"Little Eva" was a USAAF Consolidated B-24 Liberator which crashed north-west of Burketown, Queensland (near the Gulf of Carpentaria) on 2 December 1942.

The aircraft, part of the 321st Squadron, 90th Bombardment Group based at Iron Range was returning with four other B-24s from a bombing raid on a Japanese troop convoy about 80 km north of Buna, Papua New Guinea.

Exhausted and with badly blistered feet, they were driven to the four-bed Burketown hospital for medical attention and flown back to Iron Range a week later.

Their resources consisted of two .45 calibre pistols, a few bars of chocolate, a jungle knife, a fish hook and line, and some matches.

[1] On 15 December 1942 a large search party consisting of seven men of the North Australia Observer Unit (NAOU), fifteen Volunteer Defence Corps (VDC) members, a local policeman and two Aboriginal trackers set out from Escott Station to find the crash site.

The wet conditions made for difficult tracking particularly at stream crossings and the trail was finally lost at Settlement Creek near the border between Queensland and Northern Territory.

Grady Gaston, the ball turret gunner, was rescued on 23 April 1943 when he was discovered by stockmen looking for stray cattle and taken over time to Cloncurry.

[2] It was composed by a Yanyuwa man involved in the search for survivors, and stopped being performed during the 1990s, in keeping with cultural protocol after his death.

[3] In 1988, Les Hiddins visited the crash location and filmed the wreckage as part of his Bush Tucker Man show (series 1, episode 7).