During the 1960s Indonesian Konfrontasi crisis , Darwin had air raid sirens which would be sounded in the event of an attack. Those sirens , tested each month, were operating right up until Cyclone Tracy . One of the sirens was mounted on a pole outside a hardware store in Oleander Street, Nightcliff, opposite the Sandalwood Street intersection.
The sighting of 10 high flying Indonesian TU-16 Badger jet bombers over northern Australian in September 1964 caused a wild flap. No 17 Squadron RAAF Sabre jet fighters flew in from Williamtown , NSW, on September 8 , and it was announced they would stay here indefinitely.
It was stated that this was the first time since WW11 that the RAAF had stationed a fighter squadron in Darwin. It was designed to ease anxiety about the lack of air defences in the north . Several years previously , a Sabre here on an exercise had crashed into Darwin Harbour and the pilot was killed.
Just how serious the situation became was illustrated when British Vulcan bombers, which looked like huge bats, said to be armed with nuclear bombs , operated out of Darwin, flying between here and Singapore. If I remember correctly ,the bombers did not have ejector seats for the crew .
Little Darwin was told that a V -bomber crew , consisting of some lively Irish gents, had a dispute with a pompous RAAF official and when leaving here for good , stood the powerful bomber on its tail, applied full thrust and shattered every window in the officer’s residence or some other building , perhaps the mess, on the base .
That brilliant novel, Merdeka Square,by Kerry B. Collison, Sid Harta Publishers, 1997, has a map of South East Asia which shows the flight path of the V- bombers from Darwin during 1962-65, the US submarine route through the Ombai-Wetar Trench and covert flights from the US Clarke Field Airforce Base , Manila ,over Indonesia.
The sighting of 10 high flying Indonesian TU-16 Badger jet bombers over northern Australian in September 1964 caused a wild flap. No 17 Squadron RAAF Sabre jet fighters flew in from Williamtown , NSW, on September 8 , and it was announced they would stay here indefinitely.
It was stated that this was the first time since WW11 that the RAAF had stationed a fighter squadron in Darwin. It was designed to ease anxiety about the lack of air defences in the north . Several years previously , a Sabre here on an exercise had crashed into Darwin Harbour and the pilot was killed.
Just how serious the situation became was illustrated when British Vulcan bombers, which looked like huge bats, said to be armed with nuclear bombs , operated out of Darwin, flying between here and Singapore. If I remember correctly ,the bombers did not have ejector seats for the crew .
Little Darwin was told that a V -bomber crew , consisting of some lively Irish gents, had a dispute with a pompous RAAF official and when leaving here for good , stood the powerful bomber on its tail, applied full thrust and shattered every window in the officer’s residence or some other building , perhaps the mess, on the base .
That brilliant novel, Merdeka Square,by Kerry B. Collison, Sid Harta Publishers, 1997, has a map of South East Asia which shows the flight path of the V- bombers from Darwin during 1962-65, the US submarine route through the Ombai-Wetar Trench and covert flights from the US Clarke Field Airforce Base , Manila ,over Indonesia.
The book is dedicated to the memory of Adik Irma Surjani Nasution , the five year old daughter of General Nasution who was shot dead during the failed assassination attempt on her father and other members of the Council of Generals... "When she lost her life, so too did Indonesia lose its innocence ."
Collison , a member of the Australian Embassy Air Attache Corps in Indonesia , was granted citizenship by President Suharto. His first novel The Tim-Tam Man covered the period after the fall of President Soekarno. A third in the trilogy, unsighted, is Jakarta.
