Jack O’Brien in World War II

This is a part of the story of John Thomas O’Brien. John was Irene and Bill O’Brien’s second child and eldest son.

I say this is a “part” of John’s story, because there’s much more to be told than is written here, and I’m sure that one or more of his children will be able to put that together for inclusion as part of this project.

For my part, I always knew John Thomas O’Brien as my Uncle Jack who owned and ran a farm called Tilbuster in Armidale. It was a place I visited several times when I was a kid. They were fabulous trips. The life my cousins led there was so different to the life I had in Sydney. There are many treasured memories.

What I knew very little of about Uncle Jack was his record during WWII. Perhaps he was one of those who didn’t like to discuss his exploits. So many came back to civilian life just wanting to put it all behind them.

Jack had joined the Air Force on 16 January 1939, over eight months before the war started. I’m not sure whether he just wanted to fly, or whether he could see that there was a high risk of war, and he wanted to be ready to serve when it began.

RAAF recruiting poster

Jack with his RAAF number 476

What I’ve done in this story is to gather information from various books which mention Uncle Jack. These include:

War Without Glory by JD Balfe
Whispering Death by Mark Johnson
Australia in the War of 1939 -45, Air, Royal Australian Air Force 1939-42, by Douglas Gillison

And from those accounts, I’ve done my best to build Jack’s story in chronological order. Of course, others will likely have additional material which will help to fill this story out. If that’s you, please get in touch using the contact details here.

At the end of each quoted section, I reference the source and page number from the above list. Regular text (ie not as a quoted paragraph) has been written by the author based on a variety of material.

Shortly before midnight on 7 December 1941 word came that the Japanese had started to land 8 kilometres from Kota Bharu. The operations officer ordered the men to take the Hudsons and “sink everything you can see”.

At 3.30 am Flight Lieutenant J. T. O'Brien regular Air Force officer from Junee, New South Wales, who in time became Wing Commander AFC, took his Hudson on a search from Kota Bahru about 50 kilometres to sea. He found a cruiser and three destroyers heading off at speed into the north-east. He overflew them, turned and came back to attack the transports still disembarking troops inshore.
As he came in at full speed to bomb at low level, he realised he was zeroing in on the cruiser. A ghastly mistake! It was belching flak at him! It was fatal for Hudsons to attack cruisers at low level.
O'Brien swerved violently around the cruiser's bows and flew on inshore to the troopships. He found one, surrounded by barges and doubtlessly unloading soldiers. One bomb of the stick that he dropped hit home while the others would have damaged barges. He reported 'there was no scarcity of barges. We all machine-gunned them repeatedly as the opportunities offered on our way back to the aerodrome'.
War Without Glory - pages 40 to 41

Jack (right) Top of Mountain at Alor Setar, Malaysia

Jack (left) on the way to Malacca

In Jack’s own words, recalled at a later date:

Seeing a ship underneath me about 10 miles from the coast I decided to attack. It was a nice moonlight night and going out wide I came in at sea level for a mast-height attack. When within half a mile of this ship it put up such a concentrated ack-ack barrage that I realised it was a cruiser and veered off around its bows taking violent avoiding action while my rear gunner machine‑gunned the decks as we passed.
Realising the mistake I had made in attempting to attack a cruiser from low level, I returned towards the merchant ship near the beach and carried out a mast-height attack on a large merchant vessel which was stationed about four miles from the beach apparently unloading troops, as it was surrounded by barges. I encountered considerable light ack‑ack fire during my bombing run, but took violent avoiding action and dropped my stick of four 250‑pounders across its bows, getting a direct hit.
It is possible that my other bombs did considerable damage to the barges which were clustered round the sides of the vessel, but it was too dark to say definitely. There was considerable barge activity from the merchant vessel to the beach, and there was no scarcity of targets, which we machine-gunned as opportunity offered while returning to the aerodrome.
Australia in the War of 1939 -45, Air, Royal Australian Air Force 1939-42 - pages 210 to 211

Flight Lieutenant O. N. Diamond and his crew made a direct hit on a transport, just forward of its bridge, on their second run. It began to burn. They strafed the ship's decks before heading off, but anti-aircraft fire knocked out an engine and holed the Hudson's wings, fuselage and tail as they headed back to the airfield. Gunfire also damaged a Hudson flown by Flight Lieutenant J. K. Douglas DFC. He was able to get the Hudson back to base. Douglas, from Orange, New South Wales, was formerly a bank clerk. Two months later as the Japanese approached Banka Island to invade Sumatra, Douglas and his crew were shot down into the sea. All were killed.
War Without Glory – page 40

