Australia and Imperial Defence, 1918-39: A Study in Air and Sea Power

Abstract

INTRODUCTION The study of military affairs in Australia has beennlargely ignored by historians and political scientists. A criticalnanalysis of anything other than contemporary defencenpolicies has likewise been neglected. Apart from the informationnscattered throughout the official war histories, nonaccount of the armed services nor of the formulation andnimplementation of defence policy exists for the interwarnperiod. The aim of this book is to fill part of the gap. It isnintended to examine the development of the air force and thenrelationship between air power and sea power in Australianndefence in terms of the Imperial defence relationship as itnexisted between the formulation of the 1923 Imperial Conferencendefence resolutions and the outbreak of war withnGermany in September 1939. The strategic principlesnembodied in the qFleet to Singaporeq concept governedninterwar defence planning. It follows that the attitude of thengovernment and the Australian armed services towards thenSingapore strategy will be given an extended analysis. Thennature of the Imperial defence connection in the interwarnyears will be examined in an effort to show how the partnershipnbetween Australia and the United Kingdom operated. Itnis hoped to demonstrate some of the solutions offered bynAustralian and United Kingdom defence planners to specificnproblems and to reach some conclusions regarding the valuenof the Imperial connection to Australian defence generally.n Imperial defence may be defined as the joint defence ofnUnited Kingdom possessions and interests by a combinationnof United Kingdom, Dominion, and Colonial forces. Australian participation may be dated from 1885 when anmixture of fear and pragmatism led the Australian colonies tonoffer the United Kingdom troops to fight the Mahdi in thenSudan. For all its appearance as a spontaneous gesture, thendispatch of the Sudan contingent from New South Wales wasna result of a realistic understanding that the colonies couldnonly find protection through British sea power and insidensome framework of Imperialism. In an early expression ofnqforward defenceq, Dibbs, premier of New South Wales,nexplained that Australia was defending itself in Egypt just asnif qthe common enemy menaced us in the colonyq; and thatnqupon the success of British arms in the Sudan, the fate ofnIndia in all probability hinges. And if that success concernsnIndia it also concerns the Australian colonies.q Dibbs wasnestablishing what was to become a theoretical first principlenof Imperial defence: that the Empire was composed of interdependentnparts. Thereafter it was made increasingly clearnthat Australian forces would be available to fight in Imperialnwarshh..n