Bombing of Darwin invasion of Australia

I am trying to find out information about the bombing of Darwin but all the info I can find is from my country's (Australia) perspective. I am trying to find out exactly what were their motives for the bombing. Was is to destroy air targets to help shore up defence in Indonesia or was it pre invasion bombing.

Furthermore is there any info on actual Japanese plans for the invasion of Australia. I know they wanted to take Australia but I would like to know if their were any plans drawn up like where they were planning to invade first

The Japanese were attempting to cut Indonesia (at the time called the Netherlands/Dutch East Indies) off from support. I'd be awfully surprised to find that there were any plans to occupy the Darwin area; certainly there wouldn't have been much opposition at the time.

The Japanese moves look essentially like an encircling operation around Java, and they thought it necessary to cut off supply from northwestern Australia.

I rather doubt they had plans drawn up. This would have required cooperation with the Imperial Japanese *Army*, always awkward, and the IJA wasn't interested. Besides, the Japanese really didn't have the resources to run such a campaign.

Darwin had a pre war population of around 1,000 people, not very big. The USAAF and USN note the raid because of the losses they took. It was a far more important raid to Australia, the first time the country was bombed, with the risk it was a prelude to invasion. The land communications to Darwin were so poor it could almost be considered an 'island', so it was hard to defend and supply.

The aim of the operation was to isolate Java. Darwin airfield was in use as part of the ferry system supplying aircraft to allied bases in Indonesia and the Philippines and the port in use for running convoys north. The raid covered the Japanese invasions of Bali and Timor. After the carriers left land based aircraft in Timor could be used to suppress Darwin, the second strike on the 19th of February had actually been land based aircraft from bases on Celebes island.

To my knowledge there were no plans drawn up to invade Australia beyond the possibility of a vague 'staff exercise' sort of paper. The army lacked the troops, the navy the ships.

Geoffrey Sinclair Remove the nb for email.

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The Tanaka memorial is from 1927, and it expresses a person's view that Japan deserved to create a large empire. After all Britain had done so.

It also sets out a timetable, 'south sea countries' were after China had been conquered.

There is little doubt there were those in Japan talking about a Japanese empire even bigger that Britain's, but they were talking about creating it over a number of generations, there was some sanity in the planning.

I presume this should be March 1942, since the final efforts against Java were in early March. The actual raid on Darwin in February was to cover invasions of islands to the north of the town.

This is my point, while there were the proposals floating around, the reality is there was no real plan, only a nice to have or do approach, there was no invasion plan.

The reality was interdicting the sealanes could be done more cheaply and with the bonus of forcing the USN to fight for them. If the US abandoned Australia as a base so much the better, easier to pick up later.

In other words the proposals to invade Australia were made on the basis it would happen after the Japanese had taken Hawaii, and other islands and inflicted heavy defeats on the USN. So a year from the date of the conference and heavily dependent on the outcomes of the intermediate operations.

The Japanese recognised the reality a country of 7 million could not defend itself against the Japanese as well as a country of 120 million, and that the first priority was the bigger country. After the US had been made to withdraw Australia and New Zealand could be picked up and with their small populations they could not do much in the interim to make things harder for the Japanese.

Yes, it meant the IJN could provide most of the troops, rather than the army needing to divert troops from China or Manchuria. After all there was the USSR to consider, either as an aggressor or the need to take territory if it was forced to surrender. These operations were designed to go in after the USN defeat at Midway, to keep the pressure on.

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The trouble with the Japanese assumption was the reality that Midway was closer to the main US base than it was to Japan. It was well within US capabilities to wait and launch an operation when the IJN was not ready. Midway is around 1,500 miles from Pearl and 2,500 miles from Japan. Certainly the US would try to avoid its being lost in the first place, but that meant no surprise if the IJN 'accidentally' told the US.

Also Midway is hardly a major land mass, it is difficult to imagine it as a major airfield.

This was the IJN plan, what did the army think of its chances of assaulting Oahu? The logical thing was to do it last, after taking the other islands around it.

The problem with this is Ceylon is north of the equator. Given the closure of the Suez canal the main lines to Australia from Britain came around Africa. Madagascar would be the place to base an interdiction force, with perhaps an airbase on the Cocos islands watching India/Australia traffic.

No problems with this as a long term war aim, which would include taking over India and probably all the islands in the Pacific.

I would dispute this, the USN raids gave good evidence of the nuisance value of the USN and the level of threat it would become but they did not upset the basic war plan. Coral Sea was more than a USN raid, it was a deliberate decision to stand and fight.

The Doolittle raid has the credit for resolving the 'where next' argument, showing the need for dealing with the USN first, so move east, not south, west or north. The Army still had its plans for the USSR after all.

It is also equally valid to say the war planners timetable was disrupted by the IJN decision to try and take on the Indian Ocean fleet. The invasion of Burma could be well covered by all the land based airpower present, instead the IJN tried a form of decisive fleet action in the Indian Ocean. The month it cost could have been better spent refitting or pushing out the Pacific defence line, given the results obtained.

What it really shows is how the Japanese military was simply too small for the tasks assigned to it, force the US out of the war while capturing and holding the vital raw materials of South East Asia.

Yes Coral Sea showed the need to ensure enough force was on hand in case the USN decided to intervene, plus the effective loss of three carriers, even if two were temporary.

To defend Japan and the Emperor in the manner proposed really meant elimination of US bases in the central and Northern Pacific, an invasion of Hawaii and Alaska. Australia was 'at the other end of the world'.

