John and Jeanette Anictomatis

19 February 2017

Bombing of Darwin commemorations USS Peary memorial attended by former Administrator the Honourable John Anictomatis AO and Mrs Jeanette Anictomatis. USS Peary (DD-226) was a Clemson class destroyer of the United States Navy. She was commissioned in 1920 and sunk by Japanese aircraft at Darwin on 19 February 1942. The Peary lies in 89 feet (27 m) of water in Darwin Harbor. The wreck is a memorial to those who lost their lives in the first bombing raid on Australian soil and to those who defended Darwin. There is a memorial in honour of the lives lost. The memorial, in Bicentennial Park on the Esplanade, consists of a plaque and one of the 4-inch deck guns recovered from the Peary. This gun is aimed towards the Peary's resting place in the harbor. In the words of Peter Grose, author of An Awkward Truth: The Bombing of Darwin, February 1942, "The doomed yet magnificent reply by the destroyer USS Peary in Darwin harbour as Japanese dive-bombers swarmed around her deserves a place in the legend books of American military history" (Grose, Peter (2009). An Awkward Truth: The Bombing of Darwin, February 1942. NSW: Allen & Unwin). The deck gun recovered by Carl Atkinson (of Doctors Gully fame), and restored by the Royal Australian Navy, now a memorial to the 91 crew who went down with the ship, the US Navy's greatest loss of life in Australian waters.

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