Did the US save Australia from the Japanese?

[buffnut453]

If Japan just seized key ports around Australia, then they'd simply be repeating the same strategic error that characterized the rest of their Pacific campaign: grabbing isolated locations that could not mutually support each other. As happened in the Pacific, the captured ports could be retaken piecemeal as Allied strength increased, and the Japanese forces could do little, if anything, to prevent it because of the distances involved and the lack of sufficient maritime carrying capacity.

 

[Shortround6]

Let's remember a few facts......................................
Would Australia stand alone against the Japanese if their Allies could not support them? Or would they accept the new status quo? Japan does not have to fight for every inch of Australia, just seize the key ports.

Define support and provide time table?

The Japanese, if they can act even a month sooner than historically means trying to take Port Moresby in April of 1942 instead of May. This is NOT Dec of 1941 or even January.

The US had started diverting supply ships/transports intended for the Philippines starting in Dec of 1941 (first ships arrive Brisbane Dec 22) and 4600 men are landed. Granted this is a drop in the bucket and these are hardly seasoned troops. The Australians received some P-40E aircraft in March of 1942 and these were in operation in just two weeks over/around Port Moresby.

So Australia was hardly alone.

In the alternate scenario being put forth here the Japanese would somehow ignore the Philippines and send those troops/aircraft/ships to seize Indonesia and Java even sooner. Historically the Japanese didn't attack Java until Feb 28th and it took two weeks to surrender.

Now please consider in this scenario that many of the ships that arrived in Australia during Dec, Jan and Feb with men and war material would have instead gone as reinforcements to the Philippines. So when the US did join the war you have a sizable naval presence and several hundreds more aircraft sitting astride their new supply routes.

For the Japanese it is not quite enough to seize just the major ports, the ports are not where the food and raw materials are. they also have to defend the ports against counter strikes from commonwealth forces and the Americans once they finally join the war. The Japanese cannot count on them staying out even in this scenario. None (or very few) of the major ports are within supporting distance of each other and the struggle for the east coast of Australia could resemble the Benghazi Sweepstakes, with advances and counter advances of hundreds of miles as the supplies for each side ebbed and flowed.

 

[Graeme]

Australia was firmly united, including its waterside workers,

Have you seen/heard/read this book Michael? Real eye-opener....

 

[Graeme]

I am just wondering how much of a cake walk it would be to walk from Cairns/Townsville to Sydney (let alone Melbourne) in the Australian summer?

One airman made it from Darwin to Melbourne in 13 days.

 

[parsifal]

Japan launched its "Southern Offensive" across a huge expanse of the globe with one objective. To cause, to use a modern term, "shock and awe" to the Allied powers. Quickly gobbling up isolated bases within their sphere of control (Hong Kong, Guam, Wake) and overrunning poorly defended colonial territory in SE Asia, the Allies were to be so demoralized that they would sue for peace. They expected a cakewalk, but reality intervened. In spite of rapid victories in Malaya, Burma and the Philippines, and the rapid seizure of Rabaul, the Japanese quickly found themselves overextended.

Despite a massive build up of resources and supplies in Indochina since September 1940, with just two divisions deployed in Malaya and a further 1.5 divisions in Burma, and a generally supportive regime in Siam (after some initial resistance), the Japanese found their forces in this TO to be seriously short of logistics. The situation and terrain into Burma makes it understandable, but no such reasoning applies in Malaya. The final assault of Singapore was a desperate, close run battle in which the Japanese ran out of fuel outright and very nearly ran out of ammunition. They were short of everything really. If the assault had failed they would have been forced to pull back for re-supply.

Look at the differences in distances It is about 500miles from the Malayan frontier to Singapore…..Its something like 2000 miles from Darwin to Adelaide across a trackless desert. With port capacities in 1941 that were able to unload 1 ship per week on average. In 1942, Darwin was a dusty country town with a population not exceeding 5000 people. It had not the slightest chance of meeting the logistic needs of an army that would easily exceed 1 million men….

Resistance at Wake Island delayed the Japanese timetable two weeks and required additional forced to accomplish. Ditto the Philippines, which held out until May and resulted in the commander of the operation being relieved. The surprise attack by the Lexington and Yorktown on the Lea-Salamaua landings 10 March, 1942 cost the Japanese three transports critical to further expansion and damage to other ships resulting in a month long delay in launching the Port Moresby operation. Without these critical delays we don't know how much the Japanese could have achieved in severing the lines of communication to the US and UK. Would Australia stand alone against the Japanese if their Allies could not support them? Or would they accept the new status quo? Japan does not have to fight for every inch of Australia, just seize the key ports.

During the period of her offensive, the Japanese had the capacity in the PTO to support roughly 2-3 divs on sustained operations. If they switched over to defensive postures, they could support about 10 divs. It takes a lot less to support a units that is on the defensive. In this hypothetical they would need to support 15-20 divs through hostile territory with virtually no supporting infrastructure, relying on ports that were not up to the logistic demands this level of operation would demand, using a transport network that had no hope of supporting such an intensive and large scale operation.

It could be argued that the Japanese might try for an end run to the industrialised southeaster portions of the country. This was considered by the Japanese and the Australian Army and thought most unlikely (by both). Maximum lift capacity would be no more than two divs with (we think) a reinforcement rate of about 1 div per month, which in any case eats seriously into the re-supply of the front line forces. There is a mountain range down the east coast with many choke point that small forces could hold out indefinitely. Movement up and down the coastal plains would have been difficult for a hostile force, with many rivers, few bridges and mountains sometimes extending to the very edge of the coast. An assault directly into a major centre, could be possible. There were really only two options, an assault of Brisbane, or an assault of Sydney/Newcastle or Wollongong. None of these options have very encouraging prospects for a quick occupation. Townsville Bundaberg possibly Gladstone had some port capacities, but nowhere near enough Townsville was the main port of departure for Moresby, and struggled to support an overseas force, mostly unengaged of no more than 50000. And that was while the port was undamaged and under friendly control with all those hostile waterside workers apparently not helping the war effort…….

