The first ever attack on Australia by a foreign power occurred at Darwin on 19 February 1942. To this day, Australia Under Attack remains the most reliable and accurate account of the Darwin bombings.

Darwin was bombed in broad daylight by members of the Japanese Carrier Task Force which had been engaged at Pearl Harbour two months earlier. Not a single operational R.A.A.F fighter aircraft was available to meet this attack, imminent and inevitable though it was.

At the time of the raid, Douglas Lockwood was a correspondent for the Melbourne Herald in Darwin. In the years that followed, he travelled the world interviewing survivors of and participants in the attack to produce the first complete reconstruction of that tragic day.