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The most famous aspect of the air war in Northern Australia are the Japanese raids on Darwin, but these were actually on a much smaller scale than the Allied raids on Japanese targets that were launched from the same area. Over three and a half years a vast amount of effort went into creating airfields in the remote area around Darwin, supporting aircraft and personnel in that area, and carrying out a long series of attacks on Japanese targets across the Dutch East Indies.
We start with three chapters that set the scene, giving an overview of the campaign area, the bombers used by the Allies (the long ranges involved meant that fighters were rarely involved), and the Japanese defences.
Most of the remaining eleven chapters deal with particular time periods, looking at all of the raids carried out in that period. There is a focus on aircraft losses, both operational and accidental, normally with a complete list of those lost and the fate of the survivors. Often the fate of a missing aircraft wasn’t discovered until well after the war, and we also get those details. This approach reminds us that every air campaign of the war had a high human cost, with aircraft shot down by the Japanese, lost in bad weather or crashing in Australia.
The result is a very useful detailed history of this obscure but surprisingly sizable air campaign that slowly saw the Japanese put onto the back foot in a large part of their southern conquests.
Chapters
1 – Overview
2 – The Bombers
3 – The Opponents: Fighters and AA Guns
4 – The Allies Strike Back
5 – The End of the Beginning
6 – A Turning of the Tide and the Dutch arrive
7 – Bigger, Better and Faster
8 – The Catalinas arrive; the Allies Apply Pressure
9 – A New Wing and New Aircraft
10 – Trading Hudsons for Beauforts – and the Black Cats fly
11 – The Americans and the Dutch depart; Lucky 13 returns
12 – No.2 Squadron operations and the RAAF’s heavies take over
13 – The RAAF heavies move forward
14 – The Cats fly to China and the war’s end
Author: Dr Tom Lewis
Edition: Paperback
Pages: 156
Publisher: Avonmore Books
Year: 2023