Remember El Alamein

Reading time: 5 minutes
Exactly 75 years ago, Australians dressed in steel helmets and khaki shorts, and often not much else, sat in weapon pits in the Egyptian sun about 120 kilometres west of Alexandria. They were preparing for what history would call the second battle of El Alamein, the great offensive planned by Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery. In the summer heat of July 1942, his predecessor, Archibald Wavell, had held the German–Italian drive towards Egypt, a battle in which the 9th Australian Division had played a notable part. Now, after gathering more troops, tanks and guns, Montgomery was ready to launch his Eighth Army against General Erwin Rommel’s Panzer Armée Afrika, a commander and a force admired and respected even by their adversaries.

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5,700 years of sea-level change in Micronesia hint at humans arriving much earlier than we thought

Reading time: 4 minutes
Sea levels in Micronesia rose much faster over the past 5,000 years than previously thought, according to our new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This sea-level rise is shown by the accumulation of mangrove sediments on the islands of Pohnpei and Kosrae. The finding may change how we think about when people migrated into Remote Oceania, and where they might have voyaged from.

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Remembering Long Tan: Australian army operations in South Vietnam 1966–1971

Reading time: 5 minutes
The anniversary of Long Tan reminds most Australians that despite winning that iconic high intensity battle, the Australians and New Zealanders lost the Vietnam War. In fact, the First Australian Task Force (1ATF) fought at least 16 big battles, and through superior firepower from artillery, armor and airpower, won them all, sometimes by a narrow margin.

But most of the struggle in Phuoc Tuy province and South Vietnam was a prolonged low intensity guerrilla war. The big battles only mattered if the US and her allies had lost them, as big battle success allowed the allies to stay in the War. Enemy defeats just forced the enemy to revert to low intensity guerrilla war, which the allies had to control if they were to win.

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How the Coastwatchers Turned the Tide of the Pacific War

Australian Coastwatchers brought the tide of Japanese invasive successes to a shuddering halt when two coastwatchers spotted and reported an invasion fleet of 5,500 Japanese troops sailing south. The Coastwatchers’ observation was pivotal as it precipitated the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942 and thwarted the Japanese invasion of Port Moresby.

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Eaten By Moths Defending The Defence Reserves 1970-2020 – Online Zoom Event

Wednesday 12 July 2023 7:00PM-8:00PM (Australian Eastern Standard Time) via Zoom
Speaker: Dr Andrew Kilsby
Part-time service with the militia and then reserves has been a long and honourable tradition in Australia, often closely connecting local communities with the defence of Australia itself. The evolution of the Army, Navy and Air Force Reserves has seen a huge number of changes, not always for the better, especially since World War Two.

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Report from 1945 holds lessons for defence strategic review team

Reading time: 4 minutes
What defence forces should Australia maintain at a time of strategic uncertainty and rapid technological change? This is the fundamental question currently facing Stephen Smith and Angus Houston, the authors of the defence strategic review. Much has been made of the critical nature of this review and the fact it represents a ‘huge moment in Australian defence history’. Recently, however, I was going through a previous review conducted in similarly uncertain times (although for different reasons) and it was difficult not to be struck by the enduring nature of the key issues at stake.

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Hudson Bombers, 1SQN RAAF

Australia’s first action in the Pacific in World War II a valiant catastrophe – Video

Just before midnight on 7 December 1941, Flying Officer Peter Gibbes stepped off the train at Kota Bharu on the coast of northeast Malaya after a long, tiring journey up the peninsula from Singapore. Gibbes, an airline pilot in peacetime, had been newly posted to the Royal Australian Air Force’s 1 Squadron, which in the ensuing hours would become the first Australian military unit to see action in the Pacific War.

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The changing lessons of Vietnam

Reading time: 5 minutes
The national effort at remembering should also revisit a series of 50-year anniversaries for Australia’s entry and enmeshment in the Vietnam War.

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The other assassination of November 1963

Reading time: 5 minutes
On the night of 1 November 1963, President Ngo Dinh Diem of the Republic of Vietnam (commonly known as South Vietnam), and his brother and chief political adviser, Ngo Dinh Nhu, were assassinated during a coup executed by a military junta, acting with the knowledge and support of the United States.

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