ADVANCE AUSTRALIA UNFAIR - or, - THE BET OF A LIFE TIME
It was a fine day in the Kenyan savannah. The King had embarked early in the day on a shooting trip with the temporary Australian Governor-General, a commoner, who by some queer twist of Constitutional law that marks everywhere the territory of the British Empire as much as the Union flag does, had become, for a day, the Head of State of the Commonwealth of Australia.
The King had long suspected that this Governor-General, Dan Evarts, was a permanent drunkard. He smelt like it anyway. As evening set, Evarts spotted a lion and three thousand yards. "Now look here Kingy," he remarked, standing atop the bonnet of a jeep, "I bet you anything that I can bring down that lion over there."
"A thousand pounds," the King replied.
"Come on mate, be reasonable!"
"Very well then," the King said, stroking at his facial hair, "I bet you a contract that whichever nation loses the bet must spend for the rest of time the full fruits of all its combined productive labour on the production of aircraft carriers, a naval weapon so far untested and believed to be by the General staffs of all the world's civilised militaries to be comparatively useless."
Now, the Australians are honourable people, so that when Governor-General Evarts missed the shot by more than a thousand yards, they committed themselves, at the earliest possible date October of 1936, to begin this gigantic practical joke.
When Britain went to war with Germany, Australia refused to send any of her fledgling fleet of five converted aircraft carriers. So deeply had this bet spoiled the ties between the two nations that Australia did not commit a single sailor, soldier or airman to any theatre outside of the Pacific. Of course, in some regards, she had no choice, for in December of 1941, the Japanese, of all people, declared war. By February of 1942 Australia had produced ten aircraft carriers.
In May of 1942 the Japanese attacked the Philippine Islands, and Australia committed herself to the defence of that country. In the First and Second Battles of Lingayen Gulf in May 27 and May 29, Australian carriers sank the Japanese Shokaku and Ryujo, and secured landings of the Australian Army in the Northern Philippines. The Filipino Campaign would dominate Australian military history, forever.
Attempts to reinforce their landings north of the Philippine cordilleras failed, with the loss of many Japanese small ships. For this reason Admiral Tanaka was tasked with destroying the Australian fleet in July of 1942. By the end of the month he succeeded in bringing the Australians to battle at the First Battle of Polillo Islands; he traded the battleship Fuso for the Australian carrier Captain Blight. A month later, the two fleets came to blows again in the Second Battle of the Polillo Islands; this time the Japanese lost the carrier Kaga and the battlecruiser Kongo, in exchange for the Australian carrier King Sound. The Japanese fleet retreated; still the supply routes to the Philippines were not yet won. The Japanese fleet once again brought the battle to the Australians in November of 1942; here they lost decisively, losing the carriers Akagi and Soryu.
In 1942, the Australians had fought the Japanese at the First and Second Battles of Lingayen Gulf and the First, Second and Third Battles of the Polillo Islands. Australia lost two aircraft carriers with the remainder damaged; Japan lost four and one light, as well as two battleships, with the remainder damaged. The score was two up for Australia! For six months the Japanese Army bled in the Philippines. Finally persuaded to make a bold counterattack, Japan attempted again to restore the lines of supply in July 1943. They failed. The carriers Chitose and Zuikaku were sunk along with the battleships Haruna, Kirishima, Hiei, Ise, and Yamashiro; only the Australian Rabaul was lost. The Battle of the Philippine Sea was described by an Australian sub-lieutenant as: "Like playing the English at cricket, only you are at sea, and there are guns, and no balls."
At the moment when victory was so stacked in favour of Australia, Vice Admiral Hyde made the greatest blunder in Australian history since Captain Cook discovered the island: he pursued the remnants of the Japanese fleet into a storm, was ambushed by a cruiser squadron, and lost four of his aircraft carriers.
On September 18th 1943, the last Japanese soldier was expelled from the Philippines. The Japanese had lost 400,000 men in the campaign, and almost the entire Imperial Japanese Navy had been destroyed by the Royal Australian Navy in the most decisive naval campaign of the war. From this moment on, history sails headfirst into the greatest stalemate known to man, as the United States, technically at war, utterly refuses to do absolutely anything at all, and German and Russian soldiers stare at each other across the borders of the former Poland. Yet Australia maintains her place in the sun as the luckiest loser of a bet since a drunk man in a toga said to a certain Roman general; "I bet you can't swim that river."
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