The US produced a report after the war that showed that on average, the amount of shipping needed to support a division in the PTO on sustained operations was 20 times that needed to support the same sized formation in the ETO. Im amazed that people are simply so ignorant of these cold hard realities but still want to present themselves as an expert on the pacific. Nimitz famously had a sign hanging behind him that said "Before you even ask, do we have the shipping to consider it!" people would do well to remember that before haring off to make outrageous claims.

 

[parsifal]

Have you seen/heard/read this book Michael? Real eye-opener....

View attachment 491799
View attachment 491800

No, but for a while I worked for two ex- waterside workers who were at the centre of this controversy. These two "gentlemen were called Issy wyner and nick Origlass. You can google them if you like.

The alleged shortages and go slows are largely a crock. Not so pre-june 1941, but after that there was an immediate turn around.

It just didn't happen basically.

 

[parsifal]

You might find the following thesis on this book also helpful

http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2800&context=lhapapers

 

[Graeme]

Thanks for that Michael. Interesting!

 

[parsifal]

Professor Peter Stanley another commentator of colebatches book had these observations (among others) to make

"Colebatch claims that, had wharfies been less tardy in loading 155 mm guns destined for Milne Bay, the guns 'could have destroyed the Japanese landing forces before they got ashore' (p. 13). Perhaps. But Colebatch says that the guns were ordered to be loaded only on 5 September 1942. The Japanese had landed ten days before this. Even if the wharfies had loaded the guns more speedily the guns could not possibly have reached Milne Bay and got into action before the end of the fighting, two days later, on 7 September. Simple chronology demolishes that argument.


Colebatch then makes a meal of the wirelesses used by Sparrow Force in Timor, offering pages of storytelling that turn out to be a fizzer. He claims that wharfies loading the ship that carried the 2/2nd Independent Company to Timor threw the troops' wireless gear into the hold, damaging it. The 2/2nd arrived in Timor on December 1941, just after the outbreak of the war with Japan. The Japanese landed on Timor late in February 1942 and Sparrow Force had communicated with Australia in the meantime. After the invasion, when Sparrow Force's survivors were waging a guerilla war in the island's interior, they had no working wireless and cobbled together a Heath Robinson affair they called 'Winnie the War Winner', with which they re-established communications with Australia in April 1942. (This contraption is now on display in what Colebatch wrongly names as the 'National War Memorial'. Not the only error – he has a 'Dutch' commander at Dili, in Portuguese 'East' Timor and the 2/2nd Independent Company was not disbanded after its Timor ordeal.)


What has any of this to do with union 'sabotage', you ask? Colebatch slyly implies that the wharfies' rough handling of the 2/2nd's gear in December resulted in the Independent Company's isolation after the Japanese invasion. 'I do not know', he writes, 'if there was a direct connection between the fact the watersiders were specifically reported … to have thrown radio sets into the hold and the fact that the commandos had no working radio after the Japanese attack' (p. 23). But he implies that there was such a connection. Colebatch could not find any Sparrow Force veteran to claim that unionists irreparably damaged the force's wireless gear. At best 'not proved'.


Finally, Colebatch claims that a 'wharf strike in Brisbane' (undated and undocumented) prevented the 20th Brigade from carrying out a proposed rescue mission to liberate the surviving prisoners of war at Sandakan 'because there were no heavy weapons' (p. 4). But the 20th Brigade was never even considered for the proposed rescue mission, Operation 'Kingfisher'. It was earmarked for the Oboe 2 landings at Balikpapan, which it carried out in July 1945. 'Kingfisher' had been outlined, using the 1st Australian Parachute Battalion (which neither had nor needed any 'heavy weapons') but was cancelled. The feasibility of 'Kingfisher' and the reasons for its cancellation have been vigorously debated among historians of the Borneo campaign but no-one has ever before mentioned the 20th Brigade or a supposed wharf strike as a factor. The usual villain is General Douglas MacArthur, whose headquarters is said to have diverted the necessary transport aircraft to American operations in the Philippines, though the definitive reason remains debatable. Colebatch's claim adds nothing to the debate about the fate of the Sandakan prisoners. Verdict: irrelevant".

 

[Smokey Stover]

OK, educate me, tell me how many ships were sunk bringing supplies into Vladivostok, or how many were sunk on the Iran route?

Tell me when the first US supplies (not British) reached Russia?

Browse the list here:
Complete List of Lend Lease to Russia including atomic materials

Now is this list a lie or is it true (subject to clerical errors) and if it is true please explain how the Russians didn't need these materials as they were doing so well producing things on their own.

excerpts.
Aluminum & alloys, ingots, slabs, etc. 366,73S,204 lbs
Aluminum plates, sheets, strips 124,052,618 lbs.
Brass &c bronze ingots 10,214,064 lbs
Brass & bronze bars, rods, etc. 66,329,462 lbs.
Copper wire, bare 28,235,738 lbs.
Copper wire, rubber-covered 16,521,612 lbs.
Drills, etc., metal cutting, power-driven 7,822,2l6
Steel bars, cold finished 425,331,742 tons
Boiler tubes, seemless 157,231,260 lbs.
Turret lathes 3,073
Lathes 2,644
Electric welding rods & wire 24,264,316 lbs.


the last is over 12,000 tons of welding rod/wire. Want to tell me how the Russians were going to make all those welded tanks without welding wire?
Or did the Russians just use their own and stock pile this stuff in warehouses?

The Russian workers did near miracles in poorly heated factories on near starvation diets (also helped with lend lease See list of food stuffs like
Pork, pickled, salted, fresh,frozen 529,814,747 lbs.) but even the Russians cannot make tanks and planes with their bare hands out of rocks and trees.

