Secret in the Clouds

by Christopher Cummings

  Roger looked shocked. “Oh come off it!” he scoffed.

  Andrew interrupted to agree. “No, Graham’s right. I’ll bet he and his driver ran into the Germans and they killed them to shut them up.”

  “Bit far fetched,” Willy replied.

  “I don’t agree,” Andrew replied. “I found that other reference to mysterious flights over Australia in World War Two. It’s in this book here.” He reached into his schoolbag and fished out ‘Who sank the Sydney?’ After a minute he found the page he wanted. “This is talking about the Kormoran off West Australia and the author is suggesting that she was refuelling a Japanese submarine, and that the mystery planes came off the Jap sub.”

  “How could planes come off a submarine?” Roger asked, his voice laden with scepticism.

  “Because they built subs in the nineteen twenties and thirties which carried planes,” Andrew replied.

  “That’s right,” Graham agreed. “The British built ones called the ‘M’ Class, and the French had a monster named the Surcouf.”

  Andrew nodded. “The Japanese ones were ‘I’ Class,” he added. “Anyway, enough of that. Listen to this. It says, ‘On the Fourth of November the following entry was recorded in the South West Area Combined Headquarters logbook: “Zero Two Thirty Four hours Wing Commander McLean rang to ask Flying Officer Wesche re a report of an unidentified aircraft at Geraldton. Zero Four Thirty signal to Pearce (to order search). Object: locate suspected enemy raider. This operation was decided on the report from Geraldton that night-flying pilots saw the lights of an aircraft.” He then gives times and aircraft numbers sent to search and concludes: ‘Negative enemy report.’.”

  “That’s not much,” Peter commented.

  “There’s more,” Andrew replied. He went on, “One of the pilots, Flight Lieutenant E. Fairey, was awaiting his turn to take off when the officer in charge called to him: ‘I have five planes in the air- there should only be four’; the latter then landed, but the fifth switched off its lights and disappeared. It goes on to say that another pilot, who was off-duty at the time, Flight Lieutenant L. Harber, recalls hearing the sound of the plane’s engine and running out onto the veranda of the Great Northern Hotel (which looked out onto the Indian Ocean) just in time to see the lights of its twin exhausts disappearing out to sea.”

  Willy snorted. “He was probably just pissed,” he suggested.

  “Maybe,” Andrew agreed, “But the book goes on to say, ‘This was not the first such sighting made over Geraldton: a day or two earlier Flight Lieutenant J. Kessey had been returning from an evening flight when he saw the lights from a strange plane, again flying out to sea.’ It says that he reported the matter personally to headquarters at Pearce, but was received somewhat sceptically by Air Commodore de la Rue.”

  Stephen listened to this with increasing interest. “So you think that the Arados off the Kormoran were flying over Western Australia and night? That makes sense.”

  Andrew nodded. “It does, but there is more,” he added.

  “Go on,” Peter replied.

  Andrew read, “However, on the Seventh of November a further sighting was reported, this time over Pearce itself, as the South West Area Logbook records: ‘Zero Four Thirty Pilot Officer Harrop, Int Officer Pearce rang and reported a sighting of unidentified aircraft over Pearce by two airmen guards Tried to ring Flying Officer Wesche, but could get no answer- sent signal to Canberra to ask if her seaplane was up. Zero Five Forty Five received signal it was not. Zero six twenty five still cannot raise Flying Officer Wesche, so rang Sub- Lt Ryan and reported unidentified aircraft. Fifteen thirty five signal sent to Pearce ordering clearing search ahead of Convoy US One Three’.”

  “So?” Willy asked.

  “So it might have been a plane from Kormoran,” Andrew replied. “Although in fairness, this author claims it was not. He says that, ‘It has already been established,’ by him that is, earlier in the book, ‘that Kormoran’s plane had not been used since September because of difficulties of launching it, difficulties which would have been multiplied at night.’ He adds that, ‘There were no other raiders operating in Australian waters at the time.’ Therefore he concludes that the only possible source would therefore seem to be a Japanese ‘I’ Class submarine. But I don’t agree with him.”

  “Why not?” Graham asked.

