Seventy Years Ago Today An Ausssie Airliner Went Down. You've Not Heard Of It.

[Guest DWB]

Deepest sympathy to her family.....

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

MAY 02 1942

 

 

The search has wound down although Captain Eric Chaseling, the operations manager, has been in Darwin since the twenty-ninth organising the company search from there and interviewing those who were involved on the twenty-first . The Guinea airways, Ansett and any other civilian pilots are making zig-zag legs on their way over the possible area and peeling their eyes. The boys from the forty ninth are looking any time they go up, but it’s a mystery.

 

 

The investigation is ramping up in aviation house. Melbourne

 

Doreen had more papers to put in the ADY file. She now knows that ADY is an aeroplane and has started reading some that are understandable.

 

It was later noted that Doreen hadn’t been paying attention to detail when given the job of collecting and filing today’s files… Miss Oldmaid would be keeping an eye on HER work from now on. “Young pretty things with no brains…”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Captain John Chapman had begun to clear Cameron’s desk. This experience and perhaps his wearing spectacles all the time caught up with him because he would start as the operations manager with the newly formed Trans Australian Airlines in 1946 and remain desk bound in that position.

 

Many Guinea Airways employees would leave to join the fledgling government airline in forty six.

 

Tomorrow night same time...

 

 

[siznaudin]

God, I'd love to see this done as a doco/docu-drama.... fantastic.

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

May 03 1942

 

Sunday lunch at Prospect, a suburb in Adelaide.

 

Tess has cooked a roast and Hilda has come over for lunch with the children. Hilda has decided to await the news in Sydney in the bosom of her family rather than Adelaide where she has no roots.

 

The trip in wartime will be arduous because she will have the lowest priority for the two days of train travel.

 

Tess is unhappy. She has no serviettes and serviette rings to put on the table. They were last heard to be on the wharf at Salamaua in boxes in readiness to be shipped to Australia. “I decided to send my wedding presents and wonderful carved wooden boxes and cluster table I’d bought at the Chow’s trade store in Lae when I got here, home to Sydney when the Nips looked like coming here. Of course they’ve probably been bombed … wouldn’t matter really where they were, Salamaua or Wau they’ll be gone. ”

 

The news this week mentioned heavy allied raids on Lae. The conversation turned to their homes and housebois and what has happened to them. The photo album Charlie managed to bring down with him when he left, came out and happier times in Salamaua and Wau were mulled over to avoid the worry of Bill. Memeories (which are in colour not black and white) of days at Salamaua and the soccer matches on Salamaua airfield ... the carnival and sports day on the Lae strip.

 

 

 

Bill watching a Bioi working the gold lease the Grays held.

 

 

Salamaua isthmus.

 

The house boys coming back from the Lae market for the missis.

 

There were other reminiscences like, “I remember when our houseboy came to us with the label from a tin and asked what the word said. We told him and he repeated, “Gara-sin”, he was going to name his newborn son that.”

 

Gara-sin's dad outside the Grays house in Lae

 

The next time the patrol officer visited the village on a census visit, he asked if there were any new piccaninnies to add to ‘the book’ and the proud parents said they had one.

 

“Wanem name you call ‘im?”

 

They produced the much wrinkled label and showed him it saying, “Em I name bilong piccanni here.”

 

So Gara-sin was known to the white men who read his name as Kerosene. He would be a very old man now if he was still alive.

 

The Lae carnival ... the Missis foot race.

 

Greasy pole ... get the coconut on top.

 

In Sydney, Old mister Gray has decided HE is going to Darwin to make sure everything possible is being done to find his son. He’s taken cuttings from the paper and will book his passage tomorrow.

 

 

Doreen went to confession again last night and Mass this morning as she does every week.

 

Last week? The Sailor? Oh HE wasn’t a gentleman and had ulterior motives using the stockings as bait.

 

He got a slap across the face … It was a beauty, in the style of Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck in the pictures.

 

Girls modelled themselves on the film stars they saw at the pictures.

 

Movies in those days had all the blokes wearing hats and shouting at each other in rapid fire conversation. They punched other blokes. The women tended to sort of talk in hic-upping sobs, wore beautiful gowns, cried a lot and slapped men’s faces.