Ok, before i have time to read and sort through boxes of stats, you are aware of the amount of aircraft alone the Russians designed and built? Not to mention tanks, including probably the best medium tank of ww2 (T-34) which i might add went into combat as early as 1941. The Russians had at least two to three times the amount of anti aircraft guns and barrage balloons over Moscow than there ever was over London. Anti tank guns, thousands of trucks built or modified for rocket projectiles, full winter clothing equipment, special forces trained soldiers on ski's. Factory after factory taken down brick by brick and transported back behind the lines and out of reach of German planes and re-built with production going on round the clock. All this and more done with Russian built trains/track. As for your comment about ships, because of the German invasion and geography and the fact they weren't fighting in the Pacific makes your claim of sea vessels irrelevant. Not to mention for 3 years the only real allied help they received (apart from US/UK reject aircraft and equipment) all they got was cans of corned beef. To which when opening them, joked "we're opening the second front". I think your doing what most amateur historians do and hold to much faith in paper statistics and possibly misplaced pride. Lend lease or no lend lease, the fact is the US & Britain didnt even land troops on the continent until June 1944. The war for Germany was over by then. And im sorry but anyone who believes lend lease had such a huge impact on Russia defeating Germany is simply deluded. That's like saying without the British giving America radar, code breaking information and piston+jet engine technology was the reason the US won the war in the Pacific. After all, until Britain taught the US how to land F4U's on the decks of actual aircraft carriers they would still have been operating from mud runways in the Pacific island chains. Im all for friendly debate, but dont try to belittle me with a list of metal tubing and statistics that we have no way of actually proving anymore. Do you not have an opinion of your own on this matter or do you just regurgitate stats found on wikipedia......

 

[Mungo60]

Some may find these maps interesting:

RAIL in 1943

You can walk from Kokoda to Owens Corner , about 100kms in about 9 days.

Our Main Highway system as it is now, you can now drive around Australia on Tar, most of the time, if there isnt floods, cyclones, bush fires or dust storms, and to put into a bit of perspective I can remember driving from Perth to Melbourne in 1964 in a VW "Beatle", great because it was air cooled, anyway from memory basically the roads from Port Augusta in South Australia going North and West were all dirt, no tar at all, and the axis of the road changed regularly because conditions effected it, water was hard to get unless you dug for it. It used to take us about 2 to 3 days to get to Kalgoorlie and a cold beer, then it was another day or so to get to Perth. So conditions in the 1940's were very basic and sealed roads didnt exist in the Northern approaches. :

 

[pbehn]

Post D Day, supplying an army across 100 miles of water and having pipe lines for fuel the allies started to hit logistical problems when lines were longer than 100 miles. Antwerp needed to be captured intact to supply the army, it is only 250 miles from the Normandy beaches.

 

[Shortround6]

All, I can say is WOW!

Ok, before i have time to read and sort through boxes of stats, you are aware of the amount of aircraft alone the Russians designed and built? Not to mention tanks, including probably the best medium tank of ww2 (T-34) which i might add went into combat as early as 1941. The Russians had at least two to three times the amount of anti aircraft guns and barrage balloons over Moscow than there ever was over London. Anti tank guns, thousands of trucks built or modified for rocket projectiles, full winter clothing equipment, special forces trained soldiers on ski's. Factory after factory taken down brick by brick and transported back behind the lines and out of reach of German planes and re-built with production going on round the clock. All this and more done with Russian built trains/track. As for your comment about ships, because of the German invasion and geography and the fact they weren't fighting in the Pacific makes your claim of sea vessels irrelevant. Not to mention for 3 years the only real allied help they received (apart from US/UK reject aircraft and equipment) all they got was cans of corned beef. To which when opening them, joked "we're opening the second front". I think your doing what most amateur historians do and hold to much faith in paper statistics and possibly misplaced pride. Lend lease or no lend lease, the fact is the US & Britain didnt even land troops on the continent until June 1944. The war for Germany was over by then. And im sorry but anyone who believes lend lease had such a huge impact on Russia defeating Germany is simply deluded. That's like saying without the British giving America radar, code breaking information and piston+jet engine technology was the reason the US won the war in the Pacific. After all, until Britain taught the US how to land F4U's on the decks of actual aircraft carriers they would still have been operating from mud runways in the Pacific island chains. Im all for friendly debate, but dont try to belittle me with a list of metal tubing and statistics that we have no way of actually proving anymore. Do you not have an opinion of your own on this matter or do you just regurgitate stats found on wikipedia......

If yo had looked at link you would see it is not from wikipedia............

I see that you like to pick and choose your facts and ignore those that don't suit you. This started with your sentence in post #38

And there manufacturing ability far eclipsed what the US was able to produce and under severe military strain too.

I am aware of the number of aircraft and the number of different designs the Russians built, but since the number of aircraft is roughly 1/2 of what America produced I would say that Russian production did not far eclipse US production, same with tanks, no matter how good the T-34 was or wasn't. The Russians didn't out produce the US in tanks/armored vehicles.

The Russians did out produce the US in artillery but comparing the number of guns around one city to the number around a different city is hardly a reliable way of estimating total production.

Now we find out that ship production doesn't count as anything (including the steel needed) that the Russians weren't producing will be declared irrelevant.
Of course the fact that the US needed cargo ships to even get to Europe is also irrelevant? Or the Ships needed to carry the lend-lease supplies?

I guess my geography lessons were totally inadequate too, I also thought that Italy was part of the European continent. Now I find out it isn't, either that or the Allies didn't land at Salerno Until 1944?Let alone Sicily.

I don't particularly like be belittled with such "facts"

Might I ask you if you have an opinion of your own or if you are going to follow the old communist party line?

I would note that lend lease supplies started showing up in Iranian ports in Nov 1941 (which means that they were loaded on ships weeks earlier) but would take time to transit Iran into Russia.

