Cook
Could you simply have either:
a) The POD is that they do attack the airfield while he's there.
b) Even simpler, he's just made a [for the time] long flight across a contested region largely under Japanese control either enemy action or simply a break-down means he's lost?
Steve
Could you simply have either:
a) The POD is that they do attack the airfield while he's there.
b) Even simpler, he's just made a [for the time] long flight across a contested region largely under Japanese control either enemy action or simply a break-down means he's lost?
Steve
For a while Gridley it seemed like my best opportunity.
MacArthur arrived in Australia from the Philippine Islands at Batchelor airfield south of Darwin on 17 March 1942 in a B-17 bomber with his entourage. The aircraft had had to divert to Batchelor from Darwin because of a Japanese air attack on Darwin taking place at the time.
After stepping off the plane he demanded to be taken to the nearest railroad station for the south. When informed that the nearest train south was in fact at Alice Springs, some 1000 miles away he had breakfast before transferring to a DC-3 and continued his journey south.
Ten minutes after their DC-3 departed Batchelor the airfield was devastated by a Japanese air attack.
So you see I thought I had a good opportunity to kill him off there if his plane was delayed for 10 minutes, delays are a fact of live in the top end even now so would hardly be unusual in ’42.
There are only a couple of snags. The first is that Darwin was definitely not bombed on 17 March; the B-17s had flown from Batchelor in the beginning and merely returned there after their trip to the Philippines, the report that the aircraft had to be diverted because of a Jap (sic) attack was invented by the MacArthur publicity machine.
And as far as I’ve been able to dig up, so was the attack on Batchelor. So far I’ve been able to find only one report of an attack on Batchelor in ’42 and that was later in the year and caused minimal damage; more MacArthur creative reporting.
And when you think about it why would the Japanese not simultaneously attack two airfields only 50 miles apart?
So there you see, I seem to be stuck for the moment.