Darwin 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 RAAF fighter aircraft was available to meet this attack, imminent and inevitable though it was.
At the time of the raid, Douglas Lockwood was a correspondent for the Melbourne Herald in Darwin. In the years that followed, he travelled the world interviewing survivors of and participants in the attack to produce the first complete reconstruction of that tragic day.