[Flying Officer Peter] Gibbes' Hudson and six others headed for the light-show created by gun flashes, bursts and tracers. When 500 metres from the source of these lights, he dropped close to sea level, opened his bomb doors and sped towards a shadowy vessel. Just 20 metres away he jettisoned his bombs, then swept over the target. Anti-aircraft guns chased them as they flew on, then he turned back towards his new home as quickly as possible. It was the first of numerous 15 - 20 minute shuttles the Hudsons would make as they bombed, strafed, replenished their weapons (a five‑minute job) and returned to the action. Refuelling was not necessary after each sortie, as the enemy was just a few kilometres away. On returning to base from one flight, a crewman was smoking the same cigarette lit on take-off.
Whispering Death – page 62

Wing Commander Davis called a halt at 5 am for the Hudsons to be refuelled, rearmed and inspected for damage. The crews were questioned by Intelligence. Who could make accurate assessments in the heat and hazards of the battle that had been going on? But by their reports one enemy ship had been blown up; one was burning, all troopships had been damaged and there were hundreds of Japanese bodies. Twenty-four barges had been sunk or overturned in the heavy sea that was running. The naval vessels were moving off to the north-east.
Two Hudsons had been lost. Nearly all had been damaged in some way or other, several so that they could not fly again that night.
The vessel blown up was one of the landing fleet's four transports, Awagisan Maru of 9855 tonnes. She finally sank, hit by ten bombs. No. I Squadron's bombs were the first to be dropped against the Japanese in the Pacific—South East Asia war and Awagisan Maru was Japan's first ship lost.
War Without Glory - pages 40 to 41

Awagisan Maru (aka also known as Awajisan Maru or Awagisan Maru)
The first Japanese casualty

After refuelling, the Hudsons resumed their attacks. They pressed the enemy fleet as it withdrew, until finally it was lost from sight under the monsoonal cloud. The air defence was then directed wholly to the three points on the Kota Bahru landing beaches where the Japanese had come ashore. The Hudsons followed them as they moved inland and in barges towed along the Kuantan River. By dawn on 8 December, No. 1 Squadron had flown seventeen attacks, ten of them on the invasion fleet and landing barges, seven on the troops ashore, who also faced a regiment of 8th Indian Brigade Dogras. They confronted the Japanese along eight kilometres of beach and sixteen of river front.
A brigade of Indians was spread widely over the Kota Bahru area. The beaches near them were heavily wired and had concrete pillboxes spaced at every 900 metres. Their crossfire was a deadly menace to the landing invaders, pinning them down and causing heavy losses.
Flight Lieutenant O'Brien returned from another search and reported that he had seen the cruiser, destroyers and transports high-tailing it out from Kota Bahru still on the previous course but overhead were nine Japanese bombers, the first sighted. His crew sank six more barges on the way home. By this time the enemy had knocked out two of the strong points in the beach defences and cut their way through the wire. Hudsons from No. 8 Squadron down at Kuantan were coming in to join with No. 1. But the Japanese were moving inland and fanning out toward Kota Bahru airfield.
War Without Glory – pages 40 and 41

I discovered more about the photo above here. It’s a group portrait of RAAF men who were training with US airmen under the command of Lieutenant General George Kenney, United States Army Air Force, in a manned US Consolidated B24 Liberator aircraft on a mission to Kavieng. Left to right, back row: Sergeant (Sgt) Kenneth Charles Murray of Sydney, NSW, wireless air gunner; Sgt Alan Grant Harvey of Sydney, NSW, wireless air gunner; Sgt W. Loftus of Sydney, NSW, engineer; Sgt H. Wilmington of Berniden, Qld, gunner; Sgt D. Anderson of Melbourne, Vic, gunner. Front row: Pilot Officer J. Gilbert of Parkes, NSW, bombardier; Flying Officer (FO) MacPherson of Brisbane, Qld, co-pilot; Squadron Leader J. T. O'Brien of Sydney, NSW, pilot; FO A. W. Ducas of Perth, WA, gunner; Flight Lieutenant D. W. Brisbane of Sydney, NSW, navigator.

Of course, those who know their history, and who saw the date of this battle above, will know that during this battle, Pearl Harbour was also being attacked. In fact, the event familiarly known as “Pearl Harbour” was an all-out lightning strike on US and British holdings throughout the Pacific. On a single day, the Japanese attacked the US territories of Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam, Midway Island, and Wake Island. They also attacked the British colonies of Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong, and they invaded Thailand.

I guess the fact we refer to that day as “Pearl Harbor” reflects the US-centric view of the world. As the US President, Franklin D Roosevelt said the following day, “Yesterday, December 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan”.

