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

[sixtiesrelic]

24th June

 

 

It was after a fire had gone through the area that Hardy spotted the wreckage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest ozzie]

So there was no post crash fire?

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

The unusable fuel in the belly tank caught and melted some aluminium but I guess because of the heavy rain the grass didn't catch.

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

Late June

 

The wheels are going to turn very slowly from now on as every avenue is examined and reported on.

 

Some examples below.

 

 

 

 

 

There are hand written witness reports months later while the three investigators travel over the N.T examining every little thing.

 

I'll speed up the story more now.

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

A few people are getting the heat off themselves and their mates by suggesting other people are at fault... "That Gray bloke... Came down from New Guinea recently.... Morse not so good ... they're not as good as us down here, those New Guinea blokes... blah blah blah."

 

You can't really blame them. They didn't think they were in the wrong yet questions are being asked .

 

 

The fact that Cameron didn't read the Morse any better went over their heads.

 

Afflek isn't fooled. He's thinking they were low and a long way off.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

 

 

 

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

Not sure who sent me this many years ago. It is the wreckage back at the homestead being examined.

 

 

The investigators drew this map.

 

 

 

 

Nothing coming for the next two nights... visitors staying with us.

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

I could keep posting reports and answers but I think the time has come to start winding the story up.

 

 

This is Afflek’s report in August prior to the official findings.

 

 

 

 

And this is Newstead's report.

 

 

 

 

The map is of the theories. Adam’s theory only considers the DF station giving correct readings. Afflek’s is taking into consideration his experience as a pilot and the witness sightings.

 

 

When the final report 40 plus pages of virtually what Afflek says, old Mr Gray demanded a copy.

 

He spent the next thirty years getting it out and pouring over it trying to fathom out what happened on many a night.

 

There are his hand written notes in the margin and it would have been set on fire when he died. He was a collector of all sorts of things and his sons burnt most as they had no idea what to do with them.

 

Grandson bill was plane crazy and was going to be a pilot when he grew up, so he snaffled some photos of aeroplanes and the report from the heap, even though some cranky uncle told him to, “Put ‘em back”.

 

When he grew up and had been a pilot for many years, we got talking about the crash and decided we would go and find it.

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

Well the story is a good example of the holes in the cheese lining up or links in the chain.

 

Who was responsible?

 

Cameron? He flew the aeroplane above the cloud base to get a better ride for all aboard. They made a big thing of THAT!

 

How many people fly on top or amongst clouds? All the pilots did back then. There wasn’t too much of a problem … ‘find a hole’. Cameron had been caught before and did what we all would do … fly out to sea, get underneath and come back.

 

On April 21st he would have found a hole.

 

The forecast was… Cloud well broken, large cumulus base 2000/3000ft.1000/1500ft in shower area. Visibility 15/20 miles restricted in showers.

 

He had his mate flying behind him who said he was staying underneath to call up and get an actual weather with cloud base when he got closer to Batchelor.

 

The fly got in the ointment when he was told it would be dark in 15 minutes when he was 25 minutes from Batchelor, BUT there was 40 minutes of light remaining.

 

He was now faced with a problem of having to buggerup tomorrows flying by starting it late.

 

Can we blame the Aeradio bloke who didn’t check the daylight/darkness chart?

 

 

Have a look at his conditions he worked and lived in.

 

 

Pictures from CARS collection

 

The Japs had tried to drop bombs on him three hours earlier … knock out KTN communication and it made flying to Darwin difficult. They were dropping bombs on Darwin aeradio often.

 

Where was the chart? Somewhere out in the paddick covered in dust?

 

He was sitting in a hut with no windows and there was heavy cloud all around making it appear later than it was.

 

Do we blame the HF/DF operators? No! they were getting other aircraft in alright from the northern quadrant and had no idea that the southern one might be playing up.

 

Techs checked the equipment a number of times and the operators were checked and everything was found to be as excellent as could be produced.

 

Well what about the unknown bloke in the RAAF who didn’t pass the message on to DCA he’d received from the navy that an aeroplane was flying around a mission.

 

How many of those was he receiving an hour? I bet someone was reporting every aeroplane that they couldn’t readily identify in case it was the Japs.

 

I was shown the noise complaints sheet for one day at a major Aussie airport fifteen years ago. One weasely, little runt, rang up to complain as EVERY plane flew over HIS house for the whole day. There were a hundred calls logged just from him. He wants the planes to fly over someone else’s house … not his. He had rights!

 

They were a couple of thousand feet up by the time they got near his castle.

 

I don’t think that RAAF bloke should be crucified. He was probably snowed under with work in some stifling, temporary room.

 

There was a lot of bomb damage on the Darwin drome at that time.

