“Then the call went out through the battalions, basically saying, ‘Give the captured material back, we need it,’” Casey said. Soldiers then scratched their names into the paint and started souveniring bits and pieces. It’s dark, it’s wet, it’s jungle and it’s scary, and then there’s the noise and you can’t tell where it’s coming from … It looks as if one slid off the road and got bogged, and the other tried to go around and got completely, hopelessly bogged, and so they were abandoned and they were discovered by Australian troops.” “They believed there might have been up to eight of them. “Troops on the ground thought the Japanese had more than two tanks,” Casey said. ![]() It was in the mud and the grime that Australian soldiers stumbled across the battle-scarred tanks that had so terrorised them. In some of the worst conditions faced by Australian forces in the Second World War, the battle of Milne Bay raged through incessant rain, ankle deep mud, and malaria ridden swamps before the Japanese were forced to evacuate their remaining forces. Before Milne Bay, the Japanese were thought of as supermen, and this episode proved they could be beaten” “This is actually taking place on Australian soil on the territory of Papua New Guinea and it’s the first major land defeat the Japanese have had. ![]() “Strategically Milne Bay is very important for Australia,” said Shane Casey, a senior curator at the Memorial. And now the Japanese Ha-Go tank that Australian soldiers found hopelessly bogged and abandoned 75 years ago at the battle of Milne Bay is part of the National Collection at the Australian War Memorial.įought between 26 August and 6 September 1942, the battle of Milne Bay was a major turning point in the Pacific war and was the first time the Allied forces had decisively defeated a Japanese offensive on land. It’s had soldiers’ names scratched into it, been pulled to pieces and put back together again, and was even home to a dead rat. ![]() It’s been dragged over a land mine, had test shots fired at it and been filled with old machine-gun cartridges, dirt, rust and rubbish.
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