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

[siznaudin]

Nineteen days ...

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

The wait was long and difficult, specially with Old Mr. Gray, pacing like a caged lion reckoning not enough was being done.

 

I'll give you more insight into him tomorrow.

 

We see similar these days. People who aren't satisfied and push everyone... unreasonably, in many watcher's view.

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

May 11th 1942

 

 

A bit about old Mr. Gray gleaned from his grandchildren.

 

 

None of the grandsons liked him. ‘Cranky old bugger!’

 

One granddaughter DID. She lived with him for some years while her mother and brother lived in the old home. “He was nice to me and often sharpened my pencils so I could draw him pictures”.

 

None of his daughters-in-law liked him.

 

 

He was complex like most of us. He was warm when courting his diminutive fiancée, writing her love poems, but after marriage the rot set in, where is selfishness ruled till in his dotage, he looked back on those courting days and was easy to get on with. In ‘his second childhood’ as dementia was often called, he did wander and kept returning to the first home they owned and scared the owners by banging on the door asking to be let in. They got used to him and rang the family to come and get him when he came.

 

 

He was a pillar of the local Congregational church. Ceremonially and pompously said grace before meals, then officially carved the meat at the table. ‘Food was always bloody cold by the time he’d finished” … According to Tess later.

 

He did this at the head of the table wearing his opened suit coat with gold watch chain across his vest.

 

He wore a hearing aid. ”A large contraption, that looked like a pink set of hair clippers without the head. A pair of thin pink twisted wires emerged from it and the earhole shaped, chunky earpiece was on the end of them. There was a large volume knob on the front of the appliance.

 

It sometimes started whistling when he had the volume too high and everyone would shout at him, ‘Turn your hearing aid down!’

 

We kids didn’t though, we were sitting up straight, being seen and not heard.”

 

Tess didn’t feel too comfortable around him … had a feeling his hands could have roamed. Another daughter-in-law reckoned Tess wasn’t wrong.

 

 

He was a staunch ‘tea-totaller’ and went off into righteous wraths over imbibing of ‘the demon drink.’

 

…Was up there ready to take part in any public rallies against it.

 

 

He idolised his son Bill W.T. who could do no wrong. W.T. knew it and naturally played it to his own advantage against his brother, less than a year younger.

 

The second son could do no right and having a bit of a paddy was quick to blow up, which after all ‘proved his guilt.’ The next child was a daughter who old Mr Gray was nice to … till she got to think for herself and didn’t do whatever her father reckoned he wanted of her.

 

 

Charles was the last three boys who were mostly ignored by their father.

 

The youngest son was always a bit disgruntled at his being uncared for by his father and the second son felt wronged.

 

 

Darwin hasn’t been bombed for a fortnight… any day now…

 

 

The pilots in Adelaide are in conference, utilizing Chaseling and Godsell’s discoveries that a plane was sighted over Mt Briggs at sunset and Port Keats just after dark and that the lights over East Point were flares. This makes sense with the weak radio reception.

 

 

[siznaudin]

Twenty (20) days ... and counting!

 

 

[dazza 38]

Who else hasn't peeked?

I have not peeked, I look forward to the next installments .This has been Fantastic.Thank you very much.

[willedoo]

It's better than 'Blue Hills'.

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

May 12th 1942

 

Mr Gray Continued…

 

Sorry not today though… other priorities!

 

The missing blokes from the 49th.

 

Their beds have been taken by someone else. Their ‘foot lockers’ packed and stored. How long since 'the night' till the families were advised that they were missing? I haven't found out.

 

How much are they missed?

 

Air crew appeared, flew, and often didn’t come back. That was expected.

 

Ground staff were more settled. Sometimes they were bombed and sometimes they were transferred, you have time to contend with those things, but ten to go missing at once must have been a wack in the guts.

 

The mates… they’re waiting in uncertainty. Do they get on with their lives and then suddenly the old mate turns up and finds he’s been sidelined by a new best friend?

 

The officer in charge of the teletype section… What was he to do; send replacements to Brisbane? Where the hell is he going to find ten more suitable people when the unit is so short anyway? He ‘pulled the teletype course early’ because he was short handed.

