RECONNAISSANCE Spring 2019 Issue

This is the "From the Editor" column of the Spring 2019 issue of the Society's quarterly magazine, RECONNAISSANCE. The full magazine is available to Society members.

Welcome to the Spring 2019 issue of Reconnaissance.

We have seen many wartime centenaries and anniversaries over recent times and this year is no exception. 2019 marks the 75th anniversary of events during that pivotal Second World War year of 1944. For the English speaking world at least, no event of that period was bigger than D-Day. Operation Overlord may not have been as devastating for the Third Reich as the unstoppable Soviet juggernaut. But that success on the Normandy beaches was more than an indispensable condition for Nazi defeat, it was a crucial determinant of post-war history in Europe and across the world. So it is worth commemorating, even here in Australia.

In that vein the Society dedicated its July lecture to a D-Day related subject. Our President stepped forward with a captivating talk on Operation Cobra, a lesser known factor in the ultimate triumph of Overlord. The text of that lecture is the cover article of this Reconnaissance. In light of the subsequent Allied sweep across France, relatively few know that in the early stages they were badly bogged down in the difficult Normandy hedgerow country. At a loss as to how to break out, casualties mounted alarmingly. As Robert explains, the breakthrough owed much to the Americans’ pragmatic spirit, particularly that of their down-to-earth commander General Omar Bradley.  A combination of concentrated high explosive bombing from the air, chancy ground tactics, technical inventiveness and coordination with British forces to the east eventually smashed the stubborn and skillful German defenders.

This issue of Reconnaissance also presents the second installment of Lt-Col (retd) Steve Hart’s reflections on the Vietnam War. This time he describes the typical daily routine of servicemen at the Australian Task Force’s headquarters at Nui Dat as well as his experiences on returning to Australia at the end of his tour. In a recent book Australia’s Vietnam: Myth vs History journalist Mark Dapin claims to explode some myths about Australians who served in Vietnam, including the belief that they were mistreated on arriving home. Steve tells it otherwise, writing that garbage was thrown over him as he emerged from Sydney airport in September 1969. The generation who inflicted this treatment on our soldiers should be ashamed. 

We are also pleased to offer another article by Lex McAulay, one of Australia’s best known military historians. Lex fills us in on the adventures of Great War era Australian aviator Captain Ross Smith and his trusty Bristol Fighter B1229.  It seems Smith was somehow implicated in almost every aerial escapade over the Middle-Eastern theatre of the war.  

Also in this Reconnaissance, Dr John Haken is true to his mission of enlightening us on fascinating but obscure facts. Dr Haken records the history of ‘submarine mining’, meaning remotely controlled underwater explosive devices, in New South Wales waters from the 1870s to the 1920s.

Finally, concerning a D-Day of a different sort, I review Phillip Bradley’s excellent book D-Day New Guinea on the US-Australian campaign to take Lae from the Japanese in September 1943, when many of the amphibious and airborne tactics deployed in Normandy were given a trial run.

I hope you enjoy this issue of Reconnaissance.

Editor,

Reconnaissance

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