(snip) summary of the Japanese ideas to keep going across the world until the met the Germans coming the other way.

The talk of colonisation ignores just how alien Australia is to the people in 1940's Japan. It is a major change in climate and hence agriculture and society, look how much water the average Japanese farm needed. The US provided a more agreeable and known climate.

To conquer Australia, the people, is to occupy the south east of the

In the earliest days of the war, Darwin was important in trying to hold the NEI and it made sense for the Japanese to attack the port and the three air fields ringing it. Once the NEI fell and the allied effort shifted to holding Pt. Moresby in New Guinea, Darwin lost significance and the Japanese should have ignored it and concentrated all their air efforts on knocking out Moresby. But, apparently, they thought there was a risk of an allied effort to retake Timor and Java so they made repeated attacks on Darwin. Presumably this was as a result P-40s and A-24s staging out of Darwin to Timor and Java. B-26s and B-17s also staged through Darwin to raid Java and even the Malay penninsula (B-17s and LB-30s). One of the most effective Japanese attacks was the February raid, followed up in early March by a raid on Broome, far to the southwest of Darwin. A few days later the Dutch surrendered to the Japanese and there was a lull of about 10 days, when the Japanese bombed the RAAF airfield at Horn Island, far to the east of Darwin. But the Japanese flew recon patrols over Darwin. One of these, conducted by a Ki-15, was shot down by USAAF fighters directed to the contact by RAAF radar operators at Dripstone Cliffs. In mid-March the Japanese launched a series of bombing raids, going as far south as Katherine Field, 100 miles inland. On this particular raid, the Japanese just missed catching a group of B-25s that had just returned from a daring adventure up to Mindanao, where they had spent several days bombing the Japanese forces in the Philippines. They had just refueled after a 10 hour flight from Mindanao and were getting the gear cranked up into the wheel wells after take-off when the Betties made things pretty hot while Zeros and P-40s put on quite a show. It was clear to those B-25 crews that there was a hell of a lot more American air power in Darwin than in the PI, and more than one wondered what all these P-40s were doing way the hell off in the backcountry of Australia when they were desperately needed in the Philippines. The Japanese continued bombing raids into early April, when they shifted their attention to Port Moresby. This first sustained Japanese air offensive against Darwin seemed puzzling even at the time, with one observer remarking that it was a classic case of an offensive in search of an objective. There was not much worth bombing and the Japanese often hit abandoned targets such as the Darwin West air strip, an unused civilian field. Postwar Japanese records show that 25 Japanese airmen from the Takaoku and 3rd kokutai were killed in the March raids. US airmen killed totalled one. The Japanese didn't return to Darwin until Anzac Day. Fifty P-40s intercepted about twice that number of Betties and Zeros, resulting in an air battle lasting almost an hour, spread out over more than 100 miles to sea. Two days later the Japanese were back and another major air battle ensued. After this, the Japanese once again shifted their attention to Moresby. Some six weeks would pass before the Japanese would turn back to Darwin and launch a series of attacks, but with about half the forces used in the April attacks, perhaps a sign of the drubbing they had taken in New Guinea. But the Zero fighter pilots seemed much savvier in bomber escort tactics and in how to deal with American fighters than in the March and April fighting. After four days of raids, the Japanese stopped their attacks until they launched a series of night bombing raids at the end of July, followed up by a daylight raid. Then there were no more raids until a big one in the last week or so of August. This was detected by improved radar and intercepted 25 miles at sea by 36 P-40s who had plenty of time to climb above the 22,000 foot altitude of the attackers and savage both bombers and fighters. After that the Japanese shifted their attention to the growing fighting in New Guinea and the Solomons, and in September USAAF P-40s were withdrawn from Darwin and sent to New Guinea. Nothing was accomplished by the japanese air raids on darwin after the fall of the NEI, other than to provide OJT to US fighter forces in a non-critical area, and to attrit Japanese air power, already tasked with doing too much with too little. Apparently, however, the japanese were concerned about an allied thrust at their crucial NEI conquests (oil and all that) and so attempted to pre-empt any gathering of forces for a counterattack by raiding Darwin. But by doing that, they took preciously needed air assets away from the struggle for Port Moresby. Every bomb dropped on Moresby after the first week in March was wasted, every gallon of avgas burned, every bomb dropped, every aircrewman injured killed or made ineffective by fatigue was wasted. These should have been spent on Moresby. Bottom line: The Japanese were fighting in the dark. They didn't know what their enemy's strength was or what he was going to do. So they made crucial errors in deploying their limited resources. Thus the Battle of Darwin was a major success for the allies, allowing them to degrade Japanese military capability at minimum risk to themselves. While some Japanese planners may have dreamed of conquering Australia, invading Darwin would have been pointless, considering how isolated it was from the heart of Australian power. The raids were intended to disrupt a perceived threat to Japanese holdings, and were thus defensive in nature.

Chris Mark

If not for the delay in taking Bataan, and the subsequent reverses at sea, Japan would have landed in Australia. Most likely, Australia would've fallen back to protect the more populated areas of its east coast. I think Moresby would've been the prerequisite stepping stone.

Australia was in a bit of a panic as most of their forces were fighting the Germans and Italians, particularly in North Africa.

Japan landed in the P.I. with printed occupation money. Similar money was discovered printed for an occupied Australia.

Cheers and all,