 

Twenty days … He’d have had to do something about a replacement course by now, because those boys weren’t going to be picked up out of the bush and bunged straight down in front of a desk anyway.

 

The 49th is stationed at the thirty four mile. It was later called Livingston Field after the first pilot to be killed at the aerodrome.

 

Lieutenant Livingstone probably got hit by friendly fire over Darwin and crashed at the thirty four mile while trying to land. It was ‘one of those things’.

 

The story goes, that during a bombing raid, two Zeros had come in and strafed the airfield as they shot northward at low level. Not long after, one returned and a gunner spotted him and let him have it. The other gunners joined in to get the cheeky little bugger.

 

It wasn’t the Japs , it was poor old John Livingstone Jr. in his Kittyhawk.

 

I suppose we could say the gunners should have been more careful. They’d certainly have to be these days with OH&S wouldn’t they.

 

Back then they’d had high altitude bombers that appeared as tiny silver dots way up in the sky, trying to kill them and the chances of hitting one of them would be awfully remote, so when some clown comes in low, everyone is going to be letting off steam and they’d be watching where he went… waiting for another crack at him.

 

A fighter is spotted coming from that direction … What ? “Hold your fire boys till we’re absolutely sure it’s them again!”

 

Not bloody likely. His bullets might get you if you don’t get him first.

 

Have you been to Darwin? Hazy often enough and with the dust from the bombing you wouldn’t have much time to see a fighter let alone recognise what it was. Probably four to six seconds.

 

 

One in each pair is a Zero and the other a P40.

 

The arm chair detective might ask why the first to see him coming didn’t note the different engine sound. Well, ‘when your blood’s fairly up’ you don’t hear or see anything other than what you want to wack. Ask someone who finds an intruder in his home to describe what the bloke’s face looked like. The answer will be, “Dunnow … a target”

 

 

Thanks to Bob Alford's collection and the War memorial for these images.

 

Livingstone was a pretty basic camp. It was mainly tents out in the scrub. Many of the pilots had brought their beds from the hotel they stayed in Darwin, but most slept on pallaises … a sort of canvas bag filled with grass.

 

Not too many ‘campers’ today could cop these conditions. We have TV shows like ‘Survivor’ where people live under these conditions with the carrot of a million bucks prize money as encouragement. Those young blokes volunteered to perhaps die for their country or get wounded, and made the best of what they had. They knew what could happen to them. They’d seen enough wrecks from ‘The Great War’ on crutches or wearing suit coats with an empty sleeve end pinned to its shoulder.

 

Livingstone was a five thousand foot runway, a hundred feet wide with an extra ten to twenty feet of shoulder. It was made from a mixture of clay and gravel and coated with dieseline.

 

The airfield was protected by the American 102nd coastal artillery battalion.

 

The Northern Territory was populated by considerable mix of units from Oz and the USA. The 49th Pursuit Group was the first American unit to arrive in Australia as a complete unit, with all flying and support echelons fully manned and equipped. (Peter Dunn’s ozatwar.com … a must read if you are interested in just what happened all over Australia back then.)

 

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

May 13th 1942

 

 

Family portrait taken about 1938

 

Old Mr. Gray was William Thomas the second and he’d named his son W.T. the third. Can you guess? Naturally the first grandson would be another William Thomas.

 

Well! God wasn’t on the old boy’s side. His second son was first to produce a child, beating the favourite first born by some months and it was a BOY.

 

The father had an axe to grind and refused to name his son what he and the child’s mother didn’t want, but went ahead and called him Bruce. Luckily there had been a Bruce somewhere back in the Gray line.

 

To put a fly in the ointment, Ann wasn’t going to be called William Thomas and neither was Lyn in her turn. They were the next grandchildren.

 

Old Mr Gray was somewhat placated more than ten years later, when his youngest son relinquished and called his first born Bill but stopped at Thomas as the second name; he used his own instead.

 

Karma!

 

I use Mr Gray, W.T. and Bill (the grandson) in the story so you know which of the three I’m talking about.

