Born in 1942, and dying in 1963, Wojtek (“Voy-Teck”) was the name given to a Syrian brown bear-cub discovered by Polish soldiers in Iran, who had been released from Soviet gulags after Germany invaded Russia in 1941. The soldiers of the Polish II Corps raised Wojtek as their unit mascot, but their commanding officer refused to let the troops have a bear – or any other animal – as a mascot! So instead, the troops pulled a fast one, and enlisted Wojtek as a private in their unit.
And thus began Private Wojtek’s career in the Polish Army.
Wojtek the Bear
Wojtek was a popular mascot, and he spent so much time with the soldiers that he started copying their every move. He learned how to drink coffee, drink beer, smoke, march, and even salute!
In their spare time, the soldiers would wrestle with Wojtek…which was no mean feat, because before long, Wojtek was 5’9″, and over 200lbs! As he grew more and more attached to the men, the soldiers assigned one of the men to be the bear’s personal minder.
Wojtek wrestling with a Polish soldier
During the Battle of Monte Cassino, Wojtek observed his fellow Poles carrying crates of artillery-shells to the front for their artillery officers to load into their guns and mortars. Like with everything else, Wojtek started copying this behaviour, too, and easily carried the 100lb crates of shells to the front line.
After WWII, Wojtek lived out his life in Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland, where he became a bit of a star with the locals, and with soldiers from his former unit, who would drop by to visit. As a result of his activity, the Polish 22nd Artillery Supply Company changed their unit badge to depict an image of Wojtek carrying an artillery shell.
During the Second World War, Britain worked tirelessly to undermine the German war-effort through epic feats of deception and cunning. Everything from the “Magic Gang” with Jasper Maskelyne, to General George Patton and the imaginary First United States Army Group (“FUSAG”), and the infamous “Operation Mincemeat”, where a dead body was dressed as an officer, filled with “sensitive documentation”, and then dumped off the Spanish coastline by a British submarine.
The majority of British deception-plans against the Nazis during the Second World War are well-known, and are rightly famous – the story of Operation Mincemeat was even turned into a major motion picture – in colour! But what is less well-known by the general public is the almost-forgotten German counter-effort against Britain, to pull off one of the greatest feats of forgery ever witnessed in human history.
This is the true story of the German attempt to produce millions upon millions of FAKE British banknotes during the Second World War, and to bring about the collapse of the British economy through hyperinflation. A story known as ‘Operation Bernhard’.
The Beginnings of Bernhard
The origins of Operation Bernhard came to fruition on the 18th of September, 1939, just a few days after the start of the Second World War, and the German invasion of Poland. The original idea was formulated by Arthur Nebe and Reinhard Heydrich, two architects of the famous “final solution” that would eventually lead to the Jewish Holocaust. The original plan was to produce hundreds of millions in forged, British banknotes and to distribute them throughout the United Kingdom. This would cause economic collapse, and destroy the world’s confidence in the Pound Sterling as a globally-accepted currency, which it was in the early 1900s.
Looking for any way to cripple the British war-effort, Hitler gave the plan his official approval, although for obvious reasons, it had to be kept as secret as possible…something which didn’t last very long, because before too much time had passed, Sir Michael Palairet, British Ambassador to Greece, had already been tipped off about the potential Nazi counterfeiting scheme, and forwarded full details, such as they were known at the time, to the government in Whitehall, and to the Bank of England, to be on the lookout for potential forgery of British currency. The warnings were heeded, even though the Bank of England believed that existing anti-counterfeiting measures already in place should be more than sufficient to thwart any potential forgery efforts.
Planning the Deception – Operation Andreas
Operation Bernhard was comprised of several different elements, all of which had to be as perfect as possible for the plan to proceed. The first element of making the fake banknotes was, of course, to make the notepaper upon which the denominations of currency would be printed. This first stage of the plan was known as Operation Andreas, and involved finding the right combination of cloth rags and old paper and the right manufacturing processes to make the paper (or as close as possible) which British banknotes were printed on. Following steps were the engraving of the printing plates, the making of the ink, the forging of banknote serial numbers, etc.
The Germans were very confident in their ability to replicate British banknotes. The type of banknote (and the design printed upon it) used in the UK during WWII had been designed nearly 100 years before, in 1855. The banknotes were printed in black ink on large sheets of white paper – smaller sheets for five-pound notes, and larger sheets for 10, 20 and 50 pound notes.
To guard against forgery, every single plate used to print the notes had numerous little imperfections (up to 150 of them in total!) worked into the designs. These were usually imperceptible to the naked eye – but if they were perceived, then they would simply be passed off by the general public as minor printing-errors – the result of plate-wear, and of printing thousands of banknotes a day. Only bank officials would know what the marks and imperfections were, how many there were, their significance, and where these could be found on the various notes in circulations. As the imperfections were put down to wear-and-tear, the idea was that any forger making a banknote would try and make it even better than the original. A forged note with perfect printing would therefore stand out against a genuine note with small, but deliberate imperfections worked into the design.
Making the paper was surprisingly difficult, and the German forgers encountered several roadblocks along the way. The type of cloth and rags used, whether they’d been cleaned and bleached, how they were pulverised, how the paper was formed, and even the chemical composition of the water used to make the paper-mass, all had to be carefully examined and tested so that the notes looked perfect.
In the end, the decision was made to try and counterfeit five-pound notes. Being the most common notes in circulation, they were less likely to be scrutinised, and would more easily blend in with genuine British banknotes, becoming too widely dispersed too quickly for the Bank of England to pick up on the deceit until it was too late. As the war progressed, ten, twenty and even fifty-pound notes were also added to the list of fraudulent banknotes.
Early attempts at producing these forged five-pound notes proved highly problematic, and one of the biggest issues with trying to create accurate forgeries came from trying to reproduce the image of Britannia printed on every five-pound note. The engraving was so intricate that try as they might, a 100% accurate copy just wasn’t possible. It became so difficult that in 1942, the forgery plan was abandoned.
The Start of Operation Bernhard
While German forgers had given up trying to forge British banknotes, the German SS had not, and later in 1942, the plan was revived under the direction of Heinrich Himmler, and SS Major Bernhard Kruger – after whom the operation was named.
Major Bernhard Kruger
The original plan with the forged banknotes was to flood Britain with fake fivers so that confidence in the British Pound Sterling would collapse, or to cause hyperinflation. Spies and contacts had alerted the Bank of England about the possibility of this German plan as early as 1939, and first evidence of these forged notes started popping up in 1943. Fears that high-quality forged German notes could flood Britain, bringing down its economy started to rise.
Fortunately, this didn’t happen (or at least not on a large scale) because of a quirk of the Bank of England.
What none of the forgers or their controllers knew was that the Bank of England kept gigantic ledger books – some of them hundreds of years old – in which they laboriously recorded literally every single British banknote in circulation! See – every banknote issued by the Bank of England was a promissory note – a note which promised to pay the bearer five pounds – as in, five pounds sterling worth of gold or silver – upon presentation of the note.
To stop forgeries, every note had a serial number – this much, the Germans knew. What they did not know was that every single serial number, without exception – was recorded in a ledger before it was issued to the public. When a note was worn out or required replacement, it was returned to the bank. The serial number on the note was then crossed out of the ledger and the note was destroyed.
The problem was that several of the forged banknotes that the Germans produced had serial numbers on them which, when they were compared against the Bank of England ledgers – showed that they were fake! The genuine notes had already been turned in and canceled. So why were there suddenly notes showing up with identical, canceled numbers? They had to be fake! It sounds stupidly simple, but it really was that easy to find out which notes were forgeries. To catch the forgers out, the Bank of England had to do just one thing:
Stop making banknotes! Any other banknotes that were found in circulation would therefore obviously not be printed by the bank and could only be forgeries! So they did!
When they realised that their grand scheme for destroying the British economy had just gone out the window, Himmler and his S.S. confederates had to figure out some other use for their millions in forged fivers. This was when they got the idea that the banknotes could be used to fund the German war-effort. The pound sterling being a globally-accepted currency, it would be easy to pay for arms and materiel using the fake banknotes, and pass them off as genuine to unsuspecting arms-dealers or German allies, who, presumably, wouldn’t look too closely at the notes.
And this is exactly what happened.
To ensure that their plan was as foolproof as possible, Major Kruger started looking for more forgers, and eventually gathered up a group of Jewish prisoners from Auschwitz who had the necessary skills – engraving, artistry, calligraphy, and so-on, and set them up in their own barracks in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In the end, 140 men were chosen.
Because the prisoners were essential to the German war-effort, they were treated much better than other prisoners. Guards were forbidden to harass them, and they were given regular food, proper shelter and care. Of course the prisoners knew that all this relied on them producing the most perfect forgeries ever. This would be the only thing that kept them in the good graces of the SS.
Between 1942-1945, the prisoners (with their bases of operations constantly moving to keep them from escaping, or from being bombed by the allies) produced millions upon millions of pounds of British banknotes, along with a healthy dose of American dollars. These funds were then laundered and exchanged to secure Swiss Francs, genuine British banknotes, or genuine American dollars, with none of the other parties ever being any the wiser. In total, the prisoners were believed to have forged up to three hundred MILLION pounds!
The End of the Operation
Operation Bernhard came to a juddering halt in 1945 with the gradual collapse of Nazi Germany. The prisoners responsible for the forgeries were shifted continuously from place to place to try and keep them from escaping to allied lines. They were constantly broken up, reformed, separated and reunited. In the end, the SS decided that they were too much of a liability – that they knew too much – and would have to be “silenced”.
However, in typical German efficiency, the order given was that all the prisoners involved in the forgery operations had to be executed together – this way there was no chance of one or two of them escaping, or of there being any sorts of mix-ups. It was this strict adherence to this rule that actually saved all their lives!
In early May, 1945, the prisoners were moved yet again – this time to Ebensee Concentration Camp. The men had been broken up into three groups and were transported to the camp by truck separately. Two groups arrived, were sent into the camp, and then their guards fled to try and save their own necks. The order that the prisoners had to be killed together meant that they could not yet be executed – delays in transportation (the truck broke down!) meant that the third group had not yet arrived. Instead, they had to be marched to Ebensee, which took the better part of two days. This delay only increased the group’s survival.
When the third group did arrive, they too were simply dumped into the camp before their guards also fled from advancing U.S. troops. It would be impossible to pick out 100-odd specific prisoners from the thousands within the camp, so the SS guards who had escorted the forgers there simply didn’t bother. They had more important things to do – like try to get out of Europe! In this way, the prisoners were left in the camp on the 5th of May to await an uncertain future.
On the 6th of May, 1945, Ebensee camp was liberated by American soldiers, and against all the odds, the Jewish forgery prisoners had survived the entire war – and with an incredible story to tell!
The Fate of the Fake Fivers
So much for the fate of the forgers, but what about the forgeries?
When the war ended, Major Bernhard Kruger was arrested by the British, but they soon discovered that there wasn’t much that they could hold him on. While certainly illegal at any other time in history, forging an enemy’s currency in wartime was not actually a war crime! With nothing to hold him on, the British interrogated him extensively for two years during his denazification process, and then released him to French authorities, with whom he stayed with for one year. Some of the liberated forger-prisoners, after being interviewed by British officials, agreed to sign testimonies in Kruger’s favour, stating that he had been nice to them, had looked after them, had protected them and seen to their welfare as best he could during the war.
Eventually, Kruger was released from custody in 1948 and got a job at the Hahnemuhle Paper Mill…ironically, one of the places responsible for making the paper he used in his forging operations! He died in 1989 at the age of 84. The Hahnemuhle Paper Company is still operating today.
So much for Kruger. What about the banknotes?
Most of the leftover funds ended up here – Lake Toplitz in Austria, where crates of banknotes and equipment were dumped in the dying days of the Second World War. Expeditions and dives in subsequent decades hauled up some of the estimated 100,000 pounds sterling of forged banknotes which had been disposed of in the lake, and today, these forged banknotes are highly collectible as historical artifacts.
Want to Know More?
Most of the information for this posting came from the excellent documentary film “The Great Nazi Cash Swindle”, from 2004, which you can find on YouTube.