From the Japanese perspective, the whole day was a phenomenal success. Japan never conquered Hawaii, but within months Guam, the Philippines, Wake, Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong all fell under its flag. Japan even seized the westernmost tip of Alaska, which it held for more than a year.

It’s interesting to note that the invasion of Malaya preceded the attack on Pearl Harbor by an hour and a half, making it the first Japanese campaign of World War II, which therefore makes the Awazisan Maru (also known as Awajisan Maru or Awagisan Maru) the very first casualty in the war with Japan.

The following day – 8 December 1941 - it became clear that the Japanese invasion had been successful and had involved a very large group across a huge amount of territory.

The Kota Bahru based squadron was ordered to destroy the damaged Hudsons and the main buildings, and then make their way to Kuantan.

Flight Lieutenant Douglas whose aircraft had been damaged in the night attacks on the fleet, knew that its wing flaps, used in taking off and landing, had been put out of action. They would not stay retracted, and crept down while the Hudson flew straight and level during the cruise.
Nor would the undercarriage come up from the wheels-down position. The systems to retract the flaps and raise the wheels had both been shot through. The drag that this would create would slow his Hudson by at least 100 kilometres an hour and make it 'cold meat' for any Japanese. Douglas tied the flaps up with wire and, picking up nine airmen ground crew as he taxied to the runway, took off and flew to Kuantan. He landed safely at dusk. A week later Flight Lieutenant Douglas was killed in action.
Flight Lieutenant O'Brien crammed seventeen men into his aircraft, as well as the stores aboard. He gathered speed agonisingly on the soaked airfield, lumbered the Hudson into the air at the very last moment and fairly groped his way out over the treetops. Enemy machine gunners and riflemen poured fire at the escaping plane. As it lifted clear of the trees O'Brien's gunner fired back. The Hudson was damaged.
Forty kilometres along the way, six Zeros jumped the fleeing Hudson as it headed for Kuantan. There was only one slim chance of escape. O'Brien took the Hudson down and held it, on full power, only two metres above the beaches and as close to the fringing coconut palms as he dared. The Hudson's airscrews a metre off the sand, whipped it up like the dust plume behind a car.
But the risk paid off and the gods were with the Hudson's petrified passengers. Nothing could have saved them if even one of the Zeros had been able to get into firing position behind O’Brien, but he had outwitted the Japanese pilots. The overloaded Hudson reached Kuantan.
War Without Glory - pages 47 to 48

This same incident is described on page 218 of Australia in the War of 1939 -45, Air, Royal Australian Air Force 1939-42

Flight Lieutenant O’Brien, in a damaged Hudson with 17 passengers aboard, was fired on by Japanese machine gunners and rifleman as soon as his aircraft cleared the treetops, and his rear gunner returned the fire. He evaded six Zeroes about 30 miles south of Kota Bharu by flying about 10 feet above the beach beside coconut palms.

Some six weeks later, on 24 January 1942, a Japanese convoy was spotted making its way to Endau. It consisted of two cruisers, twelve destroyers, two 12,000 tonne troop transports, and three invasion barges. They landed troops at Endau and captured it quickly. First Hurricanes, then Buffaloes, Vildebeestes and Albacores set about attacking the convoy, although there numbers were low due to many planes being damaged. The final attack wave consisted of half a dozen Hudsons from 62 Squadron, which had flown up from Sumatra to take part.

Hawker Hurricane

Buffalos at Sembawang Singapore

Vickers Vildebeeste, last flew combat in 1942 in Singapore

Alabcore

Flight Lieutenant J. T. O'Brien, who had flown so well at Kota Bahru, lost his navigator/second pilot Flying Officer D. Hughes and radio operator Sergeant E. J. Silk by gunfire. Both were twenty-year old Victorians. O'Brien wrote of the attack in words that disclosed his controlled distress at the deaths of his crewmen and the ordeal that he suffered in the cockpit as the zeros killed them.
War Without Glory – page 77