 

Should the sticky beaks who heard the kite flying over when the DF blokes saw the scope show an overhead indication? Not really. They did the old gotchya of hearing what they expected. That’s like the nav student who sets off on a wrong heading and a town comes up right on time and he doesn’t carefully identify it on his map and continues flying to find out he’s a bit bushed when the next check point doesn’t appear. There’s plenty that has happened to.

 

Cameron believed he was flying where he was told he was.

 

No one got it when he missed seeing the searchlights. “Oh they passed them before they were illuminated and they didn’t look back in their searching". THAT’S a bit hard to believe.

 

The sky was misty with light rain. The lights would have made the sky glow for cubic miles.

 

No one got it when he and they were having such difficulty with radio reception. The HF set could have been on the blink but the VHF as well? Cameron should have been pretty clear when he asked for the barometer setting for his expected imminent landing. I’d say that was QFE, so the altimeter showed zero on the ground, otherwise why would he wait till he was nearly there to check the latest QNH? … what was he using up to then? For you non-pilots. QNH is the millibars set on the altimeter to show the aeroplane’s height above sea level. We use just it now, not QFE and we know that when we land, the altimeter will show how high we are above sea level. Mountains are shown on maps above sea level. Too much chance of people wacking into hills when they have the aerodrome set to zero feet because they may mess up the subtraction while concentrating on flying.

 

After the crash…

 

Buck Hardy reported the aircraft flying round the homestead. That wasn’t passed on to the authorities searching. No one got found out for that omission and Wirraways landed and refuelled at Pine creek during the search and it wasn’t mentioned to the searchers by anyone. Lots of authorities that message got passed through.

 

The RAAF bloke who reckoned he was in charge?

 

He believed he was.

 

Belting into the wing with an axe? The wing was upside down. Look at the photo… wheel pointing to the sky.

 

14s didn’t have a mail locker in the wing, but I’m sure I’ve seen a photo of either a 10 or a 12 with an open locker cover in the wing

 

 

Found it on Eddy Coates' great site.

 

behind the engine. There are twins flying around today with them. Good place for a locker. Nothing there in the engine fairing and close to the centre of gravity… minimum balance problems with last minute cargo.

 

The RAAF bloke probably saw that locker at some time and it just happened to have mail bags in it so he surmised that it was a ‘mail locker’ and Lockheeds had them. Did he know the difference between a 10 and a14?

 

Giving the aircrasaft name plate to Nobby… why not? He certainly didn’t chop the nose off to get it. There were bits of torn aluminium everywhere. He may have trimmed it up a bit to make it more manageable.

 

Interestingly, Nobby didn’t take it away, because it remained on the Pine Creek pub wall for decades.

 

I think Guinea airways was mad and started firing at anyone.

 

You can bet there was a fair bit of truth bending before the investigation... everybody does, to get the heat off them or not look so bad.

 

Was this why it was stamped SECRET?

 

The aeroplane remained where it landed up, minus the bits you saw in the photo of the blokes posing with an S shaped prop blade at the station.

 

It wouldn’t be till 1992 (fifty years) that the next interested person visited the site to view the wreckage. There would have been the odd stockman from time to time, but it is a mostly a forgotten thing.

 

We went in 2005 and THAT’S another interesting story I’ll tack on here.

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

What would have happened if the crash hadn’t occurred. Bill and I mull over this from time to time.

 

WT was a man going places. He was very conscientious and greedily devoured the latest publications from America. He studied and sat for his Morse license in New Guinea where they didn’t carry radio, so wasn’t needed. He was getting in front for employment in Australia with Australian National Airlines which had DC-2s and DC-3s. He thirsted for knowledge of anything aviation and was outspoken when it came to issues of safety.

 

Charles went to ANA four years later then he was snaffled up by Trans Australian Airlines in its early days to be part of the lower management pilot group, probably at the insistence of John Chapman (Operations manager) and Oben Dowie (Chief Pilot?) who were in the first group to get it up and running. TAA started with ex Air Force and ex airline pilots utilizing each group’s experience and expertise.

 

Charles was a quiet ‘man of few words’, but a leader of pilots who had a great admiration of him. ‘He could fly!’ is the report we hear, even now twenty years after his death.

 

We suspect that WT would have been very active in the union and probably been given a management job to get him out of the airline’s hair.

 

Most people regard unions as trouble makers, getting out of work and demanding higher pay. Well! The pilot’s union did have that agenda a tiny bit, but it was much more the safety watchdog.

 

The airline bean counters made noises about safety but wanted it kept to a minimum where possible. They weren’t going to get the blame if any little incidents occurred like the pilot does. Safety generally reduces the bottom line figure.

 

The pilots have been instrumental in keeping the safety standards part of the operation since airlines began. The media won’t ever tell you this.

