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beach to survive? How could they plan? If the days ran into a week, who here would be left?
In a moderate climate, a man could survive only three days without water—in this unbearable heat the need was far greater.
The water would have to be rationed carefully. To last five days, Smirnoff designated each passenger approximately 150 milli-litres of water per day, a little over half a cup. To measure it out they used an eyeglass from the first aid kit. The eyeglass resembled a small glass goblet the size of an egg cup. They would receive one eyeglass, equivalent to two tablespoons of water, five times a day. If they were not rescued within five days, they would have little hope of surviving. Finding help was imperative.
The loss of the valuable package was put to the back of
Smirnoff ’s mind as he dealt with the more pressing issues of survival. He had earlier scolded Vanderburg for being concerned about money at such a time—Vanderburg had laid out the
contents of his wallet to dry—so when van Romondt told the captain he had dropped the parcel, it didn’t seem to matter.
Smirnoff would later recall in his memoirs: ‘Under such circumstances, the judgment of a person over what is valuable and what is not changes substantially. It occurred to me that the safety of life was much more important than the finding of a parcel. Our energy had to be preserved for more urgent affairs.’
There would be hours of waiting and hoping. He assumed
the search for the missing parcel would fill a few of them.
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Back in Java, the President of the Javasche Bank was still unaware of the Japanese attack on Smirnoff ’s DC-3. As the plane’s passengers battled to survive in remote country, he cabled the Dutch Trade Commissioner in Australia, Jan van Holst Pellekaan, advising him the package of diamonds was on its way.
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Death and desperation
The Dakota crashed on the same rugged coastline as Australia’s most renowned aviator, Charles Kingsford Smith, who became lost while attempting to set a flight record from Sydney to the United Kingdom in his Dutch designed aircraft Southern Cross thirteen years earlier. Forced down by heavy storms over the Kimberley, he and his crew landed on a mudflat at the northern end of George Water on the banks of the Glenelg River. The aviator and his crew spent twelve days on the mudflats north of Derby, plagued by mosquitos and sandflies and living on mangrove snails and the baby food that had been part of his cargo, delirious with thirst. Smithy survived that episode and went on to break the UK/Australia flight record later that year, but he disappeared without a trace off the Burmese coast with his co-pilot Tom Pethybridge in 1935 while trying to set a 55
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new UK/Australia record in a smaller plane, The Lady Southern Cross.
Such were the hazards of flying in those pioneering days, as Smirnoff well knew. Was this flight to be the Turc’s finale?
Would he, his crew and passengers also be recorded in history as missing without a trace?
From the parachute shelter, Smirnoff looked down to the
water’s edge. Blaauw and Hendriksz had not been moved due to the extent of their injuries. Blaauw was conscious and in acute pain, lying exposed to the stinging sun. They had only been on the beach for a few hours when Hendriksz passed away.
A shallow grave was scooped out in the sand; his body was covered in a blanket, and buried with little ceremony—the task of survival weighed too heavily on the minds of those remaining to allow for long mourning. Hendriksz’s premonition had proved right. The flight he had stopped his pregnant wife from boarding at Andir airport would be his last.
Maria van Tuyn regained consciousness momentarily and
called for her baby son Jo. Leon Vanderburg was tending to the wounded nearby and he moved beside her. ‘He’s fine. We’ve bandaged his foot,’ he reassured her. Her eyes watered as she strained to speak. ‘Take care of him, please,’ she begged. She closed her eyes and drifted back into unconsciousness before Vanderburg had time to bring her the child, who was resting under the trees. She died half an hour later and was buried in the sand beside Daan Hendriksz. Smirnoff tried to remember the words of the Russian Orthodox Church’s prayer for the
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dead. The small child did not understand that his mother was gone and called for her. So fretful was the baby that when he was offered his tiny share of the water, he pushed away the eyeglass, spilling the precious water on the sand. Smirnoff angrily chastised him and then felt ashamed for doing so. When they finally got him to drink he would beg for more, over and over, the little voice pleading ‘meer tinke, meer tinke’ (more drink) and ‘ikke wa wa, ikke wa wa’ (me, water) until eventually he would cry himself to sleep, utterly exhausted. Smirnoff wrote in 1947, ‘The thing that affected us most was the pleading voice of the child constantly asking for water.’
Of the twelve who left Java, only ten now remained alive.
Joop Blaauw, who had been shot as he tried to leave the plane, was also in need of constant care. He was feverish, and he too called constantly for water. The others were still strong, but if rescue did not come soon, they would undoubtedly be sapped of their energy and strength. At least Daan Hendriksz had never woken to know the pain and fear of impending death.
When the tide subsided the plane dried out and the passengers were able to retrieve useful items and search for the package, which they did not find. Those able to scoured their luggage, hoping to find something to ease their thirst or hunger—a drink bottle, a packet of fruit gums—anything to ease the intol-erable pain in their parched throats.