 

8 PM tomorrow nioght.....

 

 

[siznaudin]

Intriguing that rail travel was so limited according to the wartime priority system, yet it was possible to book a commercial flight to Darwin?

 

Or maybe I'm missing something...

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

A question I asked too Siz.

 

Old Mr Gray was a pretty strong willed sort of bloke and would have bulldozed his way to where he wanted to go.

 

The grandsons looked at the question and worked out that he would have stayed with Charlie till a seat was available on the Darwin flight.

 

Charlie had comassionate leave. His son remembers the story of that happening. His logbook verifies this ... no flying from 4th to 23 May.

 

Mr and Mrs Gray got compasionate grounds for the flight... a bit of who you know. Military passengers got priority on civilian flights and any spare seats were available for civilians

 

Grandson Bill still has the post card, somewhere in his memoroebelia, that his grand mother posted from Darwin. Bill's father was the eighteen year old son who didn't like having to help with his nephew and neice while his parents were away.

 

AND from 'little Ann' who lives in the USA, you have this reply...

 

What he is missing is

 

(a) it probably cost a lot more to fly than to take the train, and I've a vague memory of some member of the family telling me that Mother sold some of my dad's clothes because she needed the money, and that some of the Grays were angry that she had done that.

 

(b) my mother might not have had very much money, I've no idea who paid for the train travel for the three of us, from Adelaide to Melbourne to Sydney (with that change of trains at Albury, of course, with the different gauges of State railway lines, and have they ever changed that? if so, when? One still had to change trains at Albury around 1961, the last time I took the train between Melbourne and Sydney.).

 

© there probably were things like the pram (and maybe also the bike? but I think not the bike maybe she sold that, she bought a Malvern Star around 1952 that I had to share with Lyn) that had to go with us on the journey, and all our clothes. Was the system of <<clothing coupons>> in effect in Australia? Photos of me show me wearing what looks like maybe my 4-years-older cousin Robert's woolen pullovers and long socks. When we came down from New Guinea in around September 1940, I surely wouldn't have had any warm clothes. I know that clothes coupons went on in England even after WW2. Queen Elizabeth married in 1947. "With food and clothing still being rationed in postwar Britain," states one web site, and I think I've read that people from all over the UK sent clothing coupons to her as gifts prior to her wedding to Prince Philip. And I remember that food coupons were still in existence in Sydney around 1945 or 1946 because I remember that I LOST a butter coupon en route to the store one day, to my mother's great dismay, because without a coupon one couldn't buy butter.

 

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

Monday 4th May

 

 

Eric Chasling has been conducting the company investigation and has uncovered an omission. It could be something.

 

The RAAF omitted to pass a signal over to the civies at DCA on the night.

 

Coast watcher Father Docherty, radioed in a report to naval signals at Darwin, that a twin engine, twin tail aircraft circled his Port Keats Mission for fifteen minutes between 1920 and 1935 CST before heading off in a north easterly direction.

 

Some cove in the RAAF either didn’t think it was important or overlooked it.

 

It was the war. Perhaps he was fatigued or perhaps he was another ‘Captain Mainwaring’ who made decisions on what is and isn’t important.

 

‘Captain Mainwaring’ isn’t a figment of a comedy writer’s imagination. He’s real and here with us. These days our government has made all sorts of regulations that have attracted the Mainwarings to the honeypot.

 

It’s a bit like the government issued an edict that every workplace must have a special, ‘big electro magnet’ thing installed and when the electricity is connected it attracts that ‘certain type’.

 

They even gave the thing a couple of names … ‘Occupational Health and Safety’ and ‘Equity and Diversity’. The Captain Mainwaring of the world are all immediately sucked onto it and begin throbbing with enthusiastic fervour. At least we know where they are but, boy oh boy! Would they be allowed to incorporate their safety measures in their own homes? HAA! Wives wouldn’t allow them.

 

 

Chaseling was probably pretty thorough in his investigating, G.A. had already had two Electras make holes in the earth’s surface and I guess he would be aware of DCA’s and the other airline’s interest in their operation.

 

 

 

 

The last time we looked in the archives, one folder of files was still on the secret list and funnily, another had somehow been lost, so the whole story can’t be told with certainty.

 

 

 

This photo was taken in 1938 and is in the National Library.

