‘An Awkward Truth: The Bombing of Darwin February 1942’ (2009) by Peter Grose.
Here's a review I wrote of one of the best Australian military history books I have read in recent years:
On February 19th 1942, the Japanese launched a large-scale aerial assault on the town, port and airfield at Darwin located on Australia’s northern coast. The first wave, comprising 188 aircraft, was launched from four aircraft carriers of the Imperial Combined Fleet under Admiral Nagumo located in the Timor Sea. A second wave, comprising 54 heavy bombers, was launched from newly-acquired land-bases in the Celebes and Maluku Islands in the Dutch East Indies.
The first wave struck shortly before 10am, the second arrived around midday. By the time the skies over Darwin were clear at 12.20, there was a scene of utter devastation. Much of the port and town and the nearby airfield lay in ruins, a number of ships were sinking or ablaze in the harbour and a state of confusion and anarchy had descended in the wake of the attack.
The Feb 19 raid remains the bloodiest single day on Australian soil. There would be over 60 further raids on Darwin & the surrounding area over the next two years but none would come close to the scale and devastation of the first attack.
As historian Grose points out, up until recently, the story of the attack on Darwin and the subsequent 2-year-long aerial campaign waged by the Japanese on Australia’s north, has remained curiously little-known among Australians. Even the official Australian army history of WW2, running to seven volumes, devoted a mere two pages to the Feb 19 attack. For a country that has long celebrated its military history, the attack on Darwin has tended to remain a minor footnote.
One reason might be a kind of embarrassment. The popular version of the raid is decidedly less than heroic and one that is a poor fit into the preferred legend of the Australian fighting man. It paints a picture of a complete fiasco- morale and discipline completely broke down and many hundreds of people, both military and civilian, fled Darwin en masse, some not stopping until they reached Australia’s south coast over 1,600 miles away. In their wake, looters stripped the battered town bare while wounded lay untended and bodies were left unburied.
Another possible reason is the Australian government’s decision to suppress the full story of the raid until late 1945, fearful of how it would impact on public morale, resulting in much of the story becoming shrouded in rumour and hearsay. In an official speech, Prime Minister John Curtin spoke defiantly ‘The results of the raid did not give much satisfaction to the enemy’, leading one survivor to wryly comment, ‘Then the enemy must be hard to please!’
Grose’s book aims to set the record straight. In his view, yes, there were shameful and un-savoury aspects to the story but there are also many incidences of heroism and selflessness, some of which have gone un-acknowledged. In Grose’s opinion, the breakdown of order and discipline that occurred in the wake of the attack was due not to any moral failing on the part of the rank & file but rather a profound failure of planning, leadership and organisation.
Darwin was largely caught unawares on the morning of Feb 19 but the fault lay with those responsible for preparing the town’s defences, not the defenders themselves. Years before hostilities with Japan began in December 1941, the Australian military rightly guessed that Darwin would be one of the first targets of an enemy invader. Indeed, after Pearl Harbour, most of Darwin’s civilian population was evacuated, on Feb 19, there were only 67 white women in the town, most of them employed in essential occupations. But there was precious little preparation in the months leading up to the attack. The relatively few anti-aircraft batteries were ill-trained, there were too few air raid wardens and fire-fighting teams. And the organisation and co-ordination of the various branches was either too little or non-existent. Radio warnings from advanced listening posts about the approaching attack went un-heeded on the morning of Feb 19. The AA batteries on the town’s sports oval only received a short warning because their own signalman happened to pick up radio chatter from US fighter pilots off the coast.
Grose argues that another problem was cultural. For decades, Darwin had been a town deeply divided along economic, racial and class boundaries. There was much hostility between the militant unions of the dock-workers (‘Wharfies’) and the town’s snobbish ruling elite of government officials and wealthy landowners. Not to mention considerable racial segregation against the local Aborigines and Chinese, Malay and Timorese fisher-men and pearl divers. In the author’s view, a town so divided could not present a united front against attack. In the aftermath of the attack, unionized merchant seaman from a sunken freighter refused to assist in the unloading of food and medical supplies for the town’s population unless they were guaranteed extra pay. While on the other end of the social ladder, Darwin’s chief administrator ordered several of the town’s small police force to waste precious time loading silver, crystal and crockery from the town’s Government House into trucks during the lull between the two waves of attackers while the rest of the town burned and wounded cried for help.
The infamous massed stampede of soldiers and civilians from Darwin that occurred in the wake of the attack was, the author argues, caused by a failure of leadership. The town’s military and civil commanders were either paralysed by the attack or gave ill-advised or vague orders, creating a series of ‘Chinese Whispers’ (the author’s words) that allowed mis-information, rumours and finally panic to spread. Hundreds of un-occupied RAAF men were sent from the airfield after the attack to a proposed location several miles south of the town in order to have a meal and to get re-organised. But the chain of command broke down and the re-deployment became a rout, some of the men did not stop until they reached Melbourne 13 days later!
Grose stresses that there were many heroic individuals that day. The valiant crew of the US Destroyer USS Peary, the largest warship to be sunk at Darwin that day, tried to fight off the attackers and aid other vessels before she went down, taking 91 of her crew with her (of the 300-plus deaths that day, over 100 were Americans). The stoic Australian AA gunners who remained at their weapons even without orders, continuing to fire their guns despite their in-adequate training. The heroic US pilots of the 33rd Pursuit Squadron USAAC who, possessing only 10 P-40 fighters, valiantly engaged the enemy, losing all but one of their planes. (One pilot, Lieutenant Robert Oestreicher, managed to evade the Zeros and shoot down a pair of Val dive-bombers). The soldiers and civilians who braved the oil-smeared and shark-infested waters of Darwin harbour to rescue drowning survivors from the sinking vessels. Grose’s account proves Napoleon’s famous dictum ‘There are no bad soldiers, only bad officers’.
Grose also discusses another controversial topic-the true extent of the death toll. The ‘official’ figure of 243 killed is generally accepted to be too low but some historians have hinted at a conspiracy to conceal a much larger and un-acceptable toll. Grose refutes the latter and he estimates the true toll, including US losses, at between 300 and 320, allowing for a small number of dead who floated out to sea or were taken by sharks. Another controversy discussed is the damaging of the hospital ship Manunda which was clearly marked with Red Crosses. Some claim that the Japanese pilots deliberately targeted the ship, aware of her non-combatant status, others have claimed that she was accidently hit by bombs aimed at the destroyer Peary which swerved near the former ship at one point. Grose examines both sides of the argument and admits that there can no conclusive answer.
Grose is a careful writer, giving due space to both sides of each argument and all versions of events. He may be a little too polite for some tastes but this is a very well-written & researched and very thoughtful book and the clear and balanced account it delivers about the attack on Feb 19 is long overdue.
