China-Burma-India WWII

The China-Burma-India Theater

2011-06-06T16:04:00.000+08:00

The strategy for the defeat of Japan could not have been simpler: Allied air, land, and sea forces would advance on three broad axes to roll back the new Japanese empire to the Home Islands, which Allied forces would then invade and occupy, if necessary. British Commonwealth forces would advance from India through Burma to Malaya and Hong Kong; Australian- American forces would drive north and west from Australia into the Netherlands East Indies and the Philippines; and the United States, rich in naval air and surface units, would attack across the Central Pacific toward the Philippines and Formosa. Destruction of the Japanese armed forces (especially air and naval units) would proceed simultaneously with the ruination of Japan’s economy, dependent upon seaborne oil, minerals, coal, rubber, and foodstuffs. Any amateur who could read a map could design such a grand strategy. Making it happen proved quite a different matter.

The Allied military experience in the China-Burma-India (CBI) theater demonstrated how difficult it would be to mount a cohesive offensive effort from nations with conflicting interests and asymmetrical capabilities. Not until 1943 did British commanders in India believe that their principal field force, the Fourteenth Army, could conduct even limited offensive operations. They tested their forces with a one-division advance along the Arakan coast and found the Japanese and terrain unconquerable. The Arakan offensive demonstrated what the Fourteenth Army commander, General William Slim, feared. Only wide-ranging amphibious operations could take his army past the rugged Chin Hills guarding Burma from the west and blocking access to the river valleys leading to Mandalay and Rangoon. A hardened field soldier who had learned his trade on the Western Front and in the Indian Army, Slim combined troop-leading and training skills with personal and moral courage as well as charm, a sound grasp of soldiering, and a solid appreciation of Asian warfare and the excellence of the Japanese Army. He had experienced the catastrophe of the 1942 retreat from Burma and the abortive attack in the Arakan. His honesty and character made him the obvious choice to reshape the Fourteenth Army, a force built on the Indian Army but including the ever-dependable Gurkha Rifles of Nepal, unproven infantry battalions from East and West Africa, and infantry battalions and supporting arms from the British Army.

In theory, the concept of amphibious envelopments reaching to Singapore made sense to everyone except the other Allies and much of the Royal Navy. With the demands of other theaters, the Allies could not find adequate amphibious shipping for even a modest operation aimed at Rangoon and scheduled for late 1943 or 1944. Slim now saw no alternative but an overland advance by his army, gradually reinforced from the Middle East and India proper, where the internal security mission required fewer British battalions by 1944. The Japanese Fifteenth Army, under Lieutenant General Mutaguchi Renya, also grew in the same months from four to eight divisions, thus raising the prospective cost to Slim of an overland battle through the mountains of western Burma. If Slim could find no reasonable alternative to a conventional offensive, others offered shining promises of easy victory. Churchill and Roosevelt, politicians and opportunists to the core, grasped these false options with enthusiasm.

Already tied to Nationalist China by sentiment and prior commitment, Roosevelt never abandoned his hope that Chiang Kai-shek’s armies would go on the offensive and that Chiang himself could actually play the role of regional leader. From mid-1942 until mid-1943 Roosevelt struggled to keep China in the war, aided in his quest by Marshall and Stilwell. In October 1942 Roosevelt answered Chiang’s Three Demands with limited promises of an air buildup in India and a serious effort to bring Lend-Lease supplies to Kunming by air. The Allies could complete the Ledo extension of the Burma Road only by driving at least one Japanese division from northern Burma with some sort of Sino-American army. Roosevelt did not promise to send ground combat forces, even though Stilwell favored this option. Encouraged by Hap Arnold’s staff and Chennault (now commanding the Tenth Air Force in China) to think more about offensive air operations from China, Roosevelt in May 1943 chose (much to Stilwell’s dismay and Chiang’s delight) Chennault’s concept of a major bomber offensive against China’s coastal cities and Japanese sea lanes. Chennault, the air defense expert, suddenly promised victory through bombing, probably influenced by his nominal theater air commander, Major General Clayton D. Bissell, and Bissell’s patron, Hap Arnold. The air plan, however, offered Stilwell some solace, since such a commitment required an open Ledo- Burma Road and a reformed Chinese Army to protect the bomber bases in China. At the Quebec conference of August 1943, Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Combined Chiefs of Staff approved an offensive in north Burma.

