On 19 February 1942, 188 carrier based & 54 land based Japanese aircraft, in two separate raids, bombed the Australian town of Darwin, ships in Darwin Harbour and the town's two airfields in an attempt to prevent the Allies from using them as bases to contest the invasion of Timor and Java during World War II. This was the largest single attack ever mounted by a foreign power on Australia.
Darwin was very lightly defended relative to the size of this attack, and the Japanese inflicted heavy losses upon Allied forces at little cost to themselves. The urban areas of Darwin also suffered some damage from the raids and there were a number of civilian casualties. More than half of Darwin's civilian population left the area permanently, before or immediately after the attack.
The two Japanese air raids were the first, and largest, of more than 100 air raids against Australia during 1942–1943. The event happened just four days after the Fall of Singapore, when a combined Commonwealth force surrendered to the Japanese, the largest surrender in British history.
Background
In 1942, Darwin—the capital of the Northern Territory—was a small town with limited civil and military infrastructure. Due to its strategic position in northern Australia, the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) and Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) had constructed bases near the town in the 1930s and the early years of World War II. Darwin's pre-war population was 5,800.
As early as August 1941, Darwin had been a key component in the South Pacific air ferry route designed to avoid routes through the Japanese mandate in the central Pacific for bomber reinforcement of the Philippines. The first flight to use the route occurred when nine B-17D bombers of the 14th Bombardment Squadron (H) left Hawaii on 5 September and passed through Darwin 10–12 September. By October 1941, plans were underway to position fuel and supplies with two ships, including USAT Don Esteban, being chartered and actively engaged in that purpose when war came. By November 1941, Australia had agreed to allow the establishment of training bases, maintenance facilities, munitions storage, communications, and improvement of airfields, including at Darwin, to meet the needs of the B-17 bombers in Australia.
Following the outbreak of the Pacific War in early December 1941, Darwin's defences were strengthened. In line with plans developed before the war, several Australian Army and RAAF units stationed in the town were sent to the Netherlands East Indies (Dutch East Indies; NEI) to strengthen the defences of the islands of Ambon and Timor. An improvised plan for support of the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies was completed in Washington on 20 December 1941 by the US Army General Staff. It envisioned Darwin as the hub of transshipment efforts to supply those forces by landing supplies at Brisbane, shipping overland to Darwin, and onward by air and blockade-running ships. In reality, transport to Darwin by sea was necessary. Supplies and shipping intended both to build the Darwin base and to support the Java and Philippine forces were gathered in Darwin and the vicinity. In the two months before the air raids, all but 2,000 civilians were evacuated from the town. Japanese submarines I-121 and I-123 laid mines off Darwin in January 1942.
By mid-February 1942, Darwin had become an important Allied base for the defence of the NEI. The Japanese had captured Ambon, Borneo and Celebes between December 1941 and early-February 1942. Landings on Timor were scheduled for 20 February, and an invasion of Java was planned to take place shortly afterwards. In order to protect these landings from Allied interference, the Japanese military command decided to conduct a major air raid on Darwin. On 10 February a Japanese reconnaissance aircraft overflew the town, and identified an aircraft carrier (actually the seaplane tender USS Langley), five destroyers and 21 merchant ships in Darwin Harbour, as well as 30 aircraft at the town's two airfields.
Among the ships in harbour were those returned the morning before the attack from the convoy escorted by USS Houston involved in the failed effort to reinforce Timor. Houston had departed for Java but left Mauna Loa and the Meigs which had attempted to transport Australian troops to Timor and the US Army transports Portmar and Tulagi which had embarked a US infantry regiment at Darwin.
Prelude
Opposing forces
Despite Darwin's strategic importance to the defence of Australia, the city was poorly defended. The Australian Army's anti-aircraft defences comprised sixteen QF 3.7-inch AA guns and two 3-inch AA guns to counter aircraft flying at high altitude and a small number of Lewis Guns for use against low-flying raiders. The crews of these guns had conducted little recent training due to ammunition shortages. The air forces stationed in and near the town comprised No. 12 Squadron, which was equipped with CAC Wirraway advanced trainers (which had been pressed into service as fighters), and No. 13 Squadron which operated Lockheed Hudson light bombers. Six Hudsons, 3 from No. 2 Squadron and 3 from No. 13 Squadron, also arrived at Darwin on 19 February after having been evacuated from Timor. None of the six Wirraways at Darwin on the day of the raid were serviceable. At the time of the event, there was no functional radar to provide early warning of air raids, and the town's civil defences were dysfunctional. The Lowe Commission, led by Victorian judge Charles Lowe and appointed to investigate the raids shortly after they occurred, was informed that the Australian military estimated that Darwin would have needed 36 heavy anti-aircraft guns and 250 fighter aircraft to defend it against a raid of the scale which occurred on 19 February. In addition to the Australian forces, ten United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) Curtiss P-40 Warhawks were passing through Darwin en route to Java on the day of the attack. The P-40 pilots were largely inexperienced in combat.
A total of 65 Allied warships and merchant vessels were in Darwin harbour at the time of the raids. The warships included the United States Navy (USN) destroyer Peary and seaplane tender William B. Preston. The RAN ships in port were the sloops Swan and Warrego, corvettes Deloraine and Katoomba, auxiliary minesweepers Gunbar and Tolga, patrol boat Coongoola, depot ship Platypus, examination vessel Southern Cross, lugger Mavie, and four boom-net ships. Several USN and Australian troopships were in the harbour along with a number of merchant vessels of varying sizes. Most of the ships in the harbour were anchored near each other, making them an easy target for air attack. Moreover, no plans had been prepared for how the ships should respond to an air raid.