We were no sooner in sight of the Japanese ships, when some 50 Jap Zeros jumped on us from above. I was flying in the centre of the closely packed formation of nine aircraft and the first Zero attacked from above.
With his first burst he killed my wireless operator [Silk], who was on one of the side guns, and also killed my second pilot [Hughes] who was sitting alongside me. My second pilot was killed by a bullet through the head, which afterwards struck me on the shoulder, knocking me over the controls, and lodging underneath my badges of rank on my shirt. The bullet when it struck me was apparently almost spent.
We were at 7,000 feet when attacked, and the next thing I remembered was diving, almost vertically through clouds. I pulled out of the dive and remaining in the cloud I took stock of what had happened.
I tried to call my rear-gunner on the intercommunication, but it had been shot away during the attack, and I was unable to find out if he was alive. My second pilot's feet were all tangled up amongst the throttle and bomb door levers, and I was unable to control the aircraft and lift him out of the way at the same time. I could not get my bomb doors open for bombing so decided to return to base.
The cloud cover was big lumpy cumulus from 2,000 to 7,000 feet, and was about 7/10ths covered. The Jap fighters were playing a game of hide and seek tactics with the Hudsons. They would cruise around above the cloud waiting for the Hudsons to come out and then shoot them up. After several attempts I made my way from cloud to cloud and eventually got out of the area.”
Australia in the War of 1939 -45, Air, Royal Australian Air Force 1939-42 – page 345

When I interviewed my Mum (Gwen, Jack’s sister) in 2002 for the Cousins’ Reunion video, she recalled this about the incident above.

Mum used to relate Jack’s store about when he was shot through the shoulder and where the plane was hurtling to the ground and he was unconscious and he came to just before he hit the ground and pulled the plane out of the dive, and I thought to myself, oh gosh, Mum’s getting a bit carried away here, you know. Anyway, I was appalled when I read the article in a book we had, that it had happened exactly how Mum had said, and I looked up to heaven and I said, “I’m sorry Mum”.

The Hudsons then moved to P2, one of two airfields on the Musi River near Palembang on Sumatra, Indonesia – the other being P1. On 13 February 1942 a Hudson flew out from P2 and confirmed that the Japanese were on course for the Bangka Strait which separated Bangka Island from Sumatra.

It was a powerful force of two light cruisers and eight destroyers escorting twenty-two troop transports. It was clear that they were aiming to capture Palembang. Later Japanese records show, that unknown to the men at Palembang, there was a second and even larger convoy of ships nearby – four heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, eight more destroyers and a light aircraft carrier. This combined fleet was the largest the Japanese had used in Southeast Asia.

The Hudsons were ordered to load bombs and they took off at dawn on Valentine’s Day 1942. I include this lengthy section here, not because it contains a lot about Jack, but because it shows that these were just ordinary guys doing extraordinary things in the most desperate of circumstances. The story of No. I Squadron's Flight Lieutenant O. N. Diamond towards the end of this section could have happened to any one of these crews, Jack’s included, and as J D Balfe says below, “There is an honoured place in history for the determination and heroism of the Hudson crews at Palembang.”

The attack on the task force was intense. All hell broke loose. Low cloud, darkness and scattered rain at first hid the enemy and made low flying doubly dangerous, apart from all else, until dawn’s early light. Only the enemy's gun flashes indicated where the convoy was. As dawn broke, Hudsons and Blenheims dived through heavy anti-aircraft fire at the best targets offering, each attacking individually, choosing their own targets to divide the protecting Zeros with tactics that had proved their value at Endau.
While some of the transports were moving into the mouth of the Musi to get as far as they could up the river and land troops, 8 Squadron went after them. In approaching to bomb they were themselves intercepted by Zeros about 15 kilometres from the targets. The broken cloud cover saved them and might have saved the transports too. The Hudsons managed to fly through the cloud, avoid the Zeros, hold their attack course, and complete their bomb runs. All crews bombed as best they could, but the cloud obscured the total damage done.
One Hudson and crew was lost. Flight Lieutenant J. K. Douglas DFC, after leading his flight to the targets, dived down-sun at a ship in attack then climbed away for a second run, but as he did his Hudson reared, hit by anti-aircraft fire, stalled, fell out of control, and crashed into the sea. Every member was killed. Douglas, with No. 1 Squadron, was twenty‑five, a bank clerk from Orange, New South Wales.
Flight Lieutenant John O'Brien who flew with distinction for No. 1 Squadron at Kota Bahru and Endau, scored direct hits on a transport, set it afire and left it listing. Three other Hudsons scored hits.
War Without Glory – pages 141 to 145

