An interview with the author of
SPITFIRES OVER DARWIN 1943
Jim Grant
Despite implying that in years to come descendants might find his life
interesting, "Spitfires" is an account of the events of which
Jim was a part, not an autobiography.
Jim was to find during his research, that many of his contemporaries were
just as reluctant to tell their own stories, prefering to talk about the
events in which they took part. That he succeeded is part of the book's
strengths.
"Today an 'outsider' might find most of my colleagues from those days
reluctant to talk - even for me who was one of them, it was not that easy.
Even though we lived together for two and a half years and there's not much
we don't know about each other, they still need coaxing.
"Making a list of planes that had crached during 1943, I came across
one very dramatic incident, identified the pilot as Col Duncan and tracked
him down - living in Melbourne. When I phoned, he confirmed that he was
the pilot who had jumped out of the burning Spitfire but it took two years
to persuade him to tell his story. He was concerned that his mates would
accuse him of 'shooting a line'."
Col Duncan's astonishing story of courage appears in the third appendix
of the book.
But who is the man who dedicated so many years to ensuring this slice of
history is recorded for the future?
An electrical instrument maker, Jim realised at the beginning of 1939 that
war was likely and joined an Army signal unit. "I used to come over
to Crows Nest from Haberfield once a week to play soldiers, it was a real
Dad's Army, a hopeless arrangement. So through 1939 that's what I did. I
thought okay I'll be ready. If something happens, at least I will have acquired
some knowledge of the army and its funny ways."
His efforts to transfer to the Air Force were almost dashed at the outset.
"When I applied in January, 1940, to swap over to the Air Force, the
manpower chap at Harris Street, Ultimo, wouldn't accept me - you're in a
reserved occupation'. I was about to be shown the door when an Air Force
Officer popped in and, being advised of the problem, asked what else I could
do. Guessing that a spray painter would hardly be a reserved occupation
I nominated that as my trade - at least I could cope if they decided to
give me a trade test. Although I joined the Air Force as a spray painter
my discharge certificate shows I was an instrument maker."
Jim's boss at that period had been badly wounded in the trenches in France
in World War I and urged him not to join. "I don't know why I didn't
listen. I don't think you can ever find out the reasons people joined. It
was many reasons. Anyway, I persisted and I'm not sorry I did."
From the photos reproduced in "Spitfires" - an eagle on one Spitfire,
a gremlin on another - it was clear that Jim was a man with abilities and
talents in addition to instrument making.
"No, I'm not a painter, but I'll have a go at most things. I'm one
of those blokes who, for various reasons, have had to turn my hand to many
tasks. When the situation arose, I found I could paint a bit. Mind you,
the competition was not very keen and it helped to avoid boredom. When you're
stuck in Darwin for eighteen months with not a lot of real work to do, sitting
around chewing your fingernails and bitching is no real help. It's my life
that I'm wasting, so let's waste it profitably. So I repaired watches, painted
things, took photos - I did my best to make life interesting.
"It would probably make an interesting book to record what was done
there. Cards were popular, but no matter what you were doing there's a limit
to how long you can do it, day after day. There was one advantage we ground
staff had. Most of us had learned to use our hands and we had access to
tools and materials and with imagination, a bit of perspex and a file, it
was amazing what was produced up there. The pilots were different - many
were not long out of school and had no trade or manual skills and didn't
seem interested in making things.
"Cigarette lighters made from used .303 shells were produced at a fantastic
rate as ordinary matches were useless in the high humidity and Wax Vestas
were hard to come by. Petrol and .303s were not. Selling these lighters
to the Americans or trading them for grog was a profitable business which
helped augment our lousy air force pay.
"With skill, imagination and a supply of two shilling pieces - they
had a fairly high silver content then - one of my mates, a jeweller in civilian
life, turned out a range of magnificent silver rings. The 'stones' were
sometimes pearl shell but more often than not simply pieces of coloured
tooth brush handles. We instrument 'bashers' were fortunate in having tools
suitable for the manufacture of such trinkets."
Not only was it often boring, it was also an unreal world.
"As I remember it, Darwin was mostly uniforms. Although there were
some civilians, they were on construction jobs, building roads, airstrips
and the like, so even they were in a uniform of sorts. Darwin was a fortress
town and supposedly out of bounds for the likes of us. We lived in a completely
phoney world - the niceties of the life virtually didn't exist. It was pretty
rough.
