Kokoda: Australia's Thermopylae?
Warfare
History Hit
4.5 • 943 Ratings
🗓️ 26 August 2022
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After the Fall of Singapore in February 1942, the focus of the Pacific War moved closer to Australia. Japanese forces bombed Darwin and began to launch attacks on Papua New Guinea, with a view to capturing its capital Port Moresby.
If the Japanese had captured that city, they would have been able to bomb vital Allied bases in northern Australia - potentially turning the tide of the war in their favour.
In this episode, James is joined by author David W. Cameron to find out about the ferocious, desperate, and incredibly vicious seven-month struggle that followed: the Kokoda Track campaign - often claimed to be 'Australia's Thermopylae'.
David's latest book The Battle for Isurava is available here via Simon & Schuster.
Produced and edited by Aidan Lonergan.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | After the fall of Singapore in February 1942, the focus of the Pacific War moved closer to Australia. |
| 0:07.0 | Japanese forces bombed Darwin and began to launch attacks on Papal New Guinea, with a view to capturing the vital Port Moresby. |
| 0:14.6 | If the Japanese had captured that port, it would have enabled them to bomb Allied bases, vital |
| 0:20.0 | bases, in Northern Australia. |
| 0:22.1 | I'm your host James Rogers. |
| 0:23.8 | This is the Warfare Podcast and what you hear next is the ferocious, desperate and vicious |
| 0:29.4 | seven-month campaign that |
| 0:35.0 | the following as the Japanese made their way up the narrow Cucoda trail and fought an Allied Australian and local force |
| 0:38.0 | that was outnumbered three to one. |
| 0:41.0 | To take us through this remarkable history we have David W Cameron on the podcast, an Australian author based in |
| 0:47.4 | Canberra who has written a new book The Battles for Cocoda Plateau. And he's not to be confused with the former British Prime Minister David Cameron, of course. But it's thanks to our fantastic regular listener to the warfare podcast, Rebecca Hunter, that we have David on the pod. |
| 1:03.3 | Rebecca emailed us on warfare at historyhit.com |
| 1:06.5 | and recommended both David and this topic. |
| 1:09.6 | So this is exactly what we want here on the podcast. |
| 1:12.0 | We want to hear the topics that you want to learn more about. |
| 1:15.0 | So do the same. Reach out to us on warfare at historyhit.com or directly on Instagram straight to me at James Rogers history. So a big thanks to |
| 1:25.1 | Rebecca but here now is David W Cameron on the Cacoda trail. Enjoy. Hi David welcome to the warfare podcast how you doing |
| 1:47.7 | thanks James how are you yeah I'm good thanks where are you in the world camera |
| 1:51.4 | Australia well that is the perfect place to be talking about this slice of Second World War history. |
| 1:57.4 | It's always good to focus in on some of the Australian campaigns and, in this case, not to be |
| 2:01.9 | too much of a spoiler, but I suppose you could say an |
| 2:04.4 | Australian victory yeah it was one of the first big physical air forces |
... |
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