Finished: RAAF Pomegranate PBD-1 Invader

[comrade harps]

Combining the Italeri A-26C and K kits, plus various add-ons like Hobby Boss P-47D props etc, and currently including my old blocks from childhood (even before I got Lego)




Another Operation Downfall, invasion of Japan one, but without the candy-coloured invasion stripes (night ops - not needed).

The Pomegranite reference is the type of mission. The crew will be the father of an Aussie rules football legend and a patch-work of rogues made into a new character.

[NARSES2]

Always liked the A/B-26

[comrade harps]

Douglas PBD-1 Invader B.1, 453 Sqd, RAAF, Kangnung, southern Korea, 1 March 1946

Douglas PBD-1 Invader B.1
The PBD-1 was the USMC version of the Douglas A-26 Invader. It featured numerous changes from the USAAF's A-26, including wing-tip fuel tanks, more powerful engines driving 4 bladed propellers and wing-mounted radar. In USMC service, the Invader was a direct replacement for the North American PBJ-1 Mitchell.

435 Sqd was the only RAAF unit to operate the PBD-1. Although a RAAF unit, 435 Sqd was one of several Australian manned squadrons to serve under RAF command for the duration of the war. Equipped with Hudsons, 453 Sqd's first campaign was the ill-fated defence of Malaya and Singapore. Forced to disband with the fall of Singapore, it was reformed in India, initially on Blenheims before more Hudsons became available. In 1943 it flew Beauforts before progressing to Beaufighters in 1944.

The Invader was taken on in mid-1945 when the squadron was ear-marked for use in the invasion of Japan, flying both maritime patrol and land attack missions. Because these misions were to be undertaken exclusively at night, the USMC midnight blue finish was retained and roundels similar to a type used by the Fleet Air Arm in the Pacific on midnight blue camouflaged aircraft was adopted. Unlike other tactical aircraft involved in Operation Downfall, these nocturnal RAAF and USMC Invaders were exempted from applying the yellow and orange invasion stripes. Like the late-war PBJs, the USMC and RAAF removed the PBD's rear turrets to save weight, drag and a crew member, as the threat from Japanese night fighters was minimal.





The Mission
With Flight Lieutenant George Barrington at the controls and Warrant Officer Ronald Barassi serving as the navigator-bombardier, Sweet Miss Lillian (named after Barassi's wife) went to war on their sixth and final mission together just after midnight on 1 March, 1946. That night, the invasion of Japan was underway, as American troops stormed beachheads on the Kanto Plains and British Commonwealth forces went ashore at Wakasa Bay. Their mission was code-named Pomegranate, being a coastal armed-reconnaissance seeking targets of opportunity. If, after a certain interval and completion of search patterns and no targets being found, and fuel and weather permitting, Pomegranate crews were instructed to attack land targets from a selection presented to the crew at their briefing. In Marine Corps terms, these lone night attacks against land targets were known as "hecklers".

After being relieved on station and finding no targets at sea as they patrolled to the south of the Wakasa Bay invasion fleet, Barrington and Barassi mounted a heckler against the airfrield at Matsugaoka. This site has been attacked in hecklers before with no retaliation, but with the invasion clearly underway the Japanese fought back this time. Using standard heckler tactics, the crew first made a bomb run on the airfiled and followed this up with a rocket attack. It was during the rocket approach that the nose of the aircraft was struck by flak, critically injuring Barassi and injuring Barrington's legs and feet. Barrington brought the damaged aircraft back to an emergency landing without a nose wheel, but it was too late for Barassi, who was found dead in the crumpled and holed nose.



The crew
Warrant Officer Ronald Barassi flew in RAF Mitchells and RAAF Beauforts before being transferred to 453 Sqd for service as a bombardier/navigator/radar operator in the unit's PBD-1 Invaders. Before the war, he was a well-known and liked player for the Melbourne Australian rules football club. His was survived by his wife and son, Ronald Dale Barassi Jnr.

