Reading time: 26 minutes
In mid-1942 Sydney Harbour was attacked by a midget submarine raid. Some days before, aircraft launched from the mother submarine flotilla overflew the city, to check for targets. Somewhat unbelievably, the aircraft were not identified or fired at, despite being marked as Japanese.
March 19th 2026 @ 5:00 pm – 9:00 pm Firepower: From Lavarack to the Levant to the...
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Reading time: 8 minutes
Tom Trumble’s Survival in Singapore offers an unsettling glimpse into one of the darkest chapters of Singapore’s wartime experience – the cruelty unleashed in the wake of Operation Jaywick. Jaywick is somewhat well remembered in Australia, as a daring raid by Australian and British commandos who sailed a disguised vessel, HMAS Krait, through enemy-held waters, hid in the Riau archipelago, and used folboat canoes to attach limpet mines to Japanese shipping in Singapore Harbour. Ships were sunk and damaged; the mission was regarded as ‘tactically brilliant’. Trumble’s book does not deny that brilliance. Instead, it shifts the spotlight to what is far less known and far more confronting; the hideous aftermath inflicted on civilians and internees by the Japanese security apparatus, who were determined to prove the raid must have been enabled by saboteurs from within.
Military History Conference – Melbourne and Online – Saturday 16 May 2026 9:00 AM...
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Reading time: 5 minutes
Archaeological evidence for interpersonal violence (injuries of skeletal remains) is rare in Australia, but when found, usually consists of depressions to the skull and “parrying fractures”. These are breaks to the arm bones above the wrist, resulting from the raising of the arm in defence against a weapon. This can be either from a direct blow or a glancing blow off a shield – like the one used in this experiment.
Reading time: 5 minutes
Hundreds of years ago it was women who caused cultural traditions to spread – possibly through intermarriage – linking communities along Papua New Guinea’s south coast.
Reading time: 4 minutes
Though first invented in the 19th century, submarines didn’t really come into their own as a weapon of war until World War Two, when they saw widespread use by all parties in all theatres. Able to hide underwater and strike whenever they wanted, they were feared by friend and foe alike, but what was life like for the men that crewed these small underwater craft?
Reading time: 12 minutes
Reginald Black was born in Double Bay on 4th July 1885 to The Hon. Reginald James Black MLC and Mrs Eleanor Black. He was educated at the Church of England Grammar School (Churchie), North Sydney, and at the time of his enlistment listed his occupation as a grazier operating the property “Jerralong Station” near Boggabri in the Liverpool Plains region between Gunnedah and Narrabri. Despite the location of his property, he was a highly regarded member of the Gordon Cricket Club and was recognized as the first member of the club to enlist in World War One.
Reading time: 5 minutes
Eighty years ago this week, Japan surrendered after nearly four years of war in the Asia-Pacific. For Australia, this meant the end of not only the war in the Pacific, but also the second world war that had begun six years earlier, in September 1939. In that time, around one million Australians – approximately 15% of the population – served in the armed forces. Over half served overseas, with nearly 40,000 killed and more than 66,000 wounded. But what do Australians today know about this epochal moment in our history? We surveyed 1,500 Australians aged 18 and older to find out.
When the Germans took thousands of Allied prisoners during the catastrophic Greek campaign of 1941, a handful of Australian soldiers escaped from prison trains in occupied Yugoslavia. What awaited them was not passage home, but a brutal underground war where the fate of a nation was at stake.
Told through the eyes of two of the Australian escapees – mineworker Ross Sayers and storeman Ronald Jones – Anzac Guerrillas is the incredible true story of how these men became resistance fighters, double agents and spies, evading the Nazis and exposing a group of genocidal collaborators.
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Reading time: 14 minutes
Between 1947 and 1952, for 170,000 non-Jewish “displaced persons,” Australia offered a chance to exit the dark, harrowing night of World War II in Europe. Many of these were hungry, traumatised, seeking peace and shelter, a place to work and rebuild. But with them came the kind of settlers which populate nightmares: war criminals, outright fascists, and aiders and abettors of the Nazi regime and its puppets in Eastern Europe.
Reading time: 4 minutes
Even though a rebellion in Dublin might seem relatively minor in the grand scheme of things,” says Professor of Irish Studies at Notre Dame, Declan Kiberd, “it would actually be the pin piercing the heart of the imperial giant.
