The Forgotten ‘Pearl Harbor’

Americans remember December 7 as Pearl Harbor Day, but most Americans have never even heard of the “Little Pearl Harbor,” which occurred in Bari Harbor, Italy, on December 2, 1943. More than 100 Luftwaffe bombers mounted a surprise attack on Allied ships moored in the harbor. Their bombs sank or rendered inoperable 28 of these ships. Nearly a thousand Allied troops were killed or wounded. along with hundreds of civilians.

Unbeknownst to those in the port, one of the ships carried liquid death in its belly. The American freighter John Harvey was secretly carrying mustard agent, in violation of international agreements that banned its use. President Franklin Roosevelt had covertly ordered the shipment of 100 tons of mustard agent to Italy for retaliation in the event that the Germans used chemical warfare against the Allied troops. The incident was covered up and remained a secret for decades.

When the German bombs hit the John Harvey, the ship’s hold immediately exploded with devastating violence, killing all those who knew about the mustard. Deadly liquid and gas flew high into the air and then slowly settled back down into the harbor, coating everything and everyone in the vicinity. Casualties would mount over the coming days and weeks as the agent slowly and painfully claimed the lives of many who had survived the initial attack.Among those who survived in the harbor that day were some of America’s first SEALs, the men of the OSS Maritime Unit. Their ranks included Jack Taylor, a former dentist from Hollywood, and Sterling Hayden, one of Hollywood’s leading men. Their stories are captured for the first time in a new book titled First SEALs: The Untold Story of the Forging of America’s



http://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/forgotten-pearl-harbor.html

TRY finding any references to the aerial bombing of Darwin, the Japanese mini-subs off Sydney and Newcastle, or the Aussie efforts on the Kokoda Track, in any WWII history that originates in the USA...

ONE could be excused for thinking that US interests won that one single-handedly, if you were to only go by American-composed "histories" and movie spin-offs..

AND let's not all forget or ignore that totally fictitious "U-571" 'Enigma Code..' movie [released in 2000, the year before the much-more factual British "Enigma" production..] that had the US Navy breaking the Enigma code in some  alternative universe ~ some 12-18 months after the Brit's had already captured the 'Enigma machine' in reality, and broken the code.

IS IT any wonder that so many US citizens are so ignorant of the wider world, when their only references while growing up might be American movies and Television, and suspect history texts ?      

yeah the first defeats suffered by the Nazi and the first defeat suffered by the Japanese were Both by Aussies Forces.

Over Tunisa in 1939, Lying Brits say they did it in 1940 even though there is Swedes in between

http://www.pacificwar.org.au/battaust/Britain_betrays_Australia.html

veya_victaous wrote:yeah the first defeats suffered by the Nazi and the first defeat suffered by the Japanese were Both by Aussies Forces.

Over Tunisa in 1939, Lying Brits say they did it in 1940 even though there is Swedes in between

http://www.pacificwar.org.au/battaust/Britain_betrays_Australia.html

This should be some interesting revisionist history,
Tunisia 1939, the Nazi's suffered a defeat to Australian forces?
Love to know how that is even possible, since the Nazi's were not in Tunisia then.

The first defeat happened on 14th September when U-Boat U-39 was sunk by 3 British destroyers

You might also want to read:

The Road to Singapore: the Myth of British Betrayal








The Road to Singapore: The Myth of British Betrayal

The following is a book review that I did for the History Teachers Association of Australia in 2011. It was derived from an article I did for Quadrant magazine after hearing Augustine explain his thesis at a private history study group - Turks Head Club - in Melbourne. It supported concepts from my 1991 MA that had been too politically incorrect to publish at the time. This article was followed by more detailed articles on the concept that I published in Quadrant, and in the Canadian 'Dorchester Review'. It received a good deal of comment on American blogs at the time.

I have decided to give this brief version a run here because I suspect that one of my regular commentators is a victim of the myth... you know who you are...


The Road to Singapore: The Myth of British Betrayalby Augustine Meaher IV
Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2010
The myth of a Great Betrayal by Britain during World War II has taken root in Australia, not just amongst parochial scholars, but also in the general population. Fortunately, an American scholar has produced a book (which includes excellent and readable selections for students), that demolishes the naive excuses and selective use of sources characterizing what he calls Australia’s ‘national myth’.
Augustine Meaher (IV)’s detailed analysis shows Australian interwar governments based their entire defence strategy on the fantasy that a naval base at Singapore (which they would not fund) could support a fleet (which they would not fund), so that Australia could pretty much ignore the need for any local defence. They pretended this regardless of many warnings from the British government and Admiralty that, even if a fleet were available, it might not arrive in time to prevent - at least - raids on Australian territory.
Meaher makes clear that Australia’s defence was not a matter of ‘somebody else’s problem’:
Australian governments ignored the Imperial defence requirement that the nation provide for its own local defence. Properly understood, Imperial defence would have allowed Australia to weather the turmoil of early 1942 much better.
As a result, when Churchill sensibly suggested evacuating Singapore well before the surrender, Curtin called the idea an ‘inexcusable betrayal’. The British 18th division was then sacrificed as a forlorn hope, and joined the Australian 8th and two Indian divisions in captivity. Who really ‘betrayed’ those troops?
Throughout 1942 British reinforcements for the Middle East, including armoured divisions, were designated for diversion to Australia if invasion really threatened. Britain also delivered the promised ‘main fleet to the Far East within six months’. By April 1942 the British Eastern Fleet of five battleships and three aircraft carriers was the biggest Allied fleet anywhere in the world (even without the other four battleships and two aircraft carriers en route). This assembly required the Royal Navy’s effective abandonment of the Mediterranean for several months (contributing to Rommel’s last advance to El Alamein). The British were hardly shirking on their promises.
The crux of Meaher’s argument is that Australian had small and poorly educated elites – social, political, military and industrial – who failed to understand Australian and Imperial defence needs. The result was what British General Montgomery-Massingberd described in 1935 as “a national characteristic of self complacency”.
Meaher sees the expediency of these political elites as the real betrayal. Whereas Australia had compulsory national service, and a powerful and expanding fleet before the Great War, the entire interwar period saw one defence cut back after another. All parties acquiesced, but Meaher points particularly to the Australian Labor Party, which did everything possible to reduce defence spending between the wars, and then embraced the excuse that Australia’s problems must be somebody else’s fault the moment Australia was threatened. Meaher comments:
The notions of betrayal that inform popular thinking about Australia in the Second World War do nothing to assist our understanding of the past or prepare for the future, based as they are on overly simplistic interpretations.


Nigel Davies
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
A professional historian and educator challenges some assumptions. (A sometimes tongue-in-cheek polemic, with a Socratic emphasis on challenging people to argue back. Please do so... I make some of it outrageous largely to encourage a debate).

http://rethinkinghistory.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/the-road-to-singapore-myth-of-british.html


Thankfully some Aussie's are clued up on the events