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The scandalous story of Australia’s aerial impotence in the face of Japan’s attack on Darwin 1942, the result of disastrous political nostalgia for the British Empire.

In 1942, a handful of Australian airmen stopped the Japanese advance to Australia’s front doorstep, but no thanks to the politicians and Air Vice Marshals who, despite years of warning, asked them to hold the line with too little.

In 1942, somebody had to pay the price for years of political and diplomatic wishful thinking about Australia’s defence needs, and that ‘somebody’ would be the men of the 8th Division, sent to Malaya to defend Singapore.