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| ISBN-13: | 9781741767452 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Allen & Unwin Pty., Limited |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 536 |
| File size: | 8 MB |
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Whispering Death
By Mark Johnston
Allen & Unwin
Copyright © 2011 Mark JohnstonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74176-745-2
CHAPTER 1
A difficult childhood: Australian air power to 1939
Darwin, Thursday 19 February 1942. A showery hot night gave way to what an air force officer called a 'clear, steamy, brilliant' day. Yet 'clear' was not the best word, for from its morning skies came something new and shocking for Darwin, and indeed for the whole of Australia.
RAAF Sergeant Albert Fletcher, a veteran of recent fighting in the Netherlands East Indies, was lying in bed sleepily glancing at a magazine when at about 10 a.m. he heard some of Darwin's anti-aircraft guns firing. After putting on his helmet and buckling on his gunbelt and pistol, he woke some fellow airmen who had just returned from a long flight, then dashed outside.
And hell! [he wrote in his diary] The sky was packed with formation after formation. All Jap planes and all with a bellyful of hate and sudden death.
Hundreds of men rising that day to just another day of tropical sunshine were to die before the sun had set. Some quickly and mercifully and some only in the agony that could be produced by an ocean of burning oil.
One by one the dive bombers were peeling off over the harbour and town and the sound of the detonations was now accompanied by ever increasing billowing clouds of smoke.
The familiar crackle, fascinating and deadly, of the Zero sent us crouching in our trench. From ... about three hundred yds from the hangars, we saw the bombers screaming down to within a hundred feet of the same hangars, releasing a single black bomb and then twisting away.
Fletcher watched a Japanese fighter pursue one of the few American air force fighter planes at Darwin. Smoke was trailing from the doomed American's P-40 aircraft.
Eventually the Japanese aircraft departed, leaving 'the crackle of exploding ammunition and the bursting of oil and petrol drums and vast clouds of smoke everywhere.'
In this raid and another later in the early afternoon, more than 240 Japanese aircraft bombed and strafed, killing 243 people, and sinking ten ships. Not one Australian aircraft rose to meet the attackers. An Australian air force existed, but had no battleworthy planes to meet the Japanese in Darwin, even though that port had long been identified as the back door to Australia. To add to this embarrassment for the RAAF, some of its personnel in Darwin ran away in ignominious retreat. In the words of one of the air force's leading historians, 19 February 1942 was 'the low point in RAAF history'. This book tells why, despite the best efforts of air force leaders and the great courage of individual airmen, this nadir was reached. It also tells the story of how in the months and years after 19 February the RAAF contributed to victory over Japan.
Australia's air war in the Pacific was profoundly affected by two events in the first five years of the 20th century. One, in 1903, was the Wright brothers' pioneering flight, which inspired countless young men to fly. Kitty Hawk, the town in North Carolina where they made that flight, would in the 1940s be a household name in Australia. The second event, in 1905, was the Japanese victory in the Russo–Japanese war. This triumph, the first ever by an Asian power over a European one, signified that Japan would henceforth be a major force in the eastern hemisphere, and caused anxiety in Australia. The potential for a showdown with Japan was an important factor in the creation of the RAAF in 1921, and also encouraged its subsequent development.
Australian air power existed before 1921. In September 1912, just five months after Britain established its Royal Flying Corps (RFC), the Australian government also approved 'a flying school and corps', and the Army established a flight of four aeroplanes and 43 men. Its personnel were chiefly part-time militiamen. A Central Flying School was located on flat coastal land at Point Cook, south-west of Melbourne, and in August 1914 began producing home-grown Australian military airmen. Not surprisingly, crashes were frequent, given that the aircraft were so flimsy they could not fly in strong adverse winds. The first recruit to land his fragile wire and fabric Bristol Boxkite in a 50-metre diameter circle and thereby qualify for his pilot's licence was Lieutenant Richard Williams. This was appropriate, for Williams would become the 'Father of the RAAF' and the most significant airman in Australian military history.
