The first ever attack on Australia by a foreign power occurred at Corwin on 19 February 1942.
The town was bombed in broad daylight by members of the Japanese Carrier Task Force which had been engaged at Pearl Harbour. two months earlier. Not a single operational R.A A.F. fighter aircraft was available to meet this attack, imminent and inevitable though it was.
At the time of the raid, Douglas Lockwood was correspondent for the Melbourne Herald in Darwin, and he has since travelled the world to interview survivors and participants. His is the first complete reconstruction of that tragic day.
DOUGLAS LOCKWOOD lived in Darwin for more than a quarter of a century. He first went there in 1941, as a journalist representing the Melbourne Herald and its affiliates. On his travels through the Northern Territory and the Centre he gathered a unique store of material. In the late 1950s he began writing the series of books, based on his own knowledge and experiences.
In 1962 he won the Adelaide Advertiser Literary Competition with his book 1. The Aboriginal. and other writing awards include the Walkley Award for Journalism, and the London Evening News Award for the World's Strangest Story. As a journalist he covered all the most important events in Darwin and the Northern Territory after the end of World War II and until 1969.
In later years Mr Lockwood was Managing Editor of the Post Courier in Papua New Guinea and the Advertiser in Bendigo, Victoria, where he died in 1980.
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