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Broome
 view
 A Dutch crew from a visiting Dornier Do 24 flying boat in Roebuck Bay being taken into Broome by launch in 1941.
[AWM 044613]
view
 One of the Dornier Do 24 flying boats destroyed during the Japanese attack on Broome on 3 March 1942. This wreckage can only be seen during king tides in Roebuck Bay.
[Image courtesy of the Broome Historical Society]
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Air raids
Broome
[DVA]
In February 1942, Broome in Western Australia was used as the Australian end of an air shuttle service from Java. Hundreds of evacuees were ferried to Broome in Dutch, American and Australian military and civil aircraft, including flying boats of Qantas Empire Airways. By the end of that month, the town was overflowing with military personnel and refugees. People slept wherever they could while waiting for a flight to continue their journey south. During the last weeks of February 1942 over 7000 people, including the former commander of the 8th Australian Division, Major-General H Gordon Bennett, who had escaped from Singapore, passed through Broome. On one single day, 57 aircraft landed there. view
 ‘The maps he made on our luggers... bring Japanese bombers to Broome’
[AWM DRL 1295]
On 3 March 1942, without warning, Japanese fighters attacked. The attack lasted no more than 20 minutes, during which time 25 Allied aircraft were destroyed and dozens of people were killed or wounded. Many victims were Dutch women and children packed into flying boats on the harbour either waiting to be unloaded and ferried ashore or waiting to depart for the southern states. Another 30 crew and passengers, mostly military personnel, were lost when an American Liberator bomber was shot down shortly after taking off. Precisely how many people died in the raid, and who they were, will never be known.  Correspondence, coins and trinkets that were
recovered from the wreckage of the sunken flying boats can be seen in the Broome museum. [Courtesy of the Broome Historical Society Museum]
Dozens of people lost their lives during the attack on Broome on 3 March 1942. Many of the Dutch women and children were trapped in flying boats in the harbour. Others were incinerated, drowned or taken by sharks as they attempted to swim ashore. The Dutch bodies recovered were first buried in the Broome War Cemetery but were later removed and reburied in a special area in the Karrakatta cemetery in Perth. Many were not identified and they lie in unmarked graves.
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