Countries considered virtually untouched by the ravages of the Second World War include the United States, the Dominion of Canada, New Zealand, and the Commonwealth of Australia, even though this was not entirely true. About all that most people know about the bombing of Darwin is what’s featured in the film “Australia“, starring Hugh Jackman.

The United States naval-base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii was hit hard in 1941 by a surprise Japanese air-raid which killed thousands of American servicemen, planes and ships. But while the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor has gone down in history as one of the most famous surprise-attacks of all time, most people have completely forgotten about another, similar, and even more devastating attack, which took place in northern Australia, in the early months of 1942.

This posting will look at the famous Darwin air-raids, the two Japanese airborne attacks on the town of Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory during the Second World War, and the effects that these raids had on the city and its inhabitants, and the rest of Australia.

Darwin, 1942

Darwin, named after the famous naturalist, Charles Darwin, is the capital city of the Northern Territory of Australia. It was founded in 1869, and was originally named “Palmerston”. It gained the name “Darwin” in 1911. Darwin was a small-fry among Australia’s bigger and more prominent cities. Population-centers such as Melbourne and Sydney were famous around the world, they were major ports and trading-centers. Darwin, by contrast, was a sleepy backwater town that most people had never even heard of!

In the 1940s, Darwin was little more than an isolated country town at the top end of Australia. Its population in 1940 was a minuscule 5,800 people. By comparison, Melbourne at the same time had a population of over a million. This, when the population of Australia numbered some 6,900,000 people in 1939.

Darwin and the Second World War

Darwin in 1939 was an isolated country town, at the top of the nation, but at the bottom of the population-ladder. War seemed far away, and any notion that Australia might be threatened by enemy action were laughable. Germany was on the other side of the world! Who cared what happened? If anything did happen, it wasn’t going to happen in Australia, anyway! Apart from the blackout, rationing and military service, life went on more or less as it had always done.

It’s widely believed that Australia was largely untouched by the War, which is more or less true. Air-raid sirens never wailed across the city center of Melbourne, and Sydney was never rocked by Japanese bomb-blasts, but the threat, real or not, hung in the air.

In the early years of the war, the idea that Australia might be threatened were passed off as sensational and unfounded. The main aggressor, Germany, was on the other side of the world. And Japan was more interested in China than Alice Springs. But in 1941, everything changed.

With the attack against Pearl Harbor, Australia realised that its safety was threatened…probably. The Japs were never going to reach this far south! They’d be stopped at Singapore, and blasted into the sea! End of story. Roll over and go back to sleep.

Posters like this one from 1942 are believed to exaggerate the Japanese threat to Australia. However, they were probably closer to the truth than most people knew, or were willing to admit

However, the swiftness of Japanese advances struck terror into the hearts of Darwinians. Since 1937, Japan had taken Peking and Nanking. It had bombed Hawaii, invaded Shanghai, in less than a month, it had invaded and captured British Hong Kong. It invaded American possessions in the South Pacific, and was making sweeping advances down the Malay Peninsula.

In February, 1942, the island nation of Singapore, the “Gibraltar of the East”, Australia’s first, last, and only line of defense against Japanese aggression, collapsed and surrendered in just one week!

Suddenly, Darwin felt very exposed.

The Threat Against Darwin

To protect against Japanese aggression, Darwin was to be Australia’s first mainland line of defense. To this end, it had been equipped with anti-aircraft guns, an airbase with fighter-planes of the Royal Australian Air Force, and there was even a small naval-base run by the Royal Australian Navy. These were to be the two main fighting forces which would meet the Japanese threat if they ever came south to Australia.

With the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Japanese advances through Southeast Asia being swift and brutal, Australia began to feel increasingly threatened. In the days and weeks after the Japanese December-1941 offensive in the South Pacific, the vast majority of Darwin’s civilian population had been evacuated, and the town’s already small population shrank from 5,800 in 1939, to just 2,000 people in 1942. Most of the 2,000 people were essential civilians, government and military officials, and servicemen. The majority of the women and children had been evacuated from town by railway, or else, had boarded specially-charted evacuation-ships, which would steam them south, to Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne, well out of harm’s way.

Darwin’s location at the top of Australia, its harbour, and its proximity to Japan made it a natural target for the Japanese. But as with many defense-plans in the South Pacific at this time, Darwin was not prepared for any kind of substantial and sustained attack.

British colonial bastions such as Hong Kong and Singapore had been overrun in days and weeks. The very might of the United States Navy had been challenged! What chance did a tiny, sparrow-fart town in the middle of nowhere have, against such a superior enemy?