Jack in his RAAF flying suit

Jack in uniform

When every Hurricane from PI was airborne and out of radio range defending the attacking Hudsons and Blenheims, Palembang's observer corps reported about 8 am that a large hostile formation of enemy aircraft was approaching. This was the raid force that attacked the airfields ahead of the paratroop attacks on PI fighter field and the main Palembang oil refinery.
All ground forces under RAAF Group Captain McCauley’s command at P2 were now engaged against the Japanese forces making their way up the Musi River from the coast. P2 could not help PI fend off the attack being made on it. The British anti-aircraft gun crews, RAF airfield defence men and Dutch infantry holding back the paratroop attacks were inflicting and suffering casualties. The anti-aircraft guns had to be withdrawn to Palembang out of ammunition. The RAF 60-man airfield defence team stayed at their posts with the Dutch infantry. The Japanese blocked the road from the airfield to Palembang. A night attack on PI seemed inevitable when this small force was finally withdrawn, food and ammunition supplies desperately short. They trekked through the jungle for a gruelling week to the west coast, then south and eventually re-joined their units in Java.
Only a fierce encounter dislodged the paratroops entrenched at the oil refinery. The enemy approach up the river now threatened the Allied possession of Sumatra, no less, and the battle over Banka Strait was becoming costly for the Allies. Records of the battle are hazy but Group Captain McCauley appeared to have twenty-two Hurricanes and thirty-five Blenheims, and only three Hudsons of his P2 group left in the fight. The Australian squadrons had suffered severely.
Gibbes's Hudson was the only one to return from a flight of five. Two of them were from 1 Squadron, the other three were RAF. Gibbes survived by using cloud cover after making his bomb run hitting a transport. His colleague Flight Lieutenant Lockwood, in the other 1 Squadron Hudson, was last seen going down over the sea with smoke streaming from an engine, two Zeros close behind pouring gunfire into it. The three RAF Hudsons were lost, presumably to Zeros.
There is an honoured place in history for the determination and heroism of the Hudson crews at Palembang, and that of No. I Squadron's Flight Lieutenant O. N. Diamond and his crew illustrates it well. They endured an ordeal that would try the hardiest in battle. Two Navy Zeros got the crew's Hudson in their sights and shot its starboard engine out of action, one landing wheel off, and chunks out of its tail. Diamond was able to stay in the air only at full take-off power on the port engine. He flew up the Musi River to Palembang from the coast at 30 metres, managing to dodge the Zeros' pursuit until he crash landed the Hudson on PI without injury to anyone.
The crew scrambled out only to find Japanese forces pressing their attack on the airfield. There was machine gun and rifle crossfire everywhere and the defenders' AA guns raked the field as artillery. They raced to a Hudson that they saw standing by the runway and which, unknown to them then, happened to be the 8 Squadron aircraft that had landed there at dawn after shearing off its propeller blade tips. Diamond tried everything he knew to get the Hudson into the air, got its engines started, and began a take-off run but 40 knots was the top speed that the aircraft could reach, about half the minimum speed needed for lift-off.
The crew tried every aeroplane on the field but all were damaged. None could be flown but they did not give up. Diamond led his team in a dash across the field into the bordering scrub and rice fields where they crawled over leech infested ground until they outwitted half a dozen Japanese who chased them with hand grenades. They kept going for ten hours, met Allied troops, and made their way with them into Palembang by next day, back to P2 for duty. Diamond, twenty-six, a dry cleaner from Brisbane, had been in all battles since Kota Bahru.
After thirty hours of battle, 225 Group command office in Palembang informed Group Captain McCauley that PI was being abandoned and he should prepare to abandon P2. Secret documents were destroyed, stores, rations and equipment collected for dispersal. About twenty flyable Hudsons - seven of them from 1 Squadron and four from No. 8 - loaded men and equipment and left for Java. McCauley delayed bomb, fuel and ammunition demolition when he received reports there that the defending ground forces were gaining the upper hand over the Japanese. Group decided then on its aircraft recall that was never delivered and the Hudsons flew on.
No. 1 Squadron's ground crews worked magnificently to get any Hudsons still unserviceable into the air. Using a bayonet, and tools from a steam roller, they replaced an aileron on one aircraft and an engine in another. P2 spent all that night getting its Blenheims and Hurricanes off into the Banka battle again at dawn. Fog delayed the take-off, but by dawn three Hudsons, flyable again, were off - one from No. 1 Squadron and two from No. 8. Three Blenheims flew behind them, just above the fog.
Zeros attacked them over Palembang. The Hudsons dived into the fog and escaped them. Three times No. 1 Squadron’s Hudson tried to break out of the fog, but Zeros were waiting for it. It had to turn back in and escape to P2 by flying down 30 metres in the fog. The two 8 Squadron pilots, Flight Lieutenant Ron Widmer DFC who had shot down a Mitsubishi bomber off Kuantan in December, and Flying Officer J. Lower, formerly a manufacturing chemist in Adelaide, saw twenty‑three enemy ships below. They scored near misses and a Blenheim did the same, but the other Blenheims went for troop barges and sank at least five. The squadrons made five more attacks on that day.
Although the Japanese captured Palembang quickly, they did not do so easily nor as cheaply as they won Kota Bahru and Endau. They paid heavily in men among the 10,000 that they landed. As the enemy troop barges moved up the river, the fighters covering them had to fly back to bases to refuel and rearm after the day's first clashes. Their absence on the third morning let the Hurricanes loose among three waves of fully laden barges with horrendous slaughter.
Hudsons and Hurricanes joined in on the way back from convoy attacks. Twenty barges were strafed. Japanese bodies strewed the river like 'a bowl of water in which a box of matches had been emptied'. Three transports were hit, one of them sank and three Zeros met their end. More Zeros were sighted stranded on Banka Island and destroyed. But when the third paratroop drop was made over PI that morning, the main Japanese force was coming up the river. They had the initiative, and the weight of their attack was growing.
War Without Glory – pages 141 to 145

