Nov 18, 2020
Now, just because Australia was never successfully invaded during WWII, does not mean the plans were not thrown around in a few different war rooms.
In early 1942 elements of the Imperial Japanese Navy proposed an invasion of Australia.
In the end, the Japanese military adopted a strategy of isolating Australia from the United States by advancing through the South Pacific.
This offensive was interrupted and eventually abandoned following the Battle of the Coral Sea and Battle of Midway in May and June 1942, and all subsequent Japanese operations in the vicinity of Australia were undertaken to slow the advance of Allied forces.
In Australia however, the government, the military and the people were deeply alarmed after the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in February 1942, now, the biggest wartime port in the region- was Sydney.
It is hard to imagine an enemy so audacious that it would simply sail into Sydney Harbour and attack, what was at the time the largest metropolis in Australia.
But Sydney Harbour is peppered with the remains of nineteenth-century fortifications built to defend the city against seaborne attacks by Spain, France and Russia.
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