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Originally Posted by BritinAfrica You have answered a question I have been meaning to ask. I have often wondered what would have happened had the Japs landed in Aussie. |
They would have been contained in the north. The roads south from Darwin were mostly little more than dirt tracks. If the Jpas had tried to outflank defensive positions as they had in Malaysia, they would have found themselves bogged down in waterless savannah and desert country. And if they tried it in "the Wet" as we call it, they would have just got bogged.
Units such as the Northern Australia Observer Unit (the "Nackeroos") were raised from local white fellahs and aboriginies (the unit still exists today as "NORFORCE") to surveil and harass any Japs that landed.
Even today, the defence of northern Australia is viewed more along the lines of defending "islands" of infrastructure and population, rather then trying to deny it all. An un-resupplied invasion would wither and die in the inhospitable terrain.
Hence the ADF's reliance on submarines and maritime strike aircraft (to cut the enemy's maritime supply lines) and light mobile land forces to bleed the enemy with a thousand cuts.