Centaurus
28th Jun 2012, 09:26
During the war Manus Island north of PNG was a major Japanese military base and after Allied forces swept through the Western Pacific in 1944 the island became a staging post for US forces attacking the Japanese stronghold on Pelileu in the Western Caroline Islands. After the war, the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) took over the former US Naval base at Lorengau harbour on Manus, while the RAAF operated the air base at Momote on the eastern side of the island group. I had been there several times when flying Lincolns during combined sea and air exercises. The airstrip was 5200ft long, ending at a coral reef at one end and a lagoon at the other. Crocodiles drifted menacingly in a nearby swamp, occasionally seizing an unwary dog and making it risky to walk around at night.
Nearby revetments held several derelict Douglas Dauntless dive bombers, left behind in 1945. Bullet holes had punctured their tyres, and instruments stolen for souvenirs but with a lot of TLC they could have been made air-worthy. If I knew then, what I know now about the future value of those machines, I would have bought them on the spot and taken them back home for restoration. But for now they remained behind as battered but still proud reminders of the savage carrier–borne air battles of the Pacific war. Some years after the military abandoned the airstrip, a team of enthusiasts arrived to ship the old dive-bombers back to USA. I am glad their story had a happy ending.
By1958, Guam and the USAF base at Clark Field in the Philippines, represented the main strategic American presence in the Western Pacific region, and the Australian government decided to close down Momote, leaving a small team of aviation staff to administer inter-island civil flights. Many of the RAAF married quarters still held valuable material such as furnishings and roofing tiles and it was decided to transport these back to Townsville.
For this task, freight panniers were attached to hard points in the bomb bay of our Lincoln. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to see the islands that had become so well known during the Pacific war, and I pestered the CO into agreeing that my crew should do the job. There were three pilots (myself as captain, Flight Sergeant Daryl Picton, and Pilot Officer Ian Symonds as second pilots), Flying Officer Brian Bolger and Flight Sergeant Barry Nichols as navigators, with Pilot Officers Gordon Bibby, Cliff Dohle, Flying Officer Bruce Stein, and Flight Sergeant Colin Stewart as the signallers. Pprune readers might like to follow this story on their atlas. Meanwhile I apologise profusely to the Mods for the larger picture of the Lincoln route shown here but after numerous attempts at working through photo-bucket I am buggered if I could work out how to reduce the picture size to the desired 640X480.
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y25/HSWL/CoralSeaLincolnroute.jpg
The 1000-mile flight to Momote was planned via Port Moresby in New Guinea, then right a few degrees to climb over Mount Victoria in the Owen Stanley Ranges. The jungle clad mountains in this area rise above 13,000 feet and crews don oxygen masks as the aircraft climbs laboriously to clear the mountains. Once clear of the northern coastline of New Guinea at the wartime airstrip of Kokoda, the track edges further left over the former Japanese occupied township of Lae. From here the direct track to Momote cleared the mist-covered mountains of the Huon Peninsula. The airstrip of Finschafen once defended by hordes of Zero fighters is visible through cloud gaps on the left while on the right wing tip is Cape Gloucester on the western reaches of New Britain. Leaving land at Cape King on Umboi Island, the aircraft heads north out over the Bismark Sea.
If the Battle of Britain was a defining moment of World War Two in 1940, the Battle of the Bismark Sea was its equivalent on the other side of the world in 1943. Then, an armada of Japanese troop ships sailed into the Bismark Sea from Rabaul in New Britain to reinforce Japanese held Lae. Hugging the northern coastline of New Britain and hidden by low cloud and torrential rain, the transports and escorting warships were spotted by Allied reconnaissance aircraft. As the convoy entered the Vitiaz Strait on its final run into Lae, it was attacked by Bostons and rocket firing Beaufighters of the RAAF and finished off by Mitchells and Flying Fortresses of the USAF. Few ships escaped the carnage and thousands of Japanese troops were lost. The Battle of the Bismark Sea was a turning point in the war in the Pacific.
.Now 15 years later and a few minutes after taking off on the first leg of what promised to be fascinating tour of wartime history, the Lincoln experienced a glycol coolant leak on one of the engines. Left unchecked, the glycol leak could lead to engine seizure and possible fire, leaving me with little choice but to get on the ground as soon as possible. Fortunately the heavy weight landing was smooth, and after touch-down I used the full runway length to avoid causing hot brakes.
