Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Excerpt from 'No Moon Tonight' by Don Charlwood, page 34. 

'In the flight office, the navigators were spreading their logs and charts on a table that ran the length of the room. I settled next to Joe Turnbull, the oldest of the twenty men. He was rubicund and vociferous and might easily have passed as a bookmaker, or perhaps a stage comedian. Joe had always professed to believe himself insufficiently intelligent to become a navigator.

"Listen, boy, I'm laying odds of five to two that I'm scrubbed after the next tests. They should have made me a gunner in the first place. Five to two! Any takers?"

No one ever took him seriously, but his success would have been a safe bet, for he always got through. We had begun to discuss the forecast winds when an agitated Flight Sergeant ran in.

"Is Turnbull here?"

"Yes!"
"You should be over at C Flight. All your crew are waiting for you."

"Tell them to come over here. I've got my stuff spread out on the table."

"Now, listen, Turnbull, don't start an argument at this stage."

I noticed that the Flight Sergeant was smiling. Evidently he knew Joe from past experience. But Joe picked up his belongings, grumbling, and walked out. Outside the moon was up, shining horizontally across the top of darkened trees. The night was ominously calm. Geoff sniffed the air as we walked to our bus. "There'll be a fog, all right. They'll probably divert us to the other end of the country."

in the dark interior of the bus, a sudden paralysis gripped me. I was a man in a dream who wanted to run away, but who was rooted to where he stood. This feeling remained with me in the aircraft. I looked incredulously about the cabin, at the desk and the chart, much as a man might look at the block in the moment before his execution. It was impossible! There were issues I needed to understand. But the engines had been started and we moved away.

Max Bryant watched us from the edge of the aerodrome, as I had watched the ops take-off on my first night at Litchfield. That night he wrote in his diary:

"I saw them go off – one up, two up, three up. They came thundering up the runway, lumbering heavily, lifting off at the end. At about 2350, with two crates still to take off, a terrible thing happened. There was a yell from control, "Stand by ambulance and fire wagon -aircraft coming in with port engine afire." There was silence for a few minutes, then Davies' voice, "Get ready to move."

Towards the end of the runway, I could see the green light on the starboard wing as the crate came in. He seemed to do a steep turn on his one engine, then suddenly the light dashed straight into the ground. There was a loud crash and immediately a great cloud of flame burst into the air. I heard Davies yell, "There are bombs on that aircraft. Get the others in the air immediately!" The flames were leaping skyward and there were bright flashes and explosions as flares and ammunition blew up.

By now I had discovered that the navigator was poor old Joe Turnbull. For a few moments I felt sick and shaken; only after awhile did I realise that the crew would never know what hit them.

At about 2400 hours there was a terrific explosion which shook the huts. Later there was another explosion as the rest of the bombs went. In this, four of the ground crew lost their lives. Nine men gone in a short few minutes and one of them the first of the twenty. I crawled to bed and prayed in cowardly manner that I might not die as Joe had done.