You can read more about the Battle of Palembang here.

The Hudsons moved to Java later in February of 1942, as the Japanese continued to advance on the Island.

There were Hudson pilots and crews-in Java with No. 1 Squadron who had flown in every battle in the last three months from the first at Kota Bahru. Their survival testified as much to the miracle of the fact as it did to their flying capacity and personal strength. They faced another battle as the Java invasion approached, perhaps the last for them in Southeast Asia. Certainly it would be the biggest, with the odds more against them than at any other time before. The war would not end in Java but the battle for it would end only one way.
Flight Lieutenants Peter Gibbes and John O'Brien were among those men.
War Without Glory – pages 152 and 153

As the fall of Java became imminent, the Hudsons that remained serviceable, escaped to Bandung. This is the story of how Jack got back from there to Australia.

Word came to Bandung on 8 March that Java had fallen. The squadron was to destroy all equipment that might be of any use to the Japanese. This included the Hudsons, their remaining stores and spare parts. Petrol was obtained to burn them.
Gibbes found Wing Commander Davis and said to him:
Sir, rather than destroy these aircraft I am prepared to have a go at getting one of them back to Australia. I know what doing it would involve and that neither aircraft is airworthy, but I feel that is the least of our worries at times like this. I could take some wounded perhaps. Instead of me setting fire to my aeroplane will you give me permission to fly it back? My aircraft is A 16-89.
Wing Commander Davis pondered, then agreed.
Gibbes spread the word that he was going. His crew leaped at the idea of going with him, the alternative being captivity or worse. He emphasised the dangers inherent. They did not have adequate maps or navigation equipment, no weather forecast service to help them, nor could they be sure how the Hudson would perform. A piece of one wingtip was missing and there were many holes in the wings and fuselage.
The state of the wing tanks was a gamble as bullets would almost certainly have gone through them. The tanks were self‑sealing but not to be trusted. There were fuel leaks, and instruments had been damaged. No one knew how the compass would behave after all that it had been through. They would be aiming for the westernmost point of Australia 1,200 miles (1,800 kilometres) away, could miss it and go on into the wastes of the Indian Ocean.
Petrol was another problem. The crew could not predict how long fuel tanks would last them, with the leaks and probable bullet holes. The crossing to the Australian coast from Bandung would stretch the Hudson's range over ocean as lonely as any in the world. Beaten-up and holed, the aircraft would not reach normal cruise speeds:
Then someone had an idea. We checked and found that we could reach out to the wing tank filler caps by breaking the nearest side window in the fuselage. We loaded 18-litre cans - the old four‑gallon tins - of petrol into the cabin and took along a length of hose.
That way, we thought, we could siphon petrol out into a tank, perhaps even pour it by holding up the can, and refuel in flight if the leaks turned out to be as bad as we feared.
Tony Jay co-pilot, Sid Manners radio operator and waist gunner, Charlie Mills rear turret gunner, each set about scrounging equipment, needed and they got it - the tins of spare fuel, life rafts as we thought it likely that we might have to ditch in the sea, emergency rations, life jackets, a variety of things.
Tony and I argued a while about the winds that we might encounter and finally settled on a course to fly, one which would bring us to the Australian coast somewhere between Darwin and North West Cape, we hoped.
Gibbes did not have any say in who would be his wounded passengers. That was decided between the medical officer and the C.O., but he was pleased to learn that they had been well chosen, especially Flight Lieutenant John O'Brien. O'Brien had been shot in the shoulder while flying in the Endau battle while his co-pilot had been killed alongside him. O'Brien had flown heroically through the whole campaign and in the evacuation of Kota Bahru.