 

Some of the people in the union were seen in the media. They were the spokesmen, but there were many more working in the background to study the latest trends and ‘keep the baarsteds honest’.

 

I think WT would have been one of them.

 

Could have been interesting having Charles and WT on opposite sides of negotiating tables.

 

Erik Chaseling was another who studied safety and the latest improvements. We lost him too. Far too early… how much did ADY’s demise contribute to that?

 

Cameron? He would have been management and kept a lid on too much having a go at getting more than reasonable improvements in conditions for air crew.

 

In 1942 pilots shared a room in some pretty basic accommodation… still did in the early seventies.

 

Trying to sleep on a minimum rest period with a four AM get up three feet from a snorer or at a noisy pub was unreasonable. The union finally got crew their own rooms and then at better and better hotels as the years progressed.

 

Fat cats? No! Management never had those conditions. They stayed at The Menzies or The Australian.

 

You soon tire of fancy hotels where the peckers are looking around to see who they’re better than.

 

Service and food costs a fortune and with seven to ten nights away per month, many minimum rest nights, it soon loses its sparkle.

 

I wonder how many people for years after, lay awake at night secretly wondering if they could have been instrumental in ADY’s demise.

 

What about the Yanks who perished? Kids in the wrong place at the wrong time.

 

There is a quiet spot on the side of the Stewart Highway near Batchelor called Wiley’s Rest. There is a concrete block there with an inscription, ‘TO THE MEMORY OF W. WILEY LOST 4/21/42‘. Wyatt must have been a very popular boy to have been remembered in this way. I’d like to find out why. He never even got to be there.

 

 

The boys were interred in the Adelaide River War Cemetery initially, but later they were taken back to the States to be buried in a war cemetery with their mates.

 

William Thomas Gray and Gordon Cameron lie at Adelaide River. They have had three markers over the years.

 

 

First was a wooden white painted cross, later the marble rectangular headstone, we’ve all seen at War Cemetaries and now they have low concrete marker with a metal plaque.

 

It’s a quiet sad place, but fitting for those who lost their lives much earlier than they should.

 

 

[Coop]

A great read, Sixties. Thanks for putting it up here, and for the way you told the story with roughly the same timeline.

 

These chaps were another war casualty, I guess, because some of the information they were denied came about because of fears of the Japanese.

 

Cheers,

 

Coop

 

 

[Guest ozzie]

Well done. I thoughly enjoyed this unknown part of our aviation history. Thank you.

 

 

[Pete777]

Thanks Mate that was really really well put together, thoroughly enjoyed, sticking to the timeline was fantastic.

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

THE STORY DOESN'T FINISH YET!

 

1940s…1950s…1960s… WT became the family legend.

 

Little Ann and Lyn and their mother kept apart from the Gray side of the family because Old Mr Gray thought he would take control over them and Hilda wasn’t having any of that. He was an autocratic old cow who would have taken over their lives wanting to pay the bills and completely run their lives in his old fashioned way.

 

For all his religious pontificating, none of the daughters-in-law completely felt at ease with him.

 

We cousins saw each other from time to time … birthday parties mostly, but none of us really knew each other as there were in two groups of ages.

 

Bill, elder son of Old Mr Gray’s youngest, and I saw each other only twice in his childhood. I was nine years older and spent seven years at boarding school, so missed some of their visits.

 

 

When he was six and was taken out to Essendon for a look at the big aeroplanes by his uncle Charlie, he decided that he was going to be a pilot when he grew up. He never veered from this. His father didn’t think much of the idea, HE was an engineer and so should Bill when he left school.

 

I was learning to fly and this cemented the desire more in Bill.

 

When he was still sub-Teen-age, he rode his pushbike two hours across Sydney to Mascot, to hang around with the tribe of kids who lived aeroplanes.

 

Those junior spotters wandered about the hangars and tarmac every weekend. The Engineers and security blokes knew them and mentored their passion.

 

“C’n I go up the cockpit please misda?” Silent watching of everything an engineer did, as he worked replacing components… ‘keeping quiet , out of the way an’ not askin’ silly questions and NEVER touch anything’ was the information passed on to any newcomer.

 

Many of the photos you see on Ed Coates’ site came from those sort of kids.

 

Cold winter’s days would find them sitting on the tarmac with their backs to the tall steel doors of the Qantas hangar, where they caught the radiating heat from their backrest as they watched aeroplanes take off and land on runway 16.

 

The security blokes knew them and let them stack their bikes neatly by a fence inside the perimeter so no other kids could pinch ‘em.

 

They had told the kids the rules … once! and those kids weren’t going to put a toe past some invisible barrier laid down… ever.

 

 

Bill’ll tell you the story of the day the DCA blokes came round to the Qantas hangar in the ute because they knew the kids’d be there out of the southerly there and said, “A DC-7’s coming boys, jump on and we’ll take you down to the parking area to see it.” It was parking way down the eastern parking area.