The problem was soon fixed and we got away again arriving at Momote in the late afternoon after a six hour flight. Cruising at 10,000 feet over the warm expanse of the Bismark Sea, I pondered the events that I had read about as an eleven year old lad in England in 1943. The Bismark Sea meant nothing to me in those days, preoccupied as I was with spotting German Focke Wulf 190's and Dornier 217's that flew in at low level, dropped bombs and belted back to France. In the Lincoln, the crew was lost in thought, silently contemplating the scene far below where scattered white cumulus drifted gently over the graveyard of ships and men.
At Momote, we stayed for two days of sight seeing while the aircraft was serviced and the roofing tiles loaded. We slept under mosquito nets in the stifling heat, and during the day I explored the cockpits of the Dauntless dive-bombers. Fortunately I did not see the large jungle spiders that were known to live in thick webs behind the instrument panels. Neither did I see any crocodiles, although the odd loud splash from the local swamp indicated that something was out there.
Among the families living on Manus was a teenager by the name of Max Loves. The thrilling sight of visiting Lincolns and Mustangs must have stirred his soul because when the base closed down and his family returned to Australia, Max joined the RAAF as a trainee pilot. After winning his Wings, he flew Mustangs, Vampires and Sabres. The Empire Test Pilot’s Course followed, leading to testing of Lightnings and other exotic machines at Boscombe Down. I first met Max in 1966 when he was in Milan evaluating the Macchi jet trainer for the RAAF. At the time, I was ferrying a new Avro (yes, it was the real Avro – not Bae!) 748 to Australia. We remained close friends over the years; meeting occasionally at Rye on the Mornington Peninsula to tell lies and talk aeroplanes. And to think that his distinguished career as a test pilot all started from his first sight of massed Merlins at Momote. Rather like Toad of Toad Hall and the Yellow Roadster!
The return flight was planned as an OFE (Operational Flying Exercise). The route was low level at 1500-ft eastward across the Bismark Sea to Kavieng on New Ireland, then south to the former Japanese military stronghold of Rabaul on northern New Britain. From there we planned to Milne Bay on the south-eastern tip of New Guinea and after that directly to Townsville. Any ships seen were to be photographed and their description reported in code on the RAAF Area Guard High Frequency. This was always a convenient excuse for a low pass and beat up. Officially, beat ups were frowned upon, but only if you killed yourself. Estimated flight time was ten hours.
After start-up, I kept the run-up brief to avoid overheating the liquid cooled engines. With the bomb bay panniers full of roofing tiles and the wings brimming with fuel the Lincoln used up the full length of the 5400ft runway. There were no take-off performance charts in those days and the Lincoln was held on the runway until the last second. On a hot tropical day we would barely reach lift off speed of 105 knots before the ocean would flash underneath us leaving a swirl of slipstream on the water. This usually gave the rear gunner (who had his back to the engine), an unwanted thrill. The normal takeoff boost on the Rolls Royce Merlin Mk 102 engine was +12 pounds of boost (54 inches of manifold pressure). At the discretion of the pilot, additional power was available by advancing the throttles “through the gate” which gave an emergency maximum of +18 boost, (66 inches of manifold pressure). Emergency power not only reduced engine life but with the open exhausts of the inboard engines only fifteen feet away from the cockpit, the noise was extremely painful to the ears.
Engines occasionally failed on take-off and the swing cause by the failure of an outboard engine could be hard to manage. At emergency power, the resulting swing could be downright dangerous. One pilot, a Warrant Officer who had flown Liberators, was so fearful of engine failure during take off that he always used the emergency power of +18 boost. He explained away this apparent contradiction by saying if an engine was going to fail, it would be most likely early in the peace at maximum power, leaving him plenty of runway to abort the take-off. While he never experienced the opportunity to test his theory on Lincolns, he sure managed to wear out a few engines. He was killed a few years later. Not in a Lincoln, but in a Vampire that experienced engine failure after take-off. On this occasion I decided that we needed maximum over-boost to get airborne with our heavy load.
The closure of the base meant that ours was probably the last Lincoln out. In view of this auspicious occasion, we had been given the nod on the evening before by a senior (half-tanked) officer to beat up the airstrip on departure, and to make it good. I readily agreed, rightly considering it churlish to refuse. Today an unauthorized beat up would be court martial offence and understandably so. But in 1958, a very good year for beat ups, there was a less responsible and more care-free attitude in the RAAF and in any case, a rousing beat up was usually enjoyed by all – within reasonable safety bounds of course.
