HIS3MHI – Making History – Page 01 Miracle on the Murray

HIS3MHI – Making History – Page 01 Miracle on the Murray – essay by Les Beard EARLY 1942 WAS A DESPERATE TIME FOR AUSTRALIA. In the dark weeks following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour and its subsequent and unchecked rampages against the British in Malaya and the Dutch in the Netherlands East Indies, the United States had to make some very big decisions. The forces of General Douglas MacArthur were under siege and facing inevitable and humiliating defeat in the Philippines and it was clear the Pacific would soon be a Nipponese lake. The Americans rapidly decided that Australia – cut off from a beleaguered Britain facing its own desperate struggle with Nazi Germany – must not fall to the Japanese. They poured massive defence funds into a country possessing a population of only seven millions and suffering from poor transportation systems and a thin and fragile manufacturing base. A major plank in this remarkable history-making military infrastructure programme was the massive Tocumwal aircraft repair and assembly depot built at a substantial cost of two million pounds – equating to $A139.1 millions at 2014 monetary values. [01] This leads to rumination as to why Tocumwal – a sleepy little Southern NSW town of no great account, roughly halfway between Echuca and Yarrawonga on the Murray River – was chosen as the location for the airfield. Above: [01] The aerial photograph – taken soon after the Tocumwal facility was completed – allows an appreciation of its massive size. In his 1966 work The Corps of Engineers: The War Against Japan, for the Centre of Military History in the USA, Karl Dod describes Tocumwal as...a gigantic project and the largest job in the entire [Australia] airfield program. [Dod, P 122]. The depot covered 16 square miles. It featured four long runways, 70 miles of roads and 608 buildings, including four hangars large enough to accommodate any bombers then operating with the US Army Corps. Two of them can be picked out middle foreground. The Americans named the facility McIntyre Field in memory of an Air Corps test pilot killed in a flying accident in Queensland. [The figure of $A139.1 millions is arrived at via the Australian Reserve Bank Pre-Decimal Currency Calculator, which employing an annual average inflation rate of 5.1%, values a 1942 Australian pound at 69.55 2014 dollars.] HIS3MHI – Miracle on the Murray – Page 02 No evidence of the decision-making process has surfaced. It is not known whether the Americans chose the site, or simply left the decision to the Australian Government. However, there is a general clue in Red Ted, [02] Ross Fitzgerald’s biography of Edward Theodore, [03] the controversial former Queensland Premier and Federal Treasurer who headed up the newly created Allied Works Council. This body, possessing substantial powers of material acquisition and organisation of labour, was established by the Federal Labor Government to manage major defence projects in consultation with the Americans. Theodore enjoyed the substantial backing of Labor Prime Minister, John Curtin. As Fitzgerald notes, Tocumwal was: …strategically placed so far south in case of invasion. [Fitzgerald, p 404]. Hindsight suggests Tocumwal’s reasonable proximity to Melbourne – the epicentre of Australian Defence management in 1942 – may have been a factor in site selection. Fitzgerald also explains Tocumwal was: …built at considerable speed, many of the runways and hangars had been constructed between 23 February, 1942 and 15 May, 1942, when the U.S. Army Air Corps arrived to set up a base. [Fitzgerald, p 404]. When the size and cost of the Tocumwal facility is considered, a construction period of less than two months was miraculous. [04] [05] However, the achievement must be viewed against a landscape of desperate times calling for desperate measures. In 2015 – 73 years after it was built and 43 years after it closed – argument endures as to whether Tocumwal was part of a so-called Brisbane Defence Line. Allegations that a firm plan had existed to abandon the top half of Australia in the event of a Japanese invasion caused a huge political eruption in Australia in the early years of World War II Above from left: [02] Cover of Fitzgerald’s 1994 Theodore biography, Red Ted. [03] Theodore [1884-1950] was drafted into the AWC chairmanship because of his considerable administrative skills. [04] There is scant photographic material on the construction of the Tocumwal Depot. This photo shows one of the hangars under construction. Because of the shortage of metals, the trusses were manufactured from green hardwood. [05] Three riggers pause for the AWC photographer. HIS3MHI – Miracle on the Murray – Page 03 The allegations led to a controversial Royal Commission, which contributed to the failure of conservatives led by former Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, to regain federal power at elections in 1943. Menzies and his former ministers vehemently denied