 

Harry Cook was the Chief Pilot and Chaseling with the interesting Naval style ring on his sleeve was the Operations manager. The three with the cross beside them died in the crash of VH-ABI at Katherine 18th Jan 1939.

 

 

Next report Sunday 7 PM

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

A question was put to me by 'Little Ann' about the uniforms above. They are the 1939 to sometime after the war, Guinea Airways, pilot uniforms.

 

Old Mr Gray's grandson, Bill, is staying with us at present, so I am able to run many things past him.

 

He brought up the thought, was that ALL the GAL pilots. We decided, there must be at least the same number away flying when the photo was taken.

 

The name William was passed down the generations. It can get confusing which ill'

 

I am going to cover the above a bit, later when we have no information on where ADY is and we wait for something to come up.

 

This story, if we continue on with the actual day seventy years after the facts, is going to unfold for months.

 

 

[siznaudin]

God, I'm so tempted to Google this up, but it'd spoil the real, or near real-time impact.

 

I'll give another plug here for the utterly absorbing story of a downed Spitfire pilot who trecked across the Territory for 20 days before finding rescue.

 

An amazing account of hardship and tenacity.

 

"Caterpillar Club Survivor - Lost in the Top End, 1943" Ross Smith Stagg ISBN978-0-646-47777-0

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

y're a strong man Siz. You are getting the feel better than those who googled.

 

 

[willedoo]

God, I'm so tempted to Google this up, but it'd spoil the real, or near real-time impact.

If I can resist it, you can, Siz. Be strong. (and that's coming straight from a Google addict )

Cheers, Willie.

 

 

[Guest aviatrix27]

I know where you two are coming from, after all I have about 6 tabs open that are google search results :rolleyes:

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

Who else hasn't peeked?

 

 

[Guest ozzie]

I am enjoying this too much to spoil it. no sneaky google peaks here. Appreciate the effort and detective work by the author to put this forgotten piece of history out here.

 

 

[Guest DWB]

I haven't peeked 6T. Enjoying it, don't want to spoil it either.

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

WARNING: you have a longish wait, but I'll try to make it easier than those in adelaide seventy years ago

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

May 6th 1942

 

 

NO news on ADY.

 

Chaseling told a reporter, “I haven’t given up hope yet, friendly blacks may be helping them.”

 

Ann remembers talk about this piece in a news paper, but I haven’t been able to find it yet.

 

To put this hope into perspective… Chaseling had flown over a fair bit of Australia and knew many aboriginals who refuel aeroplanes out in the boondocks as well as staff at hostels and aerodromes.

 

It is seventy years ago that this story is happening for us and for them, it was eighty years since ‘The Burke and Wills expedition’. Burke and Wills died of exposure and starvation because Burke ‘would have nothing to do with the natives’.

 

King, the only survivor, was looked after by the local Cooper Creek tribe. They helped people who needed it. King was a poor wreck of humanity and they wouldn’t let HIM starve.

 

He was saved.

 

Chaseling has discovered that someone... soldiers from out the 105 radar station way? or perhaps navy personnel? had fired off a red and a white flare out of hi-jinks and boredom on the evening of April 21. This explains the lights that aeradio reported to ADY implying they were seen from the ground.

 

No one would say who had done it… just it had been seen to happen.

 

There were showers occasionally passing that night.

 

You couldn’t blame them if they did pop off a flare they found lying about after reading the following from Peter Dunn’s great site … http://www.ozatwar.com Peter has amassed a marvellous history of the war from an Aussie’s point of view.

 

In March 1942 the RAAF decided that more RDF cover was required in the Darwin area. An SCR 268 radar (the Americans used the term RADAR) which had been modified for air warning was flown to Darwin. These units were known as a MAWD or Modified Air Warning Device.

 

The equipment was dismantled on 24th March 1942 and packed onto two trailers, with a total weight of approximately twenty tons. The equipment arrived at Batchelor by the 6th April 1942. It was all assembled by 25 March 1942 and moved over 100 miles of bush county to Point Charles. The Mobile RDF Station was operating two days after it arrived on 20 April 1942. Warnings of the approach of enemy aircraft were passed by W/T circuits to No 5 Fighter Sector. These links were known as telling circuits. The RDF Station was named No. 105 RDF Station RAAF on 1 June 1942.

