Former PM Curtin wanted Japan peace deal

[Buster Hyman]

Tuesday Apr 25 21:30 AEST

Australia's wartime Prime Minister John Curtin sought a deal giving Japan access to Australia's iron ore in exchange for guarantees of freedom from attack just months before war in the Pacific broke out, new evidence has revealed.

According to this week's Bulletin magazine, the wartime leader sought the secret peace deal with Japan's first ambassador to Australia, Tatsuo Kawai, as late as mid-1941.

The details of the agreement are detailed in a new book, Saving Australia, Curtin's Secret Peace with Japan, by Bob Wurth, of which an edited extract is published in The Bulletin.

Curtin and Kawai, who first met in Canberra in March 1941, held a series of confidential meetings aimed at preventing war but Curtin, opposition leader at the time, called the deal off, according to the book.

The Australian government had imposed a ban on iron ore exports in 1938 after Japan had secured the rights from the state government to mine and export iron ore from Yampi Sound, in remote Western Australia.

But according to the previously unpublished writings of Kawai, Curtin told the Japanese ambassador to Australia: "If Japan will do that (boost trade for us), then it would be okay for the subordinate Australian side to lift the seizure of the Yampi Sound, but Japan must guarantee Australia's safety".

Kawai wrote: "I was deeply impressed by his attitude and character.

"From that moment, my feelings of friendship towards him grew rapidly."

When Curtin became prime minister in October that year, his foreign minister H.V. "Doc" Evatt tried to pull off a last-minute peace deal between Japan and the US, Bob Wurth's book says.

According to Kawai's writings, which along with poetry and photos were discovered by Wurth during five years research, Curtin "exploded into action" after Kawai had told him in November 1941 that full war was inevitable.

By that time, Evatt and Curtin feared talks between the US and Japan were deteriorating, the extract said.

Evatt, who remained confident of brokering a peace settlement until days before Pearl Harbour, told Australian envoy Richard Casey in Washington to do "anything and everything in your power" to prevent a complete breakdown in discussions.

Despite the outbreak of war, Kawai maintained his strong friendship with the wartime leader until his death, even making a trip to Perth in 1959 to visit his widow Elsie.

Wurth's book will be released next week.

©AAP 2006

Nice timing!

[Gnadenburg]

Around ANZAC Day every year, new info' comes to light on campaigns past; but it generally comes with a left or right wing political slant too. The most distasteful was in the mid 80's, when far left disarmament & peace parties at their strongest, tried to raise the spectre of Australian attrocities against the Japanese in WW2. I recall specifically, RAAF Beaufighter operations which involved the sinking of landing craft and second pass attacks on survivors close to shore.

There is a lot of great material worth the read. People should make up their own mind about history and politics past; mindful of the political slant of the major parties.

The period of time this book refers to was a watershed in the Australian political landscape. The beginning of the American alliance brought about by a lack of confidence in British military committment & strategy in the Pacific- culminating in the disasterous fall of Fortress Singapore. Australia had no access to fighter aircraft in 1941- the British couldn't/wouldn't provide them and RAAF bureaucracy had a ridiculous buy British policy which totally exposed this country when American fighter aircraft no longer available. Increduously, the RAAF actually considered the ZERO fighter in exchange for the iron ore talked about in this upcoming book.

We must remember too, it was waterside unions way back in 1938 who initially refused to load pig iron bound for Japan- hence Pig Iron Bob Menzies. With mention of their refusal to load troop ships bound for New Guinea in 1942.

Read, talk to diggers and make up your own mind.

Personally, I firmly believe, it was the Australian Army/ US Navy who convincingly blunted the Japanese Pacific advances in WW2. Where it is the Australian Army who gets the least accolades. The US Army was poorly led, very green and ineffective in the early stages.

My what if's? Certainly if the RAAF had Kittyhawks in numbers in 1941. Coupled with the confidence to commit more Australian troops outside of ineffectual, British leadership in Singapore & Malaya.

