Although a coastwatcher radios a warning, the RAAF control centre decides the aircraft are most likely American Ps returning from Timor. Anti-aircraft fire downs five more Japanese planes. Three Ps, one B, and six Hudsons are destroyed on the ground. Preston and two more freighters are damaged.
Extensive damage is done to the airbase and port facilities. The raid also leads to widespread invasion fears and people fleeing to the south. The C5M and three of the A6Ms circle overhead while the rest conduct repeated strafing runs. One Japanese fighter is shot down and another has to ditch on the way back to Timor. B downed while taking off at Broome.
Over 70 people are killed, mostly Dutch refugees evacuated from the Netherlands East Indies. Then, a small Japanese invasion force approaches the island.
Timing things to perfection, a group of Punjab soldiers in British service then mutinies, killing the island's commander, Captain L. Williams, and four British NCOs. The mutineers signal the Japanese that the coast is clear, and about soldiers land without opposition, beginning a Japanese occupation of Christmas Island that turns out to be not very useful for them.
The island was taken without a fight, after Indian troops defected in support of the Japanese. Imperial War Museum HU". They were led by a British officer, Captain L. A group of Punjabi troops, apparently believing Japanese propaganda concerning the liberation of India from British rule, and probably acting with the tacit support of some or all of the local Sikh police officers, mutinied. On 11 March, they shot and killed Williams and the four British enlisted men β Sergeants Giles and Cross and Gunners Thurgood and Tate β and tossed their bodies into the sea.
