Darwin 1942 The Japanese attack on Australia

by Alford, Bob; Laurier, Jim

• ISBN13: 9781472816870
• ISBN10: 1472816870
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2017-02-21
• Publisher: Osprey Publishing

Summary

Following the devastating raids on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, lightning advances by Japanese forces throughout the Pacific and the Far East, and a desperate battle by the Allied command in the Dutch East Indies, it became evident that an attack on Australia was more a matter of “when” and not “if.”

On February 19, just eleven weeks after the attacks on Pearl Harbor and two weeks after the fall of Singapore, the same Japanese battle group that had attacked Hawaii was ordered to attack the ill-prepared and under-defended Australian port of Darwin.

Publishing 75 years after this little-known yet devastating attack, this fully illustrated study details what happened on that dramatic day in 1942 with the help of contemporary photographs, maps, and profiles of the commanders and machines involved in the assault.

Author Biography

Raised at Bacchus Marsh in country Victoria, Bob Alford joined the RAAF in 1966 and served twenty years as an Armourer. Following “retirement” from the RAAF, Bob was commissioned to undertake site surveys and report on military and aircraft crash sites in the Northern Territory. He was later appointed Director of the National Trust and was involved in the 1992 War Service Memorial Year. In April 2007 Bob and his wife, Pat, moved to Thailand, where they now reside.