Last Flight of the Buffaloes - a World War II Story on the Fall of Java

Historical Notes by the Author

As all tales of historical fiction, Last Flight of the Buffaloes is based on real events that took place between late February up to 8 March 1942. At the time, the joint American British Dutch Australian Command (ABDACOM) was on its back foot after being kicked out of the Malayan Peninsula, Singapore, then losing the strategic oil reserves in Sumatra and Borneo. It was no secret that the ultimate intent of the Japanese was to seize vital oil reserves for the war effort, especially as President Roosevelt enacted an embargo of oil on the Japanese, and you can't really trade with a country you're at war with.

The ill-fated East Indies Campaign was filled with retreat after retreat and a major setback for the Allies early in the war. In opposite, the Fall of Java was perhaps the high watermark of the Japanese Empire, proving that they could beat their European peers, who had always underestimated them as inferiors. Additionally, this made the Japanese in range for raids and a potential invasion of Australia, which later forced a reinforcement of the Papua New Guinea front and initiating the Solomon Islands campaign, starting at the crucial Battle of Guadalcanal between August 1942 to February 1943.

The combined ABDACOM forces surrendered on March 8 1942, formalized in Kalidjati with Dutch General Hein ter Poorten giving up the East Indies to General Hitoshi Imamura, Imperial Japanese Army. This took place after the Allied defeat at the Java Sea, considered as one of the last true naval battles where big guns and ship-on-ship action were its primary method.

The characters portrayed in Last Flight were members of the Allied forces defending Java. Lieutenant Desouza, Nescu, and Colonel Thasp were members of what is now known as the Lost Battalion—2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery Regiment, Texas National Guard, mobilized several months prior. Previously headed to the Philippines, their course was diverted and were sent to Java instead. The wide majority were captured and served the rest of the war as POW. Uniquely, one soldier from Battery 'E', sent to East Java and not to Leuwiliang, was artist and Japanese-American Sergeant Frank 'Foo' Fujita, who wrote a memoir on which I used to write this story, Foo: A Japanese-American Prisoner of the Rising Sun. The members of the Lost Battalion were then split up throughout the war, though there were reports that they were assigned to POW working groups that eventually built the Burma railway, as portrayed in the 1957 war film Bridge Over the River Kwai, starring Alec Guinness. With the 131st were an assortment of other American units, predominantly Army Air Corps squadrons that included Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawks and new Boeing B-17 bombers.

2-131 Field Artillery were themselves bundled into a combined force of British, Australian, and Dutch, known as Blackforce, named after their Australian commander, Brigadier Arthur Blackburn. Blackburn was an experienced soldier and had fought previously in the First World War with the Australian Imperial Force in Gallipoli and other battlefields, also a recipient of the highest awards for combat gallantry in the Australian military, the Victoria Cross. Before being ordered to Java, he led Australian and British troops in the Syria-Lebanon Campaign against the Germans and the Vichy French. According to the Fourth Volume of Australia in the War of 1939–1945, the official historical record of the Australian armed forces in the Second World War, Blackburn and Blackforce held out somewhere between a couple weeks to several months in the forests and hills of West Java, until they finally surrendered to the Japanese after being plagued with tropical diseases. They were then interned in a number of prisoner camps throughout Japanese territory, facing the terrible horrors that we all know today.

The character van Helsdingen is based on the real-life Captain Jacob Pieter van Helsdingen, commander of 2-VLG-V (2nd Squadron, 5th Airgroup) of the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army Air Force (Militaire Luchtvaart Koninklijk Oost Indische Leger/ML-KNIL). Little historical records are available of him but van Helsdingen, Lieutenant Bruggink (whom is featured in the story), Lieutenant Augustus Deibel (a basis for the story's Franky Drebbel), and Officer Candidate Jan Scheffer were all awarded the Military Order of William by the Dutch government; van Helsdingen was the only one awarded posthumously. Unlike in the story, Scheffer did not die on March 7, 1942 and neither did Deibel escape to Australia.

Van Helsdingen's unit had the unique privilege (or misfortune) to fly American Brewster Buffaloes. Although it was successfully used by the Finnish Air Force against the Soviets, the nature of air warfare differed slightly as the Japanese Zeroes and Hayabusa fighter could fly higher, climb faster, and were more maneuverable especially in high altitudes. Many historians consider the Buffalo and its counterpart, the Grumman F4F Wildcat, as generally inferior against the Japanese planes, and the Americans could only go toe to toe with the Japanese in the air after 1943, where the F6F Hellcat was introduced in the Navy and the U.S. Army Air Forces (in early 1942 still dubbed as 'U.S. Army Air Corps') utilized swifter and more heavily armed aircraft in the form of the P-51 Mustang and the P-47 Thunderbolt. It was no secret that the Imperial Japanese Navy and Imperial Japanese Army Air Force reigned supreme in the early part of the war.

One final note is that the airlift at the latter part of the story did happen. Even before the Japanese reached Java, many Dutch had opted to leave the East Indies by February both by air and sea, especially those who were not enlisted in the KNIL or the Stadswacht (militia). These refugees, however, were not exactly safe. As recorded by J.C. Bijkerk in her account in Selamat Berpisah Sampai Berjumpa di Saat Yang Lebih Baik ('Goodbye, Until Better Times') which I think is a phenomenal account of the years leading up to the fall of the Dutch East Indies, the Japanese were not reluctant in bombing transport ships and tankers filled with escaping refugees were bombed by Japanese aircraft; airlifts were limited for important Allied and colonial personnel and with the quick Japanese advance from Soerabaja (Surabaya) to the port of Tjilatjap (Cilacap) in southern Java, for many colonials, they would have to face the fate of being interned in Japanese camps for the rest of the war. One personality worthy of note was that of Tjarda van Starkenborgh Stachouwer, Governor-General of the East Indies, who did not leave (Dutch exile administration in Australia was handled by his lieutenant, van Mook) and notably served his people (European and Native both) through his internment with the Japanese until the end of the war.

The Fall of the Dutch East Indies marked an important point in the Second World War. However, it marked an even more important point to the future nation of Indonesia. With the Dutch gone and most collaborators captured by the Japanese, Indonesian politician Soekarno readily collaborated with the Japanese and propagandized to the natives to work with the Japanese with the intention of securing a future Indonesia independent from the Dutch. However, many historians consider the 1942-45 occupation by the Japanese was far worse for the native populace than it had ever been under over a century of Dutch colonial rule. Later on, many Japanese-trained Indonesians became the core of the Indonesian revolutionary armies against the returning Dutch, though that did not certainly mean that a good number of the population completely agreed with the newborn Republic of Indonesia, and many natives (Javanese, Ambon, and Manadonese) remained loyal to the Dutch crown through the reinstated KNIL during the grueling guerilla campaigns of the Indonesian National Revolution (1945-1955) years after.

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