The Lincoln staggered to 1500 ft and wheeling it over on one wing, I opened up to full power (+12 and 3000rpm this time) aiming right down the centre of the runway. The airmen below came out from under the coconut trees to watch. Having seen beat ups before, I knew what a thrill it was to spectators to see this enormous flying machine flash by at low level with its incredible sound of four Rolls Royce engines at full throttle. The same noise put out by four Spitfires in close formation, if you can imagine it. At 26 years old and in command of this beautiful old bomber, I was in my element. Ten years earlier I had been a broom wielder in a Camden hangar sweeping the dusty floor around the wheels of a Lockheed Hudson and dreaming of being a RAAF pilot.
There was no time for reflection now and after pulling the Lincoln up into a steep climbing turn we set course for the first leg to Rabaul. Hardly had the second pilot set cruise power when a radio call came from the RAAF air-sea rescue launch just off shore beyond the reef. Could we carry out just one low pass so that the crew of the launch could take some photographs? To the annoyance of the navigator sitting at his desk behind the captain’s seat, I said no problem – here we come, ready or not. Christ! As I write this, I cringe at the stupidity of youth and wonder how I survived. The navigator had already set up his charts and now his neat log would have to be revised with a new departure time. Stiff – I thought, and brought the Lincoln around to line up on the launch two miles away. This was inexcusable brashness on my part but I soon flushed any guilty thoughts away and concentrated on the task at hand.
The launch was painted a pale blue with RAAF roundels on each bow. Its ensign fluttered at masthead and I noticed a canvas sunshade over the stern. We went very low over the boat at 220 knots and full power, pulling up into the usual steep climbing turn, and waving to the crew on the launch. The rear gunner who of course could not see the launch until we passed, called up on the intercom that our propeller slipstream had clean blown away the sun shade on the launch. Well satisfied with the congratulations from the launch skipper on the mighty beat up, we again set sail for Rabaul, accompanied by the bitching of the navigator who had lost his chart under the table during the tight turns. In the light of fifty-four years since that day at Momote, I find myself almost too embarrassed to record this episode on Pprune. But then it was different in those days..
Time dims the finer details of the flight to Townsville, but there were two events that I clearly remember. The first as we flew eastbound skimming the waves over the Pacific between Momote and Rabaul when the tactical navigator sitting up front in the bomb-aimer position, spotted a lone outrigger canoe a few miles off Rabaul. It had a sail attached and the occupant was probably out there catching his family’s evening meal. This was too good an opportunity to miss and the radio altimeter eased steadily down to 100 feet as we bored in to show the flag for Australia, so to speak.
To our amazement, the fisherman dived overboard as we approached. Concerned that the slipstream might damage his frail craft, I banked the Lincoln at the last second and asked for a report from our rear gunner. He saw the fisherman surface next to his out-rigger and then we were gone. It later occurred to me that 14 years earlier, Rabaul and its surrounding waters had been a maelstrom of bombs and machine gun fire from low flying Japanese and American aircraft. The poor bloody fisherman, seeing a four engine bomber bearing down upon him, may have understandably thought that World War Three had started, and the baddies were out to get him.
My youthful immaturity on this trip surfaced again as we flew past Samurai Island, 30 miles from Milne Bay on the eastern tip of New Guinea. It could have ended in tragedy but for good fortune. During operational training exercises, ship sightings would be reported, which often necessitated us getting up close and personal to photograph the vessel concerned. This usually meant a fly-past at 500 ft parallel to the ship’s course while the signallers would take snaps with a large F51 hand-held camera and might even even try their luck at sending greetings in morse code using an Aldis lamp.
I fancied myself at ship identification and after the navigator picked up an echo on the radar I climbed a little then spotted a low shape streaming a long wake. Calling the crew to action stations, and having identified the ship as an Australian destroyer I decided that this was big game and that we should practice mock warfare. Opening the bomb doors, I opened up the power and increased speed toward the destroyer for a dummy torpedo attack. The Lincoln carried depth charges and torpedoes mainly for anti-submarine use, although in this case the bomb racks held four cargo panniers full of roofing tiles instead. The destroyer captain was not to know this of course, nor would he know our nationality. Normally, exercises with naval ships were well planned in advance, and the ships knew the games to play. My intention was to get in low for a quasi-legal beat up, wave madly at the sailors as we passed by and turn once again for home.
