The Diamond Dakota Mystery Page 4

turned and took them back to shore.

  The Zeroes wove mercilessly in and out of the dense smoke that saturated the bay. Appalled pilots and crews watched the carnage helplessly from the shore, numbed as their aircraft and passengers burned.

  Inside Catalina Y-59, Sophia van Tour stared in horror as a bullet struck her twelve-year-old daughter Catherina in the eye.

  Her husband Albert grabbed the screaming child and pushed Sophia out the door with a lifebelt. He followed Sophia into the water, holding his bloodied daughter. Sophia was unable to swim but floated with the aid of the lifebelt while her husband swam nearby, trying to keep Catherina afloat. They were drifting apart and Sophia watched helplessly as he suddenly disappeared beneath the surface, still clutching their daughter.

  Nine-year-old Catharina Komen-Blommert stood stunned

  as her father crumpled before her, killed by a bullet. She was pinned to the floor of the aircraft and filled with terror. Someone lifted her up and tossed her into the water, but she couldn’t swim. She splashed about, struggling to keep afloat. A wounded man, seeing her, swam back and grabbed her around the waist, trying to calm her down, encouraging her to float. Suddenly he let go, slipping beneath the surface, and she was on her own again. The wounded man had used every ounce of his strength

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  trying to keep Catharina afloat. There was another loud roar and then the sound of women screaming. The rear of the plane was gutted by fire and sank at anchor. The bullets continued to strike the water around the terrified child as the strafing went on from above. She felt herself sinking, spitting out mouthfuls of water. Luckily, one of the Australians from the Centaurus spotted the struggling child and rowed up to her, pulling her to safety.

  At the first sound of gun fire, Bart van Emmerik urged his wife Frederika to lie down with their baby, Bernhard, and he lay on top of them to shield them from the bullets. When

  Frederika spoke to her husband, he answered very slowly and was panting heavily. Frederika knew he’d been hit. Again she spoke to him, but this time he didn’t answer. His full weight now rested on her small frame. She tried to move, and on

  turning her head saw that her own arm had been shredded by bullets or shrapnel. In panic, she pushed the body of her husband away and dashed for the exit. As she leapt into the water, she turned in horror to see the plane’s mechanic, Sergeant

  Brandenburg, clinging to the port sea-anchor rope, shouting for help. Within seconds the petrol tank burst into flames.

  Brandenburg and the surrounding water became an inferno

  and Frederika swam desperately to escape the burning oil. Her baby was still inside the plane with her dead husband.

  Lance Corporal Bowden, on board British Catalina FV-N,

  went to return fire, but a Dutch woman who had rowed out

  to the aircraft and begged to come on board at Tjilitjap back

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  in Java was frozen with fear against the ammunition pans. Three men picked her up and threw her into the water. Before Bowden could cock the guns and release the safety catches the boat was on fire. He ran to get a life jacket as he couldn’t swim, but other crew members trying to get out grabbed him and threw him overboard. Bowden’s heavy flying boots weighed him down like a lead sinker. Rolling himself into a ball he pulled off the boots and headed for the surface, gasping for air. He had been hit and his nose and arm were bleeding profusely. Seeing Bowden struggling, two crew members came to his aid, removing his clothes. Convinced he was going to drown, he prayed for help.

  He had never believed in God before, but found that suddenly he could swim perfectly well—so well that when the rescuers arrived they could not keep up. Bowden was hauled onto a

  lugger which had rescued the Dutch woman they had thrown

  out of the plane when the raid began. A beautiful young girl was also pulled out of the water, but there was nothing they could do; she was already dead. They looked out for more

  survivors and saw an image that would become etched in their minds forever: three young children floated by face down, locked in a tight embrace. Every person on the lugger wept. Six British pilots and crew aboard the Catalina died in the raid, though others managed to make it to shore despite being shot, including Sergeant Pozzi, who swam the full distance to shore with an arm broken by shrapnel.