[Hugh Jarse]

Gnads, ask your dad why the Septics Air Force (engaged in air support of Australian ground forces) were called the "Fishing Fleet":}

Understandably, my dad didn't think much of them (being an Australian Infantryman) and all that.:E

[Gnadenburg]

HJ

I think that nickname came about initially, due to P39 operations out of Morseby. This aircraft was not able to mix it up with Zero & friends. P39's would disappear out to sea during Japanese raids- hence the 'fishing fleet' tag.

Interestingly, nor was the Kittyhawk a great aircraft to be fighting the Zero in. However, in the New Guinea campaign, RAAF pilots devised tactics to combat the Zero's manoevrability- I think it involved diving, slashing attacks where the P40 could outperform the Japanese. When RAAF brass discovered this, they labelled the pilots as cowards and insisted they dogfight the Zero conventionally; on it's terms in a turning dogfight.

The American Army where not much more effective than their air corp in New Guinea. Poorly led and trained, with ego maniac Generals and commonly covered up incidents of cowardice. Australian soldiers suffered significant extra casualties in their campaigns beyond the intitial defeat of the Japanese on the Kokoda- Buna & Gona well documented.

[Chimbu chuckles]

The Zero v P40 debate is interesting...talk to chaps who actually flew against the Zero in P40s and they have a dramatically different opinion than the historians.

I have a dear old mate on the Gold Coast who flew P40s in 77 Sdn in Darwin and PNG through all the big battles...Milne Bay etc...well into his 80s now he is still as fit and lucid as a man 30 hrs his junior.

This from an email of a year or three back.;

Hi Chuck,

The Zero was a piece of ****! It had only one tactic...it could turn tighter at slow speeds..less than about 220mph. It could only pull 6 G we could pull 9, and when one got on our tail we bloody well did. Our roll rate was 4 or 5 times faster. At speeds above about 220 we could pull more G and turn tighter...if he wasn't dead by the time speed was bleeding back towards that, or he was behind us, we rolled and dived away at 350+mph...his wings came off long before that....but we rolled so much faster we were miles away before he matched our manouver. Our guns were better, we had armour they didn't, we had self sealing fuel tanks they didn't. The Zero's controls were so stiff above 250 mph it took both hands to get any effect...they were terrible....it was a piece of ****!

If you played the Zero's game it could eat you up...but it had only one game and we knew it by Milne Bay. Put some rounds through em and they burn...I was a lousey shot though.

My old mate never made ace officially...but he got a few 'proper kills'...and when he told me about chasing one into the ground and another that came apart trying to follow him into a near verticle corkscrew at speeds that hit 400mph..well he did, the Jap didn't...I mentioned that the Yanks call those manouver kills and he really probably should be an Ace. His answer was a rye smile and "Well the yanks would wouldn't they". He REALLY didn't care and he genuinely believes his contribution was nothing above ordinary.

Just a wonderfull old guy.

[Gnadenburg]

The Zero v P40 debate is interesting...talk to chaps who actually flew against the Zero in P40s and they have a dramatically different opinion than the historians.

It wasn't just the historians- the American Air Corp leadership pushed hard for the P38 and seemed to have an anti-P40 agenda. The RAAF had operated a thousand Kittyhawks by war's end, and unlike the RAF, US and even Kiwis, still operated the type until the last days of the Pacific war.

The Zero and Japanese pilots for that matter, were grossly underrated initially. Then probably overrated by the time units such as the RAAF Kittyhawk squadrons adjusted tactics and attrition depleted experience levels.

One of the great "what if's" is what would the course of the Pacific War taken, had the RAAF been well equiped with Kittyhawks in 1941-1942? Debatably, Singapore may not have fallen.

Your friend is certainly humble. He may not have been a great shot because RAAF Kittyhawk gunsights were unreliable; and in the early stages, often replaces with homemade versions.

[Chimbu chuckles]

I asked him about the gunsight.

"Hopeless...absolutely hopeless...The fixed ring and bead were better...I just used to peer over the nose and try and walk my tracers towards whatever I was trying to hit".:{

Interesing to read the words of ex Flying Tigers pilots...they VERY closely match those of my friend.