Although military air services received less than 1 per cent of Australian government military spending in the period 1911–1914, a foundation was laid for involvement in a great war. Once that war began, the first Australian airmen to see action were sent to Iraq, or 'Mesopotamia' as it was then known, just weeks after Anzac troops landed at Gallipoli. The Mesopotamian Half-Flight, as the Australian unit was called, was deployed to support British forces against the Turks. In primitive and decrepit aircraft, unable to exceed 80 kilometres per hour, they undertook valuable reconnaissance work. Though without guns, the pilots dropped bombs by hand or from a rack or hole in the floor. The Half-Flight expanded to become 30 Squadron RFC. Its Australian mechanics included George Mackinolty, who in the Pacific air war would be the RAAF's key logistics officer. The Half-Flight's campaign in Mesopotamia was in some ways similar to Gallipoli, for though ending with the defeat of the British ground forces at Kut in 1916, it was a creditable baptism of fire for Australian airmen, who regularly displayed initiative, skill and courage.
In the meantime, Point Cook recruited and trained sufficient airmen to man four 'Australian Flying Corps' (AFC) squadrons. No. 1 Squadron sailed for the Middle East, and Nos 2, 3 and 4 Squadrons to the Western Front. All were undertrained and ill-equipped.
From April 1916 No. 1 Squadron AFC operated over Sinai and the Suez Canal. It benefited from the initiative of Lieutenant Lawrence Wackett, who invented a gun-mounting to put on the top centre-section of bombers. Later, on the Western Front, he developed a device for dropping ammunition in parachutes to advancing machine-gunners at Hamel. Wackett would still be innovating to improve Australian air power in the next war.
No. 1 Squadron contributed to every major battle of the Palestine campaign and produced several aces — men who had shot down at least five aircraft — including Adrian Cole and Ross Smith. Smith's bravery impressed Lawrence of Arabia, and especially the Arab troops under his command. On being attached to the Arab force, Smith proceeded almost on arrival to shoot down a German bomber whose attentions had been dispiriting them. Lieutenant Frank McNamara earned the AFC's only Victoria Cross when, although seriously wounded, he landed his aircraft to rescue a downed pilot from threatening Turkish cavalry.
Richard 'Dicky' Williams, the first graduate at Point Cook, showed outstanding leadership in this campaign. By 1918, aged 27, he commanded one of two Royal Air Force (RAF) wings in Palestine. By then, the Allied aircraft enjoyed air supremacy. In 1918 British General Allenby eulogised the squadron's contribution to Allied victory, while the commander of the RAF in the Middle East, Major-General Salmond, considered No. 1 Squadron one of the RAF's best.
Nos 2, 3 and 4 Squadrons reached the Western Front in late 1917. Their aircraft patrolled, spotted for artillery, strafed, bombed and fought for air supremacy. The Australian squadrons lost a total of just 60 planes to enemy action, while No. 2 shot down 185 aircraft, and No. 4 199. Notable among the pilots was Harry Cobby¸ the 'Elsternwick Boy Hero' of No. 4 Squadron, who by war's end had shot down 29 planes and 13 balloons. He received the Distinguished Service Order (DSO), and the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) with two bars. This superb airman would play an important — though controversial — role in the Pacific War. Other outstanding Australian pilots would not survive to play such a part, including Australia's top two aces of the war, Robert Little and Stan Dallas. However, the Great War was a formative influence for several future RAAF leaders in the Pacific. Like Little and Dallas, Bill Bostock served with British forces, while George Jones rose from air mechanic, second class in No. 4 Squadron to become an air ace with a DFC and the rank of captain.
Australian airmen cut dashing figures. Cobby once landed his aircraft in the Australian lines, joined and won a horse race, and then returned to his aircraft and resumed his patrol. The motto 'Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die' was for these daring young men a practical byword rather than a boastful gesture. Men carried no parachutes, and flew aircraft that would readily burn. The physical dangers of occupying open cockpits at altitude during winter were shocking.
