At approximately 10 o’clock on the morning of February 19, 1942, the Imperial Japanese Navy and Army Air Force opened a coordinated attack on Darwin, Australia. More than 188 aircraft launched from four aircraft carriers and fifty-five land-based bombers destroyed shipping and the harbor’s transport and military infrastructure. Nearly an hour later, a subsequent raid by Japanese army bombers attacked the Royal Australian Air Force base at Parap, destroying numerous aircraft and base facilities. From February 1942 through November 1943, the Japanese conducted sixty-four more air attacks on Darwin. In addition, the Japanese carried out similar strikes on Townsville, Katherine, Windham, Derby, Broome, and Port Hedland. Even though Australia and New Zealand joined the war in 1939, their respective air forces were ill prepared at the outbreak of war with Japan because the majority of their military assets had been sent to the Middle East in support of British operations.
The study of the development of the air defense of Great Britain’s Pacific Dominions demonstrates the difficulty of applying the emerging military aviation technology to the defense of the global British Empire during the interwar years. It also provides insight into the changing nature of the political relationship between the Dominions and Britain within the British imperial structure. At the end of World War I, both Australia and New Zealand secured independent control 2 BRITISH IMPERIAL AIR POWER of their respective armed forces through their sacrifices made on the battlefields in the Middle East and Western Front and declining confidence in British military leadership. Similar to the other nations that participated in the war, the population of these two Dominions in the 1920s developed a strong aversion to war, not wishing to repeat the sacrifices made by their soldiers, sailors, and airmen on someone else’s behalf. The economic dislocation experienced by the Dominions, created by the war and the Depression, meant little money was available to fund their respective air forces. As a result, the empire’s air services spent the entire interwar period attempting to create a comprehensive strategy in the face of these handicaps.
For many aviation advocates during the interwar period, the airplane represented a panacea to the imperial defense needs. They always prefaced their arguments with the word “potential.” The airplane could potentially replace the navy; it could potentially provide substantial savings in defense expenditure; it could potentially move rapidly to threatened regions; and it could potentially defend the coast from attack or invasion. For all of these claims, there was no supporting empirical data. In short, aviation advocates offered the air force as a third option for the empire’s defense, in an attempt to replace the Royal Navy and British Army.
