"Milne Bay a symbol of true Aussie spirit"
From an Unknown publication

Why is it that Australians are quite coy about acknowledging out-and-out cleverness at our own hands?
We seem much more comfortable lauding resilience and forbearance in the face of disaster than mastery. Maybe it accords with our Aussie battler self-concept but would the odd outright victory sully that image?

In the wake of Anzac Day, with its emphasis on Gallipoli and now apparently a new icon, Thailand's Hellfire Pass, my thoughts again turned to another setting in which Australians played a critical World War II role in Papua New Guinea.

They particularly turned to a splendid Australian victory in August 1942 at a place called Milne Bay, in south-east Papua. This event was marked by forbearance, too, and huge dollops of courage. But, above all, it was the first defeat on land for the until then almost invincible Japanese forces.

Here was breathtaking teamwork and great strategy which offered a model for the future. Alongside Midway and the Coral Sea, this battle turned the tide in the Pacific war.

It helped save Port Moresby from invasion, significantly reduced the risk to Australia and played a profoundly important role in building confidence. Many of my generation who've never experienced war at close hand overlook this factor. I am indebted to Dr John Mordike, from the Air Powers Studies Centre who contributed a detailed paper to a RAAF conference in Canberra in 1993 on events in the South West Pacific during the war. I will now draw heavily on it. To cut a long story short, Milne Bay had a vital airfield that, if captured by the Japanese, would have made victory at Port Moresby much more likely and would have facilitated bombings on eastern Australia. It also had a deep harbour allowing ships to come close to all its shores. The risk was that it allowed the Japanese Army any number of landing sites.

Around the same time, August 1942, Australians also were engaged in a titanic struggle along the Kokoda Trail as the Japanese Army tried to reach Moresby overland. But in a sense, the drama of the Milne Bay story has been overshadowed by the gritty heroics of the young Kokoda fighters.

Without wishing to sacrifice a moment of their deserved glory, I wish we could also lionise the sheer ingenuity and guts of the Milne Bay men, Air Force and army alike, comprised of
Australians and a small troop of Americans. So this Milne Force eventually assembled by Headquarters in Brisbane was a complex team, posing all sorts of challenges for Major-General Cyril Clowes, the commanding officer. On the night of August 25, the Japanese landed 1200 men of the Special Naval Landing Force from Rabaul along with a squadron of light tanks and mortars. The weather was terrible more or less constantly.
But the RAAF fighter pilots, despite being worried about the vulnerability of their planes if left exposed at Milne Bay airstrip, obeyed orders, got on with the job and performed magnificently.

In their Kittyhawks and Hudson's, they flew pre-emptive strikes against the invading forces and their landing craft, signaling there was much more to come. Indeed there was, with wave after wave of strafing just above palm tree level to root out snipers and to seek out landing crews.

Both on land, with the AIF and ground RAAF staff plus in the air, a compelling ethic had been instilled: never surrender. Clowes and his staff were determined Milne Bay would not be another Singapore.
The Japanese took much more punishment than the Allies but nothing was straightforward. It took two full weeks of exceptional stamina, courage and adaptability by the Allies to withstand the Japanese.
There was nothing like the hellish conditions of Kokoda nor the stubbornness of Tobruk Rats. The Australians didn't eke out a survival; they prevailed, with flair. Really, the name Milne Bay ought to be up there in lights and myth, as symbols of the legendary Australian spirit.
It's said the Americans find it hard to eulogise their prisoners of war because they don't fit their national image of individual triumph. Maybe we are diffident in exactly the opposite way. We could teach each other a thing or two