  “Because of the other references to raiders like the Atlantis and the Pinguin using their planes very effectively and often. I also think that they would not mention spy flights.”

  Peter nodded. “I agree. They wouldn’t would they, not if it was secret service stuff.”

  “Could the Kormoran have been in the area in time?” Willy asked, leaning forward to study a map showing her possible course.

  “Yes,” Andrew replied. “This map shows her possible course for the last sixteen days before she met Sydney, from the Twenty Sixth of October to the Eleventh of November, but it is pure guesswork.”

  “Why do you say that?” Graham asked.

  “Mathematics,” Andrew replied. “Pete can check my figures if he likes. The Kormoran could do seventeen knots, so, even doing fifteen she would cover three hundred and sixty miles a day. In sixteen days she could have steamed five thousand seven hundred and sixty miles. That’s bloody near across the Indian Ocean and back. They only show her covering about one thousand.”

  “But why would they fly over a town, or over the main air force base in Western Australia?” Willy queried. “Wouldn’t that blow their cover on a secret operation?”

  Andrew nodded. “Yes, that bothers me,” he agreed.

  “Probably got bloody lost,” Willy suggested.

  Graham nodded. “Or Geraldton is so small they didn’t notice it till they were right overhead,” he suggested.

  “Anyway, I believe the Germans used their planes for secret flights to do with espionage, and that’s what I reckon the plane you blokes found was doing, only she hit a mountain in the cloud,” Andrew concluded.

  “I think I agree with you,” Stephen replied. “But I wonder where it was going?”

  At that moment the bell for classes went and the discussion ended, but for the rest of the day Stephen puzzled over that question. He was so consumed by curiosity that his work suffered and he got into trouble a couple of times. He barely noticed. All he wanted was for the day to end so he could go to meet Major Barnes.

  At 3:40 pm his parents picked him up outside the school. The Downeys followed in their hire car. A five minute drive had them at the ‘Eventide’ Home where Major Barnes lived. The major was a sprightly old gentleman of ninety five with a bald head, grey moustache, and sharp brown eyes. He was very thin and had hands like claws, the skin all mottled with blotches and veins. He greeted them courteously enough and asked them to be seated.

  Mrs Hopkins then told her story and Major Barnes shook his head in amazement. “Incredible!” he cried. “I remember you as a little toddler. Your father doted on you and mentioned you a hundred times. I remember him bringing you to the depot sometimes. Well, well! Fancy that!”

  “Can you tell us what happened sir?” Mrs Hopkins asked.

  Major Barnes nodded. “I can indeed. At the time I was a young temporary captain and was the Adjutant of the battalion, so I was right at the centre of things. I actually took the phone call about the plane crash.”

  Stephen listened in amazement, finding it difficult to comprehend that anyone could possibly remember anything that long ago. Major Barnes then went on, “It was a timber getter named Archie Cornish. He and his mate were working up the Black Mountain Road near the headwaters of Rifle Creek. They had a camp in the scrub, that’s what we called the rainforest in those days. Anyhow, the plane crash happened on the night of the Eighteenth of June Nineteen Forty One. I remember the date because it was only two days after my second wedding anniversary and I was in strife for not remembering that!”

  He chuckled and so did the adults. Stephen waited impatiently while Major Barnes then rambled on for a
bit about his family before resuming the tale. “I got on the telephone and called up the airport at North Cairns. The aerodrome was new then, still being built. The civil aviation people did not know of any planes missing. That was easy enough to check. There were only half a dozen civil aircraft in North Queensland in those days. Not like now.”

  He then rambled on a bit about the first aerodrome and how it had been built on the mud flats, then went on, “So I rang up the Air Force chaps in Townsville. They had no aircraft at all in North Queensland and none of theirs was missing. I thought it all a bit odd so had a chat to the police. They could not tell me of any illegal planes, you know, smugglers and that sort of thing, so I got onto Brigade HQ at Kissing Point in Townsville. They did some more telephoning, to Canberra, Brisbane and the like and back came the order; send someone to have a look.”

  “That’s when I called in Percy, Lieutenant Bellamy that is. He was the IO, Intelligence Officer that is, and therefore the logical choice for a bit of investigating. So he and a young private driver were sent off to find out. I briefed them myself and they drove off about ten O’clock and we never saw them again.”