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y25/HSWL/Bowbell2.jpg
USS Bowbell at high speed.
As we approached at 100 ft, the destroyer shape turned into a frigate and the massive bow wave indicated a surprising turn of speed. It then heeled over in a tight turn just before we roared over at mast height. A signaller on the left window look-out position of our Lincoln then spotted what appeared to be a battery of guns pointing straight at us and tracking our flight path. As we flashed overhead I was startled to see an American flag streaming from the masthead. The rear gunner was quick enough to read the name Bowbell on the ship’s stern.
I closed the bomb doors and pulled up into a steep climbing turn, showing the red, white and blue roundels under the wings. This time I came around for a slow fly-past for our cameras and saw the ship’s crew now on deck and all waving. We circled a few more times and waved back before departing once again for home. The whole episode troubled me, and I pondered the saying that fools step in where angels fear to tread. We sent a sighting report to the RAAF Area Guard facility in Sydney, describing the US ship, its course, estimated position and speed.
Not long after, we received a coded message that the ship was indeed the USS Bowbell and that it was heading to Singapore. Later we found out that US personnel were being threatened by political riots in Singapore and that the Bowbell was on a rescue mission. There was an added message from the captain saying that he had nearly mistaken our Lincoln for a rebel Indonesian bomber about to attack his ship and that he had almost shot us down. He had a good point of course, because understandably he would have been on instant alert at seeing a dirty great unidentified four engine bomber with open bomb doors boring in at 100 feet with seemingly warlike intentions.
I asked the signaller to acknowledge receipt of this message from Bowbell, but restrained myself from adding that if the Bowbell had shot at us, we would have retaliated by dropping our load of roofing tiles down his funnel! We heard nothing more of the episode, but I still have a prized close up photograph taken of the Bowbell at high speed.
A few days after the Bowbell incident, I flew a Lincoln to the RAAF Central Flying School at East Sale in order to renew my A2 grade instructors rating. That was done with Flight Lieutenant Ray Drury, a former Liberator pilot who in later years retired from the RAAF as a Group Captain. During the two days I stayed at East Sale, I managed to talk my way into a single seat Vampire Mk31 for some hack-flick-zoom practice, a Dakota for a few night circuits, finally returning home to Townsville in the Lincoln, well satisfied with life. They were truly the good old days.
Nearby revetments held several derelict Douglas Dauntless dive bombers, left behind in 1945. Bullet holes had punctured their tyres, and instruments stolen for souvenirs but with a lot of TLC they could have been made air-worthy. If I knew then, what I know now about the future value of those machines, I would have bought them on the spot and taken them back home for restoration. But for now they remained behind as battered but still proud reminders of the savage carrier–borne air battles of the Pacific war. Some years after the military abandoned the airstrip, a team of enthusiasts arrived to ship the old dive-bombers back to USA. I am glad their story had a happy ending.
By1958, Guam and the USAF base at Clark Field in the Philippines, represented the main strategic American presence in the Western Pacific region, and the Australian government decided to close down Momote, leaving a small team of aviation staff to administer inter-island civil flights. Many of the RAAF married quarters still held valuable material such as furnishings and roofing tiles and it was decided to transport these back to Townsville.
For this task, freight panniers were attached to hard points in the bomb bay of our Lincoln. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to see the islands that had become so well known during the Pacific war, and I pestered the CO into agreeing that my crew should do the job. There were three pilots (myself as captain, Flight Sergeant Daryl Picton, and Pilot Officer Ian Symonds as second pilots), Flying Officer Brian Bolger and Flight Sergeant Barry Nichols as navigators, with Pilot Officers Gordon Bibby, Cliff Dohle, Flying Officer Bruce Stein, and Flight Sergeant Colin Stewart as the signallers. Pprune readers might like to follow this story on their atlas. Meanwhile I apologise profusely to the Mods for the larger picture of the Lincoln route shown here but after numerous attempts at working through photo-bucket I am buggered if I could work out how to reduce the picture size to the desired 640X480.