Imagine this – It’s December! You’ve booked yourself an international flight to the Far East to enjoy a balmy, sandy Christmas in the sun! You board the plane and take off across the Pacific headed for Southeast Asia, and settle in for several hours of relaxation, conversation and sightseeing over the ocean.
Before you’ve even reached your destination – your entire world is turned upside-down! Reports come in over the radio that suddenly, the whole world is at war! You can’t fly back, you can’t go on ahead, you have no idea where the plane is even going to land, and you could be shot down at any minute!
This is the terrifying tale of the Pacific Clipper, one of the long-haul luxury passenger seaplanes operated by Pan-American Airways in the 1930s and 40s, and the record-breaking flight that it took around the world in December, 1941, as the South Pacific exploded into war beneath its wings.
What Was the Pacific Clipper?
Introduced in 1938, the Boeing 314 Clipper was, in the late 1930s, the most modern of commercial, long-haul passenger aircraft being sold around the world at the time. Only twelve were ever constructed. Nine went to Pan-American Airways, and the remaining three went to BOAC – the British Overseas Airways Corporation.
The Boeing 314 was a large aircraft for the day, but even it wasn’t able to cover the entire width of the Pacific Ocean in a single, uninterrupted flight. Instead, the accepted practice of the day was to “island-hop” around the world, providing long-distance travel to the paying public by flying from one airbase to another, completing long-haul flights in stages. It wasn’t fast, and it wasn’t exactly glamorous, and it certainly wasn’t cheap!…But it beat the hell out of trying to cover the same distance by ocean liner!
PAA’s ‘California Clipper’ in 1940
The Pan-Am clippers came with most of the stuff that modern aircraft come with: Lavatories, seats that could convert to lie-flat beds, delicious food, and full steward service! However, they differed in many other ways:
First – journey-times were much longer. From California to Hawaii took up to 19 hours! Second – Passenger-volumes were much-reduced – The average pre-war Pan-Am clipper barely carried more than 70 passengers. Third – the Pan-Am clippers were all seaplanes, or “flying boats” – they had no landing-gear – instead, the planes took off and landed on flat bodies of water – large rivers, lakes, or along the coastline during calm weather.
Last but not least – tickets were expensive! A one-way flight from California to Hong Kong was $760 – around $14,000USD in modern prices!
Piloting a Pan-Am clipper was very different from flying a modern aircraft. Because the planes could only take off and land on water, pilots had to be extremely skilled, not only in flying, landing, taxiing and take-off – but they also had to know a lot more about weather, sea-conditions, how to spot a safe stretch of water, and how to read the windspeeds and directions accurately enough to know when, where and how to make a safe water-landing! These days, most pilots hope to only make one water-landing in their entire lives, if they ever have to – but for Pan-Am clipper pilots, it was literally a daily occurrence!
In an age when long-haul passenger-flights were limited and the industry was only, quite literally, getting off the ground – flying was far more dangerous than it is today. Engine-failures and emergency-landings happened much more frequently, and a full-service crew flew with the aircraft at all times to tackle all kinds of mechanical incidents that could happen during flight. The crew of the Boeing 314 Flying Boat was 11 in number: The captain, first officer, second officer, third officer, fourth officer, two flight-engineers, two radio-operators, the purser, and his assistant.
It was one of these fantastical flying machines – a Boeing 314 – which came to be known as the ‘Pacific Clipper’.
Pan-American Airways named all its early aircraft, just like how steamship-lines at the time named all their ships. And just like how shipping lines followed naming conventions (Cunard named all ships “-ia” – Carpathia, Lusitania, Muretania, Berengaria, etc, and White Star named all their ships “-ic” – Titanic, Olympic, Atlantic, etc), Pan-Am also followed similar conventions: All their aircraft were called “clippers”, a reference to clipper sailing ships, which were famed for their speed. The names were typically related to the plane’s assigned route.
There was the Atlantic Clipper, the China Clipper, the Caribbean Clipper, the Honolulu Clipper…and the subject of this posting: The Pacific Clipper.
The Farthest Flight of the Pacific Clipper
It is December 2nd, 1941. Off the coast of sunny San Francisco, the Pacific Clipper is preparing for a routine flight across the Pacific towards Auckland, New Zealand. There are twenty-three people on board: Twelve passengers, and eleven crew. The pilot is Capt. Robert Ford, a Pan-Am veteran, well-used to the rigors of long-haul passenger-aircraft flights.
With a range of 5,000 miles, the Pacific Clipper was never able to make the flight from California to New Zealand nonstop, and it was accepted that the plane would land several times during the trip to drop off and collect mail, passengers, food, drinks, trash, and most importantly – fuel! When Captain Ford fired up the engines and took to the skies, nobody on board could’ve imagined what lay ahead.
Pre-war Honolulu in the 1930s
The aircraft’s first stop was San Pedro, California, then out across the ocean. It landed in Honolulu, Hawaii, then Kanton Island near Kiribati, then Fiji, and then finally, New Caledonia. In the preceding days, it had covered over 6,000 miles! The final leg of the journey was still ahead: Auckland, a mere 1,200 miles away – well within the limits of the Pacific Clipper’s operational range.
As the plane took off from New Caledonia and flew southeast towards Auckland, wireless operator John Poindexter was relaxing at his station, his headphones strapped onto his head as the aircraft hummed around him. Right now, he was probably thinking about his wife – the same wife that he had advised, he would be home early for – and to keep dinner for him on the kitchen table.
That was before one of the two radio-operators on the flight pulled out sick, and Poindexter stepped in to replace him. Had he known what was about to happen, Poindexter would’ve told his wife not to bother about dinner, because he was going to be home late.
Very late.
Halfway through their current leg, the radio suddenly crackled to life, and Poindexter scribbled down a message in Morse Code. Ripping it off his pad, he hurried to tell the rest of the crew what had just come in over the airwaves.
It was December 7th, 1941. A date which would live in infamy. Poindexter had just found out about the Japanese aerial attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
As the pilot, his co-pilot, the stewards, navigator, flight engineers and radio-operators all looked at the message, they suddenly realised what a horrible position they were all in!
While they could safely make it to New Zealand, offload their passengers, cargo and mail, refuel and take-off again – it was immediately obvious that there was no way that they could ever go home…or at least…not in the conventional way.
Under normal circumstances, the plane would’ve flown northeast towards Hawaii, where it would land, refuel, and then continue on back to the mainland United States. With Japanese aircraft, warships and aircraft carriers between the South Pacific and Hawaii, however, such a route was impossible – an aircraft bearing American markings would almost certainly be shot out of the sky if it was discovered by Japanese surface vessels.
With Hawaii on high alert, landing and refueling there, even if they managed to evade the Japanese, would be next to impossible. Unable to make the journey back to California without at least one stopover, getting back home seemed impossible!
Landing in New Zealand
The first leg of this epic adventure was relatively easy – landing. Two hours after receiving the world-changing news that the naval base at Pearl Harbor had been blasted by the Japanese, Captain Ford and his crew executed a landing off the coast of New Zealand, taxiing up to Auckland and tying off. Passengers and cargo were offloaded and the plane was prepared for…well…they weren’t exactly sure what for…but they wanted to be prepared at the very least!
Unsure of what else to do, the crew made their way to the American Embassy in Auckland. Here, they managed to contact Pan-American Airways Headquarters…in New York…and waited for further instructions.
With facilities in Hawaii put out of action, the harbor inoperable and any aircraft-fuel being needed for military aircraft, flying back to California was all but impossible.
In the week that it took for headquarters to make up its mind on the crew’s next move, the Pacific was erupting into war around them. The Philippine Clipper at Wake Island had managed to evacuate all Pan-Am employees and a lucky few civilians, taking to the air as Japanese forces rolled in, riddling the aircraft with gunfire as it fought to get out of range. In Hong Kong, another Pan-Am flying boat had been blown up at its dock before it even had a chance to leave.
Knowing that time was running out and that their options were dwindling rapidly, it was eight days before Captain Ford and his crew found out what they were expected to do.
Finally, on the 15th of December, a cypher-telegram was dispatched from New York to the U.S. Embassy, Auckland, New Zealand. It instructed Captain Ford to strip the Pacific Clipper of all identifying marks, fuel-up, and to get home by whatever means were necessary. During the trip, radio silence was to be observed at all times, to prevent the aircraft from being detected by the Japanese, and to land in New York when it arrived back in American waters.
When he found out what he was expected to do, Captain Ford probably thought that it would’ve been better if he’d kept his mouth shut! There was no way the aircraft could fly that far without stopping several times for fuel. There was no way that they’d have enough food, equipment or supplies to last that long! They didn’t even have any money, and because Captain Ford only flew the Pacific routes – he had no maps or navigational charts to guide him across Eurasia, Africa, or the Atlantic Ocean! They were entirely on their own, with orders to make it home by any means necessary.
After refueling the aircraft, Ford and his passengers and crew took off once more, to an uncertain fate.
It was the 16th of December when they left New Zealand, and their first stop was one of their previous legs – New Caledonia. Here, Ford had been ordered to land, refuel, and take on evacuees – the staff of the Pan-Am facility that operated out of the New Caledonian capital – Noumea. Fearing that the island could be captured by the Japanese at any minute, Ford told the Pan-Am staff that they had exactly one hour to grab whatever they could, and flee. This wouldn’t be easy – each passenger was only allowed one bag each!
While the Pan-Am staff scrambled to pack their bags and secure their essentials, the plane was refueled. With everybody safely aboard, the plane took off once more, this time flying west.
The only other major landmass in the region that had not yet been taken by the Japanese was the Commonwealth of Australia – the Pacific Clipper’s next stop. It landed off the Queensland coast near the town of Gladstone, where once again – it started to refuel. While the ground-staff prepared the clipper for its next leg, the crew offloaded the Pan-Am employees from Noumea, judging Australia to be far enough away from Japanese aggression to be a safe evacuation-point.
While this was going on, Ford had to tackle another issue that hadn’t been an issue before last week!…money!
With each flight, the crew was provided with enough funds to cover their expenditures – food, fuel, and any necessary repairs – from California to New Zealand…but Pan-Am in New York had not been able to send them any extra funds for their long-haul flight around the world!
Wondering what to do, Captain Ford was suddenly approached by a young man, who identified himself as a local banker. The aircraft had enough food and fuel to last the trip – but what about money?
“We’re broke!” Ford recalled saying, and explained how they had only been given enough funds to support them there and back – not for halfway around the world!
“I’ll probably be shot for this”, the banker replied, but he went to his local branch, unlocked the vault in the back, and returned with $500 cash-money – American dollars! A not-inconsiderable sum in 1941!
Accepting the cash without another word, Ford handed it to Rod Brown, the aircraft’s navigator – the only person on board with access to the plane’s strongbox. The funds were deposited, and the aircraft prepared to take flight again.
Darwin in the 1930s. A sight like this would’ve been very similar to what the crew of the Pacific Clipper would’ve seen when they landed in the harbour on the 17th of December, 1941
The Pacific Clipper continued its journey westwards, flying across the Australian interior. Being a seaplane, the Pacific Clipper could only take off or land on water – and Australia being one of the driest countries on earth – there ain’t much water around! Certainly not enough to land a commercial aircraft in!
The afternoon of the 17th saw the Pacific Clipper landing in Darwin, the capital of Australia’s Northern Territory. The weather was atrocious and the plane came down in the midst of a tropical thunderstorm. Although it was the capital of the Northern Territory, Darwin was hardly a bustling metropolis! The crew were stunned to discover just how small Darwin was – little more than a large, country town. Even in 2020, Darwin’s population is still barely 150,000 people!
Darwin in the 1930s.
Despite this, Darwin was still an important military base, with an airfield, army-base, aircraft facilities, and a naval base in the deep-water harbour nearby. Darwin was such an army town that the crew found that their refreshment station was actually the local brothel!
While in Darwin, Captain Ford and his navigator, Rod Brown, had to decide what on earth they were going to do next. Australia was likely to be the last friendly nation that they would be able to land in, before they had to strike out on their own and try and make it home across the rest of the world. There would be no way to know where they could land, find fuel, repair the engines if they malfunctioned, could receive medical care, or even communicate with Pan-Am headquarters in New York, if they had to!
Leaving Australia…
After freshening up, the crew had to refuel the aircraft…again. 5,000 gallons of aircraft fuel had to be poured into the tanks before they could take off – not with pumps or hoses or anything as sophisticated as that!…Oh no.
