From versatile Catalinas , Bowditch hurled grenades at Japanese ammo barges and plucked frightened fisherman out of their boats for intelligence gathering...
*******************************************************
In another unusual wartime experience , Bowditch and operative , former Victorian wrestling champion ,George Carter, were sent to a Z- Force establishment near Toowoomba to help develop a new technique of parachuting men from Liberator bombers. Parachute drops were usually made from DC3 aircraft and when the Japanese saw one of these planes they went on the alert . It also made them suspect there were Allied troops on the ground receiving supplies. It was thought that a good way to insert a small special group would be to have them drop out of a bomber. The bomber could fly into a target area , unload some bombs and on the way out also drop parachutists for covert operations. Bowditch and Carter first practiced sliding out a chute in the bottom of a fuselage mock up.
After a night of heavy drinking in the mess, Bowdith was not feeling the best, and and when he entered the chute he jumped prematurely from the plane , ending up miles from the drop zone. He made his way to a road, was picked up by a farmer and asked to be taken to the nearest pub. While the military were out trying to find their missing parachutist he was having a hair of the dog. Carter , who revelled in physical fitness , enjoyed the jumps more than Bowditch. He was such a good chess player that he played Bowditch with his back turned.
During a break in parachuting tests , they got a lift into Toowoomba with an officer whom Bowditch described as a real “ Colonel Blimp ” type- fat, pompous and nasty . The officer, who had a chauffeur driven car , picked up a young girlfriend and took her to the pictures.
Carter and Bowditch headed to a pub . When they ran out of drinking money , Bowditch went to the picture theatre and got them to flash a message across the screen for the officer. The officer, probably thinking there was an invasion on, rushed out and was most annoyed when Bowditch bit him for some drinking money. Driving back to camp in the officer’s car, Bowditch asked the driver to stop so that he could relieve himself. The gruff officer told the man to drive on . Bowditch reached across , grabbed the driver by the throat and the car skidded to a halt. Jim then jumped from the car, climbed onto the bonnet, and urinated on the windscreen. He got back in and they drove off without a word being said by the officer who just stared straight ahead.
The next day Bowditch was told a recommendation had been made to send him to officers’ training college but he had blown it by urinating on the officer’s car the night before. Even though he had missed the opportunity to become an officer and a gentleman , he described the urination event as one of the most satisfying pisses in his life. In one grand act it had shown the officer what he felt about his chauffeur , his car and his “dolly bird ”.
On several occasions Bowditch spoke as if he had been considered for or even participated in early selection trials for Operation Rimau (The Tiger ) , the ill- fated raid on Singapore shipping. In brief statements, Bowditch indicated he had been dropped or rejected because he had trouble with his eustachian tubes , lost his sense of direction when submerged and became seasick. He implied that he and several others had been rejected. While no corroboration of his involvement in training for Rimau could be found, the late WA Z Force man , Jack Sue said that because of secrecy at the time , it was possible that he could have gone through selection / elimination trials.
Operation Rimau was similar to the earlier successful Operation Jaywick. Instead of using canoes as had been the case in Jaywick , Rimau was provided with battery powered one- man submersibles known as Sleeping Beauties (SB) which were 12ft long. Bowditch said they were hard to control . Trying to ride a motorbike underwater was how he described the situation . The operator, wearing a kind of frogman’s suit with a mask and oxygen container , sat on the SB . There was a half steering wheel and a control panel . The idea was that the SB porpoised along , the rider coming to the surface to see where he was going and then dive. Once they got next to ships limpet mines were then to be attached . At the outset of training , it was made clear to all the men that if they found the submersibles hard to handle or had any other problems , nothing would be held against them for pulling out
As an indication of the dangerous and audacious raid, this is what happened to Rimau. The British submarine HMS Porpoise took the raiding party and their 15 submersibles into the attack zone, a Chinese junk was seized and the commandoes loaded their gear onto the vessel and sailed for Singapore; the captured Malay crew from the junk were brought back to Perth by the submarine . A patrol vessel was encountered and its crew , except for one who survived and raised the alarm , were killed with machine guns fitted with silencers.
The Japanese eventually captured a number of the raiders and they were regarded by the enemy as heroes because of their audacious planned attack on Singapore. In fact , the Japanese Commander in Chief , General Itagaki , addressing the field staff of the 7th Area Army, said he felt ashamed by the brave actions of the Rimau party , whom he described as heroes. For the Japanese to win the war , they had to be braver than these men . Because the captured men were regarded as heroes , they were beheaded in July l945 , a month before the war ended .
Published by Leo Cooper, London, 1991,this book confirm's Jim's comments about Hugo Pace,described as a "close friend " of his in Queensland , of French-Egyptian parentage , who had served in the French Foreign Legion and died in Dili in l945,aged 25,listed as one of the Rimau "unsung heroes". In other earlier published accounts of Rimau, Bowditch said Hugo had been wrongly listed as Page , there having been another person named Page in the party .Author Silver, with research by Major Tom Hall, tells how an Irish actor, Ron Fletcher , who had jumped ship in Australia subsequently served in the NT with the North Australia Observer Unit,known as the "Nackeroos", was selected for Rimau, eventually beheaded. Bowditch said there had been wild talk the Japanese knew in advance that another raid on Singapore was being planned , even that a spy in WA might have alerted the enemy. It was said that there had not been enough secrecy about the operation during training in Fremantle and that when the submersibles were being transported across the Nullarbor by train they had even been uncovered and shown to people .
Bowditch was sent to Morotai in the northern end of the Netherlands East Indies ,captured by the Allies in September 1944 and turned into a major staging post for the retaking of Borneo and the Philippines. There he was involved with Americans who flew “ Black Cats ”- Catalina aircraft painted black . The slow , highly manoeuvrable amphibians, with a crew of seven to nine, had twin 50 calibre machine guns and carried bombs . They could also fire torpedoes, drop depth charges and lay mines. Rescuing downed airmen was another role . Ammunition barges were attacked , and while the Americans blazed away with guns , Bowditch hurled down grenades. Though slow , the Catalinas often flew on the deck , skimming across the water at night to surprise the enemy. The Catalinas would swoop down on terrified fishermen, pull them aboard , and fly off with them for interrogation to obtain intelligence about the Japanese.
One of the men who worked with Bowditch as an interpreter in the Catalinas was Malay operative, Ali bin Salleh, who had been indentured into the Australian pearling industry at Broome when he was a teenager.
When war broke out , Ali had trained in Perth and then became a member of Z-Force , going on dangerous missions in the islands . He was especially useful for communicating with and interrogating locals.
The huge American workshops at Morotai impressed Bowditch. The American habit of only drinking tea cold and occasionally putting an egg into a glass of beer surprised . Promotion to the rank of sergeant came in January l945.
NEXT: More dangerous operations and the mutilation he performed which haunted him for the rest of his life.