they engineered an abandonment plan whilst in office prior to 1941. So, where lies the truth? The phrase, Brisbane Line, appears to have originated with one of the officers who accompanied MacArthur to Australia when the general and his family were ordered out of the Philippines by President Franklin Roosevelt. In American Caesar, [06] his lauded 1979 biography of MacArthur, William Manchester, [07] relates that when the party flew in to Alice Springs, MacArthur’s distressed wife refused to travel further by air, forcing the Australian authorities to hastily arrange a special train to get the general’s family party down to Adelaide. While the little narrow gauge train crept through the Outback, the military officers flew on to Melbourne to ascertain the military situation. Three days later at Kooringa [8] – 130 kms from Adelaide – MacArthur’s deputy chief of staff, Brigadier General Richard Marshall, [09] came aboard to report his hurried findings. The news was grim. The Allied Army that MacArthur expected to lead for reconquest of the Philippines simply did not exist. Australia’s frontline troops were in the Middle East and few Americans were in the country. [10] Modern armaments were scarce. There were grave fears that the Allies could lose Australia and Marshall told the general that: In Melbourne, there was talk of withdrawing to the Brisbane Line, the settled southern and eastern coasts and abandoning the northern ports to the Japanese. In a word, the situation was desperate and it would continue to be for some time. [Manchester, p 246]. According to Manchester, MacArthur later described Marshall’s report as his greatest shock and surprise of the whole war. [Manchester, p 246]. Above from left: [06] The beautifully named Caesar is neither footnoted nor referenced and the source for Marshall’s disclosures at Kooringa is not identified. [07] Manchester [1922-2004] was a towering American academic and writer with prodigious research skills. [08] Deserted Burra Railway Station at Kooringa. Bypassed by a new standard gauge line to Alice Springs, it saw its last train in 1999. Douglas MacArthur was almost certainly the most famous person to pass through its bleak surrounds. [09] McArthur’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Richard Marshall, [1895-1973] the bearer of bad news at Kooringa. [10] General without an army. MacArthur, his wife, Jean, and son, Arthur, photographed on March 20, 1942, at Terowie where the general delivered his famous I shall Return to the Philippines remarks before changing to a faster train for Adelaide and Melbourne. His expression reflects inner despair. HIS3MHI – Miracle on the Murray – Page 04 It can be safely assumed the source for this gloomy assessment was Lieutenant General George Brett, [11] [12] who until McArthur’s sudden arrival, was the senior American military figure in Australia. Brett had reached Melbourne barely a month before MacArthur and found himself wrestling with beginnings of the massive United States-driven military build-up. On March 03, two weeks after the devastating Japanese air raid on Darwin, which caused severe panic in Australian Government and military circles, Brett had prepared a situation report for the Adjutant General of the U.S. War Department in which he concluded The enemy will attack North-West Australia soon. [Cox, p 39]. MacArthur, who virulently disliked Brett, did not ask him to amplify this opinion and within days of his arrival in Australia had chosen instead to meet with senior Australian military figures and Prime Minister John Curtin. [13] [14] It is entirely possible that these discussions provided the foundations for what MacArthur wrote 22 years later in his autobiography, Reminiscences: [15] The Australian Chiefs of Staff understandably had been thinking and planning only defensively. They had traced a line generally along the Darling River, from Brisbane, midway up the eastern shoreline, to Adelaide on the south coast. This would be defended to the last breath. Such a plan, however, involved the sacrifice of three-quarters or more of the continent; the great northern and western reaches of the land. Behind this so-called Brisbane Line were the four or five most important cities and the large proportion of the population – the heart of Australia. As the area to the north fell to the enemy, detailed plans were made to withdraw from New Guinea and lay desolate the land above the Brisbane Line. Industrial plans and utilities in Northern territory would be dynamited, military facilities would be levelled, port installations rendered useless and irreparable. In fact, there was a plan. This was drawn up in February, 1942, by Sir Iven McKay, [16] Commander-in-Chief of the Australian Home Forces, but researchers and writers say it did not involve the scorched earth scenario so dramatically painted by McArthur in Reminiscences. Above from left: [11] George Brett, [1886-1963] was a former Chief of the US Army Air Corps.

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