It had to be done by hand.
1,000 5gal. jerry-cans of fuel had to be literally manhandled up the side of the aircraft and poured into the tanks over the wings, passed down, refilled, and then passed back up again! All this in the raging North-Australian heat! It was past midnight before the job was done, and the crew were exhausted! They allowed themselves a few hours’ sleep, and then took off again the moment it was light.
Lifting off from Darwin on the morning of the 18th, Captain Ford and his crew flew north to Surabaya in Java, then part of the Dutch East Indies.
Desperate to hold the island by any means necessary, British and Dutch forces were understandably on-edge when they saw an unidentified aircraft entering Javan airspace. Unable to make radio-contact, the Pacific Clipper was almost taken out by friendly fire! When it finally was allowed to land – the local authorities refused to give them any aircraft fuel! They insisted that their limited stock was for military uses only – but – they didn’t want to be seen as being unsympathetic – there was a war on, after all!…and they graciously informed Captain Ford that he was welcome to help himself to as much gasoline as he could load onto the aircraft! It’s not like anybody was going for a relaxing, Sunday drive right now, so there was more than enough petrol to spare! Even enough to fuel a commercial airliner!
The lower-quality automobile fuel had never been used in an airplane before, and Ford was skeptical about whether it would even operate properly at high altitudes! But he had no choice – it was either take the lower-grade fuel – or run out of fuel entirely, and crash in the ocean!
Erring on the side of caution, Ford ordered his flight engineers to siphon the remaining aircraft fuel into one tank, and fill the other tanks with the lower-grade gasoline. The plane would take off using aircraft fuel, but would carry out the next leg of its journey using the automobile fuel.
Once the plane was airborne, Ford switched the feed-valves on the tanks, shutting off the aviation fuel and switching on the pumps for the lower-grade petrol – the engines gurgled and spluttered and smoke started pumping out, but once they’d gotten over the initial shock of the change in their diet – they started firing once more.
Chasing the Sunset
Determined to put as much space between himself and the Japanese as possible, Captain Ford steered the Pacific Clipper westwards, and out across the Indian Ocean, and over waters which were, quite literally – uncharted! With no detailed maps, Ford, his navigator, co-pilot and the aircraft’s stewards were basically flying blind, only having the vaguest idea of where they were going. Navigator Brown had no navigational documents for this part of the world, and warned Ford that all they had to go on were rough bearings.
Ford decided that their next logical destination had to be a colony of the British Empire – somewhere that the Pacific Clipper would stand a greater chance of a friendly reception. To that end, the plane attempted to find the island of Ceylon – today – Sri Lanka – off the Indian coast.
Had they been traveling by sea, this would’ve been called an “all-red route” – a sea voyage which stopped only in “red” parts of the map – red being the colour of the British Empire. As they flew on, the crew of the Pacific Clipper encountered heavy cloud-cover. Unable to determine his position, Ford dropped the plane below the clouds to get his bearings – a decision he would immediately regret!
As he broke cloud-cover, Ford got the shock of his life when a Japanese submarine appeared below! The Japanese started manning their deck-guns and began firing at the Pacific Clipper and Ford had to quickly manipulate the controls to bring the aircraft back up into the clouds!
Sustaining no damage from the Japanese attack, the Pacific Clipper finally landed in Ceylon and the crew were welcomed by the local British military garrison, where they were invited to a meeting to give them whatever intelligence they could regarding the current state of the South Pacific.
After the aircraft had been refueled, it took off once more. It was now the 24th of December – Christmas Eve, and Captain Ford was about to get a very nasty Christmas present! They had barely flown more than a handful of miles when an explosion in one of the starboard engines made everybody jump! Peering out the window, Ford and his co-pilot were stunned to see smoke and oil gurgling from the #3 engine! Ford shut the engine down and spun the plane around back to Ceylon!
When they landed, Ford pulled the engine coverings off and discovered that one of the 18 cylinders had ruptured and worked itself loose from its mounting, causing the oil to leak out. Repairing the loosened mounting was not difficult…but it did take a long time, and it was Boxing Day before the plane could take off again.
Deciding to stick with their “British-Empire” strategy, Ford and his crew headed for Karachi, then part of British India (today part of Pakistan), and from there to the Kingdom of Bahrain, at the time, a British protectorate.
So far, so good.
Arriving in Bahrain, the crew once again made contact with the British military authorities stationed there, explained their situation, and their onward plans. Captain Ford was warned to avoid flying over Saudi-Arabia if at all possible, due to the potentially hostile reception he might receive – more than a few British aircraft had been shot down over Arabian airspace, and while the Pacific Clipper had, by this time, been stripped of all its identifying marks to avoid enemy attention, there was still a good chance that an unmarked, un-identifiable aircraft might still be targeted by hostile forces.
The Pacific Clipper in flight
Captain Ford provisioned and refueled his plane, and they took off again. With fuel a precious commodity, Ford wasn’t in any position to take a ‘scenic route’ back to America, and so, ended up flying across Saudi-Arabia anyway! To protect against gunfire, the clipper remained in the clouds for the majority of the leg, only dipping down to check their bearings every few miles. They’d been in the air about 20 minutes when Ford took the plane down to check their progress. The crew got the shock of their lives when they realised that they were flying right across central Mecca! Fortunately, anti-aircraft installations did not exist in Mecca, and the Pacific Clipper flew on, unmolested.
The aircraft’s next stop was Khartoum, the capital of the Sudan. Landing on the famous River Nile, Captain Ford and his crew were greeted by representatives of the British Royal Air Force, who helped them refuel the Pacific Clipper, provision it for the next leg of its epic journey, and wished them godspeed.
Exactly where to go next was a bit of a challenge. Flying to Europe was dangerous at best, unwise at worst. While they could probably head to somewhere like Gibraltar, Ford feared that the clipper’s engines, already taxed to breaking-point, would not survive the heat of the Sahara Desert – a forced landing there would be a death-sentence to everybody! This also meant that places like Casablanca, Spain or Portugal were out of range.
Instead, the crew decided to fly to Leopoldville in the Belgian Congo – it would at least be further west, and would take them one step closer to home.
Landing on the river near Leopoldville, the plane was tied up at a jetty and the crew disembarked for their next rest-stop. Upon their arrival in town, they received the shock of their lives! Two Pan-Am employees – an airport manager, and a radio-operator – greeted them! Relieved to see colleagues again, the crew relaxed, had a meal, exchanged news…and thanks to the two Leopoldville employees – enjoyed something that none of the Pacific Clipper crew had had, probably since leaving Australia – a nice, cold beer!
The crew rested in Leopoldville overnight while they planned the next leg of their journey. They also refueled the aircraft and prepared it for the next day’s flying – in fact, they prepared it so well, that come dawn, the plane was almost too heavy to take off! With tanks full of fuel and oil, cargo and crew, and with the soggy, humid air of the equator all around them, the Pacific Clipper narrowly avoided plunging off the edge of a waterfall as it lurched ungainly into the air once more!
The Atlantic Crossing
The next leg was one of the most dangerous – flying across the Atlantic to South America – a journey that took them nearly all day and night! When they finally landed in Natal on the Brazilian coastline, port authorities insisted that the aircraft – by then looking very battered, worn-out and worse-for-wear, due to it serving as the home for the ten crew-members for the past month – had to be fumigated for mosquitoes, which could carry deadly yellow fever. The crew disembarked the plane and started planning the next part of their journey while a team of fumigators boarded the aircraft and got to work.
And boy, did they ever! When Captain Ford and his colleagues returned, the ‘fumigators’ had robbed them blind! Anything that wasn’t nailed down had been stripped off the aircraft! All their personal papers, most of their charts, maps, travel-documents, company papers, and most of their money had been stolen!…a fact they only discovered once they had already left Brazilian airspace!
Finally back in the Americas and in familiar skies once more, Captain Ford flew towards the Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad & Tobago. This was the first place they’d landed in since leaving New Caledonia a month before, that had actual Pan-Am facilities, and Ford was relieved to be among friendly faces once more. The next leg was the last one – the final flight home to New York!
Captain Ford and his colleagues were so eager to get home that they took off almost immediately. It was now the 5th of January, and New York was just a short jaunt away. They left Trinidad so early that when they arrived in New York, it wasn’t even daylight yet! As a result, when Captain Ford contacted La Guardia Airport Air-Traffic Control with the words: “This is the Pacific Clipper, inbound from Auckland, New Zealand! Overhead in five minutes!”, the air-traffic controller called back that the Pacific Clipper was not allowed to land!…for 50 minutes. Only when the sun rose near 7:00am, did the plane finally touch down in American waters once more!
The incredible journey of the Pacific Clipper
In the end, Captain Ford had made history! And in so many ways! Let’s count them, shall we?
The first-ever round-the-world flight by a commercial airliner.
The longest continuous flight made by a commercial airliner.
The first circumnavigation of the world by following the equator.
The longest nonstop flight in the entire history of Pan-American World Airways: 3,583 miles from Leopoldville to Natal.
In the nearly four weeks it took them to get home, Ford and his crew had visited twelve nations on five continents, and had made eighteen landings! They had also made incredible history!
The Pacific Clipper on its arrival at La Guardia Airport, New York. 6th of January, 1942
Anyone who has been wondering why this blog has not been updated In a whole month will be glad to know that I have not just simply vanished off the face of the earth. For the last three weeks, I have been on holiday in the Peoples’ Republic of China. I visited three cities, Peking, Xi’an, and Shanghai. More of that in a future posting. This posting is to share the prize souvenir which I brought back home with me to Australia from my trip to the heart of the Orient!
A hand-cranked, handheld air-raid siren! Most likely dating back to the time of the Second Sino-Japanese war (1937-1945), this is the first military antique (or piece of ‘militaria’) that I have ever purchased, and at a fair bargain, too!
It was purchased at the Panjiayuan (‘Pan Ji’ya Yuan’) antiques and flea market in Peking. Anyone wanting to buy antiques in Peking is strongly advised to go here! I did, and I had a wonderful time – just remember to wear your poker face and haggle hard!
Is this siren rare? Not particularly. In all likelihood, hundreds, if not thousands of these things were produced by all sides during the Second World War. And it may well be a reproduction. But is it cool? You bet! Fold down the handles, lock in the crank, open the slide and let ‘er rip! Soon, that classic siren wail will be filling the air, sending people diving for cover! It is completely mechanical and is totally capable of sounding the alarm now, as it was nearly eighty years ago!
The siren comes complete with its original military green canvas carry-pouch, which, like the siren itself, certainly shows it’s age.
The History of the Air-Raid and it’s Siren
The first air-raids ever took place on London during the First World War. Carried out by the German Air Force, these first aerial attacks on a civilian population were done using zeppelin airships, the only craft large enough at the time to carry out practical, cross-channel raids.
British preparations for air-raids in the first war were nonexistent, and the strategies for coping with this new kind of attack were hastily thrown together in response to the threat hovering in the skies over London and other British towns and cities. A typical air-raid warning consisted of little more than London’s Special Constabulary (a volunteer force of citizen-policemen) walking or cycling around London, the familiar, discordant shriek of their ‘Metroplitan’-style police whistles providing the only form of rudimentary alarm. Considering that the screech of a police whistle was as common then as a police siren is today, not everyone paid attention, and probably paid with their lives.
Air-Raid Precautions (1924)
Fearing that thousands of Londoners might be killed in future European wars, an organization called Air-Raid Precautions was created in 1924, he aim of which was to develop strategies for the protection of London, other British cities, and their civilian populations, in the event of future air-attacks.
ARP was responsible for protecting and calming the civilian population of Great Britain during air-attacks, by providing warnings of raids and supervising safe evacuations, and by helping to maintain a citywide blackout that would confuse enemy aircraft flying overhead. Wardens were appointed whose job it was to enforce the blackout, and to assist the population during a raid, guiding them to air-raid shelters before the bombs started to fall.
The Wartime Air-Raid Siren
Air-raid sirens were developed in the late 1930s to warn people of the danger of upcoming aerial attacks or ‘air raids’ during the Second World War. A typical air-raid siren is comprised of a pair of cylinders or wheels, one spinning inside the other. The sound of the airflow constantly being interrupted is what gives the siren it’s distinctive droning wail. The faster a siren’s wheel spins, the louder the sound, and the higher the pitch, due to the more frequent interruption of airflow.