 

When W.T came home from New Guinea at the end of his first two year stint, he openly drank alcohol in front of his father who told all and sundry it was OK, “It was to ward off malaria.”

 

W.T. drank beer not Gin and tonic.

 

Old Mr. Gray wasn’t quite so ready to accept Charlie’s hopping into the ‘drink’ when he opened a bottle in Adelaide while the old boy was visiting.

 

The old Rechabite disapproved! He didn’t sanction it nearly as much as he did with W.T.

 

Charlie and Tess had been on Quinine which they were probably still taking daily.

 

He got into such a fury, three years later, when Charlie was visiting home with his two year old and allowed the little bloke to have a sip of beer, that old Mr Gray had to storm up and down the road outside the house in the dark for ten minutes, trying to cool down enough to only be apoplectic in his condemnation of 'the allowing of alcohol to pass the infant’s lips'.

 

Old Mrs Gray weathered all his outbursts and told him to sit down.

 

He had it all over everyone else except his tiny wife.

 

Old Mrs Gray was loved by all. She patiently looked after everybody making them feel important, put up with her husband’s self-centredness and didn’t complain. The daughters–in–law did on her behalf, especially they heard the news of how she rang the old boy up at work and said she needed to get to the doctors.

 

He didn’t have time to drive the five minutes home from ‘the works’ and cart her off to the doctors. He was doing the books.

 

Poor Carrie suffered her appendicitis stoically while the old bugger went back to his book keeping. He wasn’t admired for that effort.

 

There is the feeling amongst a couple of grandchildren that old Gray had been a scab in the 1917 railway workshop strikes, from little things that were and weren’t said about strikers that one read about in the newspapers especially around 1989.

 

 

The previous Gray clan taken in 1901

 

Old Mr. Gray was the eldest of the children in his family. He was followed by three sisters and the first brother was ten years his junior. He had reigned supreme in his home as a youngster, being permitted to boss his sisters around, as was the male’s prerogative. Perhaps HE’D been the apple of HIS father’s eye

 

One sister was earmarked, while a still child, as the carer of her parents in their old age and was somehow prevented from getting married, so she could do the job properly.

 

Old Mr. Gray would drive his motor car over to the other side of Sydney to visit his kindly, maiden sister, in the years building up to the war, have tea and spend the evening with her, compaionably keeping her company before driving home at about eleven PM.

 

What a kindly older brother.

 

A family secret came out many years later and was shared amongst the wilder, more easygoing grandkids.

 

W.T. wasn’t spending the whole evening, sitting and talking.

 

He kept his Nazi uniform in a wardrobe over there and went to party meetings in it, then changed back into his ordinary clothes for his return home.

 

(I checked there was a Nazi party in Sydney.)

 

So there we have him … pillar of the church, business owner and worried parent, demanding to be on the spot in Darwin, to make sure everything is being done to find his son, while telling the inept experts, how to do their job.

 

To give him his due, he was remembered by his granddaughter and one niece as a kindly man who played games with them, but being rejected by the Congregational church as a trainee minister, which had been his life’s desire as a youth, because of his hereditary hearing deficiency and the loss of his firstborn, possibly contributed to his latter demeanour.

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

It's interesting... while having a surf on the net to research more info for this story, I have discovered a few sites that have cut and pasted bits of this saga on theaussieaviator to go in their reports. I wonder if they have some sort of automatic net that scoops any info that comes up about ADY and flags it for them to peruse.

 

At the moment I'm only about three days ahead of you with the writing.

 

 

[siznaudin]

It's interesting... while having a surf on the net to research more info for this story, I have discovered a few sites that have cut and pasted bits of this saga on theaussieaviator to go in their reports. I wonder if they have some sort of automatic net that scoops any info that comes up about ADY and flags it for them to peruse.At the moment I'm only about three days ahead of you with the writing.

The Big Brother spirit of George Orwell's 1984 is well and truly with us - I think the cyber-term is "bot", but some of the younger, more IT savvy TAA members might be able to correct me on that.

