AUSTRALIA PREPARES FOR AN INVASION

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23589, 17 March 1942, Page 4

AUSTRALIA PREPARES FOR AN INVASION

PACIFIC WAR ZONE

The sueed with which the Japanese “e Philippines. MaUyaand Java might lead some of us to imagine that, unless help comes from outside, the Japanese would have as easy task in Australia. The truth w that to conquer Australia w 9 u i d ., be more difficult than any job the Japanese have yet attempted, except m There are difficulties about a land campaign in Australia of which the Japanese are well aware: They - U) The army defending Australia is much larger than the armies the Japanese mattered in the Philippines, Malaya, or Java. * A „ (2) It is a purely Australian Army. So far, id their southward advance, the armies the Japanese have encountered have consisted partly or European, partly of native soldiers. (3) As Major-General Bennett has pointed out. Australian troops stopped the Japanese advance everywhere they met it in Malay, up to the time of the final assault on the hastily prepared line on Singapore Island, and they found they were much better individual soldiers than the Japanese. _ (4) There is far more fighting equipment in Australia than there was in any of the countries the Japanese have overrun. , „ (51 The success of the Japanese everywhere they have gone has been due largely to the fact that they were fighting in country teeming with natives. This enabled the Japanese both to disguise themselves as natives, and to live on the country. In Australia, it the civilians remain cool ana resolute, the Japanese will be hampered by the presence of a hostile and intelligent people, . . , . (6) The Australian Army is led, for the most part, by keen, experienced soldiers who have made their names in this war leading their men agaipst Gerpian, Japanese, Italian, and Vichy armies. Three Months’ Grace Ever since the last war Australian Army leaders who have been planning defence against Japan have been haunted by the nightmare possibility that Japan would attack Australia so swiftly that there would not be time to mobilise the rhilitia, and get it into some sort of working order before the blow fell. ' That nightmare period has passed. In the three months since December 7, without most of the people knowing much about it, the Army has become vastly stronger and fitter. Up to December, only part of the militia army wag ever in camp at the same time. Eve. y unit wag constantly being drained ol uffleers, non-commis-sioned officers, and semi-trained men who went to the A.I.F. or the R.A.A-F. In the matter of equipment, too, the militia army was treated as a secondline force, and the time seemed to it far distant when it would feel the full, effect of the rapidly maturing arms production programme. It is a very different picture to-day, though there are still some deficiencies of which the Army is conscious. New field commanders, recalled from the A.1.F.. have in the last few months toughened up training and discipline and circulated the lessons the AJ.F. has learnt in five campaigns. The Army is at full strength and over, and each week finds it harder in physique and better trained. The factories have had three more months in which to turn out field guns, anti-aircraft guns, anti-tank guns, mortars, small arms, armoured fighting vehicles, and to build up reserves of shells and bombs. Never have the Japanese attacked' a country which had the resources within itself to equip its army with tanks and guns and practically all army equipment. Yet the Japanese must try to defeat Australia. To talk of a choice between India and Australia is to ignore realities. The Japanese have an army in Burma, which so far has been able to cope with the opposition there. India has not a large army. If is probable that the next task of the army which is overrunning Java will be to try to

[By the Defence Correspondent of the "Sydney Morning Herald."]

take Australia, or enough of Australia to ensure that the continent ig cut off from men and supplies from the United States. How will the Japanese go about their coming attack on Australia? The cam. paigns of the last three months have' given us interesting evidence about Japan’s military doctrines. So far, except at Pearl Harbour, no Japanese soldier or surface vessel ap. pears to have operated beyond the range of land-based aircraft. In most cases large-scale bombing raids have been quickly followed by troop landings. By employing armoured landing craft they have been able successfully to land men and vehicles on beaches in the face of small anyis file. Lessons from . The way in which they seized and used boats and vehicles on the spot, have disguised soldiers as civilians, used aircraft to, give close sup. port to infantry, used gangster gum for bush fighting, and relied on mortars rather than on field artillery shows that they have learijt much which the Germans have to teach, In their invasions they have made a general practice of landing not at one place, but at several places at the same time; From a military point of view Australia consists of three "islands,” each separated from the others by 500 to 1000 miles of desert or’arid country. Already the Japanese are attacking the north-west "island," which Includes Darwin, Wyndham, and Broome. They may invade it with the object, among others, of establishing naval and air bases to use in a campaign against shipping in the Indian Ocean. But if they used the north-west “island” or the south-west “island," round Perth- as a jumping-of! place for an overland invasion of the vital south-eastern part of Australia, It could only be because they had given' up hope of commanding the sea off our north-east and east coast. If they attempted to move a large army across the arid centre of Australia or even south-east across the BarMy Tableland, they would burden themselves with difficulties of transport and supply and weather which they would prefer to avoid. The Vital “Heart” If, on the other hand, they decided that they would be able to keep naval vessels and transports working south along the north Queensland coast, that would present a much more suitable route of attack on the heart of Australia, which is the fertile boomerang stretching from Newcastle in the north to Whyalla in the south. Until the Japanese have grasped part of that area they will have failed in their task, because Australia will still remain a potential springboard for an Allied counter-attack. If the Japanese occupy all, or part of north-west Australia, they mifcht do it with three objects: first, to provide themselves with naval and sir bases; second, to deny us and our Allies the use Of aerodromes and ports from which bombers and naval craft might harry Japanese shipping in the Timor and Java Seas; and third, to divert large forces away from east and south-east Australia, where the main battle must be fought. Only one thing, the men in the Army believe, can bring about the defeat of the Australian Army fighting on its own ground, and with its own factories and workshops and mines behind it, and that is a failure on the part of the civilian population to remain unperturbed, to obey instructions, to go on working, to help its fighting men, and hamper the enemy. If the people do their part, the tactics by which the Japanese made their conquests in other countries must largely be ' discarded here. There the Japanese plat/Xde-' pended on the existence of organised native populations. Hisre'victory or defeat must depend, the soldiers believe, as much on the common sense and coolness of the civilians as on the skill and determination of the Army.