 

They crammed aboard, hanging onto their box Brownies they took everywhere with them, and jubilantly looked forward to this giant’s arrival and a couple of snaps shots they’d take.

 

She was a tramp with a gipsy like crew, who lives out of battered, grubby overnight bags. They travelled the world from cargo to cargo, wherever headquarters could find them one.

 

 

The mighty leviathan spluttered and kerchuffled round the corner on the two outer engines with the inners already shut down and came to a halt.

 

The boys were soon out wandering around and under her, marvelling at her stupendous size. “You had to jump up and down to touch the belly with your fingertips.”

 

She wasn’t a beautifully polished machine like Qantas, ANA or TAA’s ones that had engineers and cleaners getting stuck into every night. This was a scarred and stained, warrior that had suffered plenty of bumps and bashes from careless coolies and cargo boys on every continent. The wings were smeared with exhaust burn marks that would never polish off; oil had found its way into every join and now under the influence of gravity and not slipstream, seeped slowly downwards in thin streams to gather into a blob and drip onto anything below.

 

There was the musical tinking and crackling you hear as great big round engines and cowls emit as they start cooling down. There was the smell of 100/130 avgas, oil… both burnt and leaking, to be savoured.

 

The crew emerged. None of your aloof, beautifully pressed navy tunics with golden sleeves here posing for the news cameraman’s flashbulb, nope … fliers… world adventurers… craggy men in comfortable, ex-army clothes, elegant, but not, shiny shin boots… flyin’ jackets that had all sorts of stains and worn elbows and frayed cuffs.

 

Fliers, who had once been kids, hanging round rag ‘n stick aryoplanes back in the thirties and recognised their own.

 

They talked to these enthusiasts and answered the myriad of eager questions.

 

Bill was looking in the oil be-splattered wheel well, standing beside a tire nearly as tall as himself and said to a pilot, “Why is there so much oil everywhere coming out of the engines?”

 

“Soen!” came the Texan, drawling twang, from a rangy six foot hero, “They’re likeunole hawndawg… if they ain’tdroolin’… theyere seeick!”

 

That bloke was everything Bill reckoned Ernest Gann would be.

 

Bill started learning to fly with no encouragement or help from his father. He was the fifth in the family to learn… maybe he was the sixth come to think of it. The next cousin down from me… a girl, had exhibited the family genes of doing our own thing and been the first female interstate road train driver… not sure when she started learning to fly. She’s had a Private for years.

 

I was in PNG flying DC-3s then and Bill was going to New Guinea just as soon as he could, to be the fourth in the family to do the big adventure.

 

DC-3s were phased out of Australia by then … there were a few tramps doing freight, but Bill saw their numbers diminishing rapidly from the scene.

 

He scared himself on many occasions flying a 206 out of a mining camp up near the Star Mountains. The strip and camp were pretty close to a mountain. It was composed of rich gold bearing copper ore. It’s not there now. The native’s jungle larder is now a muddy plain and their river … a bog-hole choked with mud.

 

He scared himself enough in Islanders and Partenavias to become an experienced PNG pilot ‘who came back’, but didn’t get to fly ‘a Three’.

 

He left and flew ‘up the top end’ for some time and finally ‘got the interview’.

 

He joined a subsidiary of my mob in Sydney and we crossed each other’s paths in the terminal over the next few years.

 

He then transferred to Brissy in the 737 and lived close to us and we got to know each other well.

 

In 2004 he was flying for Virgin and again lived close to us. He had gone to Perth years before to fly F28s in between Brisbane domiciles.

 

He would come and have dinner with us on his days off.

 

No pilot union with teeth, really was evident now. Bill was like death warmed up from the long hours. He only came on his second day because he was sleeping and dozing on the first.

 

800 or 900 flying hours done sensibly is OK, but computers did the rostering and they aren’t human. They just look at what is legal and make the rosters up on those principles. Human roster clerks would realize, “You can’t do that to the poor buggaars”.

 

Maximum duty hours is all the go and some really rotten pairings involving flying a leg then sitting for hours to maybe passenger somewhere … down the back with the kids and babies (paying passengers don’t like travelling there) to wait some more, then fly a leg or two to a minim hour layover.

 

More horrible back of the clock flying to and from Darwin and Perth with maximum duty hours now than in the olden days too.

 

One evening during dinner, W.Ts crash came up and one of us said, “I’ve always reckoned I’m going up to find the crash site one day”.

 

“So’ve I!”

 

“Let’s not say ‘one day’. Let’s go there together and do it, say… in fourteen months from now, so we have plenty of chance to get the same time off and time to research where it is”.

