Australias Worst Aviation Disaster

At Batchelor Field, near Darwin, an American Flying Fortress lies broken with over 1,100 shrapnel and bullet holes in her skin. This war-torn, B-17C bomber has already performed sterling service in the air battle over the Philippines. Stripped of her heavy armament, she is made ready for transport duty to the beleaguered Aussie Diggers along the northern coast of New Guinea. In March 1943, she begins daily transport service, ferrying American GIs from the jungle battlefields of New Guinea to the US Army Rest Area in Mackay, Qld, for R&R leave. On June 14, 1943, she takes off from Mackay Airport on her final, tragic flight.

At Batchelor Field, near Darwin, an American Flying Fortress lies broken with over 1,100 shrapnel and bullet holes in her skin. This war-torn, B-17C bomber has already performed sterling service in the air battle over the Philippines. Stripped of her heavy armament, she is made ready for transport duty to the beleaguered Aussie Diggers along the northern coast of New Guinea. In March 1943, she begins daily transport service, ferrying American GIs from the jungle battlefields of New Guinea to the US Army Rest Area in Mackay, Qld, for R&R leave. On June 14, 1943, she takes off from Mackay Airport on her final, tragic flight. Revised edition published as Australia’s Worst Aviation Disaster in 2014 Australia and America’s Worst Aviation Disaster in Australia in the United States of America.

The unique feature of this book, and the tragic accident it documents, is not simply the number of deaths but, rather, the extraordinary loss that occurred to so many American families simultaneously and how important it is that people in Australia and America have ensured that this historic incident is long remembered.

Released in August 2023, “Alive…All Alive” has been researched and written by Lee McCarthy, a relative of one of the missing men. The book documents the true story of the 1945 disappearance of VH-CIZ (A65-83) – a Royal Australian Air Force C47-B with 25 servicemen on board. The Douglas Dakota was thought to have flown head-long into a severe tropical storm and subsequently crashed or ditched somewhere in the Banda Sea. The next day, when the plane could not possibly be in the air, two cryptic radio messages crackled into military receivers in Darwin – one of which stated the group were “Alive…All Alive.” Shortly after, a civilian radio operator received a third incomplete message from an unknown source. The message stated an unknown group were on Timor, were all OK, and were waiting to be picked up. Despite a frantic search effort, the men and the aircraft were never seen again. Alive...All Alive investigates the likelihood of the men’s survival, the possible outcomes of the incident, and the flawed Court of Inquiry that followed. Included are first hand accounts of the weather that day from veterans, airstrip conversations with the missing pilot, and many other details not disclosed in the Court of Inquiry. The book takes a deep-dive into war-time radio technology, explores clandestine military activity at the time, and dissects witness statements and exhibits in plain language. This is a must-read for anyone interested in war-time aviation, military radio technology, and survival in the Pacific War.

On the 25th of October, 1938, Australia's worst pre-war aviation disaster occurred on the western face of Mount Dandenong. The Douglas DC-2 Kyeema, operated by Australian National Airways (ANA), was en-route from Adelaide to Melbourne when it overshot Essendon Airport by some 20 miles as it descended through thick cloud, crashing into the side of Mount Dandenong, killing all 18 occupants. The accident, which still ranks as the sixth worst in Australia's commercial aviation history, electrified the Nation. The subsequent Inquiry found that an inadequate radio system and inexplicable, gross navigational errors by the experienced crew caused the disaster. The findings triggered the beginning of air traffic control as we now know it in Australia, and the eventual founding of the Department of Civil Aviation.

QF32 is the award winning bestseller from Richard de Crespigny, author of the forthcoming Fly!: Life Lessons from the Cockpit of QF32 On 4 November 2010, a flight from Singapore to Sydney came within a knife edge of being one of the world's worst air disasters. Shortly after leaving Changi Airport, an explosion shattered Engine 2 of Qantas flight QF32 - an Airbus A380, the largest and most advanced passenger plane ever built. Hundreds of pieces of shrapnel ripped through the wing and fuselage, creating chaos as vital flight systems and back-ups were destroyed or degraded. In other hands, the plane might have been lost with all 469 people on board, but a supremely experienced flight crew, led by Captain Richard de Crespigny, managed to land the crippled aircraft and safely disembark the passengers after hours of nerve-racking effort. Tracing Richard's life and career up until that fateful flight, QF32 shows exactly what goes into the making of a top-level airline pilot, and the extraordinary skills and training needed to keep us safe in the air. Fascinating in its detail and vividly compelling in its narrative, QF32 is the riveting, blow-by-blow story of just what happens when things go badly wrong in the air, told by the captain himself. Winner of ABIA Awards for Best General Non-fiction Book of the Year 2013 and Indie Awards' Best Non-fiction 2012 Shortlisted ABIA Awards' Book of the Year 2013

1940. Wartime Australia. Key members of Menzies' government die in a fiery plane crash. What went wrong and what happened next? In August 1940 Australia had been at war for almost a year when a Hudson bomber - the A16-97 - carrying ten people, including three cabinet ministers, crashed into a ridge near Canberra. In the ghastly inferno that followed the crash, the nation lost its key war leaders. Over the next twelve months, it became clear that the passing of Geoffrey Street, Sir Henry Gullett and James Fairbairn had destabilised Robert Menzies' wartime government. As a direct but delayed consequence, John Curtin became prime minister in October 1941. Controversially, this book also tells the story of whether Air Minister Fairbairn, rather than the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) pilot Bob Hitchcock, had been at the controls. Andrew Tink tells an engrossing and dramatic tale of a little-known aspect of Australia's political history.

On Sunday, March 27, 1977 KLM Flight 4805 and PANAM Flight 1736 both approached Las Palmas Airport in the Canary Islands, when a terrorist's bomb exploded on the airport. Both flights were diverted to the neighboring island of Tenerife. After Las Palmas Airport reopened first KLM Flight 4805 was cleared for takeoff, a few minutes later PANAM 1736 was cleared. Due to a number of misunderstandings both aircraft collided on the runway of Tenerife Airport during takeoff, killing 583 people.

"A riveting read--the stuff of nightmares, perhaps, but testimony to the resilience of the human spirit, and I couldn�t put it down." --Red Harrison, Weekend Australian "Tales of human endurance and survival don't come much better than the one Barry Ralph tells." --Michael Jacobson, Gold Coast Bulletin This tragic story is a moving account of the powers of human endurance. It recounts in authentic detail the fateful circumstances of Little Eva's last mission from a remote U.S. air base in Far North Queensland and follows the dedicated searchers and skilled trackers who risked their lives trying to save the lost crewmen. On December 2, 1942, Little Eva, an American B-24 Liberator, went down in the Australian outback after a failed bombing mission over New Guinea. When the bombs failed to dislodge, pilot Capt. Norman Crosson decided to make a run for their secondary target after the bombardier made adjustments to the bomb bay. On the way to their secondary target, the plane ran into a severe storm and crashed, forcing the men to parachute into the unknown. Four men died in the crash, while six crewmen landed safely. The fate of the remaining six airmen and the attempts at finding them in the outback by Queensland Police, led by Constable Bob Hagarty, are faithfully researched and recounted in this story of survival.