These sirens typically came in three general sizes:
Handheld, crank-operated ones, which could be operated by one man standing up (such as the one featured in this article)…
…medium-sized, manually operated sirens that were placed on portable stands…
…and finally, large, electrically powered sirens, typically mounted to large poles, or to the tops of large buildings.
Sirens normally produced two different types of alarms:
“Red Alert”, or “Red Warning” – a continuous, up-down rolling wail – this is the classic wartime siren sound that we all know from movies, TV shows, and computer games. Hearing this meant that an attack was imminent and ongoing. Civilians were to make their ways to air-raid shelters immediately. Such alerts came in two forms: one was a general alarm. The other was the signal to seek immediate shelter.
In England during the Second World War, factories engaged in wartime manufacturing were expected to keep running after the first siren had gone, and to instruct their staff to seek shelter only upon hearing the second siren which signaled an imminent attack. If the first siren was a false alarm (and they did happen), then the factory would have stopped work for no reason, and precious time would have been lost.
“White Alert”, or “All Clear” – a long, continuous, rising note that sounded for a preset period of time, indicating that an attack was over. It would now be safe to come out of shelters, and continue with ones lives.
Air-Raid Sirens After the War
The drone of an air-raid siren is most commonly associated with the Second World War and the conflicts of the 1930s and ’40s. However, they continued to be used well after the end of the Second World War.
The onset of the Cold War in the late 1940s meant that these sirens, now also called ‘civil defense sirens’, were redeployed to warn of impending nuclear attacks. The two old wartime signals of ‘Red Alert’ and ‘White Alert’ were still used, but we’re now supplemented with other warnings which indicated the likelihood of an attack, to give civilians more time to evacuate to their fallout shelters. The new medium of television was also used, along with the old standby of radio.
With the ending of the Cold War in the late 1980s, these venerable sirens were given yet another lease of life. They are still used in the United States to warn of impending natural disasters, such as tornadoes, giving people an audible signal of the approach of danger, allowing them to escape to their storm-cellars and bunkers before the big one hits.
Soldiers used urine for almost anything! They pissed on their boots to soften the leather. They pissed on their handkerchieves to make gas-masks. They even pissed on their machine-guns to stop them warping from overheating! Urine was ideal for several applications in the trenches. It was easily accessed and in plentiful supply. Any duties where water was not absolutely required, or where urine was an acceptable substitute, this freely available fluid was utilised. Pee for victory!
Australia had the only 100% volunteer army. While other nations that participated in WWI had standing armies, the newly-federated (1901) nation of Australia did not have an army of its own. All its troops and officers sent to fight in the Great War were volunteers drawn up from ranks of civilians. Most of them had no prior combat-experience, and received only the most basic of outdated infantry training!
The first air-raids on a large population center were carried out. In 1915, the first-ever air-raids over a major city were carried out by the German ‘Zeppelin’ airships. Although highly inaccurate, these raids brought war to a civilian population that was previously untouchable. But for the first time, the people of Britain realised that the Channel was no guarantee of safety. The raids were carried out on London and other major British cities, starting in January 1915, and lasting until August of 1918.
The Underwood Typewriter Company manufactured a gigantic, working typewriter as a marketing gimmick in 1915!…It was later melted down for the war-effort.Â
Despite the fact that the war started in Europe, the first allied shot was fired from Fort Nepean in Victoria, Australia!
Just two and a half hours after the declaration of war, Australia, a country on the other side of the world, fired the first allied shot of the war, using the coastal artillery cannon at Fort Nepean.
During the Second World War…
Despite the fact that the war started in Europe, the first allied shot was fired from Fort Nepean in Victoria, Australia!…Again!Â
Just as in July of 1914, on the 3rd of September, 1939, the first allied shot was fired by the coastal artillery cannon at Fort Nepean, in Victoria, Australia, on the other side of the world! By the same gun, from the same fort…and the shot was even ordered by the same man! In both instances, gun-captain, Commander Veale, ordered shots fired across the bows of two ships which refused to heave-to. In both instances, just hours after the official declarations of war.  And before any other allied nation had fired so much as a flare gun.
Cities were bombed with pianos! Okay, not really. But…Starting in 1944, pianos were parachuted into bombed out, but liberated cities across Europe, as the Allies advanced eastwards towards Berlin. Manufactured by Steinway & Sons, and called “Victory Verticals“, these lightweight, cheap, upright pianos were designed to provide a form of entertainment for troops and liberated civilians, whose own instruments were damaged by air-raids and artillery-barrages during the earlier years of the war. 2,436 Victory Vertical Steinways were manufactured.
A Steinway ‘Victory Vertical’ piano, sourced from pianoworld.com
The British tried making aircraft carriers out of ice! Those crafty Limeys. They tried concealing convoy ships as icebergs, and tried to make aircraft-carriers out of ice, to save up on precious steel.
No such ships ever made it off the drawing-board.
American psychologists produced a Freudian-style profile of Adolf Hitler. As part of trying to understand their enemy, the Americans drew up a psychological profile of Adolf Hitler. Theories about Hitler’s personality and possible future actions were built up from known facts about the Fuhreur. These were gleamed from his published works, body-language in films, and from the few people who knew him intimately and had escaped to America. One of them was Dr. Eduard Bloch!
Dr. Eduard Bloch in his medical office in Austria, 1938. Two years before he fled to America with his family
Bloch (1872-1945) was the Hitler family doctor…and a Jew. For Bloch’s attempts at treating Hitler’s mother for breast-cancer (from which she subsequently died), Hitler gave Bloch special protection from Nazi antisemitic persecution. Despite this, Bloch felt unsafe, and fled from Austria to America in 1940.
Over a three year period, from 1941-1943, he was interviewed extensively by the Office of Strategic Services or “O.S.S.”, the precursor to the CIA. He provided the Americans with valuable insight into Hitler’s personality and early life, which helped them produce their psychological profile. He told them about such things as the death of Hitler’s mother, how Hitler reacted to the news, and details about Hitler’s childhood and upbringing.
Bloch settled in New York City. He lived long enough to see the defeat of Germany, and Nazism in Europe. He died on the 1st of June, 1945, at the age of 73.
The profile drawn up by the Americans was surprisingly accurate. It correctly predicted the July 20 bomb-plot of 1944, Hitler’s increasing withdrawal from public life, and even Hitler’s suicide in 1945!
During the war, many companies ceased production of their peacetime consumer-goods, and started manufacturing materials for the war-effort.Where possible, companies were asked to build things using materials or techniques and qualities which they already had. It wasn’t always a great success.
Steinway & Sons, the piano-manufacturers, produced lightweight wooden gliders for the Allies. These were used during D-Day, for the invasion of Normandy.
The Singer Manufacturing Company, world-famous producers of sewing-machines, was tasked by the Americans to produce sidearms for the army. They were given a contract to produce 500 Colt .45 automatic pistols. The pistols did not all pass muster, and Singer did not produce any more guns for the duration of the war. It produced bomb-sights instead!
Singer lost the pistol contract to Remington-Rand, the famous typewriter manufacturer! Remington was producing M-1911 pistols from 1942 until the war ended in 1945. In total, it cranked out 877, 751 firearms for the U.S. Armed Forces!
The Royal Typewriter Company ceased all production of civilian typewriters during WWII. From 1942 until the war ended in 1945, it cranked out rifles, bullets, machine-guns, and spare parts for airplane engines! It didn’t start making typewriters again until the war had been over for two months!
The Underwood Typewriter Company produced M1 carbines for the war-effort. In the late 1930s, it manufactured a gigantic, working typewriter as a marketing stunt for the World’s Fair:
Just like in 1915…this too, was melted down for the war-effort! This typewriter was a giant version of the Underwood Master standard typewriter:
Rationing on the British Home-Front was so severe, some people came up with interesting substitutes for some rare, rationed foodstuffs and goods…
Makeup for women was in short supply. Beetroot-juice was used for lipstick, gravy and pencil-marks were used to create the illusion of stockings.
Eggs were almost nonexistent. And if you wanted them, you had to open a can of egg-powder, instead! (Eugh…) Egg-powder was mixed with water, and the resultant slurry was fried on the pan.
Restaurants continued to operate throughout the War, but were not allowed to charge more than 5s (five shillings) per dish. Vegetables were not rationed in any way at all.
Fish and Chips were not rationed. But getting plaice, cod and other regular varieties of fish was almost impossible. Instead, Britons had to eat Snoek, (“Snook”), imported from South Africa.
Winston Churchill was an impossible workaholic. He worked day and night. He worked on the toilet. He worked in the bathroom. He worked in bed. He would stay up for hours and hours at a time, working. By comparison, Hitler enjoyed his shut-eye.
His name was Jasper Maskelyne (1902-1973). Born into the famous Maskelyne stage family, Jasper was originally a magician performing in London’s West End theaterland. When war broke out, Maskelyne was recruited by the British Army to provide morale-boosting performances to allied troops. He soon grew bored of this, feeling that he was not doing enough for the war-effort. He offered his services to the army as an expert in camouflage and deception. The Army was not exactly taken by the idea. They thought Maskelyne was mad!
Maskelyne’s argument was that as a stage magician, he had a lifetime of experience in deception, trickery and illusion, which could surely be handy for the Army! But they weren’t interested. To this, Maskelyne famously retorted:
“If I could fool an audience only twenty feet away, I could certainly fool the enemy, a mile away, or more!”Â
Maskelyne supposedly convinced the army that he had something to offer, when he successfully created the illusion of a German battleship. He was employed as a camouflage expert, and together with his team of men (the “Magic Gang” as they were called), Maskelyne set to work putting on his greatest show ever.
Among other things, Maskelyne disguised tanks as trucks, to make military-buildups look like harmless goods-deliveries. He set up blackouts, and fake lights at night, to shift the position of Alexandria Harbour (a key attack-point for the German air-force), and most amazingly, shrouded the Suez Canal (a vital link between Britain and its Empire) beneath ‘dazzle-lights’.
Dazzle-lights were powerful searchlights aimed at the sky. Twenty-one massive search-lights would have revolving heads, each head with two dozen smaller lights. Aimed at the sky and constantly spinning, the hundreds of lights created a glittering, dazzling effect. It was very pretty, but its purpose was to disorientate German pilots. Blinded by the dazzle, they wouldn’t be able to look down from their aircraft to spot the canal, and therefore wouldn’t be able to bomb it.
The canal is still here, so it obviously worked.
So there you have it. These are just a few of the weird, whacky little facts about the two World Wars which you probably won’t find in your history books.
Countries considered virtually untouched by the ravages of the Second World War include the United States, the Dominion of Canada, New Zealand, and the Commonwealth of Australia, even though this was not entirely true. About all that most people know about the bombing of Darwin is what’s featured in the film “Australia“, starring Hugh Jackman.
The United States naval-base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii was hit hard in 1941 by a surprise Japanese air-raid which killed thousands of American servicemen, planes and ships. But while the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor has gone down in history as one of the most famous surprise-attacks of all time, most people have completely forgotten about another, similar, and even more devastating attack, which took place in northern Australia, in the early months of 1942.
This posting will look at the famous Darwin air-raids, the two Japanese airborne attacks on the town of Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory during the Second World War, and the effects that these raids had on the city and its inhabitants, and the rest of Australia.
Darwin, 1942
Darwin, named after the famous naturalist, Charles Darwin, is the capital city of the Northern Territory of Australia. It was founded in 1869, and was originally named “Palmerston”. It gained the name “Darwin” in 1911. Darwin was a small-fry among Australia’s bigger and more prominent cities. Population-centers such as Melbourne and Sydney were famous around the world, they were major ports and trading-centers. Darwin, by contrast, was a sleepy backwater town that most people had never even heard of!
In the 1940s, Darwin was little more than an isolated country town at the top end of Australia. Its population in 1940 was a minuscule 5,800 people. By comparison, Melbourne at the same time had a population of over a million. This, when the population of Australia numbered some 6,900,000 people in 1939.
