Queenslanders played a brave role in the Pacific’s Battle of Midway

Australians played an important role in the triumphs in the Pacific through the vital work of Queenslander Eric Feldt’s Coastwatchers, those brave souls who hid out in jungles in occupied territory, risking horrific deaths to report on Japanese fleet movements.

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This week I sat enthralled during the movie Midway, a Hollywood action extravaganza that highlights the ferocity of the great naval battle that helped turn back the Japanese tsunami threatening to engulf the Pacific in World War II.

I watched it in one of those hi-tech 4-D theatres which meant that the seats rocked every time there was an explosion and I got a puff of wind at the back of my head every time a plane took off.

Needless to say the real thing was far more dramatic. The battle occurred on the high seas near Midway Attol on June 4-7, 1942, half a year after the Japanese had destroyed the American fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

Australians played an important role in the triumphs in the Pacific through the vital work of codebreakers and Queenslander Eric Feldt’s Coastwatchers, those brave souls who hid out in jungles in occupied territory, risking horrific deaths to report on Japanese fleet movements.

The American aircraft carrier USS Yorktown is under heavy attack from Japanese aircraft during World War II’s Battle Of Midway in 1942.

But there was also another Queensland connection with the American triumphs of the time.

The battle of Midway came just after astonishing raids on Japan that were led from far out in the Pacific by American pilot Jimmy Doolittle.

On April 18, 1942 Doolittle and 15 other American crews took off from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet to launch the first-ever air raids on Japan 1200km away.

Flying twin-engine B-25s, they bombed Tokyo and other Japanese cities before most of them parachuted out over Japanese-occupied China when their aircraft ran out of fuel. Some of the raiders were killed, but most made it back to safety with Chinese help.

The Japanese are said to have killed 250,000 Chinese civilians and 70,000 soldiers in reprisals.

Jimmy Doolittle led the Doolittle Raiders in the attack on Japan

Doolittle showed himself as a brilliant pilot from his earliest days training in California.

In 1922, he flew a biplane right across the USA from Pablo Beach in Florida to Rockwell Field in San Diego, California, in less than a day, making just one stop to refuel in Texas.

Three years later he faced Bundaberg’s Bert Hinkler in the most prestigious air race of the time, the 1925 Schneider Trophy for seaplanes and flying boats.

At the time Hinkler was living in England and working as the chief test pilot for the Avro company in Southampton.

The Schneider Trophy races were set for Chesapeake Bay near Baltimore, USA.

Lieutenant-Colonel Jimmy Doolittle takes off from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet to lead the first bombing raid on Japan in 1942

On his immigration form Hinkler advised the US authorities that he had been in their country briefly in 1921, on the way home to England from Queensland and, no he was not a polygamist, no he was not an anarchist, he was not a criminal, his next of kin was Mrs Nance Hinkler of Hedge End, Hampshire, he had grown to five feet four and a quarter inches (163cm), he had dark complexion, dark brown hair and blue eyes.

Bert Hinkler is welcomed by crowds in Queen Street on his way to the Brisbane City Hall after his historic flight from England in 1928.

Hailed by the American press as ``the airman with the wonder hands’’ Hinkler’s racing aircraft was a Gloster III, a pugnacious-looking wooden biplane on floats. It had white wings and a light blue fuselage shaped like a fat round .45 calibre bullet.

It was powered by a 12-cylinder engine blasting out 700 horsepower.

But in stormy weather Hinkler was taxiing the aircraft on the water before the race when what he described as ``the terrific pounding of the waves’’ caused the undercarriage struts to give way and the wings to collapse.

In a sign of what was coming in World War II, Doolittle’s 600-horsepower, black-and-gold Curtiss R3C-2 biplane, hitting 374.27km/h, took out the championship.

Three years later Hinkler made the first solo flight from England to Australia.

Grantlee Kieza’s latest biograpy `Macquarie’ is published by HarperCollins/ABC Books

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