HIS3MHI – Making History – Page 01

Miracle on the Murray – essay by Les Beard

EARLY 1942 WAS A DESPERATE TIME FOR .

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 had to make some very big decisions. The forces of 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 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.]

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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, . As Fitzgerald notes, Tocumwal was:

…strategically placed so far south in case of invasion. [Fitzgerald, p 404].

Hindsight suggests Tocumwal’s reasonable proximity to – 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.

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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.

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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] , [1886-1963] was a former Chief of the US Army Air Corps. He irritated MacArthur who blamed him for poor air arrangements to get him to Australia from the Philippines. [12] The Douglas Cox biography on Brett, Airpower Leadership on the Frontline is an interesting source of detail on American appreciation of Australia’s defence position in early 1942. [13] MacArthur forged a strong relationship with John Curtin [1885-1945]. [14] This photo shows the Prime Minister escorting Macarthur into Parliament House in Canberra. [15] Cover of Reminiscences. [16] This portrait of Iven Mackay [1882-1966] hangs in the Australian War Memorial. .

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Jeffrey Grey, who penned the entry on Mackay in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, is scathing of MacArthur’s claims, writing that the general used the alleged existence of a Brisbane Line to…reinforce his image as the saviour of Australians allegedly prey to defeatism. [Grey, p 01]. Grey is firm that no line was ever drawn on a map and Mackay had not heard of the term, Brisbane Line, until newspapers took up the issue. He explains that in the event of invasion, McKay planned to position his meagre forces between Brisbane and Melbourne and not reinforce peripheral positions such as North Queensland. The Australian Chief of Staff had directed:

…that the region between Port Kembla and Newcastle was vital, and that, so long as it was held, Australia could continue to fight the war. Mackay's appreciation was current for only a few weeks. It was superseded by the knowledge that two divisions of the A.I.F. were returning from the Middle East. [Grey, p 01].

In May, the threat of invasion to Australia further eased when the Japanese were defeated in the naval Battle of the Coral Sea.

MacArthur, who had decided to confront the Japanese in New Guinea rather than Australia, began a reorganisation of his command, which saw George Brett recalled to the

United States in July. His replacement was the vigorous George Kenny [17] [18] who was determined to move Army Air Corps assets to Northern Australia and closer to the enemy. As he relates in his 1949 book General Kenney Reports: A Personal History of the , he inspected the Fourth Air Depot at Tocumwal in August, 1942, and then met in

Melbourne with Major General Lincoln B. Rush [19] who headed U.S. Army Air Services Administrative, Supply, Maintenance and Engineering Command in the South-West Pacific: So, I brought up the subject of Tocumwal. No more supplies were to be sent there for any reason, the airplane repair work was to be finished as soon as possible and everything except the runways and buildings was to be moved to Brisbane or further north as soon as I could get storage space at Townsville. [20] [Kenney, p 78].

Above from left: [17] . [18] MacArthur decorates his air force chief after Allied aircraft had destroyed a Japanese supply convoy in the Battle of the Bismark Sea in March, 1943. The two men enjoyed a close relationship. [19] Lincoln appears not to have impressed Kenney and he was shunted off to the New Caledonia backwater. [20] The Fourth Air Depot was re-established at Townsville and it grew into a huge facility. Over 100 aircraft can be counted in this 1943 photo.

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The relocation decision – it had the total backing of MacArthur – caused consternation and as Kenney further recounts:

Lincoln at this point began to look a little worried. He asked me what I was going to do with Tocumwal and reminded me that we had put a lot of money into the place. I told him to give it to the Australians, or back to the Aboriginals if the Aussies wouldn’t take it. [Kenney, p 78].

And this is precisely what happened.

The Royal Australian Air Force – to its probable amazement and bemusement – was gifted McIntyre Field and the Americans were all but gone by the end of 1942. As well as fulfilling a role as a RAAF maintenance and repair depot, Tocumwal was home base for various flying units, including Number Seven Operational Training Unit [7 OTU] [21] [22] qualifying aircrew for the B-24 Liberator heavy bomber. At its peak, over 5,000 personnel were on site. Some 700 aircraft, including the 7OTU, machines, were scrapped at

Tocumwal after the war. [23] The base closed in 1962.

The facility now operates as a local Government airport. [24] [25]

Top from left: [21] Liberators parked on one of the vast Tocumwal hardstands. [22] Assembled flight crews pose in front of Liberator A72-43 during a 1945 conversion course. The machine was struck off charge in December, 1952. Note the hangar in the far background. [23] Liberator wings being fed into the Tocumwal smelter post WWII. Note the dozens of machines in the background awaiting the same fate. Only one Australian Liberator – now being restored in Melbourne – escaped scrapping. Above: [24] The aerial photograph of current Tocumwal Airfield contrasts with the circa 1942 image on Page 01. [25] Three of the original hangars survive, but their future is unclear.

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This essayist leaves the last word to John Curtin.

In Background Briefings, Clem Lloyd and Richard Hall note the Prime Minister telling journalists in November, 1942, that:

…the great Tocumwal air base, which was designed for repair and fitting was now comparatively useless. It was built at a cost of two million pounds and was decided at a time before the Americans came here, and when defence of Australia on a line far south of the present defensive area was envisaged.

It is clear, then, that some sort of defence line did exist in Australia in early 1942 and – whatever it might have been called – that miraculous Tocumwal was a vital part of it.

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WORD COUNT

2,103 exclusive of headings and long quotes

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cox, D, 2006, Airpower Leadership on the Frontline: Lt-Gen George H. Brett and Combat Command, Air University Press, , , USA. Dod, K, 1966, The Corps of Engineers: The War Against Japan, Centre of Military History, U.S. Army, Washington, D.C., USA. Fitzgerald, R, 1994, Red Ted: The Life of E. G. Theodore, Queensland University Press, Brisbane, Qld. Grey, J, 2000, Australian Dictionary of Biography: Sir Iven Giffard Mackay, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT. Kenney, G, 1949, General Kenney Reports: A Personal History of the Pacific War, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York, USA. Lloyd, C and Hall, R, 1997, Background briefings: John Curtin’s War, National library of Australia, Canberra, ACT. MacArthur, D, 1964, Reminiscences, McGraw Hill Book Company, New York, USA. Manchester, W, 1979, American Caesar, Hutchinson Publishing Group, London, UK.

VISUAL SOURCES

01 ozatwar.com 02 scan by essayist 03 cooperative-individualism.org 04 ozatwar.com 05 ibid 06 scan by essayist o7 searchquotes.com 08 spiritland.net 09 wikipedia.org 10 johnnypays.com 11 dmairfield.com 12 scan by essayist 13 wikipedia.com 14 john.curtin.edu.au 15 scan by essayist 16 abd,anu.edu.au 17 corbisimages.com 18 chicagoboyz.net 19 theworldsmilitaryhistory.wikia.com 20 500thbsq.com 21 b24australia.org.au 22 ibid 23 ibid 24 hostaccommodation.com.au 25 photo by essayist