Why the Japanese Attacked Darwin

If Darwin was such a tiny, insignificant town, with barely any armed forces or defenses to speak of, why did the Japanese see it as such a threat and target?

As with any real-estate…location, location, location.

Darwin’s location and its large harbour made it a natural base for the Allies. Any British, American or Australian forces in the area would surely gather there. They would use the harbour for their warships, and the flat ground around the town for its flak-guns and airforce bases. At the time, the Japanese wanted to destroy any and ALL competition in the area, no matter how large or small. Their next target, after China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaya and the islands of the South Pacific, was the Dutch East Indies (what is today, Indonesia).

To take Indonesia without any opposition, the Japanese had to attack Darwin, to knock out any chance of the Allies to mount some sort of counterattack. And this is why Darwin became a target.

Darwin’s Defenses

Despite the threat against Darwin, the town’s defense was ridiculously small. Darwin Harbour had 45 ships, and the surrounding airfields had only 30 airplanes. Of the 45 vessels in Darwin Harbour, 21 were merchant-ships. Of the other 24 ships, five were destroyers (one of these was the U.S.S. Peary), and another ship was the U.S.S. Langley, a primitive vessel launched in 1912! This was the U.S. Navy’s first aircraft-carrier, a role into which it had been converted in the 1920s.

To protect against the threat of a Japanese air-attack, Darwin was more than capably defended by 18 anti-aircraft cannons, and a smattering of WWI-era Lewis-style machine-guns.

But they had hardly any ammunition between them. And hadn’t for weeks. As a result, the guns had never been fired, and the crews to operate the guns had never been trained!

On top of everything else, Darwin had almost no air-raid precautions. It had only one operational air-raid siren, barely any shelters, no radar, and barely any lookout posts.

At any rate, even if everything was working, they still wouldn’t have been able to mount any sort of serious defense. It was estimated that to defend Darwin effectively, the town would require at least three dozen anti-aircraft cannons or guns, and at least 250 aircraft.

Instead, it had barely twenty guns, and only thirty aircraft.

In the event of an enemy air-attack on Darwin, civilian aircraft-spotters on nearby Bathurst Island (namely the local priest, Father John McGrath), were to sight the aircraft, identify them, count their numbers, and then relay this information via radio, to the authorities in Darwin. Radio-operators in Darwin would then sound Red Danger over the air-raid sirens (the famous, classic high-low wail of an air-raid siren), signalling for the population to seek cover.

The warning would only give people a few minutes to duck and cover, but it gave them a fighting chance to seek shelter before the Japanese reached Darwin. At the sound of the sirens, the flak-cannons would be manned and loaded, and the aircraft on the ground would be readied for take-off, to engage the incoming enemy.

That was how it was supposed to happen.

The Darwin Raid: 19th February, 1942

Less than a week after the fall of Singapore, on the 15th of February, Australia was about to  find out how vulnerable it really was. With a flimsy northern defense, and nearly all its soldiers fighting in Africa or the Middle East, or captured in the South Pacific, and hardly any air-power and hardly two ships to race together, Australia was ripe for the taking.

On the 19th of February, Japanese aircraft carriers sailed south towards Australia. They parked themselves a few miles off the coast, and sent in over 200 fighter and bomber aircraft. 242, to be precise.

242 aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Air Force, against just 30 aircraft belonging to the Royal Australian Air Force.

As the planes flew south towards Australia, they passed over Bathurst Island. Father McGrath, the mission priest on the island, spotted the aircraft, and radioed his warning to land-stations near Darwin, that a large concentration of aircraft were headed their way. Another aircraft-spotter on Melville Island also spotted the aircraft, and he too, sent a radio-warning to Darwin.

However, much like at Pearl Harbor, the authorities believed the aircraft to be returning American fighter-planes, which had been out on practice-runs and recon-missions. So, no heed was taken of these radio-warnings. The sirens remained silent and no guns were manned in preparation. Darwin was a sitting duck.

The First Raid

The first raid against Darwin was at 10:00am that morning. Even though the town had been warned well in advance by its aircraft spotters, no action was taken in the time between about 9:15, when the first radio-warning was sent out, and 10:00am, a period of forty-five minutes. Then, the bombs began to fall.

With no warning at all, the remaining civilian population of Darwin was bombed relentlessly by the Japanese. After the first explosions, the town’s single operational air-raid siren went off, sounding out the alarm, but it was already too late.

The ships in the harbour were bombed and strafed, and among the casualties were the U.S.S. Peary, which was hit, and sunk. It was just one of eight ships destroyed. In the town, bombs rained down, destroying vital structures as the docks (where 21 longshoremen were killed when the quays received a direct hit), and Government House. The Darwin Post Office was obliterated in a direct hit. The postmaster and his family, sheltering in the nearby air-raid shelter, were killed instantly.