The difference was Chennault, for whatever reason, understood the relative strengths and weaknesses of the P40 v Zero...and drilled into his pilots not to turn with Zeros but use the P40s tactical strengths from the very beginning.

The result was a kill ratio in the Flying Tigers that was something like 290 Jap aircraft for the loss of 4 Flying Tigers actually shot down in air combat over about a 9 mth period...about a dozen more shot down by ground fire, killed in training etc.

They all seem to get pretty animated when someone says the Zero was a better fighter...as my friend says..."a good fighter aircraft needs to be able to do more than one thing well. A miniscule radius of turn at slow speed is only good at slow speed. If I dont fly slow it is useless. If a Jap got on my tail I could whip inverted and dive at 350+mph. His roll rate was so slow that by the time he was able to actually effect a change in direction I was literally several miles away going 70kts faster than he could go. I don't call that manouverable. if I was behind him and we were going really fast I could pull more G and turn inside and shoot at him...note I said at...I really wasn't very good"

Talked to Col Pay (his company overhaulled my Bonanza engine some years ago)....he has owned a Spit and a P-40...reckons the later has "MUCH better ailerons". My mate flew both and MUCH prefered the P40...apparently the Spits they got out here were ruined by the tropicalisation process...oil filters and such.

Read the RAAF wartime fly off report done south of Darwin between a Spit and a P40....evenly matched in some areas, like climb, speed below 15000'...P40 better with roll rate and diving speed. From what my mate says not much combat happened above 15000' in the SWP. I also note reports from jap pilots that the P38 was an easy kill until the pilots stopped dogfighting at slow speeds....when they did the slaughtered the Japs.

I feel like a teenager sitting talking to him..or I did early on...all caught up by the adventure and glamour...his view?

'Most of the time on the ground I was scared...really scared..and sick with dysentery, black water fever, malaria. In the air I wasn't scared because I was too busy. I early on accepted that I would NOT survive...that I am sitting here now is pure luck. The war taught me lucky is better than good'.

Now I have had malaria about 6 times...flown with it once when it hit me in the middle of an RPT flight I was doing in a Bandit, single pilot i might add...I could not comprehend dogfighting that way...it's extremely debilitating.

My friend said to me once 'if we had 10 or 20 Sqds of P-40s and proper training at the beginning the war it would have been a different kettle of fish...Singapore would not have fallen for starters'.....interesting hey?

From the unit history;

Equipped with Kittyhawk fighters 77 Squadron formed in Western Australia in March 1942, moving to the Northern Territory in August. During the Squadrons defence of Darwin, Squadron Leader Cresswell made the first enemy 'kill' over Australian soil when he shot down a Japanese bomber over Darwin.

February 1943 saw 77 Squadron join 75 and 76 Squadron in the defence of Milne Bay. Soon after its arrival, sixty five Japanese aircraft raided Milne Bay and were engaged by fifteen Kittyhawks from both 77 and 75 squadrons. In the ensuing combat four bombers and two fighters were shot down and a further five bombers probably destroyed for the loss of one Kittyhawk.

After deploying to Goodenough Island in June, 77 Squadron flew fighter escort missions for bombers attacking Gasmata. A succession of moves saw the Squadron in Labuan in the last months of the War, from where it was deployed to Japan to participate in the Allied occupation force of that country.


I think the P40 is probably one of the great unsung successful fighters of WW2...bad leadership early on and the pacific being viewed as a backwater war in the grand context of WW2 seems to have consigned it and it's crews to a lesser place in history than they deserve.

[Buster Hyman]

Chimbu Thanks for those quotes, great to see the thoughts of the actual crews.:ok:

[Chimbu chuckles]

I think men like him are just plain amazing....I have absolutely no doubt that if they found themselves somehow transported back in time they would hobble out to a P40, climb in and do their duty without a backwards glance....although most would clearly need help getting to the aircraft and into the seat.

Talking to these guys and reading first hand reports shows clearly to me that the majority of 'historians' never spent much time talking to the pilots...neither did the leaders of the day.

