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...Group arrived Clark Field in early November. This was one of the few B-17s not destroyed or damaged beyond repair during the Japanese attack on December 8th. Ten days later, it was evacuated from Del Monte, Mindanao, to Batchelor Field, Darwin, Australia. On December 24, Mueller flew it up to Del Monte Field for further orders. On December 25, accompanied by a B-17D, it took off at 04:30 in the morning and headed south to Japanese-occupied Davao, Mindanao, where the two aircraft bombed the airfield there. The two met fierce opposition by antiaircraft fire and Japanese Zeros of the 3d Kokutai. Although severely damaged, both planes made it back to Batchelor Field, but required depot overhaul and never flew in combat again . (1)
Early in 1942, in Australia, the problems of land and sea transportation made air delivery the only reliable method of moving critical military supplies north to the beleaguered Allied forces in the Philippines, Java, and New Guinea. However, the War Department in Washington had not authorized the U.S. Army Air Forces in Australia (USAFIA) to operate an air transport organization. Moreover, the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) rarely airlifted cargo at that time. While transport-type aircraft had been requested from the United States, priority demands for combat airplanes delayed delivery of planes, such as C-47s and LB-30s, uniquely designed to haul cargo.
On January 28, Maj. Gen. George H. Brett, the first USAFLA commander, directed that all combat airplanes unfit for combat be made part of a new directorate for air transport, within the Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA) "to overcome the immediate airlift shortage." (2) As a result, any airplane that could be made flyable was pressed into transport service. (3) In particular, a four-engine airplane capable of carrying a 4,800-pound payload at 250 mph was highly desirable. It could be fixed up to make the 2,000-mile round-trip cargo run between North Queensland and Port Moresby in less than ten hours of flying time.
One such aircraft, B-17C (40-2072), sat broken and abandoned at Batchelor Field, near Darwin. Despite extensive damage to its left wing and hundreds of bullet holes in its skin, she was made flyable. (4) A small section of metal tubing was used to fix the brake system and the damaged control cables were replaced. In this condition, and with its four engines operating, the plane was flown 900 miles south to Archerfield (Brisbane) for more extensive repairs and removal of all of its heavy armament.
In March 1943, the converted aircraft, redesignated "VH-CBA," was listed as the only B-17C assigned to the 22d Troop Carrier Squadron. Newsweek reporter John Lardner wrote of his encounter with the former bomber, now fully restored to flying status. He commented that the airplane had been neatly patched and was now ready for operation. (5)
On June 14, 1943, VH-CBA was parked at the RAAF aerodrome near Mackay, Queensland, 600 miles north of Brisbane on the northeast coast of Australia. Painted on the plane's olive-drab fuselage were the white, five-pointed stars marking it as belonging to the U.S. Army Air Forces (AAF). Unlike other AAF airplanes, however, there were no serial numbers on its tail.
A bystander would quickly note the airplane was a four-engine Boeing B-17C Flying Fortress, but with Australian civil registry. There were several other obvious differences between this plane and the newer B-17E and F-models operating elsewhere in the Southwest Pacific. This B-17 lacked the gracefully swooping vertical tail structure, a tail gunner's position, and the wider, controllable engine cowling flaps.
Three miles from where VH-CBA was parked was the city of Mackay, a popular seaside resort with wide streets, tropical gardens, and long avenues of imported Royal Palms. The U.S. Army and the American Red Cross jointly operated a rest and recreation (R&R) center there for American troops assigned to combat units in New Guinea. Planeloads of GIs from these remote outposts were regularly carried on the four-and-a-half hours flight from Port Moresby to Mackay. There, the men could find ten days of refuge from battlefield horrors and the hardships of Army life in the steamy, disease-ridden jungle.
Tragedy at Baker's Creek
Just before dawn on June 14, thirty-five passengers climbed aboard VH-CBA, now operated by a detachment of airmen from the 46th Troop Carrier Squadron (TCS), Fifth Air Force, based in Townsville. As the passengers passed through the small rear doorway of the striped-down bomber, they were directed to various floor locations inside. Some men sat on the fitted plywood that covered the drafty bomb bay doors. Others occupied the radio operator's compartment, while still others simply sat on the floor in the narrower section, aft of the radio compartment. Only the six-man flight crew occupied seats equipped with body restraints. The passengers were expected to huddle together in the confined space. They sat on their own duffel bags during the entire trip, leaving only to use the crude urinal relief tube located rearward at the tail-wheel bulkhead.
The plane carried forty-one American servicemen returning from their ten days of R&R leave at the American Red Cross Center in Mackay en route to their combat units in New Guinea. Fully loaded, the aircraft took off into ground fog and levelled off at an altitude of about 300 feet. In a matter of minutes, it made two 90-degree left turns at low altitude, then crashed in flames into a tree-lined, sugarcane paddock at Baker's Creek, five miles south of Mackay. (6) There was only one survivor.
For reasons of military security and morale, the incident was hushed-up by U.S. Army and Australian civil authorities. Nothing about the crash, or its magnitude, was allowed to be published or broadcast to the public. The tragic air crash, deemed the worst in the Southwest Pacific war, still rates as the worst aviation disaster in...
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