 

 

It was agreed … We would put our request for annual leave in July 2005 next day at work!

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

I left my USB stick at work with the next part, so you'll have to wait till the day after tomorrow for the continuation of the trip to find ADY.

 

Here is part of an Email 'Little Ann" sent too her sons recently. We forget that things were tough back then when NOW, people seem to be able to ask for money for all sorts of reasons and get it.

 

What is written made me think sadly that I do not know very much about how Mother coped in the nine or ten years between Daddy's death in 1942 and when she started her job working at Mascot (Sydney's Kingsford Smith Airport) for the Airworthiness Section of the government's Department of Civil Aviation. I know that we (she, baby Carolyn, and I) were staying at Aunty B. and Uncle Oc's for a while when I started Kindergarten, and then Mother rented a house not far from Aunty B. and Uncle Oc's. Rowan's mother - who was Mother's great friend, single at the time - lived with us for a while.

 

(Rowan is an old family friend... an author who now lives in Holland)

 

 

I know that Daddy had Life Insurance (what a great blessing!) because with it Mother bought (around 1944 or 1945) the semi-detached of 23 and 23a Isaac Smith Street - and the (small) rent from the family living at 23a (that's on the southern side of the duplex) sort of helped with expenses. (It was a blessing that Mother and her sisters grew up in the country and knew how to use the much-less-expensive cuts of meat.) I supposed that Mother got a Widow's Pension from the Federal Government (it wouldn't have been much, maybe a dollar or two a week) but it would have bought us food, and after a few years [and I vaguely think there was a court case] the government maybe gave her a little bit more a week as a War Widow. And because Daddy's death was now "deemed service-related" Mother, Carolyn and I were then coming under the umbrella of Legacy.

 

 

Legacy reimbursed Mother for the cost of school uniforms, and for the annual cost of rental of school textbooks when I was at Sydney Girls' High School.

 

 

Around about 1950 or 1951, Mother got a job working for the Registrar-General's office in the city -- the commute meant a 10 minutes walk up to the tram stop and about 15 minutes in the tram. The RG was the big building where they recorded Births, Deaths, Marriages. Mother got this job (it was part-time, from about 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.) because she had excellent handwriting - all the information was entered by hand, using pens dipped into ink. These hours were good for Mother, because in 1951 I started at Sydney Girls' High School (hours: 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.) and Carolyn was still at the local Primary School about 1/4 mile away (hours were probably 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.)

 

 

When I think of how Mother coped, and I think she coped splendidly, she has always been my role model, I also think with great dismay for the women of places like Afghanistan - if a woman there were in the same severe straits as Mother had been, how could she ever cope if she were forbidden to go to the shops, or to work in order to buy food.

 

What makes a person wonder about government departments is the fact that WT was buried with a military rank, yet there had to be a fight to get a war widow's pension.

 

 

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

Oh boy! have I been having FUN with these computer programmes. I spent 55 minutes getting the story on here and while editing it ... lost the bluddy lot.

 

Had to start again and fifty minutes later I entered it.

 

On reading through I got a bit of a shock to find the first entry was here.

 

Cut it out replaced it with this whinge.

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

It was the days of windows ME. I had more time to surf the net than Bill did. Flying, getting into the books for the next check that came up every few months had him busier than me.

 

Phone calls to cousins to glean their knowledge of family discussions. Google or Yahoo searches … emails.

 

I discovered ‘Peter Dunn’s Oz at War’ and found a newspaper article that reckoned ADY may have crashed inland from Rocky or Mackay on a secret mission. Journalists!... spose they have to write exciting stuff to keep a job.

 

We knew she went down somewhere South of Darwin near Pine Creek. I contacted Peter and told him of our plight. ‘Did he know anything or anyone who could help us?’

 

He replied he knew nothing but would love any info we could find. He said to contact a historian in Darwin… Bob A.

 

Bob knew a fair bit about the crash but had never seen it. He gave me the email address of two mates, Bob F. and Bob W.

 

Months of emails between the Bobs and me formed a friendship. The threeBobs were particularly good value for us.

 

Bob A was the Northern Territory historian who did a fair bit of work for the government. He had a huge library and knew how to get onto information on the web and in archives.

 

Bob F was the president of the War Museum and Bob W was a historian who had found the wreckage in 1992.

 

Being with the state fire authority, he knew his way around the territory and the station owners so he’d gone and taken colour photos fifty years after the crash, which he scanned and sent to us.

 

 

Initially the Bobs didn’t want to bust in on our sentimental journey when we had gotten down to the transport planning.

 

Bob W had recently been in the area after the owner told him that another fire had just gone through near the site of the crash, so drove around in a Landcruiser to case the place out for us. He had driven through thick, dead grass that was high enough to hide a buffalo. One with real big horns too.

