Key Dates in Australia's Military History: World War Two – 1941
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Crew members of HMAS Australia carry the propeller of a kamikaze aircraft that had attacked their warship in the Lingayen Gulf, January 1945.
(AWM 306770)
1941
Formation of three women’s auxiliary services—Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service (WRANS), Australian Women’s Army Service (AWAS), and the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force (WAAAF).
3–5 January
Australian troops capture Bardia, Libya, from the Italians.
10 April – 7 December
Siege of Tobruk, Libya.
Members of the Volunteer Defence Corps (VDC), first raised and maintained in 1941 by the RSSAILA (later called the RSL).
(AWM P02018.087)
13 April
Corporal JH Edmondson, 2/17th Battalion AIF, is posthumously awarded the first Australian Victoria Cross of World War 2 at Tobruk, Lybia.
April – May
Australians in Greece and Crete campaigns.
8 June – 12 July
Australians defeat Vichy French forces in Syria and Lebanon.
10 June
Recruitment commences for the Torres Strait Defence Force, to be drawn from the indigenous population of the Torres Strait Islands. The Force includes the Torres Strait Light Infantry Battalion.
In action with a Bren gun at the front line, siege of Tobruk, August 1941.
(AWM 009510)
11 November
Opening of the Australian War Memorial
19 November
HMAS Sydney sunk off Western Australia after engagement with the German raider Kormoran.
7–8 December
Japan attacks the American Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and invades Malaya, Thailand and Hong Kong.