Story 2 - WW2 Winnie the War Winner
Article from the Argus Newspaper (Melbourne), Page 12, 1 Jan
1943
“Signallers’ Skill Saved Lost Force, An Epic of Ingenuity by Bill
Marien”
Introduction
The following are the details
of the ingenious work by Signal soldiers that allowed a WW2 commando
group to survive, be resupplied and take the fight to the Japanese.
Illustration from the WW2
Book 'Signals, The Story of the Australian Corps of Signals'.
Winnie the War Winner, Pages 128 to 132
This was the first official
morse code message received in Australia from the lost 2AIF
commandos of Portuguese Timor who, for 59 days after the Japanese
landing on the island, had been written off as missing or dead.
The signal came to Darwin on the night of 19th
April 1942. It was transmitted by "Winnie the War
Winner," a crazy contraption built from scraps of wire and tin, and
pieces of long discarded radio sets.
When the commandos showed me
the incredible Winnie recently, it was easy to recapture the scene
of that night of 19th April.
In the thin air of a Timor
mountain hideout, four bearded, haggard Australians were working by
the smoking, stinking light of a pig-fat flare. Three
of them watched anxiously as the fourth thumbed a Morse key. Weak
batteries sent the dots and dashes of the morse dimly across the
Arafura Sea to the Northern Territory of Australia. The
tension was something physical as the operator strained his ears for
a reply. At last a reply came.
From 19th February,
when the Japanese landed at Dilli, nothing had been heard of the AIF
commando force which had been in Portuguese Timor since 17th
December 1941. And the commandos had heard nothing
from the rest of the world. They did not even know
that Dutch Timor had fallen until other Australians fought through
to Portuguese Timor and told them. There was little
prospect of building a radio. There were no parts, no
new batteries. The sets they had were too weak to raise Darwin.
But among those who came from
Koepang were two signalmen, Cpl John Sargeant, of Bonshaw, NSW, and
Lance-Cpl John Donovan, of Lindfield, NSW. These two
men got together, working under Capt George Parker, of Earlwood,
NSW, with Sigs Max (Joe) Loveless, of Hobart, and K. Richards, of
Victoria, two members of the original commando force, and agreed
that Darwin must be raised.
On the 8th March the
four men got to work — Loveless just out of sick bed and Sargeant
just recovered from malaria. Three days later a Dutch
sergeant, exhausted, stumbled in. He had carried what
he thought to be a transmitter-receiver 40 miles through some of the
roughest country in the world. It was an ordinary
commercial medium-wave receiving set-and out of order.
Corporal Went Scrounging
Loveless, whose knowledge made
him No 1 man of the team, thought he could build a one-valve
transmitter from parts of this set and of another small and weak
set. He planned a circuit, and all the commandos were
asked to be on the lookout for anything that might serve as a radio
part.
Cpl Donovan went scrounging at
Attamboa, on the north coast, to see what he could salvage, while
his companions recovered an abandoned army set. The
parts of the 3 sets were unsoldered, and a bamboo used to catch all
the melted solder for reuse. Loveless had carefully
preserved 2 small batteries, but they needed recharging. A
generator was taken from an abandoned 10-year old car and rigged to
a series of wooden wheels, which a native was persuaded to turn.
The set was complete on 26th March.
It would not work!
The four signallers had been
working with a tomahawk, pliers, and screw- driver. They
had no means of establishing a known transmitting wave-length.
The coils were wound round lengths of bamboo.
On the 28th March,
Donovan returned from Attamboa laden like a treasure ship. He
had the power pack from a Dutch transmitter, two aerial tuning
condensers, 60ft of aerial wire in short lengths, and a receiving
set. Next day the men had to move all their precious
gear, for the Japanese were getting too close.
Loveless got to work on a
second transmitter twice as big as the first, and built into a
4-gallon kerosene tin. A battery charger was recovered
from enemy-held territory. To get it fourteen
commandos went through the Japanese lines to the old Australian
headquarters at Villa Maria. There, within 100 yards
of Japanese sentries, protected only by the dark, they dug up the
charger which had been buried when the headquarters were evacuated.
Heard Darwin Was Safe
On 10th April the
signallers heard Darwin on the receiver, and knew then that Darwin
was still in Australian hands. But their second
transmitter was also a failure.
Loveless had another idea, but
he needed more batteries. Four were found. Then
the petrol ran out and the charger could not be kept running.
So they raided the Japanese lines and carried off tins of
kerosene. Finally the charger was started on kerosene
and run on diesel oil.
"Winnie" in the Timorese
mountains with three of its 2/2nd Independent Company creators.
L-R Keith Richards, John Donovan and Jack Sargent. Source: AWM
With batteries at full strength
they signaled Darwin on the 18th April, but got no reply.
They did not know that their message had been picked
up on the Australian mainland and passed on to Darwin, that all
transmitting stations had been warned to keep off the air and listen
to Timor the following night.
On the night of 19th
April they got an answer from Darwin. Then their
batteries failed again. But the four signallers
celebrated by smoking a tin of tobacco which they had saved since
leaving Attamboa.
But Darwin Suspicious
On the night of 20th
April they again got Darwin. But Darwin was
suspicious; demanded proof of their identity. So
questions and answers like these were rushed across the Arafura Sea:
"Do
you know Bill Jones?"—
"Yes, he's with us."
"What rank, and answer immediately?"—
"Captain."
"Is he there? Bring him to the transmitter. . . .
What's your wife's name, Bill?"—
"Joan."
"What's the street number of your home?"
Back came the right answer, and
the mainland accepted the fact that the commandos were still
fighting.
The commanding officer of
the force told me with feeling that but for
the amazing job done by these four
signallers they would not
have been able to contact Australia.
"I don't like to think what
might have happened if we had not got through,"
he said.
Conclusion
Winnie the War Winner is displayed in the Australian War Memorial
and is a testament to the skills of the WW2 signal commandos.
Winnie the War Winner at the
School of Schools for repair work in the 1970s.
Photo supplied by Denis Hare