Visitors are drawn to Broome in north-western Australia for many reasons. Some come to enjoy the pristine beauty of the Kimberley region. Or to stand on Cable Beach and watch the sun set on the Indian Ocean. Or perhaps they come to soak up the flavour of old Broome and its long and fruitful partnership with Japanese pearlers. But there is a little piece of this paradise that is not quite right. It is not necessary to go digging around to find it- its there when the tide goes out, and believe me, at Broome the tide GOES OUT. There are huge corroded shapes buried in the mudflat. They were big flying boats once but are almost unrecognisable now. But you shouldn't go out there to break something off as a momento. The wrecks are protected now. Many of them are tombs... To get the wrecks protected of course, some people had to jump through the usual Government hoops. They had to argue that preserving the wrecks had merit, and list all the reasons related to that terrible half hour decades before when Broome's Roebuck Bay became hell on water. But basically it comes down to this... the ruined flying boats are protected now because almost seventy years ago, shortly after 9:20am on March 3rd 1942... when Imperial Japanese Navy fighters swept overhead there was no protection, not for them, or their crews or for the Dutch refugees trapped inside... Fifteen refuelling flying boats went up in flames in a matter of minutes before the Zeroes moved on to attack the airfield nearby. Half of the flying boats were Dutch Dorniers and Catalinas. all packed with the families of Dutch servicemen, the last families to escape the ruin of the Netherlands East Indies (modern day Indonesia). It is known that eighty-eight people died. Given the rush to get the flying boats away from Java, its possible that the passenger lists are incomplete. Others may have died. Far worse things happened in World War Two, certainly in the Pacific (Okinawa? Hiroshima? etc), but the destruction of the flying boats at Broome remains an aviation disaster of extraordinary proportions. The disaster is all the more poignant because while flying boats were ably pressed into service by all sides in all theatres of the war, improvements in aviation and the manic construction of huge airfields almost everywhere in the Pacific made that war the swan-song for the flying-boat era. Rendered in Vue 8 Espirit Others assets My models of the Do24K and the Short C-class flying boat. The flying boat in the foreground in Netherlands East Indies Naval Aviation Service "neutrality" texture. "X-1" was one of the original prototypes produced for the Dutch by Dornier. It reached Broome shortly before the attack after flying for most of the night from Java. Also featured is the Poserworks Catalina with an RAF texture applied. Thanks for viewing...