Jo Muller, Neef Hoffman and Pieter Cramerus set out soon
after the Japanese left to scout the surrounding area. They hoped that they would find signs of life beyond the beach. Planning
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not to travel far they took no water, hoping to find some along the way. A mangrove swamp emerged before them, but as they tried to work their way around it, the rising tide made crossing impossible. The temptation of finding salvation just around the next clump of trees persuaded them to go on. Walking for
hours in the heat of the day took its toll. First their mouths and throats felt dry, and then their heads ached. They tried to suck the dew from the leaves on the bushes but it was brackish, and only increased their thirst. Hoffman had taken his shoes off to cross a tidal creek and had continued barefoot. His feet were burnt and blistered and his head began to spin. He told Muller and Cramerus he could not go on and would need to
rest before going back.
Muller and Cramerus returned to camp without him that
evening, thirsty, tired and crestfallen. They informed the captain that the terrain was inhospitable, waterless and seemingly impassable. They had not seen a single sign of life and had had to leave Hoffman behind.
A heavy silence fell on all. As Jo Muller recalled in a 1972
interview with Dutch journalist Thom Olink, ‘The baby kept screaming and we were trying to organise things. There was moaning and we were trying to . . . When one of us went to take a look, Maria had died and the baby wasn’t getting enough water. I don’t know . . . it was all so confusing. I think . . . [Muller breaks down] Smirnoff sent me off with Hoffman to find help.
It was all bush . . . it was hopeless. We were dehydrating and we knew there was water at the camp so after a few hours we
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[Cramerus and
Muller] returned. Smirnoff was not amused.
He was angry at us for not trying harder.’
Heinrick Gerrits then agreed to head south on his own. The searing daytime temperature had taken its toll on day one, reaching 40°C, and now, acutely aware of their limited resources, travelling in the heat of the day was ruled out. Hendrick van Romondt offered to join him and the pair set out across the pink sand dunes as the sun softened the colours of the landscape to pastel. Unlike the first sortie, they took with them a few cans of food and a drink bottle full of water. The rest of the men tried to sleep in the sand as a blue moon rose above them.
The night was not a quiet or restful one. Joop Blaauw’s moans could be heard over the roar of the ocean and the baby often woke crying. Vanderburg recalled seeing morphine in the first aid box they had recovered from the plane. He had no idea how much morphine to give Blaauw or how to administer it correctly, but knew that if it could help relieve the man’s agony it was preferable to his suffering. Vanderburg got hold of the morphine and his hand shook as he nervously injected it into Blaauw’s arm. As it seeped through Blaauw’s veins the injured man’s expression changed—the drug helped alleviate both his pain and his anxiety. Vanderburg stayed with him until he fell asleep.
In the morning Hoffman returned, limping from the burns
to the soles of his feet. He had run into the two men who had set out the night before. They had given him water and he had recovered sufficiently in the cool of the night to make his way back to camp.
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Muller, the radio operator, retrieved his undamaged radio set and worked feverishly to bring it to life. Even after re-establishing loose connections, the battery had barely a whisper of power. Against the odds, the radio crackled into life. It was only for a moment, but it was long enough for Muller to get a message out: three dots, three dashes, three dots, the SOS
code known throughout the world, alongside their last known position. It took two minutes and then the current died and the men sat back to wait, hoping the message had been heard.
The humidity was overwhelming. It was like breathing in
hot, thick soup. That afternoon the skies opened up, offering momentary relief—cool, quenching rain. Those who could
scrambled to find tins, or improvised sails to try to catch the droplets before they hit the ground and disappeared into the sand and the sea, but no sooner had they gathered up recep-tacles than the rain stopped and the clouds began to dissipate.
It was as if God were teasing them.
An hour after Muller sent out the SOS, a familiar sound
was heard in the air, filling the group with hope. Despite injury and fatigue, the men leapt up, running onto the beach like excited schoolchildren, waving their hands in the air. Smirnoff smiled as the sound of the engine came closer and stronger.
The SOS message had been received. Looking into the sunlight it was hard to make out the silhouetted plane at first, but they could see that it had a huge wingspan and the wings were
elevated on struts, like a ‘Vultee’ Catalina.
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But, inexplicably, the plane flew on. The men were not sure if the plane had spotted them, though they could not imagine that their stranded plane would not have been clearly visible from the air. It seemed to take hours for the plane to return, the black dot in the sky getting larger and louder. As it got closer, the men could see it was larger than the Catalina and had four engines atop its wings, not two. Even before the red sun could be seen, Smirnoff knew the plane was not Dutch, American or Australian—it was a Japanese Kawanishi ‘Mavis’
flying boat.
Smirnoff yelled, ‘Duck for cover’ as the thunder of the
engines reached a menacing crescendo. Blaauw yelled, ‘Don’t leave me! I can’t move!’ Dick Brinkman paused. His instinct was to run, but he surprised himself by dropping to the sand beside Blaauw. A small branch offered them no protection.