Lend lease supplies also started to show up in Vladivostok in Oct/Nov of 1941. Cash and Carry had started a bit earlier.

 

[MiTasol]

No, incorrect, it was in fact the buffalo.

The first of just SEVENTEEN Buffalo's arrived in June 42 http://www.adf-serials.com.au/2a51.htm - 16 weeks after the bombing of Darwin where the air forces stationed in and near the town comprised No. 12 Squadron, which was equipped with SIX CAC Wirraway advanced trainers (which had been pressed into service as fighters), and No. 13 Squadron which operated Lockheed Hudson light bombers. Six Hudsons, 3 from No. 2 Squadron and 3 from No. 13 Squadron also arrived at Darwin on 19 February after having been evacuated from Timor. None of the six Wirraways at Darwin on the day of the raid were serviceable. At the time of the event the town's civil defences were dysfunctional to say the least with the RAAFs base commander telling the Intelligence Officer that the Japanese did not have the capacity to bomb Darwin - that was after the Intelligence Officer told the CO that the Japanese were only an hour away. The Lowe Commission, which was appointed to investigate the raids shortly after they occurred, was informed that the Australian military estimated that Darwin would have needed 36 heavy anti-aircraft guns and 250 fighter aircraft to defend it against a raid of the scale which occurred on 19 February. In addition to the Australian forces, ten USAAC Curtiss P-40 Warhawks were passing through Darwin en route to Java on the day of the attack. The RAAF even had at least 116 P-40 Kittyhawks in service before the Buffalo's arrived. http://www.adf-serials.com.au/2a29b.htm

If the US had failed to join the ABDA alliance in 1941, you cannot validly assume that things would stay as historical. They wouldn't. The Australian joint chiefs were already proposing at least 10 squadrons of fighters for home defence, preferring to equip with hawker Hurricanes. Another out of date aircraft, probably they were planning on obtaining the RAFs leftovers as when the RAF replaced the worn out Hurricanes with Spitfires.

This came to nothing, but there was no panic initially because of assurances given by the Americans primarily 1940 and 41. We cut back on our aircraft development and production as a result. I find nothing in Australian archives to support that claim regarding either Wirraways or Beaufort production ever being cut back at any stage pre 1943. I do have the Wirraway fighter file at home but will have to find it to determine if there was any delay to that program but I very much doubt it.

Had the US not joined ABDA and not given guarantees to provide materiel to Australia in the lead up to war, we would not just have sat there and let it all happen. But we just sit there and did let it happen - example where were the 250 fighters that were needed to defend Darwin, that is twenty squadrons worth. As you said The Australian joint chiefs were already proposing at least 10 squadrons of fighters for home defence.

We had contingency plans to commence production of a home produced fighter. Which did not happen until well after Pearl Harbour and Darwin.

Our options were limited by engine at the time, but it was functional, and ultimately was the adaption of the Wirraway, which became the boomerang. This home produced fighter concept was first mooted in 1940, historically nothing was done for over a year and then in the panic of late 1941 a fighter adaptation was made ready in just 6 weeks. First flight 29 May 1942, fifteen weeks after Darwin which means the six weeks started 9 weeks after Darwin.

This would have happened in late 1940 if the US was tardy in joining the collective defence arrangements. We would have had about 300-400 fighters by December 1941, not including the likely MTO recalls. And what and where were these 300-400 fighters when Darwin was attacked? I am quoting actual history, not some post war revisionist history.

We would also have had a substantial bomber force, in the form of an accelerated Beaufort program and planned service delivery of the CA4 bomber. The Beaufort program was for 90 aircraft for the RAF and then 90 for the RAAF (increased Nov 42 to 450 aircraft total). After Pearl Harbor six or twelve (depending on what source you use) were sent to Singapore - with no guns and no bomb racks. At the fall of Singapore only the RAFs Q flight of 100Sqaudron had Beaufort's so total production by the time Darwin was bombed may have been in the twenties.

As for the Army, it was far more modern and up to date but all in England and the Middle East, little more than training facilities in Aus itself. That would include CMF formations like the 39th bn which fought in the Owen Stanleys. They were referred to as "chocos"…..chocolate soldiers…..and I can see that some old myths and prejudices linger on to this day. Please be aware that nearly all of the 5 divs eventually committed to front line combat during the war proved themselves superior to nearly every other nation's forces that they either fought alongside or against. Having lived in PNG for many years, walked much of the Kokoda track, been to Bloody Ridge and many of the battle fields there I know exactly what the army was up against there. Bloody ridge is in a sawtooth mountain range over 10,000 feet high within 20 km of the Rai coast and it is hard enough to get to in a helicopter let alone on foot fighting up an almost vertical face with little cover to defeat the Japanese above.

In 1941 many of these formations were short of equipment, because such equipment had been shipped off to the MTO. Our home production of military equipment was being grossly underutilized prior to December '41. A refusal by the Americans in 1941 would almost certainly lead to a 70% increase in outputs by when???….provided the money for a switchover to a full war footing could be found. The scenario would almost certainly see all four AIF formations deployed back into Australia and the 5 CMF formation much better equipped. It is entirely possible even that the armoured division would have been equipped

It would have been a cakewalk for the Japanese.

Not really. They certainly didn't think so. No but if they had known how under defended Aus was, and how impenetrable PNG was, they could well have walked through - especially if they had bypassed PNG where it was as much the terrain and weather that beat them. And still beats mining companies with all the latest technology.

 

[parsifal]

From the RAAF Historical reference page:
"The Brewster F2A-1 was test-flown in January 1938, and was the first monoplane fighter used by the US Navy. Improved versions, including the F2A-2 and -3 were purchased as Buffaloes in 1940 by Finland, Belgium and England. The RAF found that the Buffalo, with its large, rotund fuselage and underpowered engine, had many operational limitations and was unsuitable for the European war theatre.