 

He made a number of journeys from different points, trying to find a way for a couple of old blokes to be able to do the least amount of bush bashing on foot.

 

 

He sent photos to us, of his search and it looked pretty hard going.

 

The grass was overhead. I could see why he though we old blokes might have a difficult time on foot. He mentioned we would have to cross a deep creek… Hmm how deep? How wide? How much mud and mangroves to sink through? Are there Crocks?

 

He knew I was over sixty and Bill over fifty. What we hadn’t mentioned was that I was surfboard riding a couple of times a week and Bill rode a mountain bike up and down bush tracks on his days off.

 

His findings after the reconnaissance was that we should try and hire some quad bikes and a four wheel drive.

 

There was a bit of jockeying around as each side tried to suss out the other lot’s opinion of us going together in Bob F’s Landcruiser. We were all relieved when we agreed it would be a good idea.

 

 

Ann, Lyn, Bill and I decided to leave a plaque at the site to explain what the wreckage was. I had one made by a local bloke after we agreed on the wording… for example I had put 21/4/42 and Lyn said make it 21/4/1942 as it could be confusing in another fifty years.

 

A month before the journey I started bush walking in our hilly area to toughen up my legs, bought a pair of green canvas jungle boots the Viet. conscripts wore in the sixties and my wife bought a ‘you beaut expensive top of the range’ hiking shirt the man in the shop insisted I should wear.

 

I used to wear that sort of jungle boots when we wandered in the bush looking for war wreckage in New Guinea. They were comfortable, kept burrs out of ya socks and we reckoned would save our lower legs if we stepped on a serpent. Bill got me to buy him a pair.

 

On a trip back to Perth, Bill rummaged through his boxes of treasures and brought back the accident report ‘old grand dad’ had poured over for years.

 

We had our return flights booked and motel for a couple of days. Bill couldn’t snag a week off and had been lucky to even get the lousy three that we would be there. That had us arriving after midnight on one day and leaving a bit after midnight three nights later… what ya call a flying visit.

 

We had to work the afternoon we got back… arrived at six AM, so we both slept till it was time to get up and go to work.

 

 

On the flight up, we studied the crash report and took notes. It was a pity we hadn’t seen the crash photos taken in1942.

 

We arrived at the motel at about one AM and flopped into bed.

 

In the mid morning we awoke and went for a stroll down town and the old wharf area till about two PM, when Bob F came and picked us up and showed us what we hadn’t seen wandering around on foot, then took us to the Museum.

 

 

 

It’s definitely WHO you know in this world. We got the most comprehensive tour you can get of the Darwin War Museum. Climbing in and out of aeroplanes to our heart’s desire with a bloke who knew his stuff to answer our questions.

 

Bob opened a hatch under the B52 and we entered the bowls of the monster.

 

 

It’s a long way from one end to the other. Bob is squeezing through the entrance from the forward section to the mid section. It looks like a high rise building's basement in there.

 

 

I'm taking the photo from the belly, Bob is on the first story and Bill is climbing down from the flight deck.

 

There are catwalks on the sides to get at components and two stories of climbing to get to the cockpit.

 

Now a B52’s has what I call a cockpit.

 

 

While I was sitting with a huge grin on my face asking Bill if he felt the same, remembering the feeling when he was a kid and allowed to sit in the cockpit of aeroplanes, a head poked through my side window and announced,”Bloody hell lookitit… how did you blokes get in there?” He was one of the paying public who had climbed the giant steps to get a look in the cockpit. Bob told him we were some sort of officials on special appointment, (we sat up straight with our shoulders back like maybe we were Wing Commanders or something). The head withdrew and the bloke journeyed back down to the earth’s surface muttering, “ Y’ lucky Buggaars!”

 

 

We examined the cockpit and saw lots of switches and gauges that were well acquainted with… Boeing ones.

 

 

We excitedly looked for and found the bomb door controls. What a disappointment! Y’d expect a whopping great, red lever with perhaps yellow stripes, but no… a simple little switch like the ones that turned on the airconditioning recirculating fan or logo lights on the tail of a 737 was all it was.

 

After the museum Bob took us to a bunker that was fitted out in the 1940s style then said he’d pick us up and we could go to the wharf for an early dinner with Bob A.

 

 

We did the tourist thing having a couple of quieties and watched a two luggers loaded with tourist, mooching around the bay in the magnificent orangey sunset light.

 

Up, well before daylight and on the road with the two Bobs, we passengers were mesmerised by the constant dash, dash, dash of the white lines on the road zipping under the bonnet, while the illuminates edges of the thirty to forty foot high trees seem to be motionless and leaning in towards the road so it looked like a wide avenue.

 

Approaching Adelaide River, the sky lightened and the sun quickly brightened up the bottom of the eastern sky, then popped, bright orange, through the trees.