Primitive though air power remained in some respects, the Great War revolutionised it. Aerial doctrine included roles vital in the next war: winning air superiority, strategic bombing, reconnaissance, cooperation with ground and naval forces, and attacks on enemy shipping. In 1914, France, Britain and Germany had mustered a total of just 471 aircraft. By 1918 the figure had swelled to 10,304. Moreover, whereas in 1914 aircraft were unarmed and largely at the whim of the winds, by 1918 powerful fighters and bombers ruled the skies. The AFC had mirrored this development in miniature, growing from no squadrons in 1914 to eight by war's end, and creating a cadre of experienced airmen and a set of traditions for Australian airmen to emulate. The AFC trained 158 pilots, a figure dwarfed by the 10,998 the RAAF produced in World War II — yet to leaders of the RAAF, including Cobby, Jones, Bostock, Mackinolty and others, these times past were formative.
Air power was now a permanent element of thinking about future wars. However, the possibility of further armed conflict was not one many civilians now wanted to consider, and as we will see, for many repatriated military aviators peace was not going to be easy.
The 'Third Brother': the RAAF
On Anzac Day 1919, while Australian troops marched through London in a special parade, aircraft of the three AFC squadrons in Europe flew overhead. It was no simple flypast, for the 60 pilots rolled, spun and looped their borrowed RAF aircraft. Harry Cobby flew under wires strung between buildings along the crowded Strand. Fortunately neither airmen nor onlookers were hurt. 'All's well that ends well,' concluded Lieutenant-Colonel 'Dicky' Williams, Staff Officer for Aviation at Australian Imperial Force (AIF) Headquarters in London. Cobby's assessment of that day's flying antics as the most foolish act of his life may have been closer to the truth, and this finale to the AFC's time in Europe was indicative of issues to come. Cavalier Australian flying would haunt Williams on the eve of the Pacific War, but he now had to consider the more pressing question of the future of Australian air power. When the AFC was disbanded on returning to Australia in early 1919, this very future was literally 'up in the air'.
In 1917, the South African soldier-statesman Jan Christian Smuts presented the British government with a report it had commissioned on air organisation. Smuts warned that in future wars, aerial operations might take precedence over land and naval ones. To maintain its air superiority, he asserted, Britain should amalgamate its two air forces, the RFC and Royal Naval Air Service. Against opposition from those forces, his suggestion prevailed and the Royal Air Force was established in April 1918.
This decision had implications for Australia. Its governments traditionally followed British defence policy, sometimes without much attention to the consequences of applying it to a sparsely populated nation on the other side of the world, but generally with good reason. While Japan and the US — the two powers destined to dominate the Pacific air war — were maintaining separate army and naval air forces, the British precedent of creating a new service was fundamental to the Australian decision to do the same in 1921.
Before the war ended, Japan's future military aviation intentions were already occupying the minds of Australian defence personnel. In June 1918 the Australian Naval Board called for a naval aviation service, and the Board's aviation adviser, Commander Maguire, stated that although Japan currently had no sizeable air force, it undoubtedly was planning a very large one. The potential threat posed by Japan was the unspoken danger too when the Army's Chief of the General Staff, Major-General Legge, urged the creation of a 200-aeroplane air force. Japan's opposition at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919 to the Australian mandate over Germany's former holdings in New Guinea only increased concern about her intentions. Australia's strident opposition to Japan's desire for a declaration of racial equality in the Covenant of the new League of Nations did nothing to soften those intentions.
While Army and Navy leaders recognised the value of air power in support of their own operations, neither wanted Australian aircraft within an independent force. A third service would threaten their own strength, especially if airmen could persuade the Australian government of the value of 'strategic bombing', based on the theory of the Italian general Giulio Douhet and others that air power alone could win wars.
In 1918 the Australian Cabinet allocated £3 million to an 'aviation program' over the following three years, and in 1919 the British government generously offered her Dominions surplus aircraft to help them form their own air forces. Australia accepted this 'imperial gift', and in 1920–21 received 19,000 crates of material, containing 128 aircraft, hundreds of vehicles such as trucks, as well as engines, machine guns, bombs, radio sets, flying clothing, aerodrome equipment and even hangars.
The Australian population, recovering from the bloodiest war in history and intent on reconstruction, shared an international revulsion against the idea of military expansion. Nevertheless, many were excited by the peacetime exploits of aviators. Captain Ross Smith and his brother Keith became national heroes after flying from England to Australia in late 1919. Their skill, bravery and endurance over the 135 hours and 55 minutes of flying earned them knighthoods and a £10,000 prize. To help the winners fly safely from Darwin to Sydney by surveying landing fields, two other AFC veterans, Captain Henry Wrigley and Sergeant Arthur 'Spud' Murphy, made an epic first crossing of Australia from south to north. Both men would have distinguished careers in the RAAF, Murphy as an engineer, Wrigley as a pioneering commentator on air power.