 

Commanding Officer, P/O P.E. EVANS,

 

Early assistance & relief by P/O RAY RYAN & P/O HAL PORTER.

 

Early in April 1942, I left 31 RDF station at Dripstone to join with the POINT CHARLES crew, and to pick up the equipment from BATCHELOR. From there we departed for POINT CHARLES on the western side of DARWIN HARBOUR from where the Darwin lighthouse looked out over the open sea. Our route was approximately 100 miles through very rough country. There were no roads, and we had only a rough map and a compass.

 

There were two eight wheel American Army trucks on loan, with each carrying around ten tons and a RAAF tender with about three tons, all with our gear, tucker, stores etc. I cannot remember the number of personnel perhaps there were eight or ten men. The trip took two weeks, and at times it was so slow we had to walk beside the big trucks, wielding axes to cut trees and branches to clear the way .We had load shifts, tyre blowouts, we had to ford streams, ditches and gullies, and of course we were bogged many times by one vehicle or another, We then had to use both front winches on the trucks to pull the other out, and sometimes we would be held up for hours, even at times with the hold up extending overnight.

 

It was at one of these bogging hold ups that we had a frightening experience. The bogged truck had its cable attached to a tree and the other truck its cable attached to the bogged truck when the strain became so great the steel cable sang like a violin string. Suddenly the cable attached to the tree snapped. It snaked and whipped all around the place even cutting down small trees, luckily without striking any personnel, although we were spread all over the place. We were indeed very fortunate. It was a very good lesson.

 

At night we just stopped where we were, ate hard rations, and slept on our groundsheets, then off again at first light. I remember having to hang a blanket from the tail-shaft under a truck, and use it as a hammock to get off the ground because of heavy rain. The water just flowed through and under my hammock. At last, after arriving at the site, our first priority was to unload the American trucks so they could return, then we began to set up the unit.

 

It was "ON AIR " within a day or so, but our camp was a shambles. Actually I remember it was a week or more before we got our tents up and began to settle in. The NAVY delivered our fuel by dropping 44 gallon drums overboard, and we had to swim out to retrieve them, with a sentry always placed close by to watch for sharks and crocs. We walked the drums in to the beach, where they were manhandled up the cliffs with ropes to be stored.

 

The NAVY boys made it quite clear they were not hanging around they got out in one hell of a hurry. They liked plenty of sea around them!!! Our food was bad, mosquitoes and sand flies drove us mad !! The first few weeks were very hard on all of us; but I believe the job was well done, with all of us including our C.O. doing anything and everything to keep the unit performing and it did perform well!!!!

 

Medically and physically we all suffered. We had an up hill battle with the food rations and dysentery, then there were troubles with ulcers, sand fly poisoning, mosquito bites and Dengue fever. I had Dengue twice; the first time I kept going (just), but the second time I landed in hospital at BERRIMAH. They told me later I was taken out by boat. A few kilometers north of us along the beach was a deserted banana farm. We used to walk up there and bring back a stick of bananas and hang them from the ridge pole of the tent until the lower bananas became ripe, then we really enjoyed them

 

 

At Point Charles, life for the men was obviously very basic...primitive almost. Food supplies wear of the tinned variety...and very little variety at that. There were few facilities other than those the men set up themselves, and recreation and entertainment also depended on what the men could think up. Swimming, fishing and walking were the obvious recreations, though there was a deserted banana farm not far from the camp which also provided a variation to the tinned food.

 

If THIS was the early warning device the records of ADY mention, it’s not too hard to see why it was probably off the air, only having just arrived.

 

Chaseling has also interviewed Sergeant Johnston and Corporal Killingsworth who were on duty in the DF hut, to see if he can find out any more than he read in the report. Killingsworth is still stressed by the experience.

 

 

[Coop]

Hmmmm. I'll never consider myself "hard up" again...

 

Great Read Sixties- I've been following it for about the last week, and also haven't peeked yet.

 

Glad you enjoyed that read, Siz. Obviously the fighter pilots had no survival training before being thrown into action!!

 

Regards

 

Coop

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

Ann rummaged around in her memorabilia and found this. We are lucky that there are three families who have ‘kept bloody old rubbish that should go to the dump.’

