Empire Lost - Andrew Stewart [76]
It would be many months before Cross could write back to London with a more encouraging report about the Australian attitude.88 The fact that the war had come to Australia's very doorstep probably had had the greatest impact on public awareness. On the morning of 19 February 1942 nearly 200 Japanese planes had bombed the town of Darwin and 242 civilians and military personnel had been killed. The raid only lasted 45 minutes but the harbour was devastated with 25 ships sunk or damaged, among them an American destroyer. Many of the townspeople thought it to be the start of an invasion and panic resulted. The town was abandoned as civilians and deserting military fled along the road south in what later became known as the 'Adelaide River Stakes'; by the following day it was estimated that no more than 500 people were left.89 A new sense of seriousness was made clear when the South Australian government finally decided to ban all horse-racing and close the betting shops. There would, as a result, be virtually no sport organized for public amusement in the state, the first within the Commonwealth to take such a 'draconian' step.90
Matters were not helped by the worsening situation in the Western Desert. Here British Commonwealth forces found themselves forced to retreat in the face of a determined attack by Rommel's Afrika Korps and renewed Imperial disaster and humiliation followed. On 21 June 1942, after a final assault that lasted less than a day the port of Tobruk surrendered; garrisoned by South African, British and Indian troops, 33,000 men were captured along with vast amounts of supplies and equipment. For Churchill it seemed the British Army's morale had crumbled and he would later describe Tobruk's loss as one of the heaviest blows of the entire war.91 For his wartime coalition government it also presaged a serious parliamentary challenge although, in due course, this was easily seen off. The military commander on the ground, who Churchill would ultimately hold personally accountable for the disaster, was Auchinleck, and he complained back to London in July 1942 that he was hampered by his inability to detach subordinate Dominion formations for their parent divisions. In a sign of their growing independence, Dominion commanders refused to allow units to fight as piecemeal formations. The British general understood this was down to past events and political necessities but it hindered his flexibility and he reportedly never felt comfortable with troops he could not rely on not being suddenly removed from the fight.92 His deputy during the fighting around El Alamein in June and July 1942 even concluded that if there been three British divisions present prior to Tobruk's defeat as opposed to a largely Dominion force, 'we would have done better than we did'.93 The Empire appeared on the verge of collapse and nobody seemed to know how this might be stopped.
Holding the Imperial Line
The British Empire faced its nadir in 1942 as military defeat was followed by further military defeat. At its emotional centre outrage and dismay had followed the 'Channel Dash', the escape of a German naval fleet consisting of Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and the Prinz Eugen, supported by a number of smaller ships, through the Straits of Dover to their German home ports. An editorial in The Times of London reported that 'nothing more mortifying to the pride of our seapower has happened since the seventeenth century'. The event signalled 'the end of the Royal Navy legend that in wartime no enemy battle fleet could pass through what we proudly call the English Channel'.1 The Far East position had collapsed and the massed Commonwealth armies that had been assembled in North Africa appeared to be faring little better with Tobruk gone and the final line of defence established near a small