The hidden staggering numbers behind Australia’s Coastal world – WW II

Overview:

In WWII, there were 1,993 enemy attacks around Australia. Scores of submarine and ship actions, and many hundreds of individual enemy air actions, from Darwin to Hobart, from Townsville to Melbourne, saw thousands of lives lost. Yet Aussies know little of it.

The battle began with German surface raiders laying mines and attacking ships. It continued with submarine actions, and intensified with air attacks, at their height covering thousands of kilometres of coast.

This talk brings the viewer into a long struggle between German and Japanese forces and those of the USA, Britain’s and Australia’s, that saw scores of ships sunk and thousands of lives lost. Many of the stories are tragic: from fierce actions such as the loss of the cruiser Sydney with 645 lives which went down fighting against the raider Kormoran, to death on a quiet beach in South Australia where a mine blew up and killed two men, to the lonely end of a priest captured by an enemy floatplane and flown away to be executed.

Some are tales of mistakes and misadventure, such as the bad decisions by senior defence commanders in the Sydney midget submarine raids which were remedied in part by the bravery – still unrewarded – of the small ship commanders which fought the submarines to their end. Others are newly revealed – the resolute attacks by two RAAF bombers

Presenter: Dr Tom Lewis OAM RAN (Rtd.) – Please edit if required

Tom Lewis has combined three interesting career paths to make him one of Australia’s foremost military historians. He has integrated a 20-year RAN track, primarily as an intelligence analyst, with high school teaching, and work as an historian. His 35-year writing career followed time as a journalist, with his first publication Wrecks in Darwin Waters, which was followed by an analysis in Darwin’s Submarine I-124 of the first successful RAN submarine action of WWII, resulting in the sinking of the Japanese 80-man boat which still lies outside Darwin today. Zero Hour in Broome examined the second biggest air raid on Australia, and The Submarine Six presented biographies of the six who had RAN submarines named after them. Lethality in Combat, his most controversial work, analysed the realities of battlefield combat, and has just been re-published as The Truth of War.

Carrier Attack, an extensive technical analysis of the first Darwin air raid, revealed many unknown aspects of that assault, and Teddy Sheean VC chronicled not only the fight of this naval hero but the fight to get him the Victoria Cross he deserved. The Empire Strikes South, an account of all Japanese air raids made across northern Australia, showed the attacks were far more widespread than first thought. Atomic Salvation: “how the atomic bombs saved the lives of 30 million”, attracted some criticism but much praise. Tom’s book on the Sydney midget submarine raid in 1942 was published in 2022. It highlighted the two-fold scandal of first the senior commanders escaping any blame for the submarines getting inside the harbour, and not being met with sufficient measures, and second, that none of the small ship commanders were given honours for their sinking of two of the three. Attack on Sydney Harbour was released by Big Sky.

In 2023 Avonmore Books published Bombers North. This is a coverage of the Allied efforts to prosecute the war against the Japanese Empire from 1942. USAAF, RAAF and Dutch bombers flew out of northern Australia in hundreds of missions to fight back against possible invasion.  The Sinking of HMAS Sydney was also published that year. It’s a detailed look at what it was like to live and serve on board a WWII cruiser: eating, drinking, working, fighting and all. It finishes up with a detailed look at the final action of this gallant ship against the German raider Kormoran, and an examination of the theories as to why Sydney disappeared.

Cyclone Warriors – the Armed Forces in Cyclone Tracy was released at the end of 2024 to commemorate 50 years since the disaster. The former Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove wrote the introduction – he was in Darwin post-cyclone in his early days as an Army officer.

Tom is presently working on The Secret Submarine, an analysis of the sinking of I-178 by two RAAF Beaufort bombers off Sydney in 1943. His Order of Australia medal was presented for services to naval history.

Zoom Presentation: 11:00am. Wednesday 18^th. March 2026

(Sydney Time)

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