EPISODE 2: Air attack is to be considered ordinary, routine, secondary warfare.

Notifying Darwin of their situation, Armidale is ordered back in to complete the mission. The ship is attacked and sunk in a 3-minute hellfire by 9 bombers and 3 zeros. Armidale is in pieces. The front of the ship is heeling sharply to port and going down. It is here we learn the detail of Teddy Sheens brave action that saw him posthumously, awarded the Victoria Cross. After Armidale is gone Darwin sends the message ‘air attack is to be considered secondary ordinary warfare.’ There over 100 survivors in the water - and dead bodies everywhere.

"Sheean had no chance of escape. Strapped to his anti-aircraft gun, he blazed away till the last.” Leading Seaman, Leigh Bool.

This was not an empty heroic gesture which achieved nothing. His action ensured that there was just enough time before the ship sank for many of those on board to abandon ship, for rafts and floats to be launched and for the depth charges, which might otherwise have killed the survivors, to be disarmed. That time, which undoubtedly saved many lives, was purchased at the cost of Teddy Sheean’s own life. Sir Guy Green.

“I stopped, and I turned around and I tread water and I watched the ship sink, and it was going down very quickly and then when it was almost disappeared, it was almost as if it paused and stopped for a second. Might be in my imagination, I don't know, but that's how it seemed to me. Almost as if it were reluctant to disappear and then it did and having paused it just slid under and that was probably, apart from the deaths of my parents, the saddest moment in my life.” Ordinary Seaman, Ray Leonard.

“The motor boat, badly holed during the machine gunning, was our only refuge where it was possible to keep dry, and so all the wounded were lifted inside.” Ordinary Seaman Russ Caro.