Curated playlist
Battles of World War II involving Australia
- Western New Guinea campaignThe Allied command set a clear goal for early 1944. They needed to bypass heavily fortified Japanese positions in the Pacific theater. This strategy aimed to cut off enemy supply lines without costly frontal assaults. Operations Reckless…
- Operation CompassOperation Compass began on the night of the 9th of December 1940 with a force of about 31,000 soldiers, 120 guns, 275 tanks, and sixty armoured cars advancing through the Egyptian desert toward an Italian army more than twice its size.…
- Second Battle of El AlameinAt 21:40 on the 23rd of October 1942, a thousand guns opened fire simultaneously along a 40-mile front in the Egyptian desert near the railway halt of El Alamein. The Second Battle of El Alamein had begun. Over the next 13 days,…
- Operation SonnenblumeOperation Sonnenblume, which translates to Operation Sunflower, began in February 1941 with a question no British commander had seriously asked: what if the Germans moved before anyone expected them to? The Italian 10th Army had just been…
- Italian invasion of British SomalilandThe Italian invasion of British Somaliland lasted just sixteen days, from the 3rd to the 19th of August 1940, yet it produced one of the war's sharpest arguments about what a defeat should cost. When it was over, the Royal Navy had taken…
- Battle of OkinawaThe Battle of Okinawa began on the 1st of April 1945, when American forces launched the largest amphibious assault ever attempted in the Pacific Theater of World War II. They called it Operation Iceberg. The island they were storming lay…
- Fall of SingaporeOn the afternoon of the 15th of February 1942, British Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival walked toward the Ford Motor Factory in Singapore bearing a white flag of truce and a Union Jack. He was about to hand over 85,000 soldiers to a…
- First Battle of El AlameinOn the 1st of July 1942, at three in the morning, German infantry advanced east across the Egyptian desert toward a railway station so unremarkable it had no strategic value of its own. That station was El Alamein. But 106 kilometres…
- Anglo-Soviet invasion of IranThe Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran began before dawn on the 25th of August, 1941, when Royal Air Force aircraft crossed into Iranian airspace and dropped bombs on Tehran and Qazvin. The attack had a name: Operation Countenance. It would be…
- Malayan campaignThe Malayan campaign began at 04:00 on the 8th of December 1941, when seventeen Japanese bombers struck Singapore in the colony's first ever air raid. Within ten weeks, more than 130,000 Allied soldiers would be dead, wounded, or captured.…
- German invasion of GreeceThe German invasion of Greece began in the early hours of the 28th of October 1940, not with German troops but with an Italian ultimatum delivered by Ambassador Emanuele Grazzi to Greek dictator Ioannis Metaxas. The ultimatum demanded free…
- Battle of Buna–GonaThe Battle of Buna-Gona lasted from the 16th of November 1942 to the 22nd of January 1943. It ended with evidence that starving Japanese defenders had cannibalised their own dead. Australian and United States troops had driven Japan back…
- Invasion of Lingayen GulfThe Invasion of Lingayen Gulf began on the 3rd of January 1945, and what followed over the next ten days would claim the lives of around 738 ship-based personnel and wound another 1,282. The operation was a massive Allied amphibious…
- Guadalcanal campaignThe Guadalcanal campaign began on the 7th of August 1942 with 11,000 U.S. Marines wading ashore between Koli Point and Lunga Point on a remote jungle island most Americans had never heard of. By 16:00 the following day, they had seized a…
- Siege of TobrukThe Western Desert Campaign stretched from Mersa Matruh in Egypt to Gazala on the Libyan coast, covering a distance of about 480 kilometers along the Via Balbia. This single paved road served as the only reliable artery for military…
- Kokoda Track campaignThe Kokoda Track campaign was fought between July and November 1942 in the Australian Territory of Papua, and it nearly cost Australia the war in the Pacific. At its most desperate point, Japanese forces stood within 32 km of Port Moresby,…
- Battle of CreteThe Battle of Crete began at 08:00 on the 20th of May 1941, when dozens of Junkers Ju 52 aircraft disgorged German paratroopers into the skies above Maleme Airfield. Within hours, the invaders were being cut down before they could reach…
- Operation CartwheelOperation Cartwheel, launched in 1943, had a single declared objective: neutralize the Japanese base at Rabaul. That base sat on the northeastern tip of New Britain. Japan had turned it into the nerve center of its entire South Pacific…
- Siege of Malta (World War II)The Siege of Malta was a military campaign that ran from June 1940 to November 1942, pitting the air and naval forces of Italy and Nazi Germany against the defenders of a small British island in the heart of the Mediterranean. At its…
- Battle of Rabaul (1942)The Battle of Rabaul began before dawn on the 23rd of January, 1942, when a South Seas Force of around 5,000 Japanese troops entered Simpson Harbour and started coming ashore on the island of New Britain. The Australian garrison defending…