  The day before, the crew of the flying boat Corinna had conducted a ten-hour search for the missing Qantas flying boat

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  Circe, but had found no trace of the aircraft. The crew had spent the night ashore and were on the jetty getting ready for their departure to Sydney when the Zeroes struck. They watched in horror as the flying boats, including the Corinna, were sunk one after the other in rapid succession.

  The Corinna was being refuelled at the time the raid began from the deck of a former pearling lugger, the Nicol Bay, which had on board 180 drums of highly flammable aviation fuel.

  Standing on the deck surrounded by fuel, lugger captain Harold Mathieson yelled at his engineer Jenkins, who was standing at the wing tank of the Corinna, to dive clear of the flying boat.

  Jenkins dived in, remaining under water for as long as he could.

  He then hauled himself into an empty lugger dinghy that was floating nearby and, after picking up as many survivors as he could, headed for shore.

  With tracer bullets flying around his petrol-laden schooner, Captain Mathieson immediately cast off from the Corinna, which was now burning, and set about rescuing survivors in the water. By great good fortune his vessel was not hit.

  Henk Hasselo was a strong swimmer and he caught up with

  a boy aged about nine who was swimming towards the shore.

  Red-faced, breathless and terrified, he was slowing down, exhausted from fighting the tide that seemed determined to wash him back out into the bay. ‘I’ll die, I can’t swim anymore,’

  he cried. Hasselo slapped the boy and ordered him to keep swimming, urging him on. He picked up his pace and Hasselo told him to take it easy, and swim more steadily, but eventually

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  the exhausted child slipped under the surface. Hasselo dived down and pulled the boy up, swimming against the tide with the child in one arm. Another man came to help and together they supported the boy as they swam for the shore. It was hard work and they were not making good headway. To their relief, they heard a man with an Australian accent yelling, ‘You fellas want to stay here, or what?’ Looking up, they saw a smiling face leaning over the side of a pearling lugger. Hasselo pushed the boy towards the back of the boat, where he was helped on board, but Hasselo did not have the strength to pull himself up onto the deck. Next thing, he felt himself being jerked up by the strong hand of Mathieson and thrown down beside a

  dozen or so survivors.

  Captain Lester Brain headed Qantas operations in Broome.

  When the attack started, he ran to the foreshore and, seeing the carnage unfolding, searched for a means to get out to the injured and drowning refugees. Spotting a lugger dinghy, he tried to drag the heavy wooden clinker-built rowboat towards the water. Malcolm Millar saw him struggling and rushed to help. The two men began paddling out towards the inferno of smoke and flames. Hearing cries for help, they found two Dutch aviators supporting a young woman who was on the verge of collapse; nearby another serviceman supported a baby on his chest. The boat could only hold the woman and baby, so with four other survivors clinging to the sides of the boat the two men rowed to shore. Millar and Brain then returned to rescue others.

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  Heads were
bobbing about in the sea of fire as some brave souls waded into the water, trying to save the hapless victims.

  Fifteen of the flying boats were now charred hulls. They looked like smoking skeletons. Sharks circled the handful of survivors who had escaped the gun fire and burning fuel.

  Henri Juta was still trying to keep his wife afloat when the shooting stopped. A Japanese fighter had flown over very low and he distinctly saw the pilot waving at him. Exhausted, he tried to talk himself into not giving up. He looked around for help, but all he could see was smoke and fire. Wrestling with fatigue, he came across young Robert Lacomble, and swam

  alongside him. A canteen bottle floated by and Juta grabbed it, passing it to his wife to use as a float. He took off his shoes and socks, held his wife by her head and hair and started to swim to the shore.

  Nearby a man clung to a discarded auxiliary tank from one of the Zeroes, but just as Juta reached the tank it sank. Minutes later, the sound of a woman screaming pierced the air and they turned to see a man and woman struggling in the middle of a patch of burning sea that was moving towards them; the woman’s hair was on fire. Juta began to swim away from the fire, still holding onto his wife, with Robert swimming at his side. They had been heading directly for the fire—the woman’s screams had saved their lives.

