Falling bombs and the rise of a nation - five: Horror in the Harbour

Darwin Harbour was crowded with forty five allied ships - Warships, troop carriers, merchant and supply vessels, an oil tanker, hospital ship, minesweepers, tugs, flying boats and others...Some had left already, the heavy cruiser USS Houston among them.

The folk who called Darwin home, civilians and military personnel alike, went about their day unsuspecting of the attack about to come. It was a day like any other, but would become known as a day like no other soon enough...

Mitsuo Fuchida, the attack-leader, observed the harbour through his binoculars, seated high above in his command bomber. "Rabbits in a trap" came to mind, and he nodded knowing the allied shipping was positioned far too close together. The attack would be successful.

The hospital ship Manunda was only metres away from the Peary, an American Destroyer, and the MV Neptuna packed full of high-explosive anti-aircraft shells and depth-charges. the 45 ships were arrayed to closely together and the positioning was to be a major factor in the carnage to come.

09:58 on a beautiful Darwin morning, 19th February 1942.

The Destroyer Peary should have been gone, away in a convoy that left the day earlier headed by the heavy cruiser USS Houston. It had made contact with an enemy submarine though and broke away from the convoy to hunt it. The hunt was unsuccessful and it returned to Darwin Harbour where today, 19th February, she awaited her birth to refuel. src

Captain Bermingham, its commander, saw the planes coming in and knew his ship would be a target. The boilers were already up to steam and he was just getting the engines pumping when a bomb hit the stern and destroyed the steering. He'd already weighed anchor though so was now moving erratically through the harbour performing evasive manoeuvres. He was using the propellers to do so, as best he could, whilst the crew, already at general quarters (battle-stations), fired back at the seemingly endless stream of Japanese planes targeting the Destroyer.

Dive. Release the bomb. Machine guns. Pull up. Full throttle. Climb. Stall-turn. Repeat. The dive bombers kept on attacking the ship in a systematic and choreographed pattern. She was a prize they wanted to sink.

Four more bombs fell upon the stricken vessel as it limped like a wounded animal heading to the harbour mouth. A fifth delivered the final blow, penetrating the deck plunging into the ammunition racks below. The explosion lifted the ship out of the water and, with the crew at the forward gun still firing defiantly it fell back to the water only to slip below the surface stern first. The forward gun crew, and most of the other crew went with it.

91 of the 143 U.S. sailors aboard died, including Captain Bermingham.

The ship still lies there in Darwin Harbour, an official American War Grave. The forward gun was salvaged and is now prominently mounted on the Darwin foreshore with a plaque that carries every one of those ninety one names. I've been there...One can see the spot where the vessel sank from the foreshore.

Hospital ship HMAS MANUNDA was too close to the Destroyer Peary. Fuchida had ordered his pilots not to bomb it but 12 still died with 56 more injured upon that ship.

The vessel sustained a near miss then a direct hit killing and woundin those mentioned above including a couple of nurses. Lifeboats were lowered by the remaining crew and a constant stream of casualties were plucked from the water and ferried back to the Mununda.

It was a chaotic scene but one in which the ships commander, Captain Garden, excelled. He was later decorated for his bravery during the attacks and for navigating the hospital ship out of the harbour and to Fremantle thousands of kilometres away, without navigational systems, using the stars alone. There were many hero's on that ship though, and all around the harbour and Darwin also.

MV Neptuna was packed full of high-explosive shells and depth-charges and again, tied up too close was the HMAS Swan, a Corvette/minesweeper.

During loading of shells from the transport to the warship someone looked up..."The Americans have arrived," he said. It wasn't the Americans though; It was Fuchida and his attack force overhead.

A direct hit struck the Neptuna at 09:58 and as oil spewed forth onto the wharf and into the harbour men jumped for their lives. Some didn't make it including the Captain. HMAS Swan sustained hits but managed to limp away and sail thousands of kilometres to Brisbane eventually to be refitted and rejoin the fight later in the war. MV Neptuna wasn't to be so lucky.

The Japanese attack continued unabated with all of the visible allied shipping within the harbour sinking, exploding, burning and belching heavy black smoke. The rest were at the bottom of the harbour already.

