Quote:
Originally posted by shtarker
>>I don't mean it wasn't worth invading !! i meant the japs didn't have serious plans of invading (not that anyone would know it at the time, or that they wouldn't have tried if an oportunity arose obviously)
I disagree a fair bit here.
Japan simply does not have many natural resources. That is why the needed to gain control of Australia or they would be hard pressed to win the war.
For that reason they pushed very hard on Papua New-Guinea trying to reach Australia. At one point they even got close enough to perform one air raid on the city of Darwin and even sent a few submarines down into Sydney harbour.
>>do you think the British didn't help enough ??? i think the fall of Singapore etc and the rapid initial progress of the Japs took everyone by surprise....i don't think theres any shame on the British for abandoning Australia, i don't think thats true at all.
Thats a good point, Britian could not have possible done anything to stop the Japanese. And we don't hold it against you, we still have your queen as our head of state and with out England the ashes series would just be plain boring.
i could be wrong, but i didn't think the japs planned to land on australia mainland. (not that a bit of bombing and ship-sinking and general slaughter wasn't planned!!). i'm only actually going on "the times atlas of WWII" which shows the Japs planned limit of the japanese empire in 1942, which includes dutch east indies and new guinea, but not australia mainland (because they probably didn't think they'd hold on to it, i think the yanks could have landed in Australia and fought them off, probably overextending a bit to try to take Aus)