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  After they had been swimming for more than an hour, Juta

  felt something underfoot which he feared was a shark. He

  believes he would have drowned then and there had he not

  heard the sound of a motorboat approaching. A few seconds later, an American serviceman who had commandeered a dinghy and was scouring the bay looking for survivors was pulling them on board. A small girl was lying in the boat. She had been shot in the wrist and her arm lay bloodied by her side.

  The American told Juta that both her parents were dead as he punched a few holes in a tin of juice and handed it to Juta.

  They set about rescuing more victims. There were men and

  women whose faces had been badly burned and one man whose intestines were visible. When the boat was full they headed back for the jetty. It took twenty minutes. Juta picked up a young girl whose small body lay limp in his arms. He thought she could be dead but he could see no wounds. Placing her on a trolley that had been brought down to the jetty, he lifted her shirt and found two bullet holes in her back that went straight through to her heart. Dazed and shocked, he looked around at all the misery and then he gazed beyond. The sunlight shone across the beautiful bay. Tiny wavelets flickered like sequins on a rippling ocean. Only a few smoke plumes rising in the distance gave a clue to the horror of moments before. ‘What insanity!’

  he thought.

  On the shore, dazed survivors were met by locals and soldiers eager to help. Injured survivors were being treated on the beach by the only doctor in town.

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  Broome was practically defenceless; the Volunteer Defence Corps only numbered sixty or seventy men with a handful of .303

  rifles. Biddy Bardwell, one of the last white women left in Broome, was late for work and was looking for her handbag and glasses when she heard the sound of gunshots. At first she thought it was a car backfiring until her Aboriginal house girl, Gladys, rushed in calling, ‘War’s here, planes with sun on wings.’

  They both ran outside and saw smoke rising from the bay

  and the silver streaks in the sky. She ran to her sister’s house to make a phonecall but got no reply. By this time the Japanese were overhead, shooting at the aerodrome. The two women

  ran for shelter but the first trench they came upon was too narrow for them, so they ran to another. A well-known local by the name of ‘Old Charlie’ was already there—and so smelly that Biddy ran on to another depression behind some bushes and shrubs. All the locals were heading for air raid shelters, slit trenches or the mangrove swamps.

  The Japanese pilots made no attempt to fire on the town

  itself. They had been instructed to attack military targets only.

  Having destroyed every flying boat on the water, all of them military transport planes, they now focused on the airstrip.

  Gus Winckel had landed at the airstrip minutes before the Japanese appeared over the bay. Passing an American Liberator as it taxied up the runway, his Lockheed Lodestar had headed to the refuelling point. Clambering out, he called on Broome

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  resident Jock De Castilla of Gregory & Co to refuel the aircraft.

  Looking up and pointing at nine dots in the sky, he had asked Jock if any RAAF manoeuvres were expected that day. Jock

  shook his head and Winckel urged him to sound the air raid alarm quickly. De Castilla told Winckel not to worry as the Japanese couldn’t make it this far south.

  Winckel wasn’t so sure and decided to fetch a machine gun from his plane just in case. Together with his radio man, he fetched one of the two guns recently installed in the tail, along with about 200 rounds of ammunition. Winckel told his

  mechanic, Charlie van Tuyn, to take the passengers to a large concrete pipe near the runway. Charlie herded the passengers into the pipe, anxious for his wife and child who had taken off from Java before them in Captain Smirnoff ’s DC-3. They had not yet landed.

  Two US lieutenants had also seen the Zeroes approaching

  the airfield. Jumping into a jeep, they drove frantically along the strip yelling at the American servicemen to take cover.

  An RAAF Lockheed Hudson had taxied to its holding position when the pilot, Wing Commander ‘Claude’ Lightfoot, realised he had left his codes and maps behind. Turning to his American co-pilot, Sergeant Jim Harkin, Lightfoot asked him to retrieve them from the briefing hut. Harkin retorted, ‘You left the bloody things behind, so you go and get them.’ The mistake saved their lives.