"Most of us were city blokes and we missed the simple things like libraries
and music. The 'Sallys' were fantastic and did their best to provide us
with amenities, but not hearing a piano, a flute, that for me was starvation.
I was very keen on music - I still am - so we'd go miles and do all sorts
of crazy things if we heard there was a concert on somewhere, organising
a truck to take a load of blokes to hear some music, somebody singing, somebody
playing a piano, or just to have a singalong.
"I went for five or six months without ever setting eyes on a female,
let alone touching one. For young men it was unnatural. For those who were
married it must have been hell. It certainly was a crazy, unnatural world.
"The war for me in Darwin was a war of boredom saved from complete
boredom by some extra curricula activities."
The squadrons were woefully supported, with promised planes coming months
late or not at all. And when they did, many were ready for the scrap heap,
having been used for pilot training in New South Wales and Victoria. The
skill required to compensate for what the squadrons did receive and for
what they didn't receive at all was considerable as the book details.
"The thinking behind this was beyond us at the time. We weren't aware
that the planes they sent us had been thrashed to pieces - some were real
'bombs' like used cars from a 'shonky' car yard. And they expected these
young pilots to fly them into battle against the Japanese Zeros.
"Those of us who had been in England knew the new planes went to the
front line squadrons and then to the OTUs (Operational Training Units).
We had no reason to think that our Air Force would be any different.
"There was one major problem. We knew our air force as the Royal Amateur
Air Force, the other as the Real Air Force. With few, if any, exceptions,
our leaders had no experience in modern warfare. That was a simple fact.
They had spent twenty to thirty years in an Air Force - in peacetime."
Jim was not very complimentary about the permanent Air Force, its priorities,
its bureaucratic construction, its system of promotions, or many of those
in command.
"When we first went to Richmond after I finished my course in Melbourne,
I thought if this is the war, I've done the wrong thing. During the week,
we lived in brick barracks with hot showers, beds with sheets and all 'mod
cons'. It was more of a holiday home. Following an excellent breakfast we
went on parade, then were marched over to a well equipped instrument section.
There we leisurely did what we were supposed to do - or what we chose to
do - with nobody pushing us. We had an hour for lunch, then marched back
to work until 'stood down' at 1600 hours. There was no difficulty in getting
a leave pass every weekend - from Friday afternoon to Monday morning. It
was life in a government factory and I hadn't joined the RAAF for that.
"While at Richmond, we had the opportunity to join the RAF Infiltration
Scheme. To a mna, the airmen from my course who were posted to RAAF Richmond,
applied to join. We couldn't get out of the place quickly enough. We hated
what it stood for, regimentation of the wrong sort and for the wrong reason
- so we thought. It seemed to help the war effort not one jot. It was war
by the peace-time rule book."
"When we returned to RAAF Richmond after a year in England where we
thought we had really done something for the war effort, we were met by
an official reluctance to accept that fact. We were somewhat dismayed, to
say the least, at the attitude of our superiors. The 'we' included even
Clive Caldwell who had risen from civilian in 1940 to a wing commander in
1942. He was only one rank below the Station Commander but Clive Caldwell
had seen recent service with a string of air victories to his credit."
"Promotion for the permanent air force had been so rapid after the
outbreak of war that even corporals had received rapid promotion to commissioned
rank. The only way they knew how to handle men was to 'pull rank'. That
may have worked in peace time but it was not the way to get the best out
of civilians who were not interested in the air force as a career. These
peace time airmen had a lot to learn and I'm afraid they were very slow
learners.
"Again we were happy to get away from that sort of atmosphere. Once
we were up in Darwin, where keeping our Spitfires flying was our top priority,
we settled down, working with, rather than for, our superiors who were there
to get a job done so we could return home and resume our lives. We entirely
agreed."
And it is to Clive Caldwell to whom Jim gives much credit for ensuring they
were a happy family and able to contribute their best to the war effort.
"He had that arrogance and that confidence in his own ability and many
people didn't like him for that. He was an impressive man. He wouldn't tolerate
any stupidity. He expected you to work to the best of your ability and if
you couldn't do that he would ship you south. I came to know Clive Caldwell
very well post war. He was most appreciative of my effort to write an account
of our year in Darwin - to try and record it as accurately as we could."