With his schemes for amphibious operations frustrated by shipping shortages, Churchill supported American plans for the China-Burma-India theater, even though he had little faith in Nationalist China. Moreover, Churchill fell under the spell of one of the war’s most eccentric and charismatic commanders, Brigadier Orde Wingate. A Middle Eastern expert with guerrilla successes in the Sudan, Ethiopia, and Palestine, Wingate argued for unconventional warfare in Burma. Slim doubted Wingate would find the Japanese as impressionable as his Middle Eastern foes, and he resented Wingate’s influence with Churchill, who allowed Wingate to strip Fourteenth Army of some of its best British, Gurkha, and African troops.

Bursting with energy, Wingate formed the 3,300-man 77th Brigade in 1943, the Long Range Penetration Group (LRPG) or “Chindits,” a nickname drawn from the ferocious winged lions of stone guarding Burma’s temples. Wings had much to do with the Chindits, since Wingate expected his force to land by glider or parachute behind Japanese lines and then be resupplied by air. Fighter-bombers would provide fire support instead of artillery. The first experiment in February–June 1943 was no great success, proving only that Chindits got tired and sick like everyone else and could not live by airdrops alone. The Chindits killed three times as many Japanese as they themselves lost (68 to 28), but almost the entire force ended the operation unfit for future duty. Slim certainly did not see the Chindit operations as a substitute for his campaign.

Wingate’s quixotic schemes then grew into a larger and more optimistic plan for a return to Burma in 1944 on the same model. Churchill liked the concept, while Stilwell saw Wingate’s force as a useful instrument in his own plan to lead a Sino-American ground force against Myitkyina, a crucial road junction on the way to Lashio, terminus of the Burma Road. With the approval of Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, appointed the theater commander in September 1943, Wingate wrested control of troops in India that were outside Slim’s command and formed a six-brigade LRPG of 20,000 officers and men. Stilwell had no comparable ground force. He had two small Chinese divisions under his direct control, and Marshall had provided only a makeshift infantry regimental combat team drawn from “volunteers” from the U.S. Army. Designated the 5307th Composite Unit Provisional, the unit preferred the name Merrill’s Marauders, thus identifying themselves with Brigadier General Frank D. Merrill, one of Stilwell’s favorite staff officers but an inexperienced commander with a serious heart condition.

Stilwell, however, had some other assets to entice Wingate into the north Burma campaign. First, he had the full cooperation of the American air forces (if not Chennault), since an open Ledo-Burma Road would dramatically reduce the airlift requirements over “the Hump,” the dangerous southeastern extension of the Himalayas. Moreover, the prospect of Chinese bases attracted American bomber generals, who were not having great success yet over Germany and who had made huge investments in a new long-range bomber, the B-29 Superfortress. Arnold and Bissell organized their own special operations wing, the 5138th Air Force Unit or the 1st Air Commando Group, commanded by Colonel Philip “Flip” Cochran, who proved one of the most able officers in the China-Burma-India theater. Stilwell promised Wingate that Cochran’s 200-aircraft group, which included fighter-bombers and transports as well as gliders and reconnaissance aircraft, would provide the Chindits the aerial support the RAF could not, if Wingate coordinated his operations with the Myitkyina expedition.

Both Stilwell and Wingate assumed they would enjoy the services of the pro-Allied Burma hill tribes. The major mountain tribal groups—Nagas, Kachins, Karens, Chans, and Shins—numbered a minority of about 7 million of Burma’s 17 million people. The Nagas, Kachins, and Karens had served happily in the colonial security forces, had fought the Japanese in 1942, and now wanted weapons to fight Burmese collaborators and the Japanese. Many Karens had become Christians, and the Kachins rivaled the Gurkhas in their warriorlike qualities. In 1943 the hill tribes welcomed new guerrilla leaders from the United States and the Commonwealth, Detachment 101 of the OSS and Force 136 of the British Special Operations Directorate. Generously supplied with arms, money, supplies, and radios, these partisan teams rallied thousands of Kachin and Karen tribesmen. They, too, depended on the 1st Air Commando Group for support.