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

May 14th 1942

 

Conversation in Adelaide

 

‘In 1937 Bernard O’Reilly decided that the missing Stinson could be in the Lamington Ranges rather than South of Coffs Harbour as ‘eye witnesses’ reported. Some even reckoned it went down ten minutes north of Sydney.

 

O’Reilly set out eight days after the crash and found it in sheer mountainous country two days later. There were three survivors from that crash, hundreds of miles from where everybody thought it would be.

 

Three out of seven. How many could survive in ADY? ‘

 

‘They were civilians whereas Bill has bushcraft and the Americans probably are fit from training, so there is no reason why they aren’t alive somewhere”.

 

 

‘The country is not as mountainous. A moderately safe forced landing could be made if luck was on their side.’

 

‘There was something wrong with their compass perhaps. They could be miles outside the search area.’

 

The ladies asked each other again, “What do you think they were thinking.” Ladies seem to naturally home in on this facet of mysteries.

 

The men tried to point out, ‘You don’t think anything other than concentrating entirely on getting out of the mess you find yourself in. It’d the caveman coming out. When they were in a battle or hot on the heels of their food, they ignored everything happening around them to focus on dodging spears or navigating to killing distance of the animal.

 

Women in cavemen days were able to discuss anything and everything while digging or collecting food. If Mildred got herself in the foot with her digging stick, everyone could stop and gather around giving advice like, “Oooh go and wash it in the stream or you better wrap a rag around it.”

 

If Cedric kicked his big toenail half off in the middle of a battle, no one stopped to look and say, “Oooh nasty… does it hurt much?” They’d both land up full of arrows very quickly if they didn’t stay on the ball.’

 

The writer has asked three pilots who crashed aircraft, what went through their minds. They all said I was fighting to get/keep control all the time till the thump.

 

The first was in a flat spin that he couldn’t get out of in a Tiger Moth (bad rigging). The second was not able to turn or get over rising ground after an engine failure in a twin. He was banking on ground effect probably saving him.

 

The third turned back after an engine failure (carby icing) and clouted the ground very heavily and busted his Auster.

 

 

This painting by L.C. Goodchild was one of my favourites in my father’s library of ‘war books’when I was a child. Older readers will remember them, big green books with titles like ‘As You Were’, RAAF log … ‘Stand Easy’. They were the collections of reminiscences of personnel from the war. The painting was in ‘As You Were 1948’.

 

 

[siznaudin]

Twenty three days and still counting ....

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

Friday May 15th 1942

 

NO WORD!

 

In Melbourne.

 

DCA is collecting all the relevant documents and responses in preparation for the investigation.

 

Johnstone is busy and soon a team will be formed for the work of collecting, collating and investigating all possible avenues.

 

Doreen files more paperwork in the ADY folder

 

 

 

Not only do they want the maintenance release but a sworn statement that the aircraft was airworthy.

 

More about Sno Schubert later...Remember the name.

 

Note the MR was signed just 22 minutes before setting course.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

Well! it's official.

 

 

 

[Guest aviatrix27]

you have no idea how much self control is being exercised here! Still, I'm not resorting to google - yet :)

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

Remain strong... like those who had to, in Adelaide and elsewhere.

 

They all had questions.

 

 

[siznaudin]

Well! it's official.

So with the "now little prospect..." para, are they going to continue/scale down the search (such as it is)?

This is an unbelievable saga: god only knows how it's going to end.

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

May 16th 1942 Saturday

 

 

Everyone in Adelaide now has accepted that no one has lived in the crash landing.

 

The big questions are, did they suffer and how come no one can spot the aircraft?

 

 

Nobby Clark and some pilots have thrashed out where they think the aircraft flew and are submitting the map of their theory to DCA next week.

 

 

 

[siznaudin]

God almighty: isn't Australia - or even just the Northern territory bit of it - a big place... especially when you're lost.:(

 

 

[Guest ozzie]

I flown across there from the east coast at 2 n/miles a minute, it's freaking huge.

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

May 17th 1942 Sunday…. Church, no trams in Adelaide.

 

 

Nineteen days since the Japs bombed Darwin. Everyone is expecting a raid around lunch time to mid afternoon like they have come so far.

