Kokoda Air Strikes

The author of the bestselling Darwin Spitfires casts a forensic eye over the role that Allied air forces played—or failed to play—in crucial World War II campaigns in New Guinea.

Kokoda Air Strikes tells the story of the early battles of the South West Pacific theatre: the Coral Sea, Kokoda, Milne Bay, and Guadalcanal. These are presented as a single air campaign that began with the Japanese conquest of Rabaul in January 1942.

This is a story of both Australian and American airmen who flew and fought in the face of adversity with incomplete training, inadequate aircraft, and from poorly set up and exposed airfields. They persisted despite extreme exhaustion, sickness, poor morale, and the near certainty of being murdered by their Japanese captors if they went down in enemy territory.