That their efforts in Darwin often went ignored, misreported or forgotten
was not appreciated. During the Federal elections of 1943, the first to
be held during winter, the newspapers noted that there wouldn't be lots
of rallies due to the cold and unpleasant weather and with Australian men
dying on foreign soil and in foreigh waters, leaving the women at home with
the children.
"It staggered me. I can understand an English person not knowing, but
for someone in Canberra to say it's cold in Australia when we were sweating
it out. . . That was one of the things that helped me, that focussed my
mind on how little we know about our own country, how little we know about
what was a fairly important turning point in our war. Yes, people were being
killed above Darwin, and in Darwin."
Mismanagement at the upper echelons of the RAAF resulted in many of the
raids over Darwin being misrepresented. "Disastrous losses" blamed
on the "incompetence" of the Squadrons, when the truth was the
appalling condition of the planes provided. Losses blamed on weather conditions
when the flying conditions had been excellent but the planes not airworthy.
RAAF Headquarters accepting information from General MacArthur about RAAF
performance rather than investigating for themselves.
"When we got into trouble, the first time we really got into trouble,
they didn't have the guts to come to Darwin and say listen, Caldwell, you're
in a bit of a mess, what's the problem? They relied on reports that came
from the American headquarters and got stuck into us for being a lot of
idiots without bothering to find out the real reason for the debacle where
our aeroplanes were supposed to be falling into the sea, fourteen of them
in the one raid.
"The truth is that the losses - planes being shot down - were about
the same as in the previous raid. The rest had nothing to do with Japanese
aeroplanes shooting them down, it was failure of the equipment.
"To be slandered, to have it thrown at us that we were incompetent,
was galling.
"The problems higher up made it a very unhappy Air Force in the top
level. Fortunately we were insulated from most of that because we had someone
like Clive Caldwell who stood up for what was right whenever it was necessary.
He was a hero, more medals than you're ever likely to see and medals obtained
for valour."
Jim had found his time in Darwin for the most part synonomous with boredom.
But at least it was boredom with a purpose. The period immediately after
the war was boredom without a purpose.
"The war finished in August and the peace was signed in September 1945.
I didn't get out till 1946. And that was the most stupid boring time. They
didn't know how to get rid of us. Although I had a job to go to, it took
me six months to get my discharge.
"I'd met with an accident at Laverton - a bullet through the knee -
so I was posted to drive a desk at Air Force Headquarters, with virtually
a nine to four job, going to work on the tram, doing nothing all day and
then getting the tram home, living at barracks. That was the most soul destroying
time of the whole five and a half years.
"Once I got out of that, I had a job waiting for me. So I went back
into the instrument game for a while. Once again because of this disability
it had to be a desk and it was selling rather than doing which wasn't my
scene at all. But I adjusted, I guess, and gradually from that, I got into
engineering, heavy engineering in the pump industry and spent many happy
and useful years in that particular industry."
"One of the sad things I felt was this. We were given the opportunity
only recently to apply for a 1939-45 Star. This was political. I am absolutely
certain it was because some big wigs stationed down in Adelaide River or
somewhere hadn't got any closer to the war than that and wanted a gong.
So they leant on somebody in Canberra and they moved the goal posts south
so they would qualify for a gong. They weren't a bit concerned about us
but they said righto, if we give it to you, we've got to give it to all
these peanuts too. We got a letter saying the war's moved and you were in
a battle zone and if you would like to apply you can have a 1939-45 Star.
"I suppose I should not have applied, but I thought to hell with this,
why not. So I put in an application and we all received a screed saying
it's going to take a lot of time to do it and it's a big job and it will
make work for us.
"Thinking about it, if I deserved a gong, the whole population of London
deserved a medal. They got the hell bombed out of them night after night
after night. The nearest Japanese to me was about five miles away and he
was sitting up there in his aeroplane, so I never saw what he looked like.
I don't know what an angry Japanese looks like, I've never seen one, nor
a German, nor an Italian.
"And yet they give me a gong and the poor civilians are forgotten.
This is how stupid war is."
And yet that Japanese that Jim never saw, was five miles above him in a
plane loaded with bombs.
"We didn't think of those things. I don't think we ever really looked
down the barrel of a gun and said this was for me.
"We all believed that. 'I'm immune. They're going to kill everyone
else but I'll still be here.' If it wasn't for that I think the human race
would just walk out in the bush and commit suicide or something. When you
look around there are some reasons why you should say well this is enough
but there are far more reasons to say well let's keep going. This world
not a bad place to be."
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