Forced landing of a Dornier D-24K Flying Boat at Anna Plains, WA on 2/3 Marcj 1942

FORCED LANDING OF
A DORNIER DO-24K FLYING BOAT
AT ANNA PLAINS, WA
ON 2/3 MARCH 1942

visits since 4 February 2002

Dornier Do-24K Flying Boat, X-36, of the Royal Netherlands Navy, Naval Air Service (RNNAS) made a forced landing south of Broome during the night of 2/3 March 1942 at a place called Anna Plains. It had been heading for Broome with 5 other Dutch Dorniers, but missed the blacked-out town of Broome during the night. The aircraft ran out of fuel and made a forced landing on a mudflat near Anna Plains. It was subsequently set on fire by the crew to avoid capture by the Japanese. The Flying Boats were loaded with evacuees (most of them women and children) from Java.

The five other Dorniers arrived safely in Broome but were all destroyed with significant loss of life the following day during a Japanese bombing raid on Broome. Do-24K was the last of the Do-24's.

Some of the personnel on Dornier D0-24K were as follows:-

Gerrit - Johannes Philippus DIETERICH (1914-1976) Sergeant-vliegtuigmaker M

Johanna Christina DIETERICH 1915 - now living Grand Rapids, Michigan retirement home

Evert Franz Anton DIETERICH 1939 - now living Grand Rapids, Michigan retired

Gerda DIETERICH 1940 - now living Boulder, Colorado

Because of the rush to evacuate Jakarta all their belongings, including photographs etc were left for the Japanese.

Gerrit-Johannes Dieterich went on to fly Catalina's and B-24's through until 1946 and later helped the Indonesians to start up GARUDA Indonesian Airways. He then worked for Fokker and KLM until we immigrated to the USA in 1957.

Photograph of the wreck site by Stan Gadja
On the Pacific Wreck Database home page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I'd like to thank Silvano Jung for his assistance with the details of this incident.

I'd also like to thank Edward Dieterich, from Houston, Texas, for his assistance with this home page. His father was flight engineer on Dornier DO-24 X-36. His mother, brother and sister were also on that flight.

Can anyone help me with more information on this crash?

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