EPISODE 1: Sitting Ducks.

It is Tuesday the First of December … 1942 … at the height of the Second World War. The Australian Naval ship, HMAS Armidale, led by Lieutenant Commander David Richards with his brave young crew (average age 21), has been dispatched on an overnight mission to relieve wounded, ill and battle-weary Australian troops … and evacuate Portuguese civilians. And there’s another key objective, to land 63 Dutch East Indies (Javanese) fighters at Betano Bay, Timor. The mission does not go to plan. Having been spotted by the Japanese Air Force, Armidale is attacked on three separate occasions. Forced to hide in rain squalls to evade the attacks, Armidale misses the planned rendezvous at Betano Bay.

“At that time I think it would be pretty general to say that we were well aware of the fact that it would only be an act of God if we got out of this scrap that we were in. So at any rate, we two, the Armidale and Kuru were sent back … but we had to come back on different courses so that we wouldn’t be sailing together and give them more of a target.” Ordinary Seaman, Rex Pullen.

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.

EPISODE 3:  Agony, thirst, hunger ... hope.

After a rough night, the survivors, numbering around 100 men, have the makeshift raft, Carley raft, and motor boat which is being used as a refuge for the seriously wounded. Sharks are circling and another threat appears in the form of deadly sea snakes.

“… although you weren’t completely out of the water it made you feel a little bit safer because sharks and things were sort of hanging around and you didn’t know just when you were going to be pruned off round about the knees, you know.”. Ordinary Seaman, Rex Pullen

“Joe Currie floated near us for days. Sometimes the sharks would nudge him from underneath and take a bit out of him, but he stuck around just the same … I knew it was Joe because of the ring on his finger. When we found we had to go back into Betano, Joe said to me: ‘If anything happens to me, send this ring back to my mother’. I told him I would ...”. Stoker, Ray Raymond.

“On the thwart opposite me was a Javanese bloke with his entrails hanging out of his stomach. Beside him was Ordinary Seaman Fred Smith. His nose was gone, and he had bullets in his stomach and his entrails were hanging out too, so my only view was these two sets of entrails. Smith died that night … but the native bloke lived another couple of days, so I still had entrails to look at. But I wasn’t much to look at myself with my jaw shot away.”  Ordinary Seaman, Ted Morley.