  Stephen’s impatience now surfaced. “How were they equipped sir? Were they armed?”

  Major Barnes looked hard at him, then said, “They took their webbing and packs and a swag of camping equipment, some cooking gear and food, and both had firearms. The guns were normal precautions in the bush in case of wild pigs and so on. Percy had his service issue thirty eight revolver and the driver had his three-O-three.”

  “What sort of vehicle were they driving sir?” Stephen asked.

  “Oh a Ford One Tonner,” Major Barnes replied. “I know that for sure. It was the first one the unit had been issued with; was brand new; and I had to do the investigation to write the bally thing off!”

  That raised another chuckle from the adults. Mrs Hopkins now asked, “And it was three days before you started looking?”

  “Yes, about that. No radios in those days, not the little ones you can just carry,” Major Barnes explained. “Not many telephones either. The timber getters had to drive forty miles to Mt Molloy to use one. That’s why we took the report seriously. We reckoned they wouldn’t have bothered if they weren’t sure.”

  “What exactly was their report sir?” Stephen asked.

  Major Barnes was silent for a minute while he thought. Then he said, “They told me they were sitting under their tent fly having a cuppa before going to bed, about nine at night they thought, and it was all fog and drizzle. They heard the plane’s motor, said it was coming in from the east, from the sea. Their camp was near the top of the coastal range you see. Archie said he walked out to look up, amazed at the sound of an aeroplane at that time and in that place. While they were discussing it the plane flew past just north of them and Archie said that he commented to his mate, ‘I hope that beggar knows Black Mountain is in the way or.’ And as he said it there was a loud bang and crumpling noises and the sound of the motor stopped abruptly.”

  At that Stephen came out in goose bumps, his own sharp memories of witnessing the Cessna crash two weeks earlier swamping his emotions. He shuddered and shook his head, then listened intently as Major Barnes went on. He said, “I confirmed that when I met him a few days later.”

  “So you went and spoke to him?” Mrs Hopkins asked.

  “Yes I did. When we got no word back from Percy by the second afternoon I became worried and we had ourselves organized by the third morning. We hoped they had just broken down in the bush or something, but we set off anyway, ten of us in three trucks. The two timber getters told us that Percy and his driver had reached them by mid-afternoon on the nineteenth, that is the day they left Cairns. They had smoko with Archie and his mate and then went on to start searching.”

  “And you never found them?” Mrs Hopkins asked, her voice tense with anxiety.

  “Not a sign of them,” Major Barnes replied. “We searched for over a week, called in hundreds of men, soldiers, timber cutters, gold fossickers, police, and even blacktrackers.”

  “What are blacktrackers?” Tom asked.

  “Aborigines who are skilled in the art of following tracks,” Major Barnes replied. “We went along every side road, snig track and pack track in that entire area, and found nothing.”

  “But... but there must have been vehicle tracks,” Stephen asked.

  “Oh there were, and in plenty. There were at least four gangs of timber haulers at work dragging logs out and there were tyre marks all over the place, but all mushed up in the greasy mud. It was drizzling rain off and on you see.”

  Mrs Hopkins now fixed Major Barnes with a steely stare and asked, “My father, do you think he was the type of man to run away, to desert?”

  There was an embarrassed silence. Stephen noted a flush of shame mottle Tom’s neck and lower face and felt quite sorry for him.

  Major Barnes’s face set and he was silent for a minute. “No, I don’t. He didn’t strike me as that sort of fellow at all. True as steel I thought, and straight as gun barrel.” He was silent for a minute and shook his head sadly, his mouth set in a grim line as he noted the tears forming in Mrs Hopkins’ eyes. “Sorry lass, but it was me that had to do the paperwork finally, posting him as ‘missing’ and so on.”

  Mrs Hopkins nodded and clutched her handkerchief to her lips, then dabbed at her eyes. Stephen found he was all choked up too. But he was also exasperated. “But what if he ran into the Germans and they killed him? What did they do with his truck? How do you hide a truck?”

  “Germans!” snorted Major Barnes. “Come off it lad! We had no idea about that aeroplane you found till last week.”