While Slim’s Indian divisions conducted cautious offensive operations in central and south Burma in 1943–44, the Chindits, Marauders, and Chinese marched or flew into north-central and northern Burma in February and March 1944.Wingate did not intend to support Stilwell, but he died in an air crash in March, and his successor then coordinated the movement of the six LRPG brigades with Stilwell’s force. Unfortunately, Stilwell underestimated the fighting skill and tenacity of the Japanese 18th Division, under Lieutenant General Tanaka Shinchi, and he used his forces (including air support) with such profligacy that the Chindits and 1st Air Commando were combat-ineffective before Myitkyina fell. The Marauders and three Chinese divisions fought their way to the headwaters of the Irrawaddy by April 1944 but exhausted themselves in the process. In the battles of Walawbum and Shadzup, only the timely arrival of the Chinese saved the Marauders from disaster. Merrill himself collapsed with another heart attack.

Stilwell then ordered the remnants of his expeditionary force on a 65- mile trek to Myitkyina, which it besieged in June and finally captured in August with the help of more Chinese and the Burmese partisans. The campaign destroyed the Marauders and crippled the Chinese X Force. The campaign did not end, however, since Chiang had finally ordered Y Force into Burma from the east, while Marshall sent two more U.S. infantry regiments (Mars Force) to the CBI to replace the Marauders, who mustered barely 200 effectives from an original 3,000-man force. Chiang’s price of cooperation was Stilwell’s relief, since he viewed “Vinegar Joe” as pro- Communist. Stilwell did know which Chinese regime would seize the Mandate of Heaven. The Kuomintang, he noted, was characterized by “corruption, neglect, chaos, economy [bad], taxes . . . hoarding, black market, trading with the enemy.” The Communists “reduce taxes, rents, interest . . . raise production, and standard of living, participate in government. Practice what they preach.” Vinegar Joe, sick and bitter, left the CBI before the north Burma force finally met Y Force at the Chinese border south of Lashio and allowed U.S. Army engineers to link the Ledo Road with the highway to Kunming.

By the time the land route to China had been reopened, the Chennault air plan had already come a cropper. Even Roosevelt finally accepted the conclusion his military chiefs had reached long before: the Chinese Nationalists would do little to defeat Japan. Within China, signs of shirking were only too clear. Inflation and corruption, fueled by American supplies and money, became rampant. Chinese military casualties fell below 300,000 for the first time since 1937. The American military mission in Chungking, now directed by Major General Albert C. Wedemeyer, believed that only the Communist Eighth Route Army and the OSS-supported Chinese-Mongolian partisans were real fighters.

The decline of the Nationalist Army did not reflect any lack of effort by Tenth Air Force’s air transports in flying “the Hump.” By August 1943, C-46s were delivering 5,000 tons of supplies a month to China, an unthinkable figure when Chiang had demanded that support a year earlier. By January 1944, Tenth Air Force effort reached 15,000 tons a month. The commitment took a heavy toll. The transport force lost at least one aircraft for every one of the 500 air miles between India and China; more than 1,000 aircrewmen perished along the route. At its peak strength, Tenth Air Force had 650 aircraft in the air every day, around the clock. This effort made it possible for Chennault to mount Operation Matterhorn, the strategic bombardment of Chinese and Formosan targets with B-24s and B-29s based in China.

The opportunity cost to the Chinese Nationalists was high, too, since 90 percent of the cargo tonnage in 1943–44 was aviation gasoline and ordnance, not Lend-Lease arms for the Chinese Army. This imbalance exacted its toll all too soon. As the airlift over “the Hump” provided more logistical support, Arnold sent more operational wings to China and created a new command for Chennault, the Fourteenth Air Force, which included one B-29 bombardment wing. When Churchill and Roosevelt met Chiang Kaishek on their way to Teheran in November 1943, they promised Chiang, awash in self-importance, a great air war from China against Japan. Their meeting coincided with the first American bombardment of Formosa. They also promised to push operations in Burma to open the Ledo-Burma Road and increase Lend-Lease aid. In return for recognition of his role as Allied Generalissimo in Asia, Chiang promised to use his army to the best of its limited ability to support the American and British offensive.