They lay rigid and exposed on the white sand.
Japanese naval pilot Shigeyasu Yamauchi from the 11th
Flying Unit had been patrolling the Indian Ocean from Kupang down the Western Australian coastline when he saw the stranded aircraft. He continued on, but remembered the radio message he had heard being transmitted earlier, and was concerned the group was signalling to Allied fighter aircraft. He returned to the site, hoping to ensure the stranded passengers sent no more radio messages.
Hobbling up the beach towards the dunes as fast as he could, Smirnoff turned to see black bombs plummeting from the sky towards the beleaguered Dakota. One after the other, two 65-kg
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bombs fell into the water as the plane flew on, only to turn and fly back towards the besieged survivors. Smirnoff covered his ears, waiting for the explosions, but there were none. Two more bombs were released, this time exploding on the beach, sending sand fountains into the air. The drone of the engines moved off into the distance. Those who had sought cover in the bushes in the sand dunes stayed put, fearing the return of the aircraft.
They emerged some time later, remaining constantly on the alert for the possible return of the flying boat or other Japanese aircraft. To their relief, the parachute shelters, which must have been clearly visible from the sky, had been spared. Of the four bombs that fell, not a single one hit the aircraft and no one was injured. But the ordeal only served to add to their anxiety.
As the plane thundered away they were left to gather their thoughts. The Dakota lay on the beach like a stranded whale.
It would have mattered little if the bombs had reached their target. Riddled with bullets, and pounded by the waves, the Dakota would soon break up. The radio signal that had seemed like such a breakthrough to the outside world had only brought them tormentors. The unexploded bombs that sat in the water were an ongoing reminder of the danger they were in.
Growth covered the faces of the dishevelled men, and more than one of them was suffering from blistering sunburn. For the healthy, the sea offered some respite, though sharks and stingrays were regularly spotted in the water. The men kept to
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the shallows, wearily checking around them as they swam. They ventured in at low tide, sheltering under the wing of the plane with the cool wet sand underneath. They did not know it then, but the sea also harboured saltwater crocodiles and the box jellyfish, whose sting contains arguably the deadliest natural poison known.
As the stars filled the night sky, the survivors lay restlessly, deep in thought or tormented by insect bites and the pain of their wounds. They were woken from their reverie by the return of Gerrits and van Romondt, only to learn that they too had failed to find any signs of civilisation. Disheartened, those who could slept.
Smirnoff rested his aching legs and stiff arms and cursed at having to continue the seemingly endless task of waiting, listening to the sound of the waves pounding onto the shore and the buzz of insects. As he lay pondering their fate, he again remembered the small parcel and the urgent voice of the man the night they left. ‘Take very good care of it.’ He wondered what the carefully packaged wax-sealed parcel contained,
persuading himself that it could not have disappeared. If it had fallen into the sea then it could wash up on the shore with the next tide. Perhaps tomorrow he would look.
On the third morning they found Joop Blaauw’s body at the edge of the surf. In his fevered anguish the night before, he had torn off his leg splints and crawled across the sand into the sea.
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It was a heart-rending sight. T
he men wearily scooped out another sandy grave on the lonely beach beside those of Maria van Tuyn and Daan Hendriksz. Kneeling in silence, they prayed not just for the souls of the departed, but also for their own.
Sitting around doing nothing was too much to bear and
the men planned another expedition. That day, the spears of the sun’s rays seemed to pierce them more ferociously than ever.
The leaves of the trees hung limp and motionless and the
survivors, bathed in sweat, thought of nothing but water.
Smirnoff wondered how long he could maintain any discipline when the desire for thirst overwhelmed his men, destroying their rationality. Would they revert to survival of the fittest? Would the healthy turn on the weak? Unless someone found them soon, eight men and one child would face a slow death. Already the little boy’s hysterical pleas for water had turned into a whimper.
Smirnoff ’s thoughts were broken by van Romondt, who
came running towards the group, shouting excitedly, clutching aircraft parts in his hand. ‘Water,’ he yelled. ‘We can make water from the sea!’
At first the others were sceptical, but van Romondt carefully explained how he would build a distiller from parts found on the aeroplane and use petrol to heat the seawater. When the water was heated, the salt, being denser than water vapour, would remain behind while the steam would pass through a pipe into a can where it would condense, providing drinkable water.
A blowlamp and some piping were recovered from the plane
and petrol siphoned from the wing tanks. Small sticks were
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pushed into the sand to hold the piping. A kerosene tin was filled with seawater, one end of the pipe placed above to collect the steam. The blowlamp was filled with fuel, lit and placed under the tin. It required constant pumping to keep the flame burning. The men gathered round as the water slowly came to a boil, watching as the steam rose up into the pipe and finally condensed, dripping down into another kerosene tin.