These flights enthused not only the general populace, but also politicians such as Prime Minister Billy Hughes, who in a speech in Parliament in 1920 styled himself 'a fanatic' for aviation. More significantly, he said in this speech that the government was allocating funds for creating 'an efficient air force'. This was done with the prospect of future conflict with Japan in mind, for that same year a group of experienced Australian military commanders reported to the government that Japan was 'the only potential and probable enemy.' Defence Minister George Pearce, the politician most responsible for the beginning of military aviation in 1912, backed Hughes energetically, and on 9 November 1920 the Air Board was formed. That same day, new air force ranks were introduced to replace army ones, and applied to three of the board's four members: Wing Commander Richard 'Dicky' Williams and Wing Commander 'Jimmy' Goble, as well as Squadron Leader Percy McBain (an equipment specialist). The fourth member was the civilian Finance Member, A.C. Joyce.
At the board's first meeting, Williams produced a long memorandum on the future structure of the Australian Air Force, and on 31 March 1921 the 'Australian Air Force' came into existence with 164 aircraft — most of them still in packing crates — and 151 personnel. The first airman enlisted was Arthur 'Spud' Murphy. From August 1921 the new force was called the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF).
With the 'imperial gift' aircraft and ancillary materials, as well as its independence, the RAAF was apparently starting in a healthy state. Point Cook would continue through the 1920s and 1930s to produce well trained and increasing numbers of pilots. From 1926, under an agreement with the RAF, some of these graduates were sent to England for valuable further experience. In 30-year-old Wing Commander Williams the RAAF had a fine leader. Thanks to the Prime Minister's insistence that the new force's leaders be Australian, in October 1922 Williams was the first to receive the newly created title Chief of Air Staff (CAS). However, the inter-service rivalry that had threatened the creation of the air force was to complicate his job. His was an army background, while that of Goble, the second member of the Air Board, was naval: he had become a wartime ace flying with the Royal Naval Air Service. It was probably for this reason that the government insisted the two men alternate as chairman of the Air Board and CAS. This decision was divisive, and the two former friends developed a virulent antagonism that would 'poison the senior levels of the RAAF for the next 20 years'. It also established what his- torian Alan Stephens called 'a disgraceful tradition'.Each had risked his life heroically as an aviator during the Great War and had been decorated for bravery. Each had a vision for Australian aviation, but their dreams were incompatible, as were their egos.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Whispering Death by Mark Johnston. Copyright © 2011 Mark Johnston. Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
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Table of Contents
Contents
List of maps,List of tables,
Note on measurements and ranks,
Acknowledgements,
Introduction,
1 A difficult childhood: Australian air power to 1939,
2 'They will follow you through hell': The RAAF and war in Europe,
3 'We may not have much time to spare',
4 'We were actually going into action!!': Malaya,
5 The fight for Singapore,
6 'We who are about to die, salute you!',
7 'Thrilling but terrifying': The Netherlands East Indies,
8 Crisis of leadership: Darwin and the RAAF,
9 The fight over Port Moresby,
10 The 44 Days,
11 Trouble at the top,
12 Codename 'Fall River',
13 Milne Bay: The decisive factor,
14 From Kokoda to the beaches,
15 'Whispering death',
16 Wau to the Bismarck Sea,
17 Newton and Yamamoto,
18 Spitfires at Darwin,
19 'Show of force',
20 Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier,
21 Nuisance raids and bloody good shows,
22 Burma and India,
23 Island hopping,
24 The rise of 'TAF–RAAF',
25 'Brothers in arms' and 'mutineers',
26 The final battles,
Conclusion,
Appendix A Aircraft profiles,
Appendix B RAAF squadrons and their casualty and victory totals in the Pacific War,
Appendix C RAAF aerial victory claims in the Pacific War,
Appendix D RAAF aces against Japan,
Appendix E The aircraft: Victors and victims,
Glossary,
Notes,
Bibliography,