The Japanese did not look kindly on the growing U.S. Army Air Forces presence in China, however, and ordered the China expeditionary army to begin ICHI-GO (Operation One) in January 1944. For the next ten months the Japanese Army pushed the Nationalists back and overran base after base, forcing the forward-based Fourteenth Air Force fighters and bombers deeper into China, more than half of which remained unconquered. The Chinese Army’s resistance was erratic and ultimately futile, but Japanese casualties and the lengthening logistical tail of the Japanese divisions brought operations to a halt in January 1945. The Japanese generals in China cautioned Tokyo that they could not advance far enough to capture the bases of the new B-29s, which had a range of 4,000 miles.

The strategic bombing champions, however, had already concluded that an enlarged Matterhorn was too tall a challenge. With the decline of Fourteenth Air Force and military support of Chiang Kai-shek, operations in the China-Burma-India theater, divided into the Southeast Asia and Chinese theaters in 1944, reverted to a British Commonwealth effort to restore the British Empire, a goal the United States failed to support with any enthusiasm. The war with Japan would be won elsewhere.

SMALL OPERATIONS GROUP (SOG)

2010-07-29T13:39:00.002+08:00

Nicknamed "Soggy"

Date Founded: June 1944
Mission When Founded: Provide small parties of uniformed troops trained and equipped to operate in enemy coastal, river and lake area using small craft, inflatable boats, paddle boards or swimmers
Mission During the War: Unchanged Theatre(s) of Operation: South East Asia Headquarters: Fort Hammenhiel, Karaitivu island, Ceylon # of Personnel: 345 all ranks (1945)

HISTORY/PROFILE:

The Small Operations Group was formed in June 1944 to bring together the disparate amphibious units assembling in the Far Eastern theatre under one command, and to apply the lessons learnt in Europe and the Mediterranean to the Japanese. SOG was headquartered at Admiral Mountbatten's South East Asia Command (SEAC) headquarters, and continued Mountbatten's predilection for unconventional warfare formed whilst commanding Britain's Combined Operations. SOG was the first attempt to co-ordinate the activities of units that previously operated as "private armies".

SOG was commended by Colonel H.T. Tollemache RM, and Blondie Hasler was transferred from the RMBPD, promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel and made second in command with responsibility for training. SOG consisted of COPP 7 and 8, SBS groups A and B, the Sea Reconnaissance Unit and RM Detachment 385. Although highly trained in their respective specialities, once in Ceylon all SOG members were given intensive training in jungle warfare and survival, day and night navigation and endless training embarking/disembarking submarines, destroyers, motor launches and Catalina flying boats.

Burma's rivers and coastline provided the ideal location for SOG's units to demonstrate their talents. Of SOG's 173 operations, over 80 were on Burma's west coast alone. Later operations expanded to Malaya, Siam and Sumatra. SOG performed two types of mission: "Independent operations" and "Force Commanders' Operations". An Independent operation was what it was named - the SOG commander was responsible for planning and execution. On a Force Commander's Operation, a team was detached to the formation HQ for a major operation. SOG was only responsible for team selection and liaison. Only 19 of SOG's operations were independent - the rest were force commanders' operations.

COPP 7 and 8 had arrived in India in November 1943. For operations the COPPs were always attached to Force W - the naval amphibious force. Due to operational demands and the unhealthy waters of the Arakan, COPPs 7 and 8 rotated with COPPs 1, 3, 4 and 9 in 1945.

The remaining units of SOG worked with 3 Commando Brigade, the 14th Army and XV Corps. They performed reconnaissance, intelligence gathering including prisoner snatches, defence clearance, diversionary raids and jitter parties for SEAC, although SOG's official history notes that HQ struggled at times to find suitable targets for SOG's raiders. SOG's operations were usually made at night as boats are easily spotted during the day, dodging patrolling Japanese motor sampans.

SBS teams operated with V Force(1), a locally raised intelligence force, and Force 136(2), SOE's guerrilla operation - resupplying, bringing in team members and commanding local guerrillas.

The Sea Reconnaissance Unit was founded by Lieutenant Commander Bruce Wright of the Canadian Naval Reserve and an Olympic swimmer in December 1942. The SRU's mission was reconnaissance and attack by long-distance swimmers on paddle boards similar to Malibu-style surf boards. The swimmer and three metre board would be dropped by parachute 20 miles from the target. Equipped with hand paddles the swimmer would make his way to the target using the board's compass.

