Kenya, East Africa

RAAF air crew from left, Gunner Cliff Briggs, Gus Allen and Observer (navigator) Bill Corbett outside their tent in Kenya, c1942.

Rhodesia, South Africa

Trainee Rhodesian, Australian and British air crews on the ranges with their guns during the early stages of their training. The men are grouped around a British .303 Browning gun. Rhodesia, c1940.
In May 1940, the first Empire Air Training Scheme (EATS) elementary flying training school was opened in Rhodesia and included a combined observer and air gunner school. Australia agreed to send 40 trainees every four weeks to do all stages of their training between their initial and operational courses. Nearly 700 Australians participated in training in Rhodesia between 1940 and early 1942.

Cape Town, South Africa

The Australian destroyer, HMAS Nizam rescuing survivors from a Greek merchant ship that had been torpedoed south east of Cape Town in South Africa in 1942.

Dakar, French West Africa

A photograph taken from HMAS Australia during an action off French West Africa, September 1940.

Eritrea, East Africa

A picnic party on the Eritrea-Abyssinia (Ethiopia) border of staff of the 2/5th Australian General Hospital. From left: Corporal Craig, Major Murphy, Sisters Iris Inskip, Mabel Alice Skerman, Jolly; standing: Major White.

Sierra Leone, West Africa

Leading Stoker John William Evans RAN ashore on leave from HMAS Nestor in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Evans served on HMAS Nestor from November 1940 until June 1942 in the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Indian Oceans. His diary is held in the Private Records collection (PR00904) in the Australian War Memorial.

Morocco

RAAF Flying Officer Leo George Hardiman was serving with 145 Maintenance Unit RAF when he was accidentally killed in Morocco on 30 November 1944. He was 22 years old. He is buried in the Ben M’sik European Cemetery, a large civilian cemetery approximately 6 kilometres from Casablanca, Morocco.

Brazil, South America

RAAF Flying Officer John Richard Hutchins, a coalminer from Lower Tivoli, Queensland was attached to RAF Group 45, Transport Command, when he was involved in an action off the coast of Brazil on 22 February 1944. Missing and ‘officially presumed dead’, he is commemorated on the Ottawa Memorial, Ontario, Canada. He is one of 796 names listed on the memorial and described in these words:

Canada

RAAF at ice hockey, R Malcolm Warner, November 1944.

Hundreds of Australians travelled to Canada to train in the Empire Air Training Scheme (EATS) established in December 1939. Under the hotly debated agreement, Australians, Canadians and New Zealanders were to participate in aircrew training for the Royal Air Force (RAF) but advanced training was to be undertaken in Canada In March 1943, the initial three year agreement between the countries involved was renewed for another two years.

Trinidad, British West Indies

Sergeant G R C Johnson, of Ingham, Queensland (left) with an RAF sergeant outside their barracks. They had flown their Hudson aircraft of No 53 Squadron RAF from Rhode Island to Trinidad on operational anti-submarine sweeps and they continued their sorties from there and later from a base in Dutch Guyana (now Surinam) in South America.

According to a United States Department of State Bulletin issued 29 November 1941, bauxite mines in Surinam furnished upwards of 60 per cent of the requirements for the US aluminum [sic] industry. The Bulletin continued that, since the Netherlands Government were unable to defend their territory due to their commitments in the South-west Pacific, they had agreed that the United States would protect the bauxite mines in the Dutch territory.

Iceland

Some Australian airmen were based in Iceland and flew Liberator aircraft to guard the Arctic convoys. These aircrew in the Arctic Patrol, such as Sergeant Ambrose Tonkin, of Yorketown, South Australia, were awarded unofficial ‘Bluenose certificates’ of membership.

There are five RAAF graves in the British War Cemetery in Fossvogur in Iceland: Warrant Officer Benjamin Blatch, 251 Squadron RAF; Army Council Instructor Douglas Buckle, RAAF Overseas Headquarters; Flight Lieutenant Kenneth Clarson, 45 Group RAF; Warrant Officer Lewis De Garis, 251 Squadron, RAF and Flight Sergeant Evariste Pierre Dubois, 269 Squadron, RAF.