In addition to the vessels in port, the American Army supply ships Don Isidro and Florence D., former Philippine vessels acquired as part of the South West Pacific Area command's permanent Army fleet earlier in February, were near Bathurst Island bound for the Philippines with arms and supplies on the morning of the raid.
Darwin was attacked by aircraft flying from aircraft carriers and land bases in the NEI. The main force involved in the raid was the 1st Carrier Air Fleet which was commanded by Vice-Admiral Chūichi Nagumo. This force comprised the aircraft carriers Akagi, Kaga, Hiryū, and Sōryū and a powerful force of escorting surface ships. All four carriers had participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor at the start of the Pacific War. In addition to the carrier-based aircraft, 54 land-based bombers also struck Darwin in a high-level bombing raid nearly two hours after the first one struck at 0956. These comprised 27 G3M "Nell" bombers flying from Ambon and another 27 G4M "Betty" bombers operating from Kendari in Celebes.
Air raids
First raid
The four Japanese aircraft carriers launched 188 aircraft on the morning of 19 February. The main objective of their crews was attacking ships and port facilities in Darwin Harbour. Their aircraft comprised 81 Nakajima B5N ("Kate") light bombers, 71 Aichi D3A ("Val") dive bombers, and an escort of 36 Mitsubishi A6M ("Zero") fighters. While the B5N was a purpose-built torpedo bomber, it could instead carry up to 800 kilograms (1,800 lb) of bombs and there is no evidence of torpedoes being used on this occasion; the D3A could carry up to 514 kilograms (1,133 lb) of bombs. All of these aircraft were launched by 8.45 am. This wave was led by Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, who had also commanded the first wave of attackers during the raid on Pearl Harbor.
On their way to Darwin, Zeros shot down a US Navy PBY Catalina and strafed a USAAF C-47 Skytrain on the ground, near Melville Island. At 9.35 am Father McGrath of the Sacred Heart mission on Bathurst Island, who was also an Australian coastwatcher, sent a message using a pedal radio to the Amalgamated Wireless Postal Radio Station at Darwin that a large number of aircraft were flying overhead and proceeding southward. The message was then relayed to the Royal Australian Air Force Operations at 9.37 am. No general alarm was given until about 10 am as the RAAF officers there wrongly judged that the aircraft which had been sighted were the ten USAAF P-40s, which were returning to Darwin at the time after reports of bad weather forced them to abort a flight to Java via Kupang, West Timor. As a result, the air raid sirens at Darwin were not sounded before the raid.
Flying escort in a Zero fighter, Petty Officer Yoshikazu Nagahama was separated from his squadron while he was attacking the PBY flying boat and arrived over the city alone ahead of the strike force, which was making a turn to attack from the south. He engaged five US Army Air Force P-40 Warhawk fighters and single-handedly shot down four of them.
The Japanese raiders began to arrive over Darwin at 9:58 am. HMAS Gunbar was the first ship to be attacked, being strafed by several Zero fighters. At about this time, the town's air raid sirens were belatedly sounded. The Japanese bombers then conducted dive bombing and level bombing attacks on the ships in Darwin Harbour. These attacks lasted for 30 minutes, and resulted in the sinking of three warships and six merchant vessels, and damage to another ten ships. The ships sunk were the USS Peary, HMAS Mavie, USAT Meigs, MV Neptuna (which exploded while docked at Darwin's main wharf), Zealandia, SS Mauna Loa, MV British Motorist. The oil tanker Karalee and the coal storage hulk Kelat sank later. At least 21 labourers working on the wharf were killed when it was bombed.
All but one of the P-40s of Major Floyd Pell's 33rd Pursuit Squadron, was shot down or destroyed on the ground at RAAF Darwin by the Japanese. Japanese aircraft bombed and strafed the base and civil airfield, as well as the town's army barracks and oil store. All of these facilities were seriously damaged.
The bombers began to leave the Darwin area at about 10:10. On their way back to the carriers, their crews noted two Philippine-registered freighters lying just outside the port: Florence D. and Don Isidro. This information contributed to planning for the second raid that afternoon (which sank both vessels).
Japanese losses may have been as few as five aircraft and three crew. Another 34 Japanese aircraft landed safely with battle damage. Warrant Officer Katsuyoshi Tsuru and First Petty Officer (1st class) Takezo Uchikado were killed when their Aichi dive bomber (bu. no. 3304; tail no. AII-254) crashed near RAAF Darwin. Petty Officer Hajime Toyoshima (a.k.a. Tadao Minami) was taken prisoner after crash-landing his damaged Zero (bu. no. b. n.5349; tail no. BII-124) on Melville Island. Those who ditched near the Japanese fleet and were rescued included Flyer 1st class Yoshio Egawa and the Aichi crew of Flyer 1st class Takeshi Yamada and Flyer 1st class Kinji Funazaki. In 2013, a reference was discovered in Japanese records to a Nakajima torpedo bomber suffering wheel damage from a "gunshot" and both crew (names unknown) being rescued after ditching (by the destroyer Tanikaze).
Allied ground fire was relatively intense and may have claimed all but two of the Japanese aircraft lost. Only one of the USAAF P-40 pilots remained airborne throughout the first attack, 1st Lieutenant Robert Oestreicher, who has also been credited by US and Japanese sources with one Aichi shot down and one damaged. Toyoshima's Zero is considered to have been brought down by small arms fire from Sappers Tom Lamb and Len O'Shea of the 19th Battalion. Most aviation historians believe Tsuru and Uchikado's Aichi was brought down by ground fire, possibly from a major Australian Army camp at Winnellie. Egawa reported that the damage to his Zero came from hitting a tree at Darwin.