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y25/HSWL/CoralSeaLincolnroute.jpg
The 1000-mile flight to Momote was planned via Port Moresby in New Guinea, then right a few degrees to climb over Mount Victoria in the Owen Stanley Ranges. The jungle clad mountains in this area rise above 13,000 feet and crews don oxygen masks as the aircraft climbs laboriously to clear the mountains. Once clear of the northern coastline of New Guinea at the wartime airstrip of Kokoda, the track edges further left over the former Japanese occupied township of Lae. From here the direct track to Momote cleared the mist-covered mountains of the Huon Peninsula. The airstrip of Finschafen once defended by hordes of Zero fighters is visible through cloud gaps on the left while on the right wing tip is Cape Gloucester on the western reaches of New Britain. Leaving land at Cape King on Umboi Island, the aircraft heads north out over the Bismark Sea.
If the Battle of Britain was a defining moment of World War Two in 1940, the Battle of the Bismark Sea was its equivalent on the other side of the world in 1943. Then, an armada of Japanese troop ships sailed into the Bismark Sea from Rabaul in New Britain to reinforce Japanese held Lae. Hugging the northern coastline of New Britain and hidden by low cloud and torrential rain, the transports and escorting warships were spotted by Allied reconnaissance aircraft. As the convoy entered the Vitiaz Strait on its final run into Lae, it was attacked by Bostons and rocket firing Beaufighters of the RAAF and finished off by Mitchells and Flying Fortresses of the USAF. Few ships escaped the carnage and thousands of Japanese troops were lost. The Battle of the Bismark Sea was a turning point in the war in the Pacific.
.Now 15 years later and a few minutes after taking off on the first leg of what promised to be fascinating tour of wartime history, the Lincoln experienced a glycol coolant leak on one of the engines. Left unchecked, the glycol leak could lead to engine seizure and possible fire, leaving me with little choice but to get on the ground as soon as possible. Fortunately the heavy weight landing was smooth, and after touch-down I used the full runway length to avoid causing hot brakes.
The problem was soon fixed and we got away again arriving at Momote in the late afternoon after a six hour flight. Cruising at 10,000 feet over the warm expanse of the Bismark Sea, I pondered the events that I had read about as an eleven year old lad in England in 1943. The Bismark Sea meant nothing to me in those days, preoccupied as I was with spotting German Focke Wulf 190's and Dornier 217's that flew in at low level, dropped bombs and belted back to France. In the Lincoln, the crew was lost in thought, silently contemplating the scene far below where scattered white cumulus drifted gently over the graveyard of ships and men.
At Momote, we stayed for two days of sight seeing while the aircraft was serviced and the roofing tiles loaded. We slept under mosquito nets in the stifling heat, and during the day I explored the cockpits of the Dauntless dive-bombers. Fortunately I did not see the large jungle spiders that were known to live in thick webs behind the instrument panels. Neither did I see any crocodiles, although the odd loud splash from the local swamp indicated that something was out there.
Among the families living on Manus was a teenager by the name of Max Loves. The thrilling sight of visiting Lincolns and Mustangs must have stirred his soul because when the base closed down and his family returned to Australia, Max joined the RAAF as a trainee pilot. After winning his Wings, he flew Mustangs, Vampires and Sabres. The Empire Test Pilot’s Course followed, leading to testing of Lightnings and other exotic machines at Boscombe Down. I first met Max in 1966 when he was in Milan evaluating the Macchi jet trainer for the RAAF. At the time, I was ferrying a new Avro (yes, it was the real Avro – not Bae!) 748 to Australia. We remained close friends over the years; meeting occasionally at Rye on the Mornington Peninsula to tell lies and talk aeroplanes. And to think that his distinguished career as a test pilot all started from his first sight of massed Merlins at Momote. Rather like Toad of Toad Hall and the Yellow Roadster!
The return flight was planned as an OFE (Operational Flying Exercise). The route was low level at 1500-ft eastward across the Bismark Sea to Kavieng on New Ireland, then south to the former Japanese military stronghold of Rabaul on northern New Britain. From there we planned to Milne Bay on the south-eastern tip of New Guinea and after that directly to Townsville. Any ships seen were to be photographed and their description reported in code on the RAAF Area Guard High Frequency. This was always a convenient excuse for a low pass and beat up. Officially, beat ups were frowned upon, but only if you killed yourself. Estimated flight time was ten hours.