The young Barassi Jnr spent his latter teenage years living with Norm Smith, coach of the Melbourne Football Club and a former teammate of his father. He showed potential as a player and was recruited to Melbourne under the father-son rule. After compulsory military service (in the Australian Army), Barassi Jnr went on to become a football legend, playing for Melbourne before moving to Carlton as captain-coach. He later coached Melbourne, North Melbourne and Sydney, earning several VFL Premierships as player and coach and initiating tactics that were seen as revolutionary. In 1988 Barassi Jnr was listed as one of Australia's Living Treasures.

George Barrington joined the RAAF in 1943 and, like Barassi, was trained as part of the Empire Air Training Scheme. He stayed with the RAAF post-war as an intelligence officer in Japan and Southeast Asia, rising to the rank of Squadron Leader, before joining the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) 1956. For cover he worked as a journalist and writer as G.B. Barringston, becoming the Southeast Asia correspondent for The Argus newspaper from his base in Thailand. By 1960, his writing exploits extended to the first in a series of Bruce "Bluey" Howard books, which have been described as an ocker cross between Biggles and James Bond. Bluey Howard was franchised into a series of popular Australian movies, a long-running comic strip published in Australasian Post and has recently been revived into the graphic novel format. He also wrote several travel books during the 1960s and early '70s as part of his cover, but used a variety of pseudonyms for these titles.

In 1985, Barrington published the first of what he promised to be three autobiographies. Wings Above the Earth dealt with his early years and RAAF service. Having retired from his ASIS duties in 1975, he felt free to publish his espionage memoirs, Spy Catcher, in 1987, but the Australian Government tried to suppress the work. After a lengthy and suppressed court battle, the book was released and became an instant best seller, but has since been criticised as fraudulent. In 1990, Max Harris, literary critic for The Age newspaper, revealed the Spy Catcher trial to be  the result of "a hoax".  After reading a redacted version of the manuscript that lead to the trail, Harris noted that the Australian Government had been given "a fake draft of photocopied documents, photographs and notes" that was "a crude paste-up job" from which to judge the book and had been set up for "a calculated publicity stunt." Barrington died in 1989 before this criticism came to light and the manuscript for the third instalment of his autobiography remains unpublished. David Marr's 1992 biography of Barrington, [iG.B. Barringston: A Fraudulent Life[/i], went further. Marr noted that Barrington's ASIS worked really only amounted to attending parties and bars and passing on gossip, that his travel books were full of errors and that Spy Catcher was "a work of fiction featuring a significant amount of plagiarism." He also revealed that Barrington was behind the fake Tojo Diaries published in the Murdoch newspapers in 1979.

[NARSES2]

Strewth thats quick - come out really well as well 

I remember all the fuss when "Spycatcher" came out. I wasn't aware of the latter events in any detail thanks for the summary 

[comrade harps]

I remember all the fuss when "Spycatcher" came out. I wasn't aware of the latter events in any detail thanks for the summary

I think I made a few things up.

[manytanks]

Thats a mean looking flying machine there..well done there and good old Barassi, i remember him in 1977 with his green and white striped open neck shirt... dressed for a night club he was.

[NARSES2]

I remember all the fuss when "Spycatcher" came out. I wasn't aware of the latter events in any detail thanks for the summary

I think I made a few things up.

Right 

[Old Wombat]

The comrade harps' George Barrington seems to be an amalgam of Peter Wright & (possibly) this George Barrington.




Nice 'plane, though!

[comrade harps]

The comrade harps' George Barrington seems to be an amalgam of Peter Wright & (possibly) this George Barrington.

Yes! Plus a dash of a little David "Hitler Diaries" Irving. This character and others in this backstory are all about Australian literature. Barrington's memoirs and tourist books about Australia were largely hoaxes. The real Max Hastings was Max Harris (my bad, I got the surname wrong and called him Hastings - I've fixed that now) and he was a poetry editor taken in by Australia's most infamous poetry hoax, the Ern Malley Angry Penguins hoax. David Marr is a real journalist and wrote a biography of author Patrick White and the title of his Barrington biography is a play on Albert B. Facey's biographical A Fortunate Life. Former intelligence officer Peter Wright did indeed author Spycatcher and there was a trail as the British government tried to ban it, tried to gag order reportage of the trail and of course aided increased sales somewhat. There really was an Australasian Post magazine.

You may have heard of the Murdoch fella.