This is an entertaining and well-researched account of the Australian air defence of Port Moresby from March to May in 1942.

But it was not a fight for Australia. In his 2002 paper ‘He’s (not) Coming South: the invasion that wasn’t’, Dr Peter Stanley of the Australian War Memorial sets out what most scholars of the war have long understood: that the Japanese never had the capacity to invade Australia in 1942 (their starving and badly led army didn’t even have the capacity to take Port Moresby) and, more to the point, didn’t ever plan to. But they certainly planned to take Port Moresby, and for a period of about six weeks, from late March to early May 1942, the critical air defence consisted of the Australian 75 Squadron of P-40 Kittyhawks. By May their numbers were down to three. Those of us who spent our childhoods with sticky fingers from Airfix glue will remember this formidable aircraft with its painted-on shark smile. The 75 Squadron was opposed by Japanese Zero fighters. The author focuses on the personalities of the Australian unit and the intimacy of this front; the small numbers involved on both sides is striking.

This is not a tale of triumph. At the end of six weeks, Japanese and Australian losses from air combat were about equivalent. The subsequent and much more famous Kokoda campaign was, in fact, a symptom of imperial Japanese desperation.

Reviewed by Grant Hansen