An aircraft burning at Broome, Western Australia following
the Japanese air raid on the town on 3 March 1942. The aircraft is probably a
United States B-24 Liberator
Transporting passengers to and from a Dutch seaplane in Roebuck Bay near Broome, a few months before the attack.
Broome, the pearling town on the north
coast of Western Australia, was subjected to four Japanese air attacks between
March 1942 and August 1943. The first attack came while the limited port
facilities were heavily stretched coping with a large influx of refugees
fleeing the Japanese invasion of the Netherlands East Indies. During the last stages
of this evacuation, flying boats and land planes had been operating a shuttle
service from Broome to bring out thousands of Allied personnel and Dutch
civilians from Tjilatjap, on the south coast of Java. As a consequence, there
were sixteen big flying boats moored in Roebuck Bay at dawn on 3 March—all
highly vulnerable in an area only 2,400 metres long and 1,200 metres wide.
The appearance of a Japanese reconnaissance
plane about 3 p.m. the previous day had been an unmistakable portent that an
enemy attack was possible, indeed likely, yet pilots ignored warnings to leave
at the first opportunity after daybreak. Only one aircraft—a small float-plane
from the American cruiser Houston, sunk two days earlier in the Bantam Bay
battle—had taken off from the alighting area that morning before nine long-range
Zero fighters dropped down from the overcast at 9.20 a.m. Six of the attacking
aircraft, flying in line-ahead formation, swept in from the sea and crossed the
harbour entrance at a height of about 500 feet, while another three circled
overhead as a protection against opposing fighters (of which there were none).
Three of the Zeros concentrated on strafing
the moored flying boats, their explosive bullets quickly accounting for every
one of them. Several of the trapped aircraft had been almost ready for take-off
and were filled with passengers, many of them women and children, who were
forced to take to the water. The Japanese pilots showed restraint in not
further attacking those thus rendered helpless, or a party of 25 evacuees who
were gathered on the wharf about to board their aircraft, but casualties were
nonetheless heavy.
While these scenes were being played out on
the harbour, the second attack group of three Zeros turned their attention to
the aerodrome. Seven Allied aircraft had been standing there when the attack
began: a RAAF Hudson bomber, a Dutch Lodestar bomber and a Dutch DC–3 cargo
plane, and two American B–17E Flying Fortress and two B–24 Liberator bombers.
One of the Liberators, carrying 33 passengers and crew, attempted to take off
as the Zeros began their attack runs. It was promptly shot down into the sea in
flames, and the other machines were all destroyed on the ground.
Within fifteen minutes the Japanese pilots
had fulfilled their mission and departed on a return course for their base.
When about 80 kilometres north of Broome they encountered another Dutch DC–3,
one of the last Allied aircraft to escape from Java, which happened to be
carrying a large quantity of diamonds. This was also promptly shot down,
raising the Zeros’ tally of Allied aircraft destroyed to 24. In fact, the pilot
of this machine managed to crash-land on the beach at Carnot Bay, from where a
number of its passengers were rescued by missionaries from Beagle Bay several
days later.
The number of people killed in the raid has
never been determined accurately but is estimated at 70, including 32 who
perished in the downed Liberator; approximately another 30 people were wounded.
As Gillison’s volume of the Official History states:
The
evacuation of civilians from Java was conducted with inevitable haste and
later, in the war cemetery at Broome, the graves of 29 unidentified victims of
the raid gave solemn proof of the absence of records listing the names of the
passengers embarked in Java.
The Japanese attackers did not escape
unscathed, having been forced to fly through a considerable volume of
machine-gun and rifle fire from the flying boats and personnel on the shore.
Most notable was a Dutch air force crewman who took up a machine-gun which had
been removed from its mountings for repair and cradled it in his arms to engage
any Zero which came within range, despite suffering burns to his arm supporting
the gun’s barrel. One of the attackers was shot down and crashed, and damage
from ground fire forced another to ditch near Roti Island while returning to
base at Koepang in Timor (the pilot not being rescued until 21 March). Bullet
holes were found in six of the seven aircraft which reached their base safely.
At 10.45 a.m. on 20 March Broome’s
aerodrome was the target of a raid by seven bombers. During this attack the
north–south runway was cratered and rendered temporarily unusable by several
explosions, a Stinson civil aircraft was burnt out, but there was only one
fatal casualty recorded. Further attacks on 27 August 1942 and 16 August 1943
produced neither damage nor casualties.
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