After start-up, I kept the run-up brief to avoid overheating the liquid cooled engines. With the bomb bay panniers full of roofing tiles and the wings brimming with fuel the Lincoln used up the full length of the 5400ft runway. There were no take-off performance charts in those days and the Lincoln was held on the runway until the last second. On a hot tropical day we would barely reach lift off speed of 105 knots before the ocean would flash underneath us leaving a swirl of slipstream on the water. This usually gave the rear gunner (who had his back to the engine), an unwanted thrill. The normal takeoff boost on the Rolls Royce Merlin Mk 102 engine was +12 pounds of boost (54 inches of manifold pressure). At the discretion of the pilot, additional power was available by advancing the throttles “through the gate” which gave an emergency maximum of +18 boost, (66 inches of manifold pressure). Emergency power not only reduced engine life but with the open exhausts of the inboard engines only fifteen feet away from the cockpit, the noise was extremely painful to the ears.
Engines occasionally failed on take-off and the swing cause by the failure of an outboard engine could be hard to manage. At emergency power, the resulting swing could be downright dangerous. One pilot, a Warrant Officer who had flown Liberators, was so fearful of engine failure during take off that he always used the emergency power of +18 boost. He explained away this apparent contradiction by saying if an engine was going to fail, it would be most likely early in the peace at maximum power, leaving him plenty of runway to abort the take-off. While he never experienced the opportunity to test his theory on Lincolns, he sure managed to wear out a few engines. He was killed a few years later. Not in a Lincoln, but in a Vampire that experienced engine failure after take-off. On this occasion I decided that we needed maximum over-boost to get airborne with our heavy load.
The closure of the base meant that ours was probably the last Lincoln out. In view of this auspicious occasion, we had been given the nod on the evening before by a senior (half-tanked) officer to beat up the airstrip on departure, and to make it good. I readily agreed, rightly considering it churlish to refuse. Today an unauthorized beat up would be court martial offence and understandably so. But in 1958, a very good year for beat ups, there was a less responsible and more care-free attitude in the RAAF and in any case, a rousing beat up was usually enjoyed by all – within reasonable safety bounds of course.
The Lincoln staggered to 1500 ft and wheeling it over on one wing, I opened up to full power (+12 and 3000rpm this time) aiming right down the centre of the runway. The airmen below came out from under the coconut trees to watch. Having seen beat ups before, I knew what a thrill it was to spectators to see this enormous flying machine flash by at low level with its incredible sound of four Rolls Royce engines at full throttle. The same noise put out by four Spitfires in close formation, if you can imagine it. At 26 years old and in command of this beautiful old bomber, I was in my element. Ten years earlier I had been a broom wielder in a Camden hangar sweeping the dusty floor around the wheels of a Lockheed Hudson and dreaming of being a RAAF pilot.
There was no time for reflection now and after pulling the Lincoln up into a steep climbing turn we set course for the first leg to Rabaul. Hardly had the second pilot set cruise power when a radio call came from the RAAF air-sea rescue launch just off shore beyond the reef. Could we carry out just one low pass so that the crew of the launch could take some photographs? To the annoyance of the navigator sitting at his desk behind the captain’s seat, I said no problem – here we come, ready or not. Christ! As I write this, I cringe at the stupidity of youth and wonder how I survived. The navigator had already set up his charts and now his neat log would have to be revised with a new departure time. Stiff – I thought, and brought the Lincoln around to line up on the launch two miles away. This was inexcusable brashness on my part but I soon flushed any guilty thoughts away and concentrated on the task at hand.
The launch was painted a pale blue with RAAF roundels on each bow. Its ensign fluttered at masthead and I noticed a canvas sunshade over the stern. We went very low over the boat at 220 knots and full power, pulling up into the usual steep climbing turn, and waving to the crew on the launch. The rear gunner who of course could not see the launch until we passed, called up on the intercom that our propeller slipstream had clean blown away the sun shade on the launch. Well satisfied with the congratulations from the launch skipper on the mighty beat up, we again set sail for Rabaul, accompanied by the bitching of the navigator who had lost his chart under the table during the tight turns. In the light of fifty-four years since that day at Momote, I find myself almost too embarrassed to record this episode on Pprune. But then it was different in those days..