Darwin and the Second World War
Darwin in 1939 was an isolated country town, at the top of the nation, but at the bottom of the population-ladder. War seemed far away, and any notion that Australia might be threatened by enemy action were laughable. Germany was on the other side of the world! Who cared what happened? If anything did happen, it wasn’t going to happen in Australia, anyway! Apart from the blackout, rationing and military service, life went on more or less as it had always done.
It’s widely believed that Australia was largely untouched by the War, which is more or less true. Air-raid sirens never wailed across the city center of Melbourne, and Sydney was never rocked by Japanese bomb-blasts, but the threat, real or not, hung in the air.
In the early years of the war, the idea that Australia might be threatened were passed off as sensational and unfounded. The main aggressor, Germany, was on the other side of the world. And Japan was more interested in China than Alice Springs. But in 1941, everything changed.
With the attack against Pearl Harbor, Australia realised that its safety was threatened…probably. The Japs were never going to reach this far south! They’d be stopped at Singapore, and blasted into the sea! End of story. Roll over and go back to sleep.
Posters like this one from 1942 are believed to exaggerate the Japanese threat to Australia. However, they were probably closer to the truth than most people knew, or were willing to admit
However, the swiftness of Japanese advances struck terror into the hearts of Darwinians. Since 1937, Japan had taken Peking and Nanking. It had bombed Hawaii, invaded Shanghai, in less than a month, it had invaded and captured British Hong Kong. It invaded American possessions in the South Pacific, and was making sweeping advances down the Malay Peninsula.
In February, 1942, the island nation of Singapore, the “Gibraltar of the East”, Australia’s first, last, and only line of defense against Japanese aggression, collapsed and surrendered in just one week!
Suddenly, Darwin felt very exposed.
The Threat Against Darwin
To protect against Japanese aggression, Darwin was to be Australia’s first mainland line of defense. To this end, it had been equipped with anti-aircraft guns, an airbase with fighter-planes of the Royal Australian Air Force, and there was even a small naval-base run by the Royal Australian Navy. These were to be the two main fighting forces which would meet the Japanese threat if they ever came south to Australia.
With the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Japanese advances through Southeast Asia being swift and brutal, Australia began to feel increasingly threatened. In the days and weeks after the Japanese December-1941 offensive in the South Pacific, the vast majority of Darwin’s civilian population had been evacuated, and the town’s already small population shrank from 5,800 in 1939, to just 2,000 people in 1942. Most of the 2,000 people were essential civilians, government and military officials, and servicemen. The majority of the women and children had been evacuated from town by railway, or else, had boarded specially-charted evacuation-ships, which would steam them south, to Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne, well out of harm’s way.
Darwin’s location at the top of Australia, its harbour, and its proximity to Japan made it a natural target for the Japanese. But as with many defense-plans in the South Pacific at this time, Darwin was not prepared for any kind of substantial and sustained attack.
British colonial bastions such as Hong Kong and Singapore had been overrun in days and weeks. The very might of the United States Navy had been challenged! What chance did a tiny, sparrow-fart town in the middle of nowhere have, against such a superior enemy?
Why the Japanese Attacked Darwin
If Darwin was such a tiny, insignificant town, with barely any armed forces or defenses to speak of, why did the Japanese see it as such a threat and target?
As with any real-estate…location, location, location.
Darwin’s location and its large harbour made it a natural base for the Allies. Any British, American or Australian forces in the area would surely gather there. They would use the harbour for their warships, and the flat ground around the town for its flak-guns and airforce bases. At the time, the Japanese wanted to destroy any and ALL competition in the area, no matter how large or small. Their next target, after China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaya and the islands of the South Pacific, was the Dutch East Indies (what is today, Indonesia).
To take Indonesia without any opposition, the Japanese had to attack Darwin, to knock out any chance of the Allies to mount some sort of counterattack. And this is why Darwin became a target.
Darwin’s Defenses
Despite the threat against Darwin, the town’s defense was ridiculously small. Darwin Harbour had 45 ships, and the surrounding airfields had only 30 airplanes. Of the 45 vessels in Darwin Harbour, 21 were merchant-ships. Of the other 24 ships, five were destroyers (one of these was the U.S.S. Peary), and another ship was the U.S.S. Langley, a primitive vessel launched in 1912! This was the U.S. Navy’s first aircraft-carrier, a role into which it had been converted in the 1920s.
To protect against the threat of a Japanese air-attack, Darwin was more than capably defended by 18 anti-aircraft cannons, and a smattering of WWI-era Lewis-style machine-guns.
But they had hardly any ammunition between them. And hadn’t for weeks. As a result, the guns had never been fired, and the crews to operate the guns had never been trained!
On top of everything else, Darwin had almost no air-raid precautions. It had only one operational air-raid siren, barely any shelters, no radar, and barely any lookout posts.
At any rate, even if everything was working, they still wouldn’t have been able to mount any sort of serious defense. It was estimated that to defend Darwin effectively, the town would require at least three dozen anti-aircraft cannons or guns, and at least 250 aircraft.
Instead, it had barely twenty guns, and only thirty aircraft.
In the event of an enemy air-attack on Darwin, civilian aircraft-spotters on nearby Bathurst Island (namely the local priest, Father John McGrath), were to sight the aircraft, identify them, count their numbers, and then relay this information via radio, to the authorities in Darwin. Radio-operators in Darwin would then sound Red Danger over the air-raid sirens (the famous, classic high-low wail of an air-raid siren), signalling for the population to seek cover.
The warning would only give people a few minutes to duck and cover, but it gave them a fighting chance to seek shelter before the Japanese reached Darwin. At the sound of the sirens, the flak-cannons would be manned and loaded, and the aircraft on the ground would be readied for take-off, to engage the incoming enemy.
That was how it was supposed to happen.
The Darwin Raid: 19th February, 1942
Less than a week after the fall of Singapore, on the 15th of February, Australia was about to  find out how vulnerable it really was. With a flimsy northern defense, and nearly all its soldiers fighting in Africa or the Middle East, or captured in the South Pacific, and hardly any air-power and hardly two ships to race together, Australia was ripe for the taking.
On the 19th of February, Japanese aircraft carriers sailed south towards Australia. They parked themselves a few miles off the coast, and sent in over 200 fighter and bomber aircraft. 242, to be precise.
242 aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Air Force, against just 30 aircraft belonging to the Royal Australian Air Force.
As the planes flew south towards Australia, they passed over Bathurst Island. Father McGrath, the mission priest on the island, spotted the aircraft, and radioed his warning to land-stations near Darwin, that a large concentration of aircraft were headed their way. Another aircraft-spotter on Melville Island also spotted the aircraft, and he too, sent a radio-warning to Darwin.
However, much like at Pearl Harbor, the authorities believed the aircraft to be returning American fighter-planes, which had been out on practice-runs and recon-missions. So, no heed was taken of these radio-warnings. The sirens remained silent and no guns were manned in preparation. Darwin was a sitting duck.
The First Raid
The first raid against Darwin was at 10:00am that morning. Even though the town had been warned well in advance by its aircraft spotters, no action was taken in the time between about 9:15, when the first radio-warning was sent out, and 10:00am, a period of forty-five minutes. Then, the bombs began to fall.
With no warning at all, the remaining civilian population of Darwin was bombed relentlessly by the Japanese. After the first explosions, the town’s single operational air-raid siren went off, sounding out the alarm, but it was already too late.
The ships in the harbour were bombed and strafed, and among the casualties were the U.S.S. Peary, which was hit, and sunk. It was just one of eight ships destroyed. In the town, bombs rained down, destroying vital structures as the docks (where 21 longshoremen were killed when the quays received a direct hit), and Government House. The Darwin Post Office was obliterated in a direct hit. The postmaster and his family, sheltering in the nearby air-raid shelter, were killed instantly.
The town post office after the raid
The anti-aircraft defenses of Darwin were woefully unprepared for the raid. For nearly all the soldiers there, this was the first time they’d fired any sort of gun at all! Most of the ground units had no rifles. And if they had rifles, they had no ammunition. And if they had ammunition, they had no training, so most of the shots went wild. Nevertheless, of the 188 aircraft that struck Darwin in the first raid of the day, seven were shot down by Allied flak-guns. A paltry number. The 188 planes in the first wave decimated much of the town, and destroyed the two airbases nearby, as well as wreaking havoc on the harbour and ships therein.
The Second Raid
At 10:40am, the first raid ended. But another one came at a few minutes before midday. This raid, consisting of the remaining 54 of the full force of 242 Japanese airplanes, attacked  the airbases  and town yet again, in a smaller raid lasting just 20 minutes.
At the end of the second raid, the All Clear sounded and the damage was examined. 23 of the 30 airplanes had been destroyed, and in all, 10 ships had been sunk, and another 25 were damaged. 320 people had been killed, either from drowning, burns or bombing, and another 400 people had been injured.
The Aftermath
The air-raids on Darwin were devastating on many levels. Although the majority of the population had been evacuated before the raids, poor preparations and management meant that even with a reduced population, the town suffered high casualty-rates and significant damage. Electrical power was cut, water and gas-mains destroyed and telecommunications disrupted.
The town post-office was blown to oblivion, along with the town postmaster and his family.
What followed after the raids was a complete breakdown of civil and military leadership. Soldiers raided empty houses, and evacuation-marches were bungled up. This last with the result that soldiers and airmen were scattered all over the Northern Territory with no definite rallying point.
The damage and disaster was on such a huge scale that for days, weeks, months, years and even decades after the bombings, the full extent of the catastrophe was hidden from the public.
A Dog Named Gunner
Out of the raids on Darwin came one remarkable story about a dog. An Australian Kelpie puppy called ‘Gunner’. Gunner’s claim to fame was being the canine radar for Allied military forces in the Darwin area during the Second World War.
Gunner possessed remarkably sharp hearing, and was able to detect the sound of incoming aircraft from miles away. Furthermore, he was able to differentiate between friendly Australian and American airplanes, and enemy airplanes flown by the Japanese, based on the sounds of their engines.
Gunner was injured during the raid on Darwin and was taken to the nearby hospital for treatment. The doctor on duty insisted that he couldn’t treat the dog without knowing its name, rank and serial-number! Gunner’s owner, Percy Westcott, fired off that the dog’s name and rank was that of Gunner, and that he held serial No. 0000 in the Royal Australian Air Force!
Gunner’s remarkable ability for accurately alerting ground-crews to incoming enemy attacks was soon noticed. And his success-rate at accurately picking up on enemy aircraft was so high that Westcott’s commanding officer gave him permission to operate a portable air-raid siren whenever Gunner started whining and whimpering, to alert his comrades of an incoming Japanese raid.
Gunner’s extremely sharp hearing meant that he was literally better than radar and on more than one occasion, accurately picked up on the presence of an incoming raid up to twenty minutes in advance, far outside the capabilities of radar-equipment at the time!
During the later stages of the war, Gunner’s owner, Westcott, was posted to Melbourne, and had to leave Gunner behind in Darwin. What happened to the dog remains unknown.
The Affect of the Raids
Australia had previously considered itself untouchable by the hand of war. The war was happening in Europe, anyway! And in Asia, the might of the British Empire would protect Australia from harm.
After these first raids, Australia realised its own vulnerability, and made moves towards securing its own defence. One of the most significant moves was to recall thousands of Australian troops (then fighting in the Middle East and Africa) back to their homeland, a decision made by prime minister John Curtin.
Curtin’s decision was a popular one…but only with Australians. He encountered fierce resistance from both the American and British governments, especially from Winston Churchill, who wanted to send the Australian troops to Burma to fight against the Japanese. However, Curtin was so worried about Australia’s position in the war that he insisted on overruling Churchill and to have the troops steamed home as soon as possible, something which did happen, after many lengthy exchanges through letters and telegrams.
Future Raids on Darwin
Darwin, along with other cities and town in northern Australia, were bombed repeatedly throughout the war during 1942-43. By the time the war ended, the Australian mainland had been hit by no fewer than 62 separate air-raids in the space of two years.
More Information?
Looking for more information? I strongly suggest watching the documentary: “The Bombing of Darwin: An Awkward Truth”, about the air-raids, and the cover-up which followed.
On the last day of September, 1938, British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, flew into Heston Aerodrome, alighted from his aircraft and proclaimed to the crowd around him, that thanks to the Munich Agreement signed with Herr Hitler, he had secured “peace for our time!”