The crew decided on a night take-off from Bandung to get them as far away from the Japanese as possible in darkness. There was a minor phase of the moon to help them. Gibbes spoke of a poignant departure:
The poor fellows we were leaving behind gave us all sorts of messages to those dear to them. Wing Commander Davis asked us to arrange urgently for Catalinas to fly from Australia and pick up the men who would be trapped if his squadron was not flown out. They would be waiting at somewhere secret on Java's south coast.
I remember thinking we must get through on this flight, not just to save ourselves to fight again but to get those Catalinas up to those men who had been through such hell.
Again Gibbes thanked his airline experience to get them through. The month was March, the height of North-Western Australia's cyclone season:
As I opened the Hudson's throttles to full boost in take-off, I said across to Tony Jay 'Keep your fingers crossed'. I saw his hands as I did. His knuckles were clenched white as the flarepath, dim as it was, disappeared behind us and we were still not quite airborne.
A second later we lifted clear. The Hudson rose hesitantly in the warm night air, the load burdening it down and we will never know by how much we cleared the trees in the pitch darkness beyond the end of the strip.
For the first hour in the air the aeroplane was sloppy, unresponsive and tried ceaselessly to go its own way, which was to fall over on one wing, the damaged one, and spiral down. Gibbes had to fly with almost full left aileron wound on to keep the Hudson level. Fortunately there was no turbulence, or he might not have been able to keep control, especially if the air had been rough through the mountains out of Bandung. But as the aeroplane flew on and consumed fuel, its weight came down, control became easier, and speed increased a little. No man aboard slept that night — an escape through no man's land:
We did not have radio contact or navigation aids of any kind. When I contemplate the course that we took I consider we were lucky. It led us far out over the Indian Ocean somewhere east of Christmas Island. There would have been little chance of us being found, had we gone down.
But Australia is a big continent and we did not expect to miss it. We flew through the night and as the hours went by, I watched our only fuel gauge that was working creep down. It showed close to empty as the first streaks of dawn began to lighten the eastern sky. All serviceable tanks would be in the same state but we could not tell.
Airframe damage and the added drag from bullet and shrapnel holes made it impossible for us to calculate our fuel consumption. Our navigation estimate of the Hudson's position was more or less an educated guess. It was time to put our risky in-flight refuelling plan to the test.
The crew took out the windows on either side of the cabin, through which the waist guns were thrust and fired in action. Gibbes reduced engine power and with some wing flap lowered, slowed the Hudson down almost to stall speed, around 90 miles (144 kilometres) an hour. The usual 320 kph slipstream died away enough to let Sergeant Mills reach through the window openings out to the nearer petrol filler caps in either wing.
Taking one side at a time while Sergeant Manners held Mills' ankles, he reached out, took off the cap and guided the hose length into the filler throat to the tank, keeping the other end of the hose in the cabin. They made a makeshift funnel by rolling up a map and poured cans of fuel into the pipe. Some of the petrol sprayed into the atmosphere above the wing surface, some on to the cabin floor, but to the joy and surprise of all, most of it reached the tank. In Gibbes’ words:
The insatiable demands of Messrs Pratt and Whitney, keeping our proud old aircraft aloft, were met amid rejoicing. If we had yet to ditch, we might not have as far to row.
Not long later our spirits surged to the call we all craved to hear - 'land ahead!' How we needed those words! I shall never forget the feeling of immense relief to see red coastline coming up. There it was in the distance, lovely, dry, red desert. Australia, the empty, sunburned country that our Dutch allies had given away 300 years before! Now it was the most wonderful land in the whole world .
Nothing that we flew over looked like an airfield for nearly half an hour, until a tiny, straggling town came up, iron roofs shining in the morning sun. I could see an airfield and a runway, short but good enough for us. We made straight for it, circled to check the strip and wind, and landed. I saw the name, 'Roebourne '.
Wide open, lovely, beautiful Roebourne, queen city of the south! We would not have changed it at that moment for Sydney, Surfers Paradise or anywhere. We were in the North-West of Western Australia.

