DARWIN PREPARED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 February 1943, Page 3

DARWIN PREPARED

DEFENCE MUCH STRONGER AUSTRALIA'S PEARL HARBOUR. JAPANESE ATTACK OF YEAR AGO RECALLED. (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, February 18. One year ago tomorrow, at 10 a.m. on February 19, 1942, the first enemy bombs fell on Australian soil. Employing 96 bombers with fighter escort, the Japanese Air Force pounded Darwin in a devastating attack which killed more than 100 people, sank ships in the harbour and destroyed the aerodrome and other military installations. Preparations to meet the attack were ineffectual —but just as the enemy's earlier treacherous raid on Pearl Harbour jolted the States out of complacency, so did the great raid oh Darwin galvanise the Australian war machine into full battle order. Darwin today stands as a defensive base immeasurably stronger than a year ago. While Australian and American forces have been assembled in strength in the far north, the Japanese air force made \5l attacks on Darwin. The raids have become less frequent as their cost has mounted. On August 23, the enemy made his twentieth and latest day raid! Of the raiding force ■of 42 aircraft, 14 were destroyed, three probably destroyed, and eight damaged.

In all, the Japanese had sent more than 400 planes against Darwin in daylight attacks, and American fighter pilots had destroyed nearly 80 of them. At least 20 more were so badly damaged that they almost certainly crashed in the sea on the way back to their bases in Timor. In 31 night raids on Darwin, the latest made by a single bomber in January, the Japanese have also lost several planes. Most of the bombs in their recent nuisance visits have fallen harmlessly into the bush or into the waters of Darwin Bay. After the shattering destruction of the first great raid, the Darwin defences were speedily reorganised. Today, Australian and Dutch bomber and long-range fighter squadrons have wrested the air initiative from the Japanese and are pounding incessantly enemy bases in the islands ot the Banda and Arafura Seas. “The war round Darwin has been very real for our airmen stationed there, but it has been static and monotonous for the army garrison,” wrote a northern war correspondent some weeks ago. After the first enemy bombing, A.I.F. officers just back from the Middle East undertook the reorganisation of Darwin’s defences. Many changes were made in the garrisons. Today few soldiers in the area have] been there for more than a year. They are the best-quartered of Australia’s troops in the tropics. “Cabbage planes” make regular one-day trips flying thousands of pounds of fresh green vegetables to the area from Brisbane and Sydney. Fresh meat is brought there by ship, road and air. Along the rich river flats of the north, Army plantations of pineapples, bananas and other tropical fruits play a big part in feeding the territory’s forces. Darwin, first Australian focal point of the South-West Pacific war, has a great advantage over other tropical bases in this theatre in that it has no malaria. And now the Japanese have been forced, at least temporarily, to abandon their air attacks, the main problem of the moment confronting the soldiers at this key northern base is that of monotony and boredom resulting from inactivity.