Today's phto is sent from Kalkarini out in Western NT,
The town of
Broome, Western Australia was attacked by Japanese fighter planes on 3 March 1942, At least 88 people were killed.
Although
Broome was a small pearling port at the time, it was also a refuelling point for aircraft, on route between the Netherlands East Indies and major Australian cities. As a result,
Broome was on a line of flight for Dutch and other refugees, following the Japanese invasion of Java, and had become a significant Allied military base. During a two-week period in February–March 1942, more than 8,000 refugees from the Dutch East Indies — many of them in flying boats, which often served as airliners at the time — passed through
Broome.
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Lt Zenjiro Miyano, the commander of Dai 3 Kohkuu Sentai (3rd Air Group) of the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service, led nine Mitsubishi Zeroes and a Mitsubishi C5M2 reconnaissance plane from their base at Kupang, Timor in the attack, on the morning of 3 March.
From about 9.20am, the Zeroes made strafing attacks on the flying boat
anchorage at
Roebuck Bay and the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) base at
Broome Airfield. No bombs were dropped, although some were reported, perhaps a result of witnesses seeing the Zero pilots releasing their drop tanks. The raid lasted an hour.
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There were no Allied fighter planes based in
Broome at the time. The only allied ‘kill’ that morning was a Zero fighter, shot down by a Dutch airman, Flt Lt ‘Gus’ Winckel, (below right) who grabbed a machine gun from his aircraft as the attack began.
Resting the heavy calibre aircraft machine gun on his arm, he hit a Zero piloted by Warrant Officer Osamu Kudo. (below left) . The Zero caught fire, trailed smoke and vanished into the history books. Kudo never returned to his base in Timor and nobody actually saw
his machine crash, but stories abound as to where he may have gone down.
The wreckage and his remains could be in the
sand dunes or ocean anywhere between
Broome and the top of Western Australia.
This same Zero was responsible for shooting down the LB30 liberator mentioned below,
A second Zero crashed into the sea off a small island near Roti Island on its way back to base on Timor. Following a two hour swim to shore,
the pilot was rescued and returned to his squadron. This machine ran out of fuel no doubt due to the extra half hour over
Broome, plus it was suffering from battle damage.
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Following their successful raid on
Broome, the remaining 8 Japanese Zero’s,
well pleased with the morning’s pickings headed up the WA coast to their base onTimor. They were not expecting any more action and were therefore surprised to intercept a Royal Dutch East Indies Airlines DC-3. The Japanese wasted no time & quickly shot the DC-3 down. With his aircraft on fire, Smirnoff managed a brilliant crash-landing on
the beach at Carnot Bay just north of
Broome. The Zero’s continued straffing the crashed aircraft and wounded some of the passengers. During the 5 days on
the beach 4 people died of their wounds including a mother and her 18 month old baby. To add to this, the day after the crash they were bombed by a large Japanese flying boat returning from a reconnaisance of
Broome.
Initially, the flying boat dropped biscuits, but upon intercepting the downed aircrafts distress signals, and assuming that Australian fighters would soon be on the scene, they promptly dropped bombs as
well.
An American Consolidated LB30 Liberator was shot down just after take-off during the raid, killing 33 personnel aboard. This aircraft is thought to have crashed into the sea about 10 kms off
Cable Beach. There were no eye witnesses to the actual crash and judging by the direction the wind was blowing on the day (Japanese aerial photo) it is thought that
Roebuck Bay may be the site. To this day people have wondered why this many ‘able-bodied’ servicemen did not survive the crash, considering the aircraft went in at a shallow angle. It has been found that these servicemen were all wounded aircrew on their way to
Perth and other hospitals in Australia. Only one man U.S. serviceman, Sgt Melvin Donoho, managed to swim about 16 km (10 mi) from the crashed B-24 to shore, a journey which took him more than 24 hours.
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Following the attack, an RAAF officer, P/O Frank Russell who had been on one of the flying boats during the raid, wrote (a scene of ghastly devastation! Our flying boats all over the place were sending up huge clouds of black smoke. Burning petrol in sinister patches floated all over the sea... All around us there fell a ceaseless stream of tracer bullets. Several of the Dutch Dorniers had been full of women and kids, waiting to take off to ... safety)
Japanese aircraft later made several smaller attacks on the
Broome area. On 20 March, Mitsubishi G4M "Betty" heavy bombers made a high altitude attack on the airfield. One civilian was killed and there was some crater damage. The last attack was in August 1943.
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