As a result, the Buffaloes were transferred to the Far East where a number of these aircraft were taken over by the two RAAF fighter units in Malaya – Nos 21 and 453 Squadrons. At the outbreak of Japanese hostilities, the RAAF, RAF, and RNZAF Buffaloes, supported by Dutch Buffaloes, fought gallantly but were out-classed and outnumbered by the Japanese Zeros".

Where do you think these aircraft would deply to if the ABDA treaty had not been signed? Or is okay to think 'alternate history" for the Japanese and not the allies. A kind of Axis wet dream for the ra ra boys?

(from wiki)

RAAF units formed under Australian operational control January 1942

• No. 1 Squadron RAAF
• No. 2 Squadron RAAF
• No. 3 Squadron RAAF
• No. 4 Squadron RAAF
• No. 5 Squadron RAAF
• No. 6 Squadron RAAF
• No. 7 Squadron RAAF
• No. 8 Squadron RAAF
• No. 9 Squadron RAAF
• No. 10 Squadron RAAF
• No. 11 Squadron RAAF
• No. 12 Squadron RAAF
• No. 13 Squadron RAAF
• No. 14 Squadron RAAF
• No. 15 Squadron RAAF
• No. 20 Squadron RAAF
• No. 21 Squadron RAAF
• No. 22 Squadron RAAF
• No. 23 Squadron RAAF
• No. 24 Squadron RAAF
• No. 25 Squadron RAAF
• No. 26 Squadron RAAF
• No. 27 Squadron RAAF
• No. 28 Squadron RAAF
• No. 29 Squadron RAAF
• No. 30 Squadron RAAF
• No. 31 Squadron RAAF
• No. 32 Squadron RAAF
• No. 33 Squadron RAAF
• No. 34 Squadron RAAF
• No. 35 Squadron RAAF
• No. 36 Squadron RAAF
• No. 37 Squadron RAAF
• No. 38 Squadron RAAF
• No. 40 Squadron RAAF
• No. 41 Squadron RAAF
• No. 42 Squadron RAAF
• No. 43 Squadron RAAF
• No. 60 Squadron RAAF
• No. 66 Squadron RAAF
• No. 67 Squadron RAAF
• No. 68 (Reserve) Squadron RAAF - Reconnaissance based at Kojarena, WA - flew Avro Ansons[1]
• No. 69 (Reserve) Squadron RAAF - Reconnaissance based at Georgina, WA - flew Avro Ansons
• No. 71 Squadron RAAF
• No. 73 Squadron RAAF
• No. 75 Squadron RAAF
• No. 76 Squadron RAAF
• No. 77 Squadron RAAF
• No. 78 Squadron RAAF
• No. 79 Squadron RAAF
• No. 80 Squadron RAAF
• No. 82 Squadron RAAF
• No. 83 Squadron RAAF
• No. 84 Squadron RAAF
• No. 85 Squadron RAAF
• No. 86 Squadron RAAF
• No. 87 Squadron RAAF
• No. 92 Squadron RAAF
• No. 93 Squadron RAAF
• No. 94 Squadron RAAF
• No. 99 Squadron RAAF
• No. 100 Squadron RAAF
• No. 102 Squadron RAAF
• No. 107 Squadron RAAF
• No. 292 Squadron RAAF

RAAF Empire Air Training Scheme Squadrons

See also: Article XV squadrons

• No. 450 Squadron RAAF
• No. 451 Squadron RAAF
• No. 452 Squadron RAAF
• No. 453 Squadron RAAF
• No. 454 Squadron RAAF
• No. 455 Squadron RAAF
• No. 456 Squadron RAAF
• No. 457 Squadron RAAF
• No. 458 Squadron RAAF
• No. 459 Squadron RAAF
• No. 460 Squadron RAAF
• No. 461 Squadron RAAF
• No. 462 Squadron RAAF
• No. 463 Squadron RAAF
• No. 464 Squadron RAAF
• No. 466 Squadron RAAF
• No. 467 Squadron RAAF

Joint RAAF-Netherlands East Indies Squadrons

• No. 18 (NEI) Squadron (bomber)
• No. 19 (NEI) Squadron (transport/communications)
• No. 119 (NEI) Squadron (bomber)
• No. 120 (NEI) Squadron (fighter)

Or are we going to assume that Australia would continue to move blithely on, providing units for empire defence when its own shores were under threat? on what basis could we reasonably assume that......none at this stage. Even some basic research would quickly reveal that Australia only reluctantly agreed to the overseas deployments of its forces AFTER gurantees had been secured from both the americans and the british, with the dutch as well. Any part of that collective security arrangement left missing was likely to affect the Australian respopnses to empire defences and further encourage our defence planners to initiate home production initiatives. did we have the capacity to equipourselves in the absence of US commitment, or in the case of a temporary US withdrawal from theatre? yes we could.

 

[parsifal]

A valid issue might be to consider the implications of the 1940 presidential election going differently....

https://www.quora.com/Would-America...t-if-Wendell-Wilkie-had-won-the-1940-election

 

[MiTasol]

You need to read up on the Fortress Australia plans. The fortress Australia plan was a pipe dream depending on Australia having hundreds of fully serviceable combat aircraft and fully trained troops before Japan arrived. The bombing raids on Darwin and Broome showed that the defences did not exist and we could not even maintain what few aircraft we had. We were so incompetent that we sent the Beauforts to Singapore with no guns and no bomb racks.