The town post office after the raid

The anti-aircraft defenses of Darwin were woefully unprepared for the raid. For nearly all the soldiers there, this was the first time they’d fired any sort of gun at all! Most of the ground units had no rifles. And if they had rifles, they had no ammunition. And if they had ammunition, they had no training, so most of the shots went wild. Nevertheless, of the 188 aircraft that struck Darwin in the first raid of the day, seven were shot down by Allied flak-guns. A paltry number. The 188 planes in the first wave decimated much of the town, and destroyed the two airbases nearby, as well as wreaking havoc on the harbour and ships therein.

The Second Raid

At 10:40am, the first raid ended. But another one came at a few minutes before midday. This raid, consisting of the remaining 54 of the full force of 242 Japanese airplanes, attacked  the airbases  and town yet again, in a smaller raid lasting just 20 minutes.

At the end of the second raid, the All Clear sounded and the damage was examined. 23 of the 30 airplanes had been destroyed, and in all, 10 ships had been sunk, and another 25 were damaged. 320 people had been killed, either from drowning, burns or bombing, and another 400 people had been injured.

The Aftermath

The air-raids on Darwin were devastating on many levels. Although the majority of the population had been evacuated before the raids, poor preparations and management meant that even with a reduced population, the town suffered high casualty-rates and significant damage. Electrical power was cut, water and gas-mains destroyed and telecommunications disrupted.

The town post-office was blown to oblivion, along with the town postmaster and his family.

What followed after the raids was a complete breakdown of civil and military leadership. Soldiers raided empty houses, and evacuation-marches were bungled up. This last with the result that soldiers and airmen were scattered all over the Northern Territory with no definite rallying point.

The damage and disaster was on such a huge scale that for days, weeks, months, years and even decades after the bombings, the full extent of the catastrophe was hidden from the public.

A Dog Named Gunner

Out of the raids on Darwin came one remarkable story about a dog. An Australian Kelpie puppy called ‘Gunner’. Gunner’s claim to fame was being the canine radar for Allied military forces in the Darwin area during the Second World War.

Gunner possessed remarkably sharp hearing, and was able to detect the sound of incoming aircraft from miles away. Furthermore, he was able to differentiate between friendly Australian and American airplanes, and enemy airplanes flown by the Japanese, based on the sounds of their engines.

Gunner was injured during the raid on Darwin and was taken to the nearby hospital for treatment. The doctor on duty insisted that he couldn’t treat the dog without knowing its name, rank and serial-number! Gunner’s owner, Percy Westcott, fired off that the dog’s name and rank was that of Gunner, and that he held serial No. 0000 in the Royal Australian Air Force!

Gunner’s remarkable ability for accurately alerting ground-crews to incoming enemy attacks was soon noticed. And his success-rate at accurately picking up on enemy aircraft was so high that Westcott’s commanding officer gave him permission to operate a portable air-raid siren whenever Gunner started whining and whimpering, to alert his comrades of an incoming Japanese raid.

Gunner’s extremely sharp hearing meant that he was literally better than radar and on more than one occasion, accurately picked up on the presence of an incoming raid up to twenty minutes in advance, far outside the capabilities of radar-equipment at the time!

During the later stages of the war, Gunner’s owner, Westcott, was posted to Melbourne, and had to leave Gunner behind in Darwin. What happened to the dog remains unknown.

The Affect of the Raids

Australia had previously considered itself untouchable by the hand of war. The war was happening in Europe, anyway! And in Asia, the might of the British Empire would protect Australia from harm.

After these first raids, Australia realised its own vulnerability, and made moves towards securing its own defence. One of the most significant moves was to recall thousands of Australian troops (then fighting in the Middle East and Africa) back to their homeland, a decision made by prime minister John Curtin.

Curtin’s decision was a popular one…but only with Australians. He encountered fierce resistance from both the American and British governments, especially from Winston Churchill, who wanted to send the Australian troops to Burma to fight against the Japanese. However, Curtin was so worried about Australia’s position in the war that he insisted on overruling Churchill and to have the troops steamed home as soon as possible, something which did happen, after many lengthy exchanges through letters and telegrams.

Future Raids on Darwin

Darwin, along with other cities and town in northern Australia, were bombed repeatedly throughout the war during 1942-43. By the time the war ended, the Australian mainland had been hit by no fewer than 62 separate air-raids in the space of two years.

More Information?

Looking for more information? I strongly suggest watching the documentary: “The Bombing of Darwin: An Awkward Truth”, about the air-raids, and the cover-up which followed.

Anzacday.org website-entry.