Bombing of Darwin (1942): The Largest Attack on Australia

The bombing of Darwin on 19 February 1942 was the first and largest attack ever made on the Australian mainland. In two raids Japanese aircraft struck the harbour, airfields and town of Darwin in the Northern Territory, killing at least 235 people and sinking or damaging dozens of ships. The attack brought the Second World War to Australia’s doorstep only days after the fall of Singapore.

Background

By early 1942 Japan was advancing rapidly through South-East Asia and the Netherlands East Indies. Darwin, a small northern town with a deep-water harbour, had become the key Allied base for supplying and reinforcing Timor and Java. Most women and children had already been evacuated south in late 1941 and early 1942.

Japanese planners wanted to put Darwin out of action before landing on Timor. They assigned the task to the carrier force of Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, which had struck Pearl Harbor ten weeks earlier, supported by land-based bombers from Ambon and Sulawesi.

The raids

The first raid arrived shortly before 10 am. About 188 aircraft from the carriers Akagi, Kaga, Hiryū and Sōryū, led by Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, attacked shipping in the harbour, the wharf, the town and the airfields. Warnings from coast watchers and a mission station on Bathurst Island did reach Darwin, but they were misread as returning American aircraft, and the air raid sirens sounded only as bombs began to fall.

Around midday a second wave of 54 land-based bombers attacked the Royal Australian Air Force base. Allied defences were thin: a handful of anti-aircraft guns and a flight of American P-40 fighters, most of which were shot down or destroyed on the ground.

In the harbour, eight ships were sunk, among them the US destroyer USS Peary and the cargo ship Neptuna, which exploded at the main wharf while loaded with depth charges. Many others were damaged. Around 20–30 aircraft were destroyed, and the wharf, post office and government buildings were wrecked. Japanese losses were very light, only a few aircraft.

Death toll

The exact number of dead has long been debated. The Lowe Commission counted 243 deaths, and later research has settled on a figure of at least 235, while some historians have argued the true toll was higher because many victims were seamen whose bodies were lost in the harbour. The dead included Australian and American servicemen, merchant seamen of several nations, wharf labourers and civilians, among them post office staff killed when the building took a direct hit.

Around 300–400 people were wounded. Hospitals were overwhelmed, and the hospital ship Manunda, itself damaged in the raid, treated many of the injured before carrying them south.

Aftermath and panic

Many civilians and some servicemen fled south in confusion in the days after the raid, an episode later known as the “Adelaide River Stakes” after the town about 100 kilometres down the road. A royal commission under Justice Charles Lowe investigated the defence failures and the breakdown of order, and reported in March and April 1942. Its findings were kept largely out of public view, and wartime censorship played down the scale of the attack.

One Japanese pilot, Hajime Toyoshima, crash-landed on Melville Island and was captured by Tiwi islanders, becoming the first Japanese prisoner of war taken on Australian soil. He later died in the Cowra breakout of 1944.

Later raids

The attack of 19 February was only the beginning. Darwin was bombed more than 60 times, and northern Australia was raided around 100 times in total, with the last attack on Darwin in November 1943. Towns such as Broome, Wyndham, Katherine and Townsville were also hit. Darwin became a heavily fortified military town, and Allied air power in the north grew steadily.

Legacy

For decades the bombing was overshadowed by other parts of the war, partly because of wartime secrecy. Since 2012, 19 February has been a national day of observance, Bombing of Darwin Day. Memorials stand on the Esplanade and at the wharf, and the raid is often compared with Pearl Harbor because of the shared Japanese carrier force.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1941, December: Evacuation of women and children from Darwin begins.
• 1942, 15 February: Singapore surrenders to Japan.
• 1942, 19 February, about 9:58 am: The first, carrier-based raid hits Darwin.
• 1942, 19 February, about midday: Land-based bombers attack the RAAF airfield.
• 1942, 19–20 February: Japanese forces land on Timor.
• 1942, March–April: The Lowe Royal Commission investigates the raid.
• 1943, 12 November: The last Japanese raid on Darwin.

Why it matters

The bombing of Darwin ended any sense that Australia was remote from the war. It hastened Australia’s turn towards the United States for its defence and set the stage for the battles that followed in the Coral Sea and New Guinea.