I remember that all officers were paraded and we had a 'pep' talk from Air Vice-Marshal Maltby RAF from Singapore. He said that we were not going to retreat further, and that the RAF, RAAF and the Dutch were to hold the Palembang airfields at all costs.

George Mackey acquired a meteorological working space; and had already organised some signals personnel and an old AR-7 radio receiver from somewhere. For data we managed to receive the PLO Bandoeng meteorological broadcast which was still going, fortunately, and also the Australian collective message; but had nothing much else except occasional information from pilots and some dependence on climatology. The RAF Blenheims and other aircraft on the base and RAAF Hudsons were carrying out reconnaissance bombing raids on shipping, eg Japanese transports, on Singora and other targets, and from mid-February on Singapore itself. We managed to prepare at least one chart a day. Our equipment was absolutely basic; at least we had brought some plotting charts, and somehow had the meteorological war codes and current cyphers.

Bureau of Meteorology