Most of the senior officers had not flown combat at all, or the few who had had last done so in 1918....an era when aircraft did not have the performance to do anything much besides race around in circles and the one with the better turning performance won. As usual they were fighting the last war not the current one

I guess people who are not experienced pilots tend to hear that the Zero could turn on a sixpence and assume therefore it was extremely manouverable...but if attaining the bank angle takes 3 times as long as an aircraft with a fast roll rate but less pitch response the slow rolling aircraft is still left behind.

This from an article written by Eric Shilling...an AVG ace.

in a short but informative interview with Saburo Sakai, Japans leading living Ace, I asked, "Commander, what was the Zero's top speed?" His answer amazed me when he said, "The A6M2 had a top speed of 309 mph. and a maximum allowable dive speed of 350 mph. It became extremely heavy on the controls above 275 mph, and approaching 350 mph, the Zero's controls were so heavy it was impossible to roll. A further comment by Sakai was that the skin on the wings started to wrinkle, causing the pilot great concern, since a number of Zero's had shed their wings in a dive." A captured Zero tested by Americans military, showed its top speed to be 319 mph, this was a later model, the AM6M5, and was tested without guns or ammunition. Therefore Saburo Sakai's statement that the top speed of the A6M2 and A6M3 of 309 mph would seem to be correct.
Saburo Sakai, in an interview made on August 11, 1996, admitted that, after flying the P-51 he had changed his mind and now rated the Zero as number two, where as before he thought it was the best. He said, "the P-51 could do everything the Zero could do and more." My comment to him would have been that it's too bad you never got the opportunity to fly the P-40.

Compare this to the P-40's 355 mph, and he the maximum allowable dive speed of 480 mph, (occasionally our pilots dove as fast as 510 mph) 130 mph faster than the Zero. The P-40's roll rate at 260 mph was 96 degrees per second, three times that of the Zero's mere 35 degrees at the same speed.

Japanese pilots were taught the antiquated importance of Dogfighting, or turning combat as used in WW I. Unfortunately our military pilots were taught the same thing, dogfighting. But the Americans didn't have the equipment with which to be successful. When the Japanese encountered Chennault's hit and run tactics, they were at loss. It wasn't in their book, and they didn't know how to handle the situation.

And this quote from Eric Shilling;

Although subsequent model P-40s did fall behind the newer model Me.109s and British Spitfires, however in every case, each new model Zero that came out remained inferior to its contemporary model P-40.
Now why in the hell would anyone consider the Zero to be the best fighter of the war?

Hell, it didn't even start out that way. . .
The above is not just my opinion, but garnered from available facts, and flying the P-40 in combat.

What was truly obsolete happened to be the turning or dogfighting combat that had been used during of WW I.



This from another AVG Ace, Dick Rossi.

The record of the AVG: We were in actual combat for seven months; we had less than 300 people. As of Dec 2, 1941, there were 82 pilots and of the original 100 P-40s sent out to Chennault, 78 remained with 62 in commission, 68 with radios and 60 with armament. There were shortages of just about everything and no spare parts to speak of. The group has a confirmed count of 299 combat victories with another probable 600 aircraft destroyed on the ground. Our losses were 4 pilots lost in aerial combat, 7 shot down and killed by anti-aircraft fire during strafing runs, 8 killed in operational and training accidents unrelated to enemy action. Four were MIA and 3 of those were found to be POWs. Three died from Japanese bombing raids. One was shot down and seen alive, but no word as to his fate. The American Fighter Aces Association confirms 20 AVG pilots as Aces with another 6 pilots achieving Ace status during the next few years.

Imagine the difference if that knowledge had been available to RAAF P40 pilots in the first mths of their war which essentially followed the AVG experience.

[tinpis]

I wonder if Sakai ever re-visited Lae before he died?

He would have enjoyed being held to ransom by rascals.

[inthefluffystuff]

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Thanks for the inside stories guy's truely humbling to hear of brave mens actions for us and Australia.