 

 

This week in the Advertiser and Argus :-

 

Coal miners are still on strike … (What about the war effort?)

 

 

If you are found diddling your petrol ration by driving your work vehicle to and from home ‘you can get six months or a hundred quid’.

 

 

With the planning of clothes rationing maybe as soon as a week’s time there has been and unprecedented panic buying spree in the city stores. Some stores have had to have only one door open for entry and another at the back of the store to exit. Tickets have been issued to shoppers to keep them in order in other stores. No one has taken any notice of the entreaties to not hoard.

 

One woman complained that she couldn’t buy sox for her boy in a prison camp and the authorities should take this into consideration that ladies wanting to buy clothes for prisoners should get a go.

 

 

Shock horror… there is a move afoot to allow women to become taxi drivers and girls are joining the signal corps.

 

 

Are the Yanks sending over their ‘best and fairest’ to Australia to fool us into thinking All Yanks are like them. The uniforms are certainly better fitting and quality than your average Aussie’s issue.

 

 

An add advises that Hypol emulsion taken daily will enable you to work all day… there’s a big strapping iron worker in front of a furnace in the illustration to prove it.

 

 

The Japs are blaming the weather for their poor showing in the Coral sea and are telling lies to the readers at home about our casualties … according to German media.

 

 

Rabaul and Moresby are copping a pasting from our bombers.

 

 

 

 

Look at this! No slap on the wrist back then!

 

 

 

 

 

[siznaudin]

Twenty six days! ... getting near 4 bloody weeks!

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

May 18th 1942 Monday

 

The Guinea Airways, Ansett and ANA pilots haven't given up as they fly over the area. Most pilots knew each other and none like lost airmen somewhere down there.

 

It is difficult to believe that W.T. could be dead.

 

He’d walked away from three forced landings. I suppose his luck can’t hold out forever, but you just never know.

 

 

The first emergency, 11 November 1935. The no three con rod broke. Luckily he was within gliding distance of Salamaua beach and the tide was out.

 

 

The aircraft was a Simmons Spartan. The most disliked aircraft to fly in New Guinea before the war and like all bad pennies it was the longest serving aircraft to fly there.

 

It crashed often and got rebuilt. The main problem it had was double cambered wings, so one spare was required and could be put on any of the four attachment points. The Gipsy Moths needed four spares for a quick repair.

 

 

The second was a bit more dangerous. He hit an eagle, which snapped the prop. He had to pancake in the treetops and fall the hundred or so feet to the ground.

 

 

He was not too hurt and was able to high tail it away back to Sunshine before the Kuku kuku’s (pronounced cooka-cooka) could get to him. They would have killed him and taken his head and some fresh meat would be nice for dinner... he wasn’t having any of that!

 

 

W.Ts flippant captions on the back of the photos like, ‘How to land a Moth’, ‘VH-ULE on Tyak Hill after I’d finished with it’ and ‘Moth VH-ULE ready to be carried to Sunshine, were disapproved of by old Mr. Gray who wrote on them, ‘Eagle smashed propeller’ just to make sure the viewer didn’t think HIS son was a careless or dangerous airman.

 

The third was in a Fox Moth on the way to Streaky Bay. He was able to land and find the problem, repair it and continue.

 

 

Have a look at just where Streaky Bay is. How would you like to fly there and back in an open cockpit aircraft that did about 83 knots.

 

We have no photos of that episode, but I will post some of his great photos he took in New Guinea later while we wait for the discovery of where they are.

 

It has been pointed out to me that I got one bit of info wrong yesterday... didn't read the article carefully or think about it. WE held Moresby. The Japs came over to bomb and attack our aircraft in forty eight zeros and bombers; it while our side was visiting Rabaul ginving THEM a pasting.

 

 

[Guest ozzie]

reference to 'bad pennies', always keep a box of matches in the map pocket.

 

 

[Guest aviatrix27]

"It crashed often and got rebuilt."

 

Hang on a minute, non-pilots sometimes ask "how often do these things crash?" - my stock answer is "usually just the once!".

 

And Oz, I don't keep a box of matches in the map pocket, but always have at least 2 cigarette lighters on board - will that do? :p