Australia was firmly united, including its waterside workers, Yes - so united that on the day Darwin was bombed the wharfies were on strike refusing to load ships with supplies the Australian, Dutch and US military desperately needed to fight the Japanese just a few hundred miles north of Darwin - and they refused to load military goods on ships for various reasons throughout the war. In Darwin, if the wharfies had not been on strike when the Japanese arrived, the number of ships and tons of cargo sunk would have been lower as the ships would have been on the water or at sea. Also many of those desperately needed military supplies, which were in very short supply, which burned on the docks would have been on the water or at sea. Ships on the water are manouverable and several of those on the water were able to escape. Ships tied to the wharf are stationary targets


and the Japanese would simply not have the logistics....the trains, the MT, the port capacities, to "ship" nonexistent supplies back to japan. Except the ports and trains and MT they would have captured from the Australians. Yes they may have needed to repair a lot of them and that would have slowed them considerably but as they showed in Malaya they adapted instantly - whereas Australia took over three months after the bombing of Darwin before they started designing the Boomerang. As for nonexistent supplies to send back to Japan, what about all the food and other goods Australia was sending to Britain and the ME, and the raw materials for iron and steel production.


There simply is not the lift capacity in the Japanese merchant fleet to transport and maintain an expeditionary force of that size and maintain it at that distance. Agreed, unless they bypassed PNG. moreover, once they get ashore, there would be a rapid slow down in the offensive due to a shortage of MT. Like they were slowed down in Malaya by the lack of MT and all the bridges being destroyed. Agreed Australia is a totally different scenario but the Japanese thought outside the box whereas Australia was very much in the normal "She'll be right mate" mode right up until February 19, 1942. Even after that they were slow at best to do anything new The best parrallel I can think of is the Axis operations in NA. Over 30000 trucks were employed to keep something like 3 divs supplied to combat readiness standard. and the distances from their PEs to the front lines was a fraction of those facing the Japanese. The IJA didnt have 30000 trucks to pour into the campaign, sne they didnt have the rolling stock or the rail gauge conversion capability to set up an effective railnet There are multiple track gauges in northern Australia, set up from the 1880s as a defensive measure against a possible Russian and later Japanese aggression. The multiple rail gauges were the result of every railroad having there own standards. You presume that the Japanese would not be able to work with these various gauges even though the Australians could. That is a lot like the Aussie cricketers blaming the bad wicket when they lose, even thought the team that beat them found the exact same wicket perfectly serviceable. You also claim the Japanese would have to do rail gauge conversion. Why


It would not have been a walk in the park. No, but it would have been much easier than trying to invade Australia through Papua New Guinea


Frankly you don't know what you are talking about.

 

[MiTasol]

Good perspective, SR.
Taking Australia would be much like Japan trying to invade the west coast of North America.
Aside from military and civil resistance, they would have to deal with the topography, and while the Sierras and Cascades are not completely impossible, the Rockies would be.
Also consider that moving inland through the Pacific Coastal range, Cascades and Sierras has limited options and virtually all passes provide textbook examples of killing zones.

Taking Australia in early 1942 would have been much easier than taking just California in the USA - the population of California was roughly double the population of the whole of Australia. It had more military bases than Australia, far far more modern military aircraft and fully trained military aviators than Australia, more army personnel than Australia and the US Navy in California probably outnumbered the whole RAN world wide by at least 5 to 1.

Terrain wise the highest mountain in Australia is just 2,228m/ 7,310ft and the highest in Queensland is just 1,622 m/ 5,322ft. The vast majority of the country is moderately flat with a few small mountain ranges, nothing like the Pacific Coastal range, Cascades and Sierras, or the much worse PNG terrain, though the temperatures in January February can be savage, 40C/100F is not unusual. There was not a lot of large timber and that is confined to a narrow coastal fringe. Flooding in Cairns at that time of year is always a major risk. The inland roads from Brisbane to Canberra are far more flat than anything - the only steep section being in the first 100km/60m out of Brisbane.

On Jan 1 1942 the front line fighter on Australian soil was the the Hawker Demon (or the Wirraway trainer - take your pick). There were Buffaloes in Singapore but they were on loan from the RAF, and none made it to Australia.
There were 150 odd Hudson's in Australia by Jan 1 and they had been in service long enough to be an effective weapon.
There were a hand full of Beauforts in service, actually at that stage still officially in RAF ownership but flown by Australians and not capable of combat operations as demonstrated by the Singapore Beaufort debacle weeks earlier.

The Army was mainly reserve forces and trainees being trained to fight in the Middle East, not Australia or PNG. They did a fantastic job in PNG, even before the ME troops arrived back in the pacific but they would have been outclassed by battle hardened Japanese veterans before that.

If the Japanese had attacked Cairns, Townsville and Brisbane instead of Rabaul, Lae and the Owen Stanleys in PNG in January 1942 NE Australia would have fallen quickly and the critical bases that the Americans created in Aus starting March 42 would have been in Japanese hands.

Before the Battle of the Coral Sea (May 42) and Midway (June 42) the Japanese had almost total control of the SW Pacific ocean and the crack troops sent to PNG would have cleaned up Australia quickly. They could easily have taken Canberra from Brisbane and set up their version of a Vichy government. There would have been resistance, like in France, etc, but for while the shock of invasion would have allowed the Japanese to consolidate and the brutallity of their rule would have made the majority compliant, again like France, etc.
In the long run America would still have pushed the Japanese out of the SW Pacific but to claim the Australia could have survived on its own at that stage is pure fairy tale.
Australia's first modern combat fighters were the P-40s that arrived in March 42 and were supplied under lend lease.

Until the Japanese Navy was thrashed in the Coral Sea and Midway Australia was a very soft target. Thank the gods they went for PNG instead of Australia.

 

[parsifal]

Another out of date aircraft, probably they were planning

Nothing wrong with the hurricanes in secondary TOs like the PTO, the MTO or USSR. The majority of fighters fielded by japan through much of 1941 and into 1942 remained the Ki27 and A5M. Against the Oscar and Zeke they would have struggled, but no more really than the P-40 . as they were in PNG the superior Zekes would have been overwhelmed by three issues, only moreso in the context of an invasion of Australia, long range bombing and counterstrikes, overwhelming numbers and a failing logistics network. There is no magic wand to say things are any better in Australia for the Japanese than they would be in PNG. Much worse in fact.

