Statistics.
# A warning that a large number of aircraft had been observed passing overhead at a great height over Bathurst Island and were proceeding southward, was received by the officer in charge of the Amalgamated Wireless Postal Radio Station at Darwin at 9:35am on the morning of 19th February 1942. That officer repeated the message to RAAF Operations at 9:37am.
The attack started at 9:57 am. No general alarm was given to the town until 10:00am. By then it was too late.
#The first part of the attack was carried out by thirty six Zero fighters, seventy one Val-type Dive Bombers and eighty-one Kate type aircraft, a total 188 aircraft.
#The first raid was followed by twenty seven Betty-type bombers and twenty seven Nell-type bombers, a total of 54 heavy bombers (all manufactured by Mitsubishi) which arrived in one shining silver formation over Darwin at 12:00 noon.
#Two hundred and forty three Japanese planes dropped 683 bombs (114, 620 kilograms) on the town of Darwin, the shipping, the harbour and the RAAF airfield. Fighter aircraft strafed every conceivable target in the area; defending machine gun and anti-aircraft crews fired everything they had at the Japanese aircraft but were unable to stop the carnage that followed.
#A soldier from Darwin who was a member of the burial party is reported to have said,
"We buried over three hundred bodies in a mass grave on the beach. Bodies without identification or parts of bodies were not counted."
#Another three hundred and thirty were wounded, two hundred of them seriously. It was not recorded as to how many of these men died or lived.
#Casualties in the media were grossly misleading. Headlines in
the Melbourne Herald on 20 February 1942 announced
"15 KILLED, 24 HURT IN DARWIN ATTACK". In the ensuing months, the figures increased until officially "at least" 172 were killed on the ships.
Another nineteen later died of wounds on the hospital ship Manunda, and another 330 were wounded, over two hundred of them seriously. In
addition, there were fifty-two deaths of civilians and servicemen, making
an official total of 243 killed. This is probably about half of the actual
number.
#An unpublished army intelligence report at the time estimated the
casualties as "about 1,100". Strict censorship was imposed, suppressing
the intelligence report, and the true figure will never be known.
By comparison, the Japanese killed two thousand in their raid on Pearl
Harbour, and the raid on Coventry by the Germans on 11 November 1941 killed four hundred people. On the basis of human life lost alone, the raid on Darwin was one of the most devastating air raids of World War II up to that time.
# Devastation: The post office was demolished and its nine occupants
perished. Army casualties were relatively few because of their prepared
defensive positions, but for the civilians in their fibro houses and the
forty-five ships at anchor in the harbour, the result was devastating.
#The army told civilians to get themselves out of Darwin to the south by
whatever means they could, and when the second wave of fifty-four
bombers appeared at midday, they needed no further encouragement.
The railway had been disabled, but the road to the south was choked
with civilians who left with whatever they could carry with them.
#Aircraft losses: All together, twenty-three aircraft were destroyed.
The USA Air Force lost ten P40 Kittyhawks, one B24 bomber, three
Beechcrafts. The US Navy lost three Catalina amphibians. The RAAF
lost six Hudsons; another Hudson and a Wirraway were damaged.