 

Bob could have driven at any speed he liked on the only highway with no speed limit, but he cruised at about a comfortable hundred.

 

We stopped at the Adelaide River road house to grab some coffee and sandwiches for breakfast and a snack later.

 

You realize you are a long way from everywhere else in the Top End, when you see the petrol tankers they have. Road train really springs to mind when you pass a prime mover pulling four tanks, what else could you call the monster.

 

Another hour’s driving and we were ready to leave the bitumen and try and find ADY.

 

 

Bob F had a GPS while Bob A was using compass and map.

 

We had been given very clear instructions and a printout of Bob W’s GPS patrol to go by, so we were waiting for and recognised the turn off towards the creek crossing easily.

 

 

The Bob’s did their calculations in their own ways on what direction to take. We had decided which was the hill we were going to make for and lined up the direction, on the drive over the plain from the road to the creek.

 

I looked at the direction the shadows of the ant hills and trees lay on the ground and use them for my compass.

 

 

We changed into our hiking clobber and wondered if we should have bought a jungle knife to cut our way through the bad parts… Always think of these things too late don’t we.

 

I did have my fly net I like to take with me in fly country. The others laughed, but I didn’t have the annoying little buggaars crawling over my face there and back and didn’t have to give the Great Australian Outback Wave all the time.

 

We girded our loins for the creek crossing and traipsed off towards it through the low, thick, flood plain bush.

 

The going was easy as Bob W. had pushed over the grass and flattened some with his wheels.

 

Now, how often do we make mountainous problems in our minds of things we’re told?

 

We nearly fell in the creek as we unexpectedly busted out of the ‘elephant grass’

 

Would ‘a gotten a nasty graze from the dry bank as we fell the four feet to the bottom. Could ‘a banged our heads on the opposite bank too.

 

No mangroves, no Crocks … no water! In the wet season she’s a creek, but now it was just a dry sand bottomed water coarse.

 

Even more surprising was the grass on the other side… about three feet tall and thinned out once off the narrow flood plain.

 

Bob F took a plastic bag out of his pocket and tied in the branches of a tree. “Marker to show us where the crossing is when we return”. Now I’ve never thought of that!

 

The trek to the hills was a doddle, although there was a nasty moment when Bob F’s GPS lost its satellites and went blank. The shadows hadn’t changed and Bob A. was confident in his magnetic compass.

 

 

CONFERENCE IN THE SADDLE BETWEEN TWO HILLS… LEFT OR RIGHT?

 

We decided to go left and climb the nearer hill.

 

The Bobs left Bill and I who went straight to the summit, while they started a contour path around the western slopes searching for clues.

 

 

Bill got to the top first and couldn’t see anything.

 

 

We started down a few yards, me going right, him, left and suddenly he shouted, “Here it is.”

 

The wing was as we imagined from the photos of 1992 but the scattered small bits of aluminium everywhere was a surprise.

 

 

The crash was a beauty. Pieces of aluminium had lines of holes where the rivets had been. The impact had been so great that the rivets had sheared off and popped out, leaving round holes. I would expect holes to be a bit egg shaped from the force that could shear rivets… these were round.

 

There were bits we could identify and other torn sheeting and twisted components that could have been anything.

 

 

The stainless steel parts were still bright and shiny. I ambled well to the right of the impact zone and found one piece of aluminium sheeting about the size of two filing cabinet drawers, wrapped around a rocky reef. I pulled it off and it was the shape of the rock, giving a clear indication of the force it arrived at. It fitted nicely when I put it back.

 

I later spoke to an engineer who had done a lot of finding of war wrecks in PNG and asked how this piece could have hit with such force on the wrong side of the hill.

 

Wing fuel tank exploded.

 

Good guess. None of the left wing has been seen… lots of little unidentifiable bits.

 

 

The long grass was a nuisance as it covered most of the smaller pieces that we discovered by stepping on them or seeing a glint of metal.

 

 

The Bobs sauntered off down the hill while Bill and I made discoveries everywhere.

 

“Funny buggars …ay? Wandering off, looking all about when there’s so much here.”

 

The Bobs were experienced wreck surveyors and knew much that we didn’t.

 

They called us from about a hundred yards down the hill to come down.

 

They’d found what they were looking for… a bare patch where intense heat had baked the earth into a brick like hardness, which wouldn’t let the grass grow.

 

 

Here was the airframe.

 

Someone had placed the seats in a line at some time, amongst torn metal sheeting and other components.

 

She must have come down on her nose and burst the belly tank.

 

The aluminium in the nose had obviously melted when the five gallons of unusable fuel in the tank caught on fire.

 

 

Everything in the cockpit had been badly burnt.