I find nothing in Australian archives to support that claim regarding either Wirraways or Beaufort production ever being cut back at any stage pre 1943. I do have the Wirraway fighter file at home but will have to find it to determine if there was any delay to that program but I very much doubt it.

Beaforts were selected for production in July 1939. More than 600 firms were lined up for sub assembly and
A major production facility was set up and manned. Everything was basically ready by the latter part of 1940, but the british engine embargo stuffed the whole program up. Major redesign was needed to fit the Twin wasp as a substitute, but Australian govt approached these negotiations at a very leisurely pace. It was December 1941 before headway in this direction began to show results. I do not believe the Australians were pushing this licence as hard as they could have, this is certainly suggested in Horners book.

I wasn't considering the Wirraway actually. I was thinking more the CA4/CA11

But we just sit there and did let it happen - example where were the 250 fighters that were needed to defend Darwin, that is twenty squadrons worth. As you said

That's rubbish and you know it. Australia committed itself to empire defence, sending more than a full group to Malaya, committing 4 sqns to the Middle East and manning about 10 sqns in Europe . We provided substantial resources to the EATS scheme her in Australia amounting to over 500 training aircraft in 1941 alone. In 1939, before the empire training scheme came into effect and before Italy entered the war, there were plans to expand Australian home defences to over 20 sqns from memory, with a further 6 sqns for defences in Malaya. Thigs did change, but if they change to the extent of the US not being there, do you think it reasonable to assume nothing else would change on the allied side?

Which did not happen until well after Pearl Harbour and Darwin.
rubbish. We were sending our best (which wasn't very good……) to Malaya and the middle east and spending our treasure on building up the ETO forces via the EATS scheme

First flight 29 May 1942, fifteen weeks after Darwin which means the six weeks started 9 weeks after Darwin.
And possible production from late 1940, if the US did not join collective security of the far east. If the alternative is the case primary supplier of aircraft would have to be the US, whi simply would not sit there and let the Japanese run amok
And what and where were these 300-400 fighters when Darwin was attacked? I am quoting actual history, not some post war revisionist history.
no you are not quoting actual history, and your reliance on people like Allan Jones, David Flint, Quadrant and Catchpoles ia not even "revisionist history". Its more fake history, generated from the far right of present day Australian politics.

The Beaufort program was for 90 aircraft for the RAF and then 90 for the RAAF (increased Nov 42 to 450 aircraft total). After Pearl Harbor six or twelve (depending on what source you use) were sent to Singapore - with no guns and no bomb racks. At the fall of Singapore only the RAFs Q flight of 100Sqaudron had Beaufort's so total production by the time Darwin was bombed may have been in the twenties.

And again, production was ready from October 1940, but failed to commence due to engine issues
. With no US commitment to collective security, it is not unreasonable to assume that the production of the Twin Wasp could have accelerated. The squadrons in the MTO had utilised more than 100 aircraft in 1941, all of which should be assumed as diverting to Australia. The efforts poured into EATS are at risk of being diverted to home defence

As for the Army, it was far more modern and up to date but all in England and the Middle East, little more than training facilities in Aus itself.
There were four combat ready divisions of the AIF, 6th, 7th 8th and 9th. These formations would be most unlikely to leave Australia if the defences in the far east were any worse than they were. Horners Book '"High Command' discusses this very well.

Having lived in PNG for many years, walked much of the Kokoda track, been to Bloody Ridge and many of the battle fields there I know exactly what the army was up against there. Bloody ridge is in a sawtooth mountain range over 10,000 feet high within 20 km of the Rai coast and it is hard enough to get to in a helicopter let alone on foot fighting up an almost vertical face with little cover to defeat the Japanese above.

Ive served and actively defended the place. Being a tourist or a resident is a far cry from training in it. It was hard. I never claimed that the terrain in Australia is worse, but the lack of infrastructure is at least as bad and a lot more extensive with far greater distances.

Now I least know what im up against….a fat cat ultra conservative who believes and supports the neocon fairy stories and expects us underlings to pander to their every whim

In 1941 many of these formations were short of equipment, because such equipment had been shipped off to the MTO.
And that's the very point. If home defences, or so called empire defences were any worse than they were, it is totally stupid to assume that the Australians would continue with that commitment. The AIF formations would have stayed right where they were if the US was not there. If the US was defeated they would have been pukked back earlier than they were…..all of them.

No but if they had known how under defended Aus was, and how impenetrable PNG was, they could well have walked through - especially if they had bypassed PNG where it was as much the terrain and weather that beat them. And still beats mining companies with all the latest technology.
The Japanese had surprisingly accurate Intell on the home defences. Read Ballantynes translation of the IJA operations in the solomons. They did over-estimate the air defences.

But I would suggest that both sides were over-estimating each other. The British in Malaya were prime examples of that. If we are going to give the Japanese superpowers for perfect intel, why are we not making similar assumptions for the allies in their assessments

 

[parsifal]

The fortress Australia plan was a pipe dream depending on Australia having hundreds of fully serviceable combat aircraft and fully trained troops before Japan arrived.

And if the US had not committed to the collective security of the Far east, do you seriously suggest the Australians would have embarked on distant operations in the middle east and Europe. The original plans drawn up in 1939 called for all of those AIF formations to be retained in Australia. Even the deployment of the 8th division is questionable under those circumstances.

The alternative scenario is that the US enters the war, but suffers a catastrophic defeat just after Pearl Harbour. In those circumstances we were promised massive reinforcements from Britain. Likely to be in the vicinity of 4-6 divisions and around 1000 a/c.

The allies were not going to abandon Australia in that scenario. Politically it was never going to happen. I believe Churchill in this case.

Its not a pipe dream if the forces were there. The forces were available, but the need for them never arose



The bombing raids on Darwin and Broome showed that the defences did not exist and we could not even maintain what few aircraft we had.

