GHQ Courier in Australia during WW2

The GHQ Courier service was established in September 1943 after a phone call between General Douglas MacArthur and Australian Prime Minister John Curtin to discuss the provision of a service between General Douglas MacArthur's GHQ SWPA in Brisbane and forward areas in New Guinea and the Islands.

The USAAF's 322nd Troop Carrier Wing provided the aircraft for the GHQ Courier service and Australian Civilian Airlines supplied maintenance facilities and staff. Captains for the courier aircraft came from civilian airlines and co-pilots and radio operators were provided by the RAAF. This combination was an immediate success and provided a nightly service between Australia and New Guinea and the Islands. There were only two occasions in 2 1/2 years of operation that the courier service failed to deliver the General's mail. On both occasions the aircraft crashed killed all those on board.

The GHQ Courier service would leave Brisbane each night at about 8pm and arrive at Port Moresby at around 5am the following morning. As the Allies made advances against the Japanese the Courier service extended its reach initially to Nadzab and Finschhafen and then on to Hollandia followed by Biak and Morotai. Eventually the Courier service reached right through to the Philippines and despite MacArthur no longer being based in Brisbane by that time, the Courier service still originated from Brisbane.

Troops at airfields in forward areas were often confused when they saw an American C-47 with Australian Civilian Airline markings on it as well as the USAAF stars and bars and even more surprised when RAAF personnel disembarked the aircraft.

A subsidiary Courier service was also run to Adelaide. On one afternoon a co-pilot, arriving back in Brisbane from an Adelaide run found that he was rostered to depart for Port Moresby that same night. When he arrived in Port Moresby he surprised a South Australian solider by handing him a copy of the previous day's Adelaide newspaper. Many Australian daily newspapers hear of the incident and offered to provide an ongoing similar service if the GHQ Courier service would take them.

The civilian passenger services would deliver their daily papers to Brisbane and then the 8pm GHQ Courier service would fly them through to Finschhafen by 5am the next morning where crews were changed and the aircraft then flew on to Hollandia. Military camps competed with each other to attract delivery of bundles of newspapers. Artillery was often silenced when the Courier service flew in to drop its bundle of newspapers. Their courtesy was sometime rewarded by a full case of ice-cream packed in dry-ice provided free by an Australian confectioner.

General Douglas MacArthur's mail only occupied a small part of the aircraft and at times some very strange cargoes accompanied the General's mail. On one occasion 20 cages of white mice were transported to Manila for Army medical research purposes. During a fierce storm some of the cage doors opened and the mice escaped. Some of the mice made three trips between Brisbane and Manila before they succumbed to the cold.

The article states that when MacArthur moved to Hollandia, the GHQ Courier service delivered his furniture which supposedly even included a piano. I'm not sure if this story is factual or not. Possibly not.

Air crews were able to carry their own variety of parcels to and from New Guinea or other locations for soldiers and relatives in Brisbane. One radio-operator would pick up a freshly baked sponge cake at 3pm every Friday from a soldier's wife in Brisbane and deliver it with an accompanying letter at Finschhafen at 6am the following morning thus circumventing the normal six weeks for letters to arrive in Finschhafen.

An enterprising cook persuaded one of the Courier pilots to fly cases of roast chickens, fresh vegetables and fruit to Finschhafen each trip. The chickens were killed and roasted just before the GHQ Courier took off from Brisbane. The Commanding Officer was always invited to dinner to keep him onside.

On one night time flight, the pilot, co-pilot and radio operator all fell asleep some time after the aircraft had left Townsville at 1am. When the pilot woke up at 3am the compass showed that they were flying south headed back to Townsville. On another flight to Brisbane, loaded with Americans and Australians heading south to some well earned leave, the flight crew dozed off again. The aircraft started to lose altitude until the passengers and of course the pilot were suddenly alarmed by the loud blast of a safety horn designed to warn the pilot that the landing wheels had not been lowered prior to their landing.

One one occasion a Courier Captain agreed to sneak a homesick solider aboard for an unapproved weekend in Brisbane. Unfortunately for the soldier the route for that Courier Captain was changed and the soldier eventually had to hand himself in to the Military Police.

When the war ended in September 1945, the GHQ Courier service continued to fly but this time they were returning war-weary troops back to Brisbane.

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