Less than a year later, the world would be plunged further and further into the greatest military conflict ever seen in the history of mankind.
The Sinking of the S.S. Athenia
This posting looks at one of the most infamous, and yet possibly, one of the most forgettable war crimes of the Second World War. Within hours of war being declared, a passenger-liner with over a thousand lives onboard was torpedoed and sunk. It sparked fury and outrage, condemnation and denial throughout the world, and spurred Europe on into the bloody contest of war for the second time in a generation.
The Background
On the 1st of September, 1939, the German Army invaded Polish territory, claiming that the Poles had attacked guard-posts along the German-Polish border. The world held its breath to see what would happen next. For forty-eight hours, the Wehrmacht and the Wojsko Polskie, the German and Polish armies respectively, duked it out on the borderlands.
It was by no means certain that the Polish would lose, or that the Germans might win. Poland had fought, and won, a war against Russia back in the 1920s, so Polish confidence in their armed forces was not without foundation.
For two and a half days, the world held its breath, keeping tuned into the wireless, their eyes on newspaper-headlines, their ears out for the postman’s whistle or the knock of the telegraph-boy, wondering whether or not France and Britain would honor their alliances with Poland to come to her aid if she was ever under attack.
The Athenia Sets Sail – September 1st, 1939
12:05pm. The S.S. Athenia steams towards her dock at Glasgow, Scotland, ready to start taking on passengers. Onboard already are the crew, and some early-boarding passengers.
The S.S. Athenia is a British steamship; a passenger-carrying vessel that plied the transatlantic trade for the Anchor-Donaldson Line, running regular services between two halves of the great British Empire! The United Kingdom at one end, and the Dominion of Canada at the other. It did regular service between Liverpool or Glasgow, in England and Scotland, to Quebec, or Montreal in Canada.
The Athenia is a modest ship – nowhere near the size, or grandeur of the great floating palaces of the world – She cannot compete with the world-famous ocean-liners such as the Aquitania, the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth, or the Normandie, pride of the French Line. She doesn’t have the old-world charm of the Olympic or the Berengaria, but she will get you to where you want to go in comfort and style. Her weight is a mere 13,580 tons, compared to a heavyweight such as the Titanic, tipping the scales at over 46,000!
The rumblings of war have been in the paper for weeks. Months, even. Fears of a second Great War had been in the air ever since the German annexation of Austria in 1938.
Some people see war as being inevitable. Others think that 1939 will close as a year of peace. Either way, she leaves Glasgow, Scotland, for Montreal in Canada on the 1st of September. She carries 1,418 passengers and crew.
The S.S. Athenia, Montreal Harbour, Canada; 1935
Passengers on the Athenia range from the moderately famous, to regular families, to single persons heading to the United States and Canada; returning from holidays, from business-journeys, or escaping from the potential powder-keg of Europe before it gets too late.
10:00pm – The Athenia takes on the last of her passengers at Glasgow. She weighs anchor and sets a course for the English port city of Liverpool.
As the ship pulls away from the dock at Belfast, dock-workers scream at the passengers on the deck that they’re cowards, for running away from a war, instead of staying to stand and fight with the rest of them. As yet, no formal declaration of war exists between Britain and Germany. The Athenia sails off into a peaceful Irish Sea.
September 2nd, 1939
3:30pm. The Athenia departs from Liverpool, England. She is bound for the open ocean. She will not stop until she reaches the Canadian port of Montreal.
7:30pm. Under advisement that a state of war is soon likely to exist between Britain and Germany, the ship’s master, Capt. James Cook, orders a blackout onboard, to protect against possible U-boat attacks. All the curtains are drawn. All the portholes are shut, the navigation-lights, mast-lights, port and starboard navigation-lamps and wheelhouse lights are all shut off. Passengers are not even allowed to smoke on deck, in case the glows of their cigarettes should give away the ship’s presence.
On the ship, the war seems far away and distant. But the crew is already taking precautions. Apart from the blackout, the ship now sails up the western Irish coast. It must stay close to land to deter submarines, which can only maneuver effectively in deeper waters.
September 3rd, 1939
3:40am. Having altered her course for safety reasons, the Athenia now sails away from Ireland and out into the open sea. She is heading across the Atlantic Ocean for Canada. As she sails off into deeper waters, there is the ever-present danger of German U-boats. U-boats have been patrolling these waters for several days now, in preparation for the official declaration of war.
Seeking to protect his ship, Capt. Cook adopts traditional wartime tactics against u-boats. The ship sails as fast as it can (15kt), and maintains a zig-zag course, steaming forwards always, but at the same time, changing her heading every couple of minutes. First a few degrees port, then starboard, then port, then starboard again. This is to prevent any submarines from getting an accurate fix on her, and therefore, hinder a u-boat’s ability to fire an accurate shot at her hull.
The Athenia is only doing what any other ship in the British merchant navy would do. But she is hampered in this by her speed and size. Big ships such as the Queen Mary can move much faster, and are less of a target to u-boats as a result, despite their much larger sizes. The Athenia may be smaller, but her slower speed makes her more vulnerable to attack.
While protected by treaties and conventions, the crew of the Athenia don’t expect the Germans to play nice. Although legally, the Germans cannot attack the Athenia due to her status as a noncombatant vessel, Capt. Cook and his men take no chances.
Unknown to Cook and his crew, the one man who is actually on their side is Adolf Hitler himself. Hitler sees the British, as a great and powerful nation of intelligent, white, Aryan people, as brothers and friends of the German people. He is eager to find a peaceful and diplomatic solution to the problem of war.
So as not to antagonise the British, he orders the u-boats of the German Navy to adhere tightly to the 1936 Prize Regulations. The Regulations are a series of rules (to which Germany was a signatory) which lay out the kinds of ships which may, and may not be sunk during maritime warfare.
Unarmed merchant ships, such as the Athenia, could not be sunk without just cause. If a German u-boat found such a ship, it was obliged to make its presence known. The ship in question was expected to heave-to (stop dead in the water). German sailors were then allowed to search the ship for illegal contraband (such as munitions or firearms).
If no such contraband was found, the ship was to be allowed to continue on its way. If contraband was found, the ship could be sunk. But only AFTER the crew and passengers had been offloaded into lifeboats.
A ship clearly marked as an armed merchant-ship, or a ship of the Royal Navy, could be fired upon without a u-boat making its presence known first.
11:00am. The Athenia is steaming towards Canada. The seas are heavy and rough. This hampers the Athenia’s speed and her ability to maintain an effective anti-submarine, zig-zag course.
11:15am. In the Athenia’s wireless-room, 2nd Radio Officer, Donald McRae, picks up a signal. It’s a radio-broadcast from the tiny island of Valentia, off the west coast of Ireland.
It is nothing less than Neville Chamberlain’s famous speech that informs the entire world that “consequently, this country is at war with Germany”.
The message is hardly unexpected. But it’s a bit of a shock, anyway. McRae makes sure that the entire ship knows the news before very many more minutes have elapsed.
The official declaration of war by Britain means that as of this time onwards, the Athenia is sailing through wartime waters. German submarines will be on the lookout for ships that are of importance to the British war-effort, and if they find them, they will sink them.
The Athenia is safe, however. As an unarmed passenger-ship without the facilities for being converted to an armed merchant-cruiser, troopship or munitions-transport, she is protected by international treaties. A ship such as the Athenia, which does not, and which is unable to contribute to the British war-effort, is an illegal target in marine warfare. This should prevent her from being sunk by German submarines or battleships.
12:00 NOON. Capt. Cook orders a notice to be drawn up. It is to inform the passengers of what has happened back in Europe. Under no circumstances are the officers onboard to cause undue panic or alarm. They are instructed to reassure passengers and tell them that the current activities onboard the ship are precautionary, and for their own safety.
1:00pm. The ship’s lifeboats are uncovered and prepared for an emergency. Two boats are swung out on their davits. Should there be an real emergency, these two may be lowered and loaded with passengers at once. It will give the ship a head-start in rescuing survivors, and provide the crew with valuable minutes with which to evacuate the passengers.
2:00pm. Fritz-Julius Lemp is 26 years old. He is commander of the German U-boat, U-30. Already at sea, he receives orders to proceed to his assigned patrol-area in the Atlantic Ocean. Germany is at war with Great Britain.
7:00pm. The Athenia is steaming full-ahead towards Canada. With U-boats about and war declared, she doesn’t want to linger in hostile waters for any longer than she has to. She is moving at top speed steering a wartime course, with her lights doused. But unknown to her crew, Capt. Lemp of U-30 has already spotted her.
Lemp orders the submarine to dive. He tails the ship, spying at her through his periscope. He finds the ship’s behavior odd. It is moving at top speed, it is steering a zig-zag course and has all its lights off to prevent detection. Lemp is well aware that Hitler does not want civilian shipping destroyed. But this ship is acting like an armed merchant-ship, or even a battleship of the Royal Navy!
Onboard the Athenia, Capt. Cook is taking NO chances. He well remembers the unrestricted submarine warfare of the 1910s and how great ships such as the Lusitania were torpedoed and sunk for no other reason than that they could be. Although he shouldn’t have to do so in this war, Capt. Cook adopts all the traditional tactics for eluding submarines. He lived through an era of unrestricted submarine warfare and knows what might happen to his ship.
7:30pm. Capt. Cook, confident in the security and safety of his ship, joins the first class passengers for dinner. The Athenia continues to steam westwards, zigzagging all the way.
7:38pm. Capt. Lemp on U-30 is finally satisfied that the ship he has been tailing is a British armed cruiser or a military vessel of some description, and therefore a legitimate target of war under the terms of international treaties and regulations. He orders the submarine to fire two torpedoes.
7:39pm. The Athenia is rocked as something slams into the side of the ship! The whole ship is rocked by the impact and the electrical power goes out, plunging the entire vessel into darkness! Crew on deck spot the disappearing periscope of a submarine, confirming that it is indeed a torpedo-strike.
7:40pm. The first torpedo has hit the Athenia square-on and blown a hole in her side. The other torpedoes have missed, or have not fired at all due to malfunctions in the torpedo-tubes.
7:45pm. 1st R/O Don is ordered to send out an immediate distress-message, in case another torpedo knocks out the Athenia’s power-supply altogether. He sends out a coded distress-message, but also sends out a message in plain English. Automatically, an electronic cry for help is sparked off across the airwaves…
“ATHENIA TORPEDOED – 5/42 NORTH, 14/5 WEST”
At once, the ship receives welcome news. Norwegian cargo-ship, the Knute Nelson, just 40 miles away, has received her loud and clear. The Nelson’s radio-operator appears to be in shock. He telegraphs back to the Athenia:
“THE OLD MAN* DOESN’T BELIEVE YOU’VE BEEN TORPEDOED, BUT HE’S COMING TO YOUR ASSISTANCE ANYWAY”
(*’Old Man’ is the ship’s captain).
One of the ships that receives the SOS call is the German ship the S.S. Bremen. Unsurprisingly, it ignores the radio-message and continues to its destination, the Russian port of Murmansk.
8:15pm. The Athenia has been sinking for a little over half an hour, settling heavily by the stern. The submarine, U-30, has surfaced to watch the effects of the torpedo. Radio-officer Georg Hoegel intercepts the Athenia’s plain English radio-transmission. He is shocked by what he hears. He writes it down and hands it to Capt. Lemp. Lemp too, is horrified and guilt-ridden by what he reads. Instead of torpedoing a prize of war, he has attacked and sunk an unarmed civilian passenger-ship, carrying women and children! He swears his crew to silence and secrecy. They will not speak of this to anyone, ever. Lemp feels so horrible about what he has done that he refuses even to enter it into the logbook.
The distress-messages sent out by the Athenia echo around the Atlantic Ocean. Allied shipping receive the calls, and telegraph the unspeakable information to the Admiralty in London.
9:15pm. The Athenia is in no immediate danger. She is sinking, but the damage is limited and there is time to spare. For the 1,400-odd people onboard, the Athenia is amply equipped with 26 lifeboats. All those not killed in the torpedo-attack are offloaded onto the boats and lowered into the water. By now, there are only two lifeboats left. Radio Officer Don continues to send out distress-messages over the radio. So far, four ships have responded and are steaming towards the disaster-site.
