Tom Womack

Tom Womack is a professional writer with three books and more than 50 magazine articles published to date. Professionally, he has 35 years' experience writing Advertising / Public Relations content for a broad range of national and international companies. Womack writes extensively on military history topics with a primary focus on the former Netherlands East Indies during the early months of World War 2 in the Pacific Ocean.

"The Dutch Naval Air Force Against Japan: The Defense of the Netherlands East Indies, 1941-1942" was initially published in 2006. The first English-language text of its kind on this neglected topic, it details the punishing air war that marked the Japanese invasion of the Netherlands East Indies from December 1941 - March 1942. A larger, much more comprehensive second edition of this book appeared in December 2023.

"The Allied Defense of the Malay Barrier, 1941-1942" appeared in 2015 and details the naval war of the Netherlands East Indies campaign. This project utilizes more than 300 American, Australian, British, Dutch and Japanese language sources to provide a comprehensive overview of the campaign from a Dutch point-of-view. It also provides the first English-language account of the failed Allied evacuation of Java following the disastrous Battle of the Java Sea.

Womack is currently finalizing the manuscript for his next book, which details a secret program to train Dutch pilots in the former Netherlands East Indies following the German invasion of Holland. The program was personally approved by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in late 1940. It was secretly executed to skirt American neutrality laws as the US struggled to remain neutral as war raged around the world. Acting on direct orders from FDR, the US Navy released a number of Navy and Marine pilots from duty to serve as civilian instructors for Dutch flight cadets in the East Indies.

Womack holds a BA in History from the University of Texas at Austin. He lives in San Antonio, Texas with his fiancee, two cats (Crash and Sheba) and one very large, oversized puppy (Sky).