  Lightfoot heard the planes as he was walking back to the

  briefing hut. He turned to see the Zeroes pounce on an American

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  Liberator that had just moments earlier left the airstrip. Harkin proposed taking off and his gunner was all for firing from his tail gun position but the wireless operator cut the engines, telling them not to be fools; the Zeroes would make mincemeat out of them. The three men ran for cover and watched from the long grass as the Hudson exploded in a ball of flames.

  Pilot Warrant Officer Osamu Kudo was chasing Jack Lamade, the US lieutenant who had only just made it to Broome that morning on his last drop of fuel. He had refuelled and managed to get his small float plane airborne as the attack began. When Kudo saw the American Liberator bomber taking off he banked sharply to the right to chase the larger target. Lamade’s seaplane had just had its second lucky escape. It was the only aircraft to make it out of Broome.

  The Liberator was carrying wounded men from Java. Bomber

  pilot Lieutenant Edson Kester was unable to counter Kudo’s relentless attack, the Liberator crashing into the sea some ten kilometres off Cable Beach. Broken in two, it floated on the water for a few moments before being swallowed in a swirl of oil-slicked water.

  Army Surgeon Captain Charles Stafford of the US Medical

  Corps, assigned to look after the wounded on the Liberator, broke free from the sinking bomber and tried to help the

  wounded stay afloat but to no avail—he and most of the others soon slipped beneath the surface. Two of the servicemen, Sergeant Melvin Donaho and Sergeant Willard Beatty managed to get

  away from the sinking plane, swimming for a gruelling thirty-

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  six hours through shark-infested waters, tidal su
rges and rips, Donaho battling to keep Beatty from slipping under. Of the thirty-three US servicemen aboard the Liberator, many of whom were sick and wounded, only Donaho and Beatty would make

  it to shore alive. Beatty died a few days later in a Perth hospital.

  Japanese pilot Kudo headed back to the aerodrome, diving

  down at Gus Winckel’s Lodestar. In an interview with Dutch journalist Marianne van Velzen, Winckel described the attack.

  The first time they came over they shot the Lodestar to pieces.

  I was so mad. My beautiful Lodestar. They came over a second time and I knew how they would fly. I just stood there with the machine gun in my hands on the middle of the tarmac.

  They must have thought I was crazy. They came over and

  they flew so low. I could see his face, the pilot. I even saw him smile. Not for long though. I gave him a full burst and he crashed.

  The Zero exploded, crashing into the sea, and Kudo was killed.

  Winckel’s arm was badly burnt and he bears lifelong scars as a reminder of the encounter. From that time on he was known in military circles as Wild Bill Winckel.

  Six aircraft lay burning on the Broome airstrip as the Japanese headed back to Timor.

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  The arrow flight of Zeroes caught every aircraft in Broome. It was a huge success. The Japanese had destroyed fifteen flying boats and seven aircraft, including two Liberators and two Flying Fortresses, on the airstrip. They had never expected to find so many planes in Broome on that day, nor would they have been aware that the planes, legitimate military targets, contained civilians. The attack was over in about half an hour, after which the remaining eight Zeroes and the ‘Babs’ headed north to return to their base at Kupang.

  It is unknown how many Dutch citizens lost their lives in the Broome raid. There were no records of how many evacuees were on each plane. No record was kept of those who made it to shore, nor of the wounded who died in hospital, nor of the bodies that washed up in the mangroves. Some of the recovered bodies had been mutilated by sharks and many others drifted away, never to be found. Only thirty bodies were recovered from the flying boats, including the unidentified remains of two Dutch women and five children who were later buried in nameless graves at Perth’s Karakatta Cemetery. Historian Mervyn Prime lists the names of fifty-eight Dutch nationals, thirty-two US servicemen, and six members of the British 205 Squadron RAF who lost their lives in the Broome raid, but other refugees who sought to escape on the flights leaving Java might have been trapped in the sinking hulls of the flying boats or disappeared on the tide.