 

 

We were able to identify so many things… instruments throttle pitch and mixture levers minus their nobs, press studs from army or flying jackets, a boot heel, a bullet shell casing…

 

Bob A. came into his own in identifying the little bits and pieces.

 

When I said, “Here’s a boot heel, still after all these years”, Bob looked down at it and said, “American”.

 

“How do you know THAT?”

 

“Rubber! … Aussies had leather heels on their shoes into the fifties”. The same with the bullet shell. A quick look at the letters on the base and he told us what rifle type it was for… Yank.

 

We searched around and Bob took notes for his official report on the site.

 

 

 

The control column and rudder pedals were still there, twisted and the control wheels had snapped the three spokes near the hubs, so the force of pilots or maybe the cockpit wall hitting them had been severe.

 

No one knew it when they’d hit. It was too hard and instantaneous.

 

We were impressed to see paint that we could read still, after the crash and a number of bushfires over the decades. We recognised the Irish paint scheme beneath the latter Guinea Airways paint and could also make out some of the words Coast to Coast GAL had on their aeroplanes.

 

 

We decided to screw the plaque to the largest section of the body.

 

Can’t say that we said prayers… we didn’t. We did say “Well we did it” to each other, rather than making some sort of speech to the spirits of the boys.

 

We didn’t feel a particular sadness at the place. It was just a peaceful spot in the bush with a few small birds tweeting from time to time.

 

We didn’t take souvenirs, just plenty of photos… it is the most complete wreck in the Northern Territory and should stay that way.

 

 

We didn’t leave flowers, just our footprints. Kapok bushes were flowering with their bright yellow simple flowers. They were more fitting than a wreath. They appear each year around the time of the discovery.

 

 

We returned to the car a more direct route, got changed into cooler clothes and drove back the long way, while Bob A. gave us a tour of ‘The Golden Way’ he designed. It is a tour of the old gold mines and diggings that many Chinese undertook in the eighteen hundreds.

 

 

The next day Bill and I drove a rental car to Adelaide River for a look at the war cemetery then into Batchelor strip and had a bit of a wander about. A fire had been through the area to the west of the aerodrome and it is surprising at how much junk from the war is still to be found…small items like, fuel drums with D D stamped into them.

 

I found a forty-four gallon drum, bung (screw lid) I liked. It was much more substantial than modern ones, so I pocketed it as my memento of the trip.

 

That was 2005.

 

In March this year, Bill visited me and we got onto the subject of ADY with my son while having a get together and decided we would go again next year. We rang Bill’s son and he reckons he’s coming too.

 

Might get onto some of the cousins and see if they’re interested.

 

More emails coming up.

 

THE END

 

IN MEMORY OF WILLIAM THOMAS GRAY AND HIS DAUGHTER CAROLYN BOGE WHO WERE MOST SUDDENLY TAKEN FROM US SEVENTY YEARS APART ON 21st APRIL 1942 and 2012

 

 

[Guest DWB]

I have thoroughly enjoyed this dedicated account of ADY & congratulate you on the manner & professionalism in which it has been presented. History must be preserved.

 

 

[siznaudin]

I second Dex's comments and add that it has been a rare privilege to have experienced, even if from the current day comfort and security of cyberspace, the anguish and sense of the unresolved which so many people endured for so long in 1942. Thank you for sharing it Sixties - a really fascinating account, and it was indeed - "one which I'd not heard of".

 

*late edit: isn't the Spitfire - in the Darwin museum shot - the one which is normally at Temora?

 

 

[red750]

The Temora "Grey Nurse" is RG-V A58-602 whereas the Darwin one is ZP-W A58-606.

 

 

[siznaudin]

The Temora "Grey Nurse" is RG-V A58-602 whereas the Darwin one is ZP-W A58-606.

Thanks Pete ... so that means there are two Spits representing the Gibbes aircraft? ... Interesting!

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

Thanks guys. It was fun.

 

I don't know if all crash reports are as interesting. They're not things most of us ever see.

 

It was great to read between the lines.

 

Initially there was being a bit mad at people's laziness till we put ourselves in their shoes and look at the whole picture. Getting bombed possibly causes a bit of sleeplessness.

 

Knowing how we all have the desire to make our reports out to make ourselves not look bad, made it interesting to look for discrepencies. There were a few, also there's always the desire to defend out own when someone else questions their actions. I've known a couple of chiefs who ripped it into their minions for any little stuff-ups but went all out, standing up for them if someone else complained.

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

Just to remind you of how slow the wheels turned in 1942...

 

Remember way back earlier this year, you followed this story?

 

Well the second picture on this page (up the top) is the statement written for Mayor O'Sullivan during the investigation.

 

The findings they completed were still months away.

 

 

[Coop]

Thanks again, sixties. A very thorough job indeed.

 

Coop