9:30pm. The S.S. City of Flint is an American steamship making her way across the Atlantic Ocean. It picks up the Athenia’s distress-messages and alters course towards her. The captain, navy-veteran Joseph Gainard, informs his passengers (mostly students and academics) that the unthinkable has happened – a British civilian passenger-ship has been fired upon by a German submarine, is sinking, and is in need of immediate assistance. Passengers aid the crew in preparing the ship to take on survivors as it steams towards the disaster-site.
10:00pm. With rescue just a few hours away and all surviving passengers and crew put off in the boats, Capt. Cook, and the remaining crew and officers abandon ship. Radio Officer Don sends off one last communication to the rescue ships, that their vessel is being abandoned and to come as fast as they can. Officer Don joins the captain and remaining crew in the last lifeboat, reserved for their use, and lower it into the water.
Onboard lifeboat No. 6, Sir Richard Lake, a former Canadian politician, and his wife, watch the ship sinking. As on the Titanic, passengers row the lifeboats around and into clusters and clumps, to remain secure, and to keep warm in the open air. Despite his age (Sir Richard is eighty years old!), he insists on taking an oar and helping with the movement of the boat.
10:30pm. Now that the fuss has died down, an urgent telegram is sent to the Admiralty in London. It reads:
“IMPORTANT – IMPORTANT – ADMIRAL ROSYTH INTERCEPT 2059 JAMMING NEAR SSS SSS* ATHENIA GFDM*, TORPEDOED, POSITION 54.44/14.05”
The signal “SSS” is similar to the signal “SOS”, but is specifically used by ships who were the victims of submarine-attacks. The letters “GFDM” is the Athenia’s radio callsign.
11:00pm. Onboard the last lifeboat to leave the Athenia, Capt. James Cook removes his uniform and dons civilian clothes instead, to make it appear that the captain has gone down with the ship. He knows that in the last war, German submariners would shoot the commanding officer of an enemy ship.
12:00 MIDNIGHT. Another telegram reaches the Admiralty in London, confirming that the steamship Athenia has indeed been hit by a German torpedo. The Admiralty sends out urgent radio-messages to all Royal Navy ships within broadcasting range.
September 4th, 1939.
12:05am. Royal Navy ship, H.M.S. Vanquisher receives an urgent communication:
“IMMEDIATE PROCEED TO SS ATHENIA SINKING IN POSITION 56.42 NORTH, 14.05 WEST”.Â
12:56am. Royal Navy ship, H.M.S. Vivacious receives an urgent communication:
“IMMEDIATE HMS VANQUISHER PROCEEDING TO BRITISH SHIP ATHENIA SINKING IN POSITION 56.42 NORTH, 14.05 WEST. DETAIL ONE OF YOUR DIVISIONS TO ACCOMPANY HER. ACKNOWLEDGE”.
2:30pm. The impact of the torpedo-attack on the Athenia goes much further than other ships, the Royal Navy or even the Admiralty or the German Navy. In London, at the American Embassy, American Ambassador to Great Britain, Joseph Patrick Kennedy…as in the father of future American president John F. Kennedy…is awoken to the news of the sinking of the Athenia. Americans are onboard the ship, and he makes it his duty to find out how many, and who they are. He sends a telegram to the State Department in Washington D.C.:
“REPORT: STEAMSHIP ATHENIA OF DONALDSON LINE TORPEDOED 200 MILES OFF MALIN HEAD WITH 1400 PASSENGERS ONBOARD. SOS RECEIVED. SHIP SINKING FAST”.Â
At the same time out at sea, the first rescue-ships arrive. Passengers and crew from the Athenia are offloaded from the lifeboats onto the vessels which come to the sinking ship’s aid. The ships sail off to the town of Galway, in Ireland, the nearest land to the sinking vessel.
4:30am. The Athenia continues to sink. Despite the damage, the ingress of water is slow. She will not go under for another six hours. She will finally founder at 10:30am. More ships arrive to rescue more passengers and take them to Ireland. British naval ships have come to pick up more survivors.
The S.S. Athenia sinking; Sept. 4th, 1939
The City of Flint, one of the first ships to pick up the Athenia’s distress call, sails for Halifax, Nova Scotia, with over 400 survivors onboard.
The Impact of the Sinking
The sinking of the Athenia sent shockwaves around the world. Newspapers in Great Britain, the colonies, Australia, Canada and the United States flashed the despicable and cowardly act of the Germans, to attack an unarmed passenger-ship without warning, over their front pages in big letters, complete with photographs. Here is the New York Times for the morning of September 4th, 1939:
In Kansas, the Topeka Daily Capital flashed the following headlines:
If you haven’t spotted it yet, it’s under the heading: “BRITISH STEAMSHIP SINKS IN 18 HOURS”.Â
Almost at once, the finger-pointing began. The British knew the Germans did it. The Germans knew that the Germans did it. But the Germans insisted that the British did it, as a way to discredit the honourable German Navy, which would NEVER attack an unarmed civilian ship! The truth was that the German Navy knew what had happened. By listening to English radio and reading English newspapers, and by plotting out the locations of all their u-boats, the Germans knew that it was U-30 that had done the deed.
The truth about what really happened to the Athenia did not come out until 1946, during the famous Nuremberg Trials.
The sinking of the Athenia destroyed any hopes that the Germans, or the British had, of finding a quick, peaceful and diplomatic end to what they hoped would be a false war. Instead, it horrified the British people and resolved them to despise the Germans. It shocked the Germans and dragged them into a war which they were still trying to get out of…get out of with Britain, at least. The sinking of one ship had so polarised the European community that by 1940, the whole continent was at war.
More Information?
“OUTBREAK 1939 – The World Goes to War”, by Terry Charman (Virgin Books, London, 2009).
A local fisherman walking along the surf, spots something in the waves. It’s waterlogged, soaked through, and is being steadily washed up onto the beach by the breaking waves. Once the fisherman gets close enough to the water, he recognises this bit of ‘driftwood’, as a human body.
The body is dressed in British military attire. There is a life-vest around the body, and handcuffed to its wrist, an official-looking briefcase, locked, and no-doubt, crammed full of all kinds of military intelligence!
Officially, Spain is neutral during the Second World War. But that doesn’t stop them from passing on intelligence to the Nazis when the situation suited them. And right now, it seemed to suit them very well.
The dead body of the English seaman was brought ashore and the contents of the pockets scrutinized. According to his identification papers, the corpse was that of the late Maj. William Martin, of the Royal Marines. He had apparently drowned, or frozen to death in the cold Atlantic waters and his body had been washed ashore. With a wealth of British military intelligence literally chained to his wrist.
The Germans had struck on a bonanza of information! Now, they knew that the Allies planned to invade Italy! They knew how many people there would be, how many tanks, air-planes, troops, and even where the landing-beaches would be! It was a gold-mine, a jackpot! A triumph!
…and it was all FAKE.
This is the true story of “Operation Mincemeat”, an audacious and ludicrous plan dreamt up British espionage and propaganda men in London during the middle of the Second World War. A plan to deceive the Germans so utterly that they would never know their true intentions! It was a plan that seemed insane and impossible! A plan that went off without a hitch…
What was Mincemeat?
In 1943, the tide of the Second World War is beginning to turn in the Allies’ favour. It’s turning alright, but it’s taking its sweet time about it.
To hurry things along, the Allies plan an invasion of Italy, to destroy Mussolini and the Italian fascists, and render the Italians a negligible force, and a useless ally to the Germans. Or better yet, to get the Italians to join the Allies in their struggle against German and Japanese tyranny!
But to invade Italy, the Allies need to keep the German code-breakers and spies busy and distracted, by feeding them nice, fat, juicy chunks of misinformation. Lies and deceits that would keep them guessing and uncertain, right up until the very day of the invasion!
With the North African theater of the war going so well throughout 1942, the Allies were planning their next step in the war: The invasion of Europe. To go through France was foolhardy, impossible, and stupid. For the time-being, at least, that would have to wait. But Italy, on the other hand, might be an easier, and more viable option.
Critical to the invasion of Italy was the invasion of Sicily, the island famous for its long connections to the Italian Mafia. Whoever controlled the island of Sicily would have a naval base in the region, and would therefore be able to control the rest of (or a vast majority of) the Mediterranean Sea.
The problem with invading Sicily was that the Germans knew that the English knew that invading Sicily was the wise thing to do. So to throw the Germans off the scent, the English began one of the biggest and most outlandish deception-plots in the history of the Second World War: Operation Mincemeat.
How did ‘Mincemeat’ work?
The best way to get the Germans to think that the Allies were going to invade Italy via every other possible part of the Italian coastline, apart from the island of Sicily, was to do it in writing. But obviously, para-dropping a letter over the Reichstag in Berlin wasn’t going to work. This deception had to be more dramatic than that. The British had to make the Germans think that they’d stumbled across a huge gold-mine of information, purely by chance. Something that would look like such a huge blunder to the British, and such a huge intelligence win to the Germans, that it couldn’t possibly just be a set-up, could it?
The idea for ‘Mincemeat’ was dreamed up by two men: Lt. Commander Ewen Montagu, and Flight Lt. Charles Cholmondeley. For those trying to untangle their tongues after that, it’s spelt: “Cholmondeley”…but is actually pronounced: “Chumley”.
Originally, Cholmondeley had suggested dropping a dead body over France with a radio-set and a busted parachute. The Germans would pick up the radio-set, and the British could transmit lies to them, live over the airwaves. This idea was shelved for being too unworkable. How would the radio-set survive a drop from an airplane which was supposed to kill a man, with a parachute that didn’t work properly? It sounded interesting, but was far too impractical. But Cholmondeley wasn’t going to give up. He was sure the idea could work…it just needed a bit of tweaking.
He’d gotten the idea for the dead-body ruse from a man who would eventually become one of the greatest writers in the history of British literature…Ian Fleming. Yes, that Ian Fleming. James Bond Ian Fleming. Fleming supposedly, got the idea from another author…strange how no idea can ever be truly considered original, is it?
Regardless of who dreamt up the idea in the first place, Cholmondeley kept it in his brain until he could figure out how he could use it effectively in the war-effort.
The problem was that planting documents on dead bodies had been used for years. It happened in the Great War, it happened twice in 1942 alone! The British were perhaps fearful that if they used this trick too often, the Germans might get wise to their schemes. So it had to be deployed with delicacy.
And the upcoming invasion of Sicily was just such an event where this scheme might work.
Preparing the Bait
For Operation Mincemeat to work, Cholmondeley and Montagu required the following ingredients:
– One dead body. Male. Average size and appearance.
– British field battle dress.
– A background and biography of the dead body.
– Delicious, juicy papers and intelligence documents that would make the Germans drool with delight.
The first step was the hardest: Finding the body.
This being the middle of WWII, you’d think that finding a dead body would be easy. Dead soldiers, sailors, airmen, civilians, government types, and so-forth, must be all over London. But not just any body would do. For the plan to work, it had to look as if the body had died by drowning or exposure. As such, the actual cause of death of the body had to be hard to detect. It couldn’t be something obvious like a heart-attack, a gunshot, a stroke, or from some sort of infectious disease.
And on top of that, they had to find the body, never mind what it died of! The days of body-snatchers were long-gone, and everything had to be done through official channels, full of white paper and red tape. The body, when found and selected, couldn’t be one after which relations or friends were likely to come calling. There had to be no next-of-kin wondering what happened to Uncle Bertie or Cousin Jonathan, there had to be no living relations, no friends, no family, nothing whatever. The body had to be completely unattached.
As tricky as this was, they did eventually find a body.
To aid the duo in their scheme, they enlisted the help of Sir Bernard Spilsbury, a renowned pathologist. He explained how a body decomposes, and what kinds of traces various manners of death leave behind. This allowed Montagu and Cholmondeley to narrow their field of search.
The body that they finally selected was that of Glyndwr Michael. Mr. Michael, a Welshman, was a derelict, a drifter, a homeless illiterate and a man with a sad past. His father had committed suicide, and his mother was dead. He had, so far as the research uncovered, no living relations. And he’d committed suicide by swallowing rat-poison. His body had been found in the streets in London and taken to the mortuary. Because evidence of the poison was miniscule, post mortem, it was almost impossible to tell what the man had died of. So he could have died of almost anything!…
…such as drowning at sea.
