Veteran tells war tale

Bryan Cox turns 90 next January, but he still remembers the deadly events of January 15, 1945, as if it was yesterday.

The Tauranga ex-pilot is the last living survivor of the tragedy known as ‘Black Monday' – a day when eight Kiwi pilots and eight aircraft were lost.


SunLive caught up with Bryan, as he took to the skies again this month in the back of a Harvard, piloted by Tauranga veteran pilot Derek Williams. Thanks to Classic Flyers for helping SunLive make this happen.

'I think about it every day. It was the worst loss of pilots and aircraft ever suffered by the Royal New Zealand Air Force.”

The day unfolded on Bryan's 20th birthday. Early in the morning squadrons based at Green Island, north of Bougainville, were involved in a rescue mission to save flight lieutenant Frank Keefe, who'd fallen into Simpson Harbour – offshore of Japan's major Pacific base at Rabaul, Papua New Guinea.

'He was hit and he bailed out and landed in the middle of the harbour, 1km from shore. An American Catalina rescue plane was flying outside the harbour, hoping the weather would close in so they could land and pick him up.”

The weather didn't close in – and that afternoon Bryan received orders to join squadron leader Paul Green and fellow pilot Grev Randell in the rescue mission.

A NZ Ventura bomber was called to drop bamboo rafts into the water near Frank. Bryan was among 15 pilots flying Corsairs to help protect the Ventura on its mission.

The raft drop was successful, but as Bryan flew overhead, he saw a limp lieutenant floating in the water.

'I was the last person to see him. He'd stopped swimming by that point.”

Disaster struck when the group headed back for Green Island.

'Unfortunately, we ran out of daylight halfway home; we were flying into a tropical front. It was as black as pitch, like a blackboard; and we had to just fly into it.”

Bryan, who'd never flown at night in a Corsair, credits his survival to using an artificial horizon (an instrument showing an aircraft's orientation relative to Earth's horizon).

'It saved my life. I soon became spatially disorientated; when I looked at the plane beside me it looked like they were above me.”

All Bryan could see was a faint glimmer on his altimeter, which at one point told him he was nearly at sea level. He'd just banked to avoid hitting the wing of another plane.

With no radio contact or electrics, and rain battering down, Bryan was oblivious to the blue flashes later reported by survivors, as aircraft crashed into the sea.

'The rather critical thing was my brother had been flying a Lancaster in Europe and he was shot down on August 24, 1944. Just before this happened my parents had received word the bodies of his crew were found in Germany.

'I was thinking what on earth are my parents going to do now? I don't know where I am, nobody else knows where I am and I'm flying at four miles a minute.”

Suddenly, a flash of lightening lit up the skies and Bryan could see the runway's location.

He managed to land and was taken into a tent, given a 'mug of rum” and interviewed.

'Everyone was listening on the radio what was going on. I didn't know anything about it.”

Of the 15 who flew into the front that afternoon, seven pilots crashed into the sea.

Bryan was dispatched from Green Island shortly after the events of January 15. He served post-war in Japan, before leaving the RNZAF in 1947.

He returned to Hamilton, where he married his brother's widow in 1949, and the pair had four children.

Bryan didn't fly for nine years after the war ended, but later began flight tutoring at Auckland's Ardmore airfield, clocking up more than 20,000 teaching hours before his retirement.

He's written three books on his war experience: ‘Too young to die', ‘Pacific Scrapbook' and ‘Cats Have Only Nine Lives'.

What happened to Frank Keefe?

Late on January 15, a Japanese boat pulled flight lieutenant Frank Keefe from the water and took him to shore.

Frank died 15 days after his capture. Japanese authorities said he died of blood poisoning – a condition believed to be worsened by a lack of medical supplies.

Among the Japanese soldiers at Rabaul was Minoru Fujita – who took pity on Frank and prayed for him in English.

'Minoru had been a naval officer, had visited America and spoke some English,” says Bryan.

'He knew the Lord's Prayer and before Frank was taken away on an army truck as a prisoner they said the Lord's Prayer together.”

Minoru survived the war and in 1988 hired a Japanese-American military historian to track down Frank's family origins.

Minoru visited Frank's late brother John in Auckland, and spent one night staying with Bryan and his wife.

'He was the first Japanese to talk to Frank and I was the last one to see him. And he stayed in my house.”

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