Within minutes an open-tray, farm type of truck rattled in through the gate, a serious, bronzed, hard-featured man at the wheel in sleeveless denim shirt, faded khaki trousers, high-heeled boots and 'fat cattle' hat, the marks of the outback westerner. He seemed dubious of the arrivals, almost hostile, and looked them over nervously from a few yards away. Probably he had never seen a Hudson before, but he had spotted something about the aeroplane that gave him cause for his suspicion. In the sun and rain of the tropics the blue and white rings of the RAAF roundels on the wings and fuselage had gone and only their red-circle centres remained —the Rising Sun of Japan!
However, they managed to persuade this very cautious, first Australian to see them, that he and they were on the same side. The man was Roebourne's aircraft refuelling agent. He filled the Hudson's usable petrol tanks and topped up its oil. As he gave a parting wave Gibbes thought probably he would go back into Roebourne and say: 'A funny thing happened to me at the airport this morning...’.
Hudson A 16-89's battle-weary, bedraggled but joyous crew headed on south for the next Air Force station at Geraldton, 800 kilometres farther down Western Australia's coast where a flying school trained Empire Air Scheme pupils to pilot multi‑engine aircraft. Pupils, pilots and engineers of the school gazed silently at the Hudson on their tarmac, horrified that in such unairworthy condition it had attempted the flight that it had just completed. The engineers worked many hours on the injured drop-in. They patched the torn wingtip and only at Gibbes’ insistence agreed to the Hudson flying on. When at last Gibbes and his crew reached Melbourne, the rest and recuperative leave that they so well deserved was given them before being posted to further duties.
War Without Glory – pages 158 to 161

By late 1942 action had turned to Papua New Guinea, and the demands for transport for both men and supplies increased significantly.

Another response to the seemingly insatiable demand for transport was the creation of the RAAF Special Transport Flight. It was a heterogeneous collection of military and civil aviators and aircraft, largely from No. 1 Operational Training Unit (OUT). Its list of pilots read like a who's who of Hudson experts, including Bill Pedrina, David Campbell, Ron Cornfoot, Archie Dunne, Peter Gibbes, Jim Marshall, Jack O'Brien and Ron Widmer. It began flying from Ward's on 1 4 December, when it dropped supplies at Soputa, on the track to Sanananda.
The following day Pedrina made four sorties over this area. On the fourth sortie, he and two other pilots took urgently needed ammunition to an ALF unit, even though this required dangerous flying over the Owen Stanleys, and flying at just 200 feet over Soputa. Pedrina's aircraft was on its final run when, in the words of one of his crew, 'the machine shook violently and went into a steep climb', Struck by flak, it crashed, killing Pedrina and two of his crew. It was an inauspicious start, but fortunately there would be only one more fatality in the unit's six weeks of operations. On 17 December the CO, Squadron Leader Hall, landed successfully on an emergency dropping strip cleared from the kunai grass at Dobodura. It was then decided to land supplies on this strip, rather than drop them and continue losing 30 per cent of provisions on impact. Allied wounded were often evacuated on the return trips.
Whispering Death - Page 238

In December 1943 the Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff decided to launch two great simultaneous drives against Japan. One thrust would be across the Central Pacific, the other via New Guinea and the Philippines. MacArthur was ordered to invade Hollandia [now Jayapura], on the north coast of Dutch New Guinea, in April 1944, to be followed by the Philippines in November.
Valuable information on Hollandia came from No. 3 Wireless Unit RAAF, which from Darwin monitored the area's wireless traffic. From their three airfields on this distant target, the Japanese were bound to intercept Allied bombers sent against it. However, General Kenney had long‑range Lightnings capable of flying to Hollandia and staying overhead for an hour before returning to Nadzab in New Guinea. These P-38s escorted 65 Liberators to Hollandia on 30 March 1944, and more again the following day.
Among the Liberator crews on the second raid were Australian airmen learning to fly B-24s in preparation for the creation of RAAF Liberator squadrons. Flying them was not easy, especially above 20,000 feet. For example, manipulating the rudder was physically difficult. This 'flying boxcar' was doubly hard to manoeuvre if damaged, and although the B-24 was far better armed and armoured than the Betty, it was less robust than the B-17. The Australian pilots included 'Mickey' Jaques, a veteran of 13 Squadron’s Hudsons, who had won praise from American onlookers two weeks earlier when, after flak had damaged a landing wheel over Wewak, he brought the immensely heavy aircraft down safely at Nadzab.
Squadron Leader Jack O'Brien, who had flown over the Netherlands East Indies in desperate times, led an entire RAAF flight in the 31 March raid. The RAAF crews had mixed feelings about the raid. Though due to return to Australia to become instructional staff, they were also keen to attack the almost 'virgin' territory that Hollandia represented, in contrast to the devastated targets to which they were usually sent. Just days earlier the Japanese Fourth Air Army had withdrawn from its shattered Wewak base to Hollandia, which had long been untroubled by heavy air attack. This led to careless dispersal among many other Japanese aircraft grounded there because of lack of spares or maintenance. Consequently General Kenney’s raids were pulverising. When the Allies captured Hollandia, they counted 340 aircraft wrecks on its three airstrips.
Whispering Death - pages 363 to 364

These are a few shots of Jack which I only have in low resolution – I’d love to get some high-res versions if anyone has them. Please let me know via the contact details here.