44 Days: 75 Squadron and the Fight for Australia

In the limited preview and the pre-amble it seems to be very biased towards 75 Sq being the only ones who fought over there. 75 Sq did a great job defending Port Moresby, but this was only part of the overall Battle for Australia. 75 was joined at Milne Bay by 76 Sq, the AIF (Australian Infantry Forces), The US Engineers and anti-aircraft gunners, who, as a team effort, beat the Japs over an 11 day intensive battle. The first close air/ground coordinated battles by any Aussie services, with huge success. Everyone up here, including the Japs, had to battle dysentery, hepatitis, malaria, mosquitoes, torrential rain, mud, etc, etc. so all-in-all, it was a very difficult time.

OUR OWN FORGOTTEN FEW I think it's important that this pivotal moment in Australian history, not just its military history, should finally become better known, through a major publication such as this - now written about with so much flair, by Michael Veitch. The pilots who flew under the command of their revered leader John F Jackson - killed in action himself under controversial circumstances - inevitably became collectively known in RAAF circles as: Jackson's "Few", reflecting the 'more than passing resemblance' which the Air Battle of Port Moresby, fought on Australia's doorstep just across the Torres Strait to our north, tends to have (in hindsight) by comparison to the Battle of Britain, fought over SE England and the English Channel. An obscure self-published monograph with the title: 'Jackson's Few' - now long since out of print - of which I once saw a copy, through its simple choice of title (as above) effectively evoked the irresistible temptation to make this perhaps, initially, seemingly unlikely (even outrageous) comparison relating to 75 Squadron RAAF which Michael Veitch now writes about in this gripping account of the events of March through May 1942. The comparison I'm referring to is one that's often been casually made, between these 75 Squadron RAAF pilots and those RAF squadrons/pilots involved in a similar critical few weeks during the Battle of Britain. As rudimentary as the 'raw material' may have been, in that self-published earlier attempt to grapple with this difficult subject, its title was of course a very simple and effective allusion to the famous words of Winston Churchill: "Never have so few done so much for so many". Michael Veitch is an excellent story teller, who has now written a fascinating, absorbing and important record of those perilous months in early 1942, when 75 Squadron RAAF defended Port Moresby alone (in the air) but very much alongside the Australian Army's 39th Battalion: the militia, defending what is now the site of Jackson's International Airport at 'Seven Mile' just outside Port Moresby. It was at the heart of a complex of airfields which the Australian Army and Air Force were defending together, as well as all of the various ground and shipping installations. The 39th Battalion, along with the 2/14 Battalion and a number of other very famous units, were yet to set out on the Kokoda Track and suffer a proportionally similar (utterly devastating) loss of life, and other casualties on a much larger scale, again - by virtue of being ground troops, and thus involving much greater actual numbers of combatants. I strongly recommend this invaluable and beautifully written book, preserving what was not only a very special 'chapter' in Australia's aerial history but was also an incredibly precarious moment in the history of the nation. -a WWII military aviation enthusiast.

Good book on WW2