Time dims the finer details of the flight to Townsville, but there were two events that I clearly remember. The first as we flew eastbound skimming the waves over the Pacific between Momote and Rabaul when the tactical navigator sitting up front in the bomb-aimer position, spotted a lone outrigger canoe a few miles off Rabaul. It had a sail attached and the occupant was probably out there catching his family’s evening meal. This was too good an opportunity to miss and the radio altimeter eased steadily down to 100 feet as we bored in to show the flag for Australia, so to speak.
To our amazement, the fisherman dived overboard as we approached. Concerned that the slipstream might damage his frail craft, I banked the Lincoln at the last second and asked for a report from our rear gunner. He saw the fisherman surface next to his out-rigger and then we were gone. It later occurred to me that 14 years earlier, Rabaul and its surrounding waters had been a maelstrom of bombs and machine gun fire from low flying Japanese and American aircraft. The poor bloody fisherman, seeing a four engine bomber bearing down upon him, may have understandably thought that World War Three had started, and the baddies were out to get him.
My youthful immaturity on this trip surfaced again as we flew past Samurai Island, 30 miles from Milne Bay on the eastern tip of New Guinea. It could have ended in tragedy but for good fortune. During operational training exercises, ship sightings would be reported, which often necessitated us getting up close and personal to photograph the vessel concerned. This usually meant a fly-past at 500 ft parallel to the ship’s course while the signallers would take snaps with a large F51 hand-held camera and might even even try their luck at sending greetings in morse code using an Aldis lamp.
I fancied myself at ship identification and after the navigator picked up an echo on the radar I climbed a little then spotted a low shape streaming a long wake. Calling the crew to action stations, and having identified the ship as an Australian destroyer I decided that this was big game and that we should practice mock warfare. Opening the bomb doors, I opened up the power and increased speed toward the destroyer for a dummy torpedo attack. The Lincoln carried depth charges and torpedoes mainly for anti-submarine use, although in this case the bomb racks held four cargo panniers full of roofing tiles instead. The destroyer captain was not to know this of course, nor would he know our nationality. Normally, exercises with naval ships were well planned in advance, and the ships knew the games to play. My intention was to get in low for a quasi-legal beat up, wave madly at the sailors as we passed by and turn once again for home.
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y25/HSWL/Bowbell2.jpg
USS Bowbell at high speed.
As we approached at 100 ft, the destroyer shape turned into a frigate and the massive bow wave indicated a surprising turn of speed. It then heeled over in a tight turn just before we roared over at mast height. A signaller on the left window look-out position of our Lincoln then spotted what appeared to be a battery of guns pointing straight at us and tracking our flight path. As we flashed overhead I was startled to see an American flag streaming from the masthead. The rear gunner was quick enough to read the name Bowbell on the ship’s stern.
I closed the bomb doors and pulled up into a steep climbing turn, showing the red, white and blue roundels under the wings. This time I came around for a slow fly-past for our cameras and saw the ship’s crew now on deck and all waving. We circled a few more times and waved back before departing once again for home. The whole episode troubled me, and I pondered the saying that fools step in where angels fear to tread. We sent a sighting report to the RAAF Area Guard facility in Sydney, describing the US ship, its course, estimated position and speed.
Not long after, we received a coded message that the ship was indeed the USS Bowbell and that it was heading to Singapore. Later we found out that US personnel were being threatened by political riots in Singapore and that the Bowbell was on a rescue mission. There was an added message from the captain saying that he had nearly mistaken our Lincoln for a rebel Indonesian bomber about to attack his ship and that he had almost shot us down. He had a good point of course, because understandably he would have been on instant alert at seeing a dirty great unidentified four engine bomber with open bomb doors boring in at 100 feet with seemingly warlike intentions.
I asked the signaller to acknowledge receipt of this message from Bowbell, but restrained myself from adding that if the Bowbell had shot at us, we would have retaliated by dropping our load of roofing tiles down his funnel! We heard nothing more of the episode, but I still have a prized close up photograph taken of the Bowbell at high speed.
A few days after the Bowbell incident, I flew a Lincoln to the RAAF Central Flying School at East Sale in order to renew my A2 grade instructors rating. That was done with Flight Lieutenant Ray Drury, a former Liberator pilot who in later years retired from the RAAF as a Group Captain. During the two days I stayed at East Sale, I managed to talk my way into a single seat Vampire Mk31 for some hack-flick-zoom practice, a Dakota for a few night circuits, finally returning home to Townsville in the Lincoln, well satisfied with life. They were truly the good old days.