Norway

Operation Freshman was an attempt to deliver a small force by glider to destroy the hydro-electric power station at Vermork, in Telemark, Norway, where heavy water was being produced for German atomic research. Two gliders containing men of the Royal Engineers towed by two Halifax bombers, set off on the night of 19-20 November 1942. The mission was a disaster. One Halifax and both gliders crashed in southern Norway. The occupants were either killed in the crash or subsequently executed by the Germans in compliance with Adolf Hitler’s notorious ‘commando order’. The order denied members of enemy ‘special forces’ any protection under the terms of the Geneva Convention and Allied commandos were to be executed as soon as they were captured.

Two of the glider pilots were Australians attached to 38 Wing RAF: Pilot Officer Norman Arthur Davies, of Melbourne, Victoria, and Pilot Officer Herbert John Fraser, of Bendigo, Victoria. Davies and Fraser are buried in adjoining graves at Stavanger (Eighanes) Churchyard, Norway. The two Australians are commemorated on a memorial at Skitten Airfield, near Wick in Caithness, Scotland.

Norway

Two officers from 248 Squadron RAF, who were killed in action on 12 March 1945, when their aircraft reportedly caught fire and crashed into the North Sea after a raid in Norway. They are Warrant Officer Raymond William Moffat, the pilot, of Rockhampton, Queensland (left) and Flying Officer Bruce Andrew Stanley Abbott, the navigator, of Homebush West, New South Wales. Both men are commemorated on the Air Forces Memorial, Runnymede, England.

Russia

Naval Gunner (Able Seaman John Walker) Henry Hanke, 1943.

Many Australian sailors took part in the Battle of the Atlantic, often in British warships while on exchange with the Royal Navy. From the rough seas around the Cape of Good Hope, through the tropics of the West Indies, to the freezing Arctic Circle, they escorted convoys and hunted for German submarines. Here, Able Seaman Walker, RANVR (Royal Australian Naval Reserve) is wearing anti flash hood and gauntlets, protective tin helmet and his life preserver.

Poland

A memorial plaque to the crew of a Halifax bomber of 148 Squadron RAF who were killed when their aircraft was shot down near Wojnicz, Poland, in 1944. The plaque that was erected in the town church by local citizens, commemorates the airmen’s sacrifice and proclaims the contribution of western nations to the liberation of Poland. It was unveiled in August 1986. The Australian, British and Canadian flags represent the nationalities of the aircrew.

The plaque is engraved with the inscription:

Delhi, India

RAAF pilots Flying Officer Peter Niseen, of Beerwah, Queensland, and Flying Officer Syd Cave, of Collaroy Beach, New South Wales, with a street hawker in a bazaar in Delhi, India, 17 November 1944. Both men were pilots with No 194 Dakota Squadron RAF and were engaged in dropping supplies to forward troops in Burma.

Iraq

RAAF Flying Officer Frank Terry Britten, of Woollahra, New South Wales, attached to 208 Squadron RAF was killed in an accident in Iraq on 29 January 1943. He is buried in the British Military Cemetery at Kirkuk, Iraq.

Lieutenant Mavis Cullen (left) and Lieutenant Lorna Whyte, members of the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS), at a prisoner of war (POW) processing unit in Manila in the Philippines after their liberation from Japan. The two women were with a group of nurses, both Army and civilian, who were captured by the Japanese in Rabaul and transported to Yokohama in Japan. They spent three years in Japan and together with the Australian servicemen who were captured with them, were in captivity longer than any other Australians in the 2nd AIF taken prisoner by the Japanese.

Peleliu, Pacific Ocean

Damien Parer, Australia’s most famous official war photographer, had been caught in an action fought between American and Japanese troops on Peleliu in the Pelau island group in the central Pacific Ocean. Parer who had left the Australian Department of Information in 1943 to join the American Paramount company, was filming an attack on the island by US Marines when he was killed by mortar fire.

During 1944, Peleliu was an important link in the Japanese defensive line flanking the American Central Pacific advance towards the Philippines and when the US 1st Marine Division landed on Peleliu on 15 September they suffered heavy casualties from the well-defended beachhead. Damien Parer was killed two days later.

More than a month of heavy fighting followed the US landing but Japanese resistance finally finished on 13 October. Peleliu continued to hide a number of Japanese soldiers during the next years, men who refused to believe that the war was over.

Vietnam

Sub-Lieutenant Max Shean, RANVR, Gibraltar, 1941.