Trapped

A true story of survival

February 1942. The Japanese invasion of Timor has begun and attempts to evacuate a group of 29 Australian airmen, charged with keeping an airfield operational until the last moment, are thwarted.

Under the leadership of Bryan Rofe, a 24-year-old meteorological officer, the airmen make for remote jungle along the northwest coast. All attempts to rescue the group fail. Malaria-ravaged and starving, these men are taken to the limits of their endurance for 58 days. When a 300-strong Japanese patrol is sent to hunt them down all hope seems lost, until they receive a strange signal from sea.

About

Trapped is an exciting podcast series about a group of Australian airmen stranded on Japanese-occupied Timor in the early stages of the Pacific War.

Over six episodes, join me – Tom Trumble – as I tell the dramatic story of those airmen; of how they came to be stranded on Timor; of the men who risked their lives to try and rescue them; and those sent to hunt them down.

I found this story in official reports, journals, letters and court transcripts. In retelling this story, I have kept to the facts. Dramatic sequences have been carefully recreated using archival material, recorded testimony of survivors and voice actors speaking lines from primary sources.

What follows is a story of survival, courage, leadership, mateship and – at certain points – cruelty and violence. But for me, this story is intensely personal. Because the commanding officer of those stranded airmen was my grandfather.