Mr. Michael was perfect! The body was bought and paid for, and the plan was in action!
You Only Die Twice
The body was found. It was suitable in every respect. Size, weight, age, gender, manner of death and general overall appearance. Now, it had to be kitted out as a dead naval officer.
To do this, Mr. Michael was renamed Major William Martin, Royal Marines. And to enforce this falsehood to anyone who dared to ask, a library of phoney documents were run off the printing-press to certify this.
The body was outfitted with standard brown British Battle-Dress. An actual naval uniform was considered too hard to obtain in wartime…they were all handmade by Gieves and Hawkes of Savile Row! They wanted to give the fictitious ‘Maj. Martin’ a sendoff to support his king and country, but they didn’t want the funeral to be that expensive!
Besides, could you imagine asking a Savile Row tailor to measure up a corpse for a naval dress-uniform? He’d probably kick you out of his shop.
With the attire sorted, now came the documentation.
‘Maj. Martin’ was given I.D. papers that said he was born in Cardiff, Wales, in 1907. His surname was ‘Martin’ because it seemed to be a really common surname in the Royal Marines in the 1940s, a convenient coincidence. Nobody was likely to ask questions.
Along with stuff like a wallet with his I.D. cards in it, his pockets were stuffed with everything from train-tickets, theater-stubs, love-letters from his phoney fiancee, a receipt from an exclusive London jeweler for an engagement-ring that cost and arm, a leg and his right nut, a photograph of his fiancee (in reality, a photograph of an office-secretary, who posed for the shot), bank-papers, cards, business-letters, money…even a letter from the London tailor Gieves and Hawkes…Not to say that his naval dress-uniform was ready, but to say that they were waiting for payment for a shirt he’d supposedly asked them to make for him!
With the personal papers complete, it was now necessary to prepare the false military documents. Among other things, letters and maps were planted inside the official briefcase. These papers would ensure that the Germans thought the British would invade Greece before invading Italy. This was fake, of course. It was a ruse to get the Germans to position their troops where they would be completely useless, while the Allies invaded Sicily. All the documents were printed or typed on official War Office stationery, with all the right stamps, seals and signatures.
But it wasn’t just necessary to deceive the Germans…but the British as well! Just in case anyone who wasn’t in on the plot should come asking questions, more fake documents were prepared, to protect the mission. As Churchill said: The truth must always be protected by a bodyguard of lies. And they lied alright! Even the coroner who had secured the body for the operation typed up fake documents. He claimed that permission had been given by the corpse’s next of kin (in this case, parents) that the body might be used for military purposes.
Again, this was fake. Mr. Michael, the corpse, had no parents! They’d died years ago! But it was all part of the deception…
Preparing the Drop
The body was prepared, dresed, kitted, fitted and stuffed with papers. Now all that remained was to cast the bait into the sea, and wait for the Germans to bite.
The only problem with this was that the bait was a dead body. And bodies rot.
to combat this unsightly issue, the men in charge of ‘Mincemeat’ engaged the services of the original ‘Q’…Charles Fraser-Smith. A genius scientist, who was literally the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s ‘Q’ character in the James Bond series, Fraser-Smith devised a metal canister in which the corpse could be stored. To prevent decomposition, the canister was filled with dry ice, and then sealed shut. Dry ice is carbon-dioxide in solid form. Once the ice melted and vaporised, the entire inside of the canister would be filled with Co2, driving out the oxygen and preventing further decay of the corpse.
This canister, along with all the other necessary bits and pieces for the deception, were loaded onboard a submarine, H.M.S. Seraph. The Seraph and its crew sailed out into the Atlantic Ocean.
Once the Seraph had reached the waters off the coast of Spain, it’s C.O., Capt. Norman Jewell, ordered the submarine to surface. The canister with the corpse inside was brought up on deck, and opened. The briefcase with the papers were shackled to its wrist and a life-jacket strapped around its torso. Now, the operation could begin.
The body was prepared for burial at sea. Capt. Jewell read out the 39th Psalm, although this wasn’t specified in his orders, and then the corpse was lowered into the sea.
To make the deception just that little bit more realistic, the crew of the Seraph even launched an inflatable life-raft, to drift off with the body. Then, they sailed off, letting the currents take the body away towards Spain. The specially-designed canister that carried the corpse was dumped into the sea and riddled with machine-gun fire to make it sink. The Seraph sent a radio message back to London to say that the mission had been a success.
After the Drop
Just dropping the corpse into the ocean and sailing off was not enough to ensure ‘Mincemeat’s success. Once the corpse was found by the Spanish and its contents were passed onto the Germans, the British carried on with their ruse. Maj. Martin’s name appeared in a list of the dead and missing, which was published in the New York Times a week later. You can read it here:
You can see Martin’s name at the bottom of the list of officers. He’s mentioned as “ROYAL MARINES. – T/Capt (A/Major) W. Martin“.
To further impress on the Germans and their Spanish collaborators the ‘importance’ of these phoney documents, the British started making inquiries about what had happened to the ficticious Maj. Martin and his precious cargo. After a while, the Spanish Government, still pretending to be ‘neutral’ during the War, sent the papers contained in the locked briefcase back to England. Although the Spanish had assured the British Government that the contents of the case had been untouched, the British could see that the Spanish and Germans had gone over the documents in minute detail, and they must’ve believed their contents, because they went to extraordinary pains to make it look like they hadn’t been tampered with, to prove how ‘uninterested’ they had been. But there were telltale signs, such as envelopes being re-sealed and papers being replaced into their packets in the incorrect order and so-forth.
The message sent to the War Office and to the United States Government, was “Mincemeat Swallowed Whole”, to indicate that the ruse had been a success.
And boy, was it ever!
The Effect and Importance of Mincemeat
Mincemeat was an intelligence success because through this deception, the Germans relocated their troops from Italy, to Greece, where the British wanted them to think the Allies would make their invasion of southern Europe. Greece was one of the last Allied strongholds in Europe to fall to the Germans, so it must’ve seen reasonable to the Germans that it would be the first place that the Allies would want to reclaim.
This relocation of troops to Greece meant that only a skeleton force was left in Sicily to defend the island. Even after the invasion of Sicily, German agents working in England, who worked with the British Government against the Nazis, in the famous Double Cross System (usually just marked as “XX”), would feed the German Government false information, saying that their ‘spying’ in Britain revealed that the invasion of Sicily was a blind, a distraction for the Germans, while the Allies prepared for their main invasion of the Greek islands.
This falsehood also paid off. The Germans, convinced that Greece was to be invaded, refused to move their troops. By the time they realised how they’d been tricked, and relocated their men to Italy, the Allies had attained a firm hold on the island of Sicily and was preparing for the big push to the Italian mainland.
Less than a year later, in September, 1943, with the Italian fascists under Benito Mussolini beginning to wane in power (and with Mussolini himself becoming increasingly unpopular in the eyes of the Italian population for failing to defend Italy and allying himself with Hitler), the Italian Royalists, under King Victor Emmanuel III, signed an armistice with the Allies, and switched sides, from Axis to Allied.
The Italian Royalists and most regular Italians, now free from the scourge of Mussolini, fought against the Germans and the remaining fascists elements in Italy. Despite allying himself with with the winning side, King Victor, a once popular and respected monarch, was suffering from increasingly waning popularity. When the Italian capital of Rome was bombed by Allied planes, his popularity took a real nosedive.
Operation Mincemeat secured several wins for the Allies and changed the course of the war in many ways…Although it did little to secure the Italian king’s popularity, and in 1946, the monarchy was abolished.
This posting will chronicle one of those little, forgotten stories of the Second World War. It is one of the greatest examples that I can think of, where the old saying that ‘Truth is stranger than Fiction’, was never more true in the history of the world.
What Happened?
It is Mid-1944. The Second World War is reaching the beginning of the end. In just weeks, the Allies will make their great push towards France, blasting through Hitler’s famous line of defenses known as the “Atlantic Wall”. Spearheading the way is their mighty invasion force and their grand battle-plans, collectively known as “Operation Overlord”.
Joseph Stalin had been begging the Western allies to open up a Western front on the German war for years now, as the Red Army was being decimated by the rapidly advancing Germans. Although the Soviets had held off the Germans and forced them back from the city of Stalingrad in 1943, the Russians could not hope to take on the full force of the German war-machine on their own. To aid them, the Western powers had to divide and conquer the Germans, by splitting their forces. To do this, they had to force them to fight on two fronts at once: The Eastern Front, against the Russians, and the Western Front, against the British, American, French, Commonwealth and various free forces and resistance-groups in Europe.
Hence the necessity for Operation Overlord and all that it entailed.
The invasion was of course, a closely guarded secret. People who didn’t need to know about it were kept strictly in the dark. People who were working on it were never told what it was. And the people who knew what was going on were never allowed to tell anybody anything about it. As they say: “Loose lips sink ships”.
So…onto the Panic of 1944.
Across and Down
So closely guarded were all the aspects of the Invasion of Normandy, that it was inconceivable that anyone apart from the king, the prime minister and top military officials would know anything more about it than what the king, the prime minister and top military officials were want to tell them.
So, imagine their horror when the following chain of events took place…
May, 1944. Counter-espionage agents working for the British Security Service (more commonly known as ‘MI-5′, not, please, to be confused with the British Secret Intelligence Service…’MI-6’) could get incredibly bored on the job. Sometimes there just wasn’t anything to do around the office! So…what do you do when there’s nothing else to do? You read the newspaper.
By chance, some of the MI-5 chaps decided to have a shot at a few crosswords. After all, it was important to keep their minds sharp, and what better way than to test themselves with a few puzzles from the local papers? The papers which they had close to hand were those of the Daily Telegraph, a prominent London newspaper. Picking out the crosswords page, they started to solve the clues…
To their great alarm, the agents found that the answers to many of the clues were the codenames given to vital D-Day operations! Names such as…
‘Utah’ (Landing beach).
‘Juno’ (Landing beach).
‘Gold’ (Landing beach).
‘Sword’ (Landing beach).
‘Utah’ (Landing beach)
‘Omaha’ (Landing beach)…appeared in Daily Telegraph, 22nd May, 1944.
‘Overlord’ (Codename for the Invasion)…appeared in Daily Telegraph, 27th May, 1944.
‘Mulberry’ (Floating harbour)…appeared in Daily Telegraph, 30th May, 1944.
‘Neptune’ (Naval support for the invasion)…appeared in Daily Telegraph, 1st June, 1944.
Unsurprisingly, these results set off alarm-bells throughout MI-5! It now seemed that a German spy was using the newspaper crosswords to send vital information back to his masters in Berlin! Or possibly to other enemy agents working in Britain! If the enemy put two-and-two together, they could piece together the entire invasion-plan!
The Crossword Culprit
Acting swiftly, but most importantly, discreetly, MI-5 agents launched an investigation. The Daily Telegraph accepted crosswords sent into it by its readers. The agents tracked down the contributor who had sent in all the crosswords with the offending answers, and traced him to the quiet (just under 10,000 inhabitants as of 2012) town of Leatherhead, in Surrey.
The man they were seeking turned out to be Leonard Dawe. Dawe was a schoolmaster. In his spare time, he kept his mind active by writing up crossword puzzles and sending them to the Daily Telegraph as a way to earn a bit of extra money. He was interrogated relentlessly by the agents who captured him, and when they asked him why he chose those particular answers for his crosswords, he indignantly asked why he shouldn’t! There wasn’t a law against words…was there?
Well alright then…The agents then asked him who had supplied him with those words! Dawe had no idea what was going on, but told the truth anyway…his students from the local schoolhouse had suggested them!
As to where they heard them from, if they did at all…that’s anybody’s guess!
Dawe was found not guilty of any charges that the agents could try to pin on him and lived out the rest of the war. He died in January, 1963 at the age of seventy-three.
An amazing case of truth really being stranger than fiction…
A Steinway ‘Victory Vertical’ piano, sourced from pianoworld.com
Dr. Eduard Bloch in his medical office in Austria, 1938. Two years before he fled to America with his family
Posters like this one from 1942 are believed to exaggerate the Japanese threat to Australia. However, they were probably closer to the truth than most people knew, or were willing to admit
The S.S. Athenia, Montreal Harbour, Canada; 1935
The S.S. Athenia sinking; Sept. 4th, 1939
