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.
This video vividly tells the story of Australia’s first action of the Pacific war.
This excellent video was created by the Australian Military Aviation History Association. See more of their great videos and information here.
Black Tudors – The History of England Podcast
Black Africans began to make their way in increasing numbers to England – firstly mainly via trading countries like Spain and Portugal, but increasingly direct. What sort of lives did they make in England? Please leave this field emptyTell me about New Quizzes and Articles Get your weekly fill of History Articles and Quizzes We […]
The horse bit and bridle kicked off ancient empires – a new giant dataset tracks the societal factors that drove military technology
Reading time: 7 minutes
Starting around 3,000 years ago, a wave of innovation began to sweep through human societies around the globe. For the next millennium the continued emergence of new technologies had a dramatic effect on the course of human history.
How the Sino-Soviet split created strange bedfellows
Reading time: 6 minutes
The Cold War had a lot of strange alliances, with many unlikely partners like Australian intelligence helping overthrow Chile’s elected government or the United States selling weapons to Iran. Weirder still, a natural alliance, one between the communist behemoths of the Soviet Union and China, never really worked out. What was behind the Sino-Soviet split, and how did it lead to China and the United States working together against the Soviet Union?
