Remembrance: Bombing of Darwin | 1942-2025

In 2025 Australia marks the 83rd anniversary of the bombing of Darwin on Wednesday 19th February 2025.

At 9.58am on February 19, 1942, just four days after the supposedly impregnable British garrison in Singapore collapsed, Japanese bombers escorted by Zero fighters appeared in the skies above Darwin. The first wave attacked the CBD and harbour infrastructure, and sank 11 ships either at anchor or berthed. A second wave came for the RAAF base. By noon, 243 people - including 53 civilians - were dead, 400 wounded.

The wharf was cut in two, 30 aircraft were destroyed and the post office levelled - postmaster Hurtle Bald, his wife Alice, daughter Iris and six post office workers died when a bomb hit their slit trench.

The dead were buried in temporary graves at Vestys Beach near the meatworks. Later, their bodies were transferred to the Adelaide River Cemetery, where they lie today.

Tokyo had no intention of invading - Japanese army leaders knew they lacked the capacity - but nobody fully informed the Australian people.

There was a brief report in The Age on February 20, but Prime Minister John Curtin subsequently banned media reports on the Darwin bombing.

Unauthorised reports of this nature cause needless anxiety, especially to wives and children who have been evacuated, Mr Curtin said in a memo to the Advisory War Council.

Despite political attempts to dampen the bombings true dimensions, news and gossip that northern towns were under fire drove fears even deeper into battered hearts.

Military historian Tom Lewis new book, The Empire Strikes South: Japans Air War Against Northern Australia 1942-45 , reveals new information about the war.

He told Fairfax Media that contrary to enduring claims there had been 64 raids in the Northern Territory, his research of Japanese war records found 77, while 208 enemy combat flights were carried out in northern Australia.

In wartime, some truths get lost, viewed through different prisms, changed or forgotten, he said. At least 186 Japanese airmen died when their aircraft were brought down. In many cases their bodies lie in remote sites across the vast bush and coastal waters of the north. Many of the wrecks have never been found.

I was identifying a portion of a Dutch bomber just this week - it was an enormous war and its scattered all over.

The Darwin area took the brunt of the attacks, with the first in February 1942 and the last on November 12, 1943.

In between, there were scores of strikes on airstrips strung along the Stuart Highway, Batchelor, Adelaide River, Katherine and on Milingimbi in Arnhem Land.

Small towns and missions on the West Australian coast - Broome (where many died when seaplanes carrying women and children evacuated from Java became sitting ducks as the Zeros arrived), Derby, Port Hedland, Onslow and Wyndham sustained a handful of raids.

In the east, Townsville - a key Australian and US army staging base - was hit four times, and the airstrip on Horn Island in the Torres Strait was bombed once. Inexplicably, so too was a sugar farm near Mossman in far north Queensland.

Dr Lewis said that for years Australians hardly knew a thing about the Japanese attacks.

If the government wanted to keep quiet about the bombings to avoid citizen panic, after the war people just wanted to forget and get on with their lives, he said.

The first hint that something bigger had happened in Darwin was Douglas Lockwoods book Australias Pearl Harbour: Darwin 1942 in 1965. Weve been filling in the gaps since.

An air raid siren will be sounded at 9.58am.

❊ When ❊

Times: 9.58am
Darwin

❊ Web Links ❊

→ Remembrance: Bombing of Darwin | 1942-2025

→ www.australia.gov.au

→ www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Darwin

❊ Also See.. ❊

➼ Royal Flying Doctor Service | Darwin

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