Ric Havyatt describes bomb disposal work in Darwin, 2008

Transcript of interview

Mostly the air raids on Darwin, after the first few raids, were at night, so every time the full moon came you'd expect a visit from the Japanese planes. They would come over in a formation of 27 planes in 'V' formation, or three 'V' formations of nine planes in each part of it, and drop about 300 bombs. And of those, probably four or five would not explode and had to be handled. They were aiming of course at strategic positions, such as airfields, but with a formation of 27 aircraft more or less side-by-side they covered a fairly wide area. So you'd find them not only on the airfields but on the outskirts to airfields. We were fortunate in that all the Japanese bombs that fell on Darwin did not contain time-delay fuses. They had direct-action fuses and if everything went well for the bomb the moment it hit the ground it would explode. But on occasions the setting mechanism on the fuse of the bomb didn't operate and the bomb when it hit the ground didn't explode, but it went into the ground anything from 2 m to about 4 m or so, underground, but they were relatively safe to handle. But on occasions if the bomb was damaged it would tumble in the air and sometimes land flat on its side. And if it lands on its side, lands on its belly, it didn't explode, so under those circumstances we could easily find the bomb and deal with it. But when you're in the bush, as we had around the outside of the airfields, the only indication of an unexploded bomb was a hole in the ground about 30 cm in diameter. So, you know, what you were looking for was a hole in the ground.