  “Besides the men in the plane were killed in the crash weren’t they?” Tom added.

  “Not them!” Stephen cried in exasperation. “The ones they were coming to meet. Your Grandad and his driver might have run into them and been killed by them. Then they buried them in the jungle.”

  “What about the truck?” Tom replied, stung by Stephen’s tone.

  “They could have buried that too,” Stephen answered.

  “Oh, how?”

  “With a bulldozer,” Stephen replied.

  At that Major Barnes snorted and said, “Bulldozer! Come off it laddie. This is the forties we are talking about. Most of the timber was still being pulled out by bullock drays. Only few timber getters had motor trucks. The only bulldozer in the whole area was working pushing snig tracks for a team of cutters at Rootey Creek. Fellow named Jorgenson owned it and he used it to push out a space for us to set up our search HQ. Then he and his mate helped in the search for a week.”

  “Jorgenson?” Stephen asked, struck by the name.

  “Yeah, A Dane or a Norwegian or something. Big, burly bloke. Used to be a merchant seaman till he got sick of all that salt water he said,” Major Barnes replied.

  “Where did you search?” Stephen asked.

  At that Major Barnes coloured a little. “I told you. We went along every road and track in the area. If a car couldn’t get along it we walked, or rode horses.”

  “Could you show us on the map?” Stephen persisted. He could see that his mother and father were pursing their lips slightly but he felt he just had to know.

  Major Barnes looked annoyed. “I’d need a map to show you that!”

  “I have them here,” Stephen said. He took out his 1:50 000 maps and opened them.

  Major Barnes snuffled and then groped for his glasses. Having placed them on he peered at the maps. After a minute he turned to the marginal information, then shook his head. “I can show you the general area with these,” he said, “but to really show you I need the same map we used, the ‘inch to the mile’ series Nineteen Forty, and the old Parish Survey Maps. The roads and tracks will be different now.”

  Stephen felt quite crestfallen at that but still asked Major Barnes to indicate the general area of their search. Major Barnes obliged, moving his fingers all the way up the strip of country between
the sea and the Mitchell River Valley. “As far west as the old Rumula to Biboohra Railway,” he said. “We didn’t look west of the railway. Most of the search was in the jungle country.”

  “Did you look for the crashed plane?” Stephen asked.

  “Of course we did! I climbed that blasted mountain and spent two days scrub bashing along the sides of it. Not a sign. We decided the timber cutters must have heard something else, a big tree falling perhaps.”

  Stephen pictured the wreck and how easy it would have been to miss it in all that green tangle. He knew there were still at least a dozen aircraft ‘lost without trace’ in the North Queensland rainforest.

  “Is there anything else you can tell us?” Mrs Downey asked.

  “Oh a few details possibly,” Major Barnes replied. He suddenly looked tired and leaned back.

  Mrs Hopkins spoke up, “Would you mind if I came and had a chat about the old times tomorrow?”

  At that Major Barnes brightened. “That would be nice. Say at about Ten?”

  So it was arranged. The group said their thanks and farewells and moved out to the cars. As they went to get in Stephen’s father said, “Well, that was interesting but it didn’t give us any more clues to work on.”

  “Maybe not,” Stephen said. He now felt quite discouraged.

  Tom also looked quite gloomy. He said, “I’d still like to visit the area and climb the mountain.”

  Stephen turned to his father. “Dad, did you apply for the permit to drive along the Black Mountain Road?” he asked.

  “Yes I did. They said I could pick it up this afternoon or tomorrow morning,” his father replied. “We will get it now.”

  It was arranged that Stephen’s mother, with the Downeys and Mrs Hopkins, would drive home while Stephen and Tom went with Stephen’s father to get the permit. They still had twenty minutes before the government offices closed so they drove to town and went in. Stephen’s father did the talking at the counter while Stephen and Tom looked at the posters and pictures.

  When Stephen heard his father ask in an exasperated tone ‘why not?’ he wandered over to listen. The girl behind the counter looked embarrassed but shook her head. “I’m sorry, but the Ranger reports that the Black Mountain Road has been closed for repairs and will not be open to the public for two weeks.”