ABC TV WW2 and borneo doco

[Mike K]

Originally Posted by motto

Dang! Missed it Mike and it's not on iview.

Dave

They do air it every 6 months or so .

The surviving airmen of a B24 shot down , were taken in by the natives . A UK SOE agent and team was sent into Borneo around the same time .. the airmen managed to contact him ... The English SOE Major was a eccentric character who encouraged the natives to bring in heads of the Japs ..he them paid a bounty .

The SOE team included some Australian Z force soldiers , they interviewed two of these Z force guys .

Anyway Tarakan was taken and the stranded airmen made radio contact with Allied forces there, and a Auster flew in , it landed on a strip made from bamboo flattened out .

Only one of the US airmen was still alive at the time of the doco being made , the B24 radio operator . The pilot was killed during the parachute escape in 1944 .

Amazing story all round

They accounted for around 1000 japs . The natives hated the Japs deeply as they had murdered the pre war Christian missionaries and stolen their women , one of the priests stupidly gave himself up to the Japs only to be beheaded .