Debris and detritus littered the harbour-surface, dead bodies, and those fighting to keep their heads above water...All covered in thick oil. Flames burned on the surface and the shipping, belching acrid black smoke, the wharf was collapsing and the bombs and bullets kept falling.

Men leaped from ships to escape explosions and searing heat from the fires...Into water slick with oil and more flames. The wharf had collapsed fully now and pillars of smoke rose skyward, from land and the harbour, to where the planes still bombed and strafed the harbour and Darwin itself. It was chaotic...And in the midst of that some fought back from anti-aircraft and machine gun batteries, the decks of sinking ships and the very streets themselves.

One can only imagine the pandemonium, the fear, screams of pain and defiance matched only by the screams of the diving planes and their deadly cargo as they dived again and again to wreak more havoc. In this maelstrom of fire and smoke brave men and women performed acts of great bravery in defiance of the attack and defence of Darwin. Many hero's stood tall, and yet many died too. Men, women and children.

The Japanese attack force dropped more bombs on Darwin than they dropped on Pearl Harbour ten weeks earlier, and once again Fuchida's force were accurate and efficient. They flew in, delivered their payload, and left devastation in their wake as these same pilots had done in Pearl Harbour.

It is difficult to imagine the ferocity of such an attack unless one is there. An eyewitness recalls an hour after the attack whilst observing the MV Neptuna from the destroyed wharf:

"...she was on fire underneath. The hull was glowing a shade of red, I could hear this rumbling noise and I couldn't get away quick enough. Then she blew - The biggest explosion in Darwin Harbour. The whole town shook." (George Tye).

Later a 6-foot piece of the ship was found in a street in Darwin, over 1 mile way. There were 40 men still trapped in the Fortuna at the time it exploded.

The destruction at the harbour was almost total with every ship sunk, sinking or severely damaged. A few limped away but were fighting-ineffective. The wharf was destroyed along with many, many lives. And yet the attack continued. Relentless and efficient.

And then they were gone again...At least until 12:00 when the second wave arrived to hit the RAAF base, airfield, runways and hangars.

The airforce base was pattern-bombed meaning a strategic process of precisely placing bombs to cover each and every square metre of it. Again it was a devastating attack. One man was later found literally "wrapped around a tree trunk like fleshy-paper" after not being able to find a slit trench to hide in, others were found "shredded" into strips.

The attacks, carried out with precision and executed perfectly, were extremely successful. The pilots were incredibly skilled and were lead by a master tactician. Darwin was decimated and more was to come.

This was the first bombing attack on Australian soil and the raids were to continue for almost two years ranging further inland to reach airfields, ammunition and fuel dumps and communications installations. These incessant attacks were a precursor to land invasion and simultaneously the Japanese were marching down through Papua New Guinea with the land invasion of Australia in mind.

"After we kill all your soldiers we will come and kill the women, children and aged people."

This line was broadcast over and over by the Japanese propaganda machine only a few weeks after the first bombing. The message was read by Tokyo Rose, a Japanese woman educated in America, and it fed into people's homes and military bases by short-wave radio.

Rose would name individual units or servicemen, "too bad for you guys serving in Squadron 452 at 34 mile. You are getting bombed at midnight," she'd say.

"Hey Rose, we call bullshit!" The Aussies would laugh defiantly...And sometimes it was, bullshit, other times the bombs would fall and the men would go running for their slit trenches to avoid them...

---

---

This post, and those before it as listed below, has introduced a few stories of the Darwin bombing the scope of which is far too huge to ever sum up in a few simple posts...It's an entire book and more! It's a story full of pain and suffering, hope and hero's, villains, victors and of human suffering and triumph. It happened at a time when the world was at war, when every corner of the planet was affected by the greed, hubris and mean-spiritedness of other humans.

This event brought war home to Australia for the first time. It galvanised a nation which rose to the challenge and met the enemy with the gritty determination Aussies generally approach adversity. Like the First World War the country and its people learned tough lessons, adapted, dug deep and eventually triumphed...It was a long road though.

Thank you for reading.

---

---

NOTE about this series:
A little while ago I announced a series I would do about the bombing of Darwin, Australia. I've done three posts so far and it's time for part four. You can find the other three by following the links part one, part two, part three and part four here.

---

---

Tomorrow isn't promised - Design and create your ideal life, don't live it by default
_{An original post written by a human
Discord: galenkp#9209} 🇦🇺