The air raids into Darwin destroyed 23 out of 65 deployed a/c, Damaged or sank 5 ships. Casualties amounted to 238 killed and 312 injured. RAAF losses amounted to 6 a/c from those 23 previously mentioned. All 10 of the USAAC P-40s were lost along with one B-24. Three USN Beechcrafts and 3 PBYs were also destroyed. Total Japanese losses, mostly to nonoperational causes are believed to be in the order of 6 or 7 a/c. given that there were 135 attackers, this was not such a bad result, though it shocked the country at the time. An invasion straight after the raid would have almost certainly have succeeded, but from there where or what are the Japanese going to do?. There was a single brigade group with less than a 1000 trucks available and a cibilian population with maybe 2000 trucks, at most, around Darwin. The Japanese would get ashore, and then be marooned, unable to move……







We were so incompetent that we sent the Beauforts to Singapore with no guns and no bomb racks.
The section of Beaforts sent to Singapore were sent as a special recon unit. They weren't equipped for bombing or fighting





Yes - so united that on the day Darwin was bombed the wharfies were on strike refusing to load ships with supplies the Australian, Dutch and US military desperately needed to fight the Japanese just a few hundred miles north of Darwin –

What can I say, this is one of colebatches most outlandish claims. Oh yes, I am aware of where you are getting this drivel from. Why don't you say that what was needed was a declaration of martial law.


In fact professor Slattery along with about 6 other highly respected authors have all more or less refuted this claim. It is spurious. Oh there were localised labour disputes, for sure but the days lost per man in Australia due to labour disputes was lower than in the UK, and probably lower than in the US. Its just a made 'alternate history" by the present day far right in our country who have firm beliefs in their rights to entitlement. Is that where you are comng from?



and they refused to load military goods on ships for various reasons throughout the war. In Darwin, if the wharfies had not been on strike when the Japanese arrived, the number of ships and tons of cargo sunk would have been lower as the ships would have been on the water or at sea. Also many of those desperately needed military supplies, which were in very short supply, which burned on the docks would have been on the water or at sea. Ships on the water are manouverable and several of those on the water were able to escape. Ships tied to the wharf are stationary targets
All untrue and baseless im afraid. You've been reading too much of "the world according to allan jones' I'm afraid.

Except the ports and trains and MT they would have captured from the Australians. Yes they may have needed to repair a lot of them and that would have slowed them considerably but as they showed in Malaya they adapted instantly

Further along you argue that the Japanese should have bypassed PNG, which at this time means they don't invade Rabaul. Okay, not my idea of following core Japanese objectives, but that means there is no invasion of the East Coast. That means they have to invade through Darwin. I think they could do that easily. And with a baseforce landed they probably could have increased the ports throughput capacities from the 1 ship per 3-7 days to say a ship a day. There are no trains in Darwin at this time, and about 3000 trucks, of which at least 1000 were military. They might manage to seize 1000 trucks. That's not even enough to move a full Brigade "down the track".

The allies considered turning the tables and using Darwin as a springboard into the NEI but abandoned for preciselu these bottlenecks. Darwin was a port easily interdicted and the overland communications very restricted. An invasion of Australia via Darwin is a losing proposition without a shadow of a doubt. Why can I say that? Because I served nearly 10 years in the navy and even in the time I was serving it was deemed so restricted as to not be suitable for anything larger than a patrol boat. Different now, but not in 1942.

As for nonexistent supplies to send back to Japan, what about all the food and other goods Australia was sending to Britain

Not from the northern territory and not from the amount of territory the Japanese could hope to conquer with the forces they could possibly depl0y to Australia at that time. In February 1942, they had available the South seas Force (0.5 divs), about a battalion for guam, 2 divs for phillipines. Other forces were still engaged in Malaya the indies and Burma. Good luck conquering austrlia with 2.5 dives and 1000 trucks

Agreed, unless they bypassed PNG.
How does that help. It shuts off the east coast of Australia to any invasion if you do that, yields, or releases 0.6 of a division, maybe, and channels your offensive through Darwin. Any other pathway increases the logistic issues faced by the Japanese, not eases it.

Like they were slowed down in Malaya by the lack of MT and all the bridges being destroyed. Agreed Australia is a totally different scenario but the Japanese thought outside the box whereas Australia was very much in the normal "She'll be right mate" mode right up until February 19, 1942. Even after that they were slow at best to do anything new

In Malaya there were 2 divs deployed, with only 1 div ever in action at any time. They captured, intact almost the entire MT park of III Indian corps early on, probably around 10000 trucks. They brought with them bicycles, hence the term "bicycle blitz", but despite all this, found themselves short of supplies at the gates of Singapore

As for the 'she'll be right attitude, that had not existed since at least April 1941. We were very nervous about what was developing. We were lied to by the British, because they wanted our continued help in the MTO, but we were also lulled into a false sense of security by the presence of b-17s in the PI, the US pacific flt in Hawaii. As those successive layers of the defensive onion were peeled away we began to enter a state of near panic. Not only the govt, the military, even the civil populace. My mother was evacuated from metropolitan Sydney to my current city in September 1941. But we were committed to collective defence principals and did our best to make it work. It was a riskety structure though. Remove the americans from the equation and I think the whole dynamic will change

The multiple rail gauges were the result of every railroad having there own standards. You presume that the Japanese would not be able to work with these various gauges even though the Australians could.

Its irrelevant when you think about it. You have corralled the Japanese to invading Australia in February 1942, not invading PNG (including rabaul). There is no rail net in the Darwin area in 1942 at this time. Good luck playing trains in Darwin with no railways.

. No, but it would have been much easier than trying to invade Australia through Papua New Guinea
Well I agree, but to achieve what. Certainly not the conquest of australia, more like the early defeat of japan. Leaving Rabaul in Allied hands would be a first order massive mistake, shortening the war by as much as two years