 

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

May 7th 1942

 

Captain Godsell landed at Tipparary station today and asked the owner if anyone had seen anything of ADY.

 

He got the men together and one stockman said he’d seen a big plane with two engines fly over him at the Mt Briggs yards one afternoon. It spooked the horses as it flew low towards Wyndham which is in the direction that the sun was, as it set through the trees.

 

Godsell and Buckley are busily trying to come up with independent theories to see how similar they are.

 

The pilots are discounting Adam’s theory because of the bad radio reception indicating ADY was not close to Darwin.

 

The pilots have maps up in the crew room showing all the tracks aircraft have made in the search. Each day they fly off track for a look on the way to and from Darwin.

 

They are now making a grid at sixty degrees each side of the direct track for pilots to fly and record so there are no double ups.

 

How often have you missed something on the ground flying in one direction and seen it easily from say ninety degrees to the original direction.

 

Can someone be alive? It’s now sixteen days.

 

Hell, a Super Electra is a pretty big aeroplane. WHY can’t anyone spot it.

 

 

It had a 20 metre wing span and the airframe was thirteen and a half metres long. It’s not a thing that you can hide under a bush.

 

They weren’t an aeroplane that always stayed together when they walloped the ground. Poor old ABI didn't mean to come down where she did, so she broke up badly. Other's forced landing did better, although the land was flat where they did.

 

 

 

 

Below is ADY not long after she arrived in Adelaide, having broken Scott and black's time in the Mac Robertson air race of 1934 de Havilland Comet's record

 

 

The pilots were reasonably high up in the airframe even if the gear collapsed.

 

 

There was the known weakness of that nose however. It came off easily.

 

 

It had huge fowler flaps. These must have lowered the stall speed to a slow one.

 

Now, Here’s a thing! The Japs had Lockheed 14s before and during the war. They were called Tobys then later Thelmas. I wonder if the Ack-ack gunners in Darwin knew that.

 

 

Wouldn’t that be a nice bit of bastardry to send Thelmas out on reconnaissance over the Darwin area where Hudsons were based.

 

 

[siznaudin]

Or else the Nips could have used their Dakota lookalike, 'though that would've been somewhat slower.... jeez, 16 days!:(

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

May 8th 1942.

 

 

Seventeen days …

 

 

Can people survive seventeen days ?

 

Ross Keith Stagg did for twenty four in similar country a month after ADY came down .

 

Sixteen men lasted seventy- two days up in the snow of the Andes and all they had to eat was snow and their mates.

 

 

The twelve who were in ADY had eleven rifles and ammo between them. The US soldiers carried all their gear with them rifles included. ADY had a rifle strapped to a bulk head along with first aid and emergency rations. TAA the real one, Trans Australian Airlines, had a .303 still strapped to the rear bulkhead of the Flying Doctor Dragons in the nineteen fifties.

 

There would be food of sorts to eat. Crock’s, wallabies and even dogs were around the area. If you’re hungry you’d eat dog.

 

 

Questions … why didn’t they go to the fires they were trying to land near?

 

Did the rain put them out?

 

Did they know where the fires were the next day?

 

Had the pilots been killed and the live passengers didn’t know about the fires, so they remained near the wreckage as advised.

 

Were there broken legs and back injuries that stopped someone from trying to find help.

 

The country is rough and stony in the Darwin area. That would be difficult to drag yourself over.

 

 

We wait!

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

Now? who checked up on Lofty's lottery ticket?? I got my money back on the 70 mill last night, so I can't complain.

 

May 9th 1942

 

Saturday. Last night before she left work, Doreen filed more papers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They give us the example of the thoroughness of an investigation. Every stone will be unturned getting to the reason for a crash to stop it happening again.

 

The thing here is, many of the pilots and DCA people were friends. These were the days when the industry was small. Most had come up the ladder together, but then many people in CASA are blokes I’ve known in airline days.

 

 

[Pete777]

I haven't peeked either, and also enjoying very much. . . .Thankyou.

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

May 10th 1942

 

 

 

Sunday;

 

Old Mister Gray insisted on taking over and saying grace before the Sunday lunch in Tess and Charles’ home.

 

Little Ann and Lyn learned the most important of life’s rules.

 

“Children will be seen and not heard!”

 

 

No news of ADY