Initial training was at the US Marines' Camp Pendleton, San Diego, but sharks and cold water restricted swimming to 5-10 miles. The SRU moved to warmer Nassau, Bahamas in 1943 for more intensive training. Sea training was completed in March 1944, and consisted of 48 men all ranks. By then the SRU's proposed missions for the Aegean and the Adriatic were cancelled and the unit reoriented for Asian seaborne roles and was assigned to SOG.

The SRU started operations in 1945, working in 10-man sections, plus porters for the boards, and performed recces ahead of Allied advances and cleared Japanese defences. SRU's most valuable contribution to British seaborne raiding were long swimming fins and the American-pattern single-window diving mask soon adopted by all British combat swimmers. The unit was disbanded at the end of the war.

Royal Marine Detachment 385 was created in the summer of 1944, and became operational in March 1945. The 122-strong unit consisted of canoeists and parachutists. Organised into three sections suited to specific operations, Detachment 385 performed deception raids, Japanese prisoner snatches and landed agents and stores for guerrillas, and generally acted as SOG's general purpose unit. The unit's first operation was almost its last when six men were lost, and eight of its 18 missions were failures.

(1) V Force was a guerrilla force run by the British Army, and assembled from Ghurkha platoons of the Assam Rifles augmented by 1,000 hill tribesmen. Originally conceived as a "stay-behind" force in the event of Japanese invasion; its role changed to that of intelligence gathering and the maintenance of outposts ahead of the advancing main British units. V Force's officers were appointed on the basis of expert knowledge of the local language and peoples rather than rank.

(2) Force 136 was the cover name for the Special Operations Executive in the South East Asian theatre. First named GS I(k) it became Force 136 in March 1946. Most of Force 136 agents were Malaysian, Chinese, Thai and Burmese. Force 136 utilised native resistance to the Japanese occupation by organising local resistance movements. Force 136 also organised more conventional military operations behind Japanese lines.

Japanese Warhawks over Rangoon!

2010-07-29T13:22:00.000+08:00

One of the most unusual tales regarding the air war in the Far East during World War II concerns the operational use of Curtiss P-40 Warhawks by the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force (IJAAF)! According to research by noted Japanese military aviation historian Osamu TAGAYA;

"In total, the Japanese appear to have had as many as ten flyable P-40Es. For a brief period, during 1943, a few of them were actually used operationally by the 50th Hiko Sentai in the defense of Rangoon. Testimony to this fact is given by Yasuhiko Kuroe (64th Hiko Sentai) in his memoirs, in which he says one Japanese Warhawk shot down a friendly 'Sally' over Rangoon by mistake!"

However, Hawk victories over No.12 Hiko Sentai (FR) Mitsubishi Ki-21 Sally bombers in the skies above Rangoon, Burma began on 25 December 1941. On that date, twenty-seven Sally bombers attached to No.12 FR departed their home base at Don Muang Airfield, Bangkok Thailand (Siam) for a mission to bomb Rangoon and the nearby airfield at Mingaladon. Accompanying No.12 FR were thirty-six Sallys of No.60 FR along with an escort of twenty-five Nakajima Ki-43 Oscars belonging to No.64 FR.

After forming over Don Muang, the formation proceeded to Moulmein, Burma, changed course and approached Rangoon at an altitude of 6000 meters. With Rangoon in sight, the lead Sally of the No.12 FR under the command of Capt. KUSAKARI, suddenly turned away. A message from Capt. KUSAKARI indicated that his aircraft had some mechanical difficulty and the No.1 Hiko Chutaicho for No.12 FR, Capt. OURA, was to take the lead position. As the formation reorganized and proceeded to the primary target, the electric power facility at Rangoon, they were attacked by the defending force, British Brewster Buffaloes and Curtiss P-40Bs belonging to the 3rd Pursuit Squadron ("Hell's Angels") of the American Volunteer Group, "Flying Tigers."

At least three of the No.12 FR Sallys were lost. The first being that of Lt. Seizo HAYASHI. Two other Sallys made forced landings. One crash-landed at Don Muang and the other, flown by Lt. Koichi MIYAWAKI, crashed in the mountains of Siam. Major Tateo KATO, leading the escort fighters of the No.64 Hiko Sentai, lost at least two of his pilots, Lt. Horoshi OKUMURA and Sgt. Shigekatsu WAKAYAMA.

Sources: "Japanese Army Heavy Bomber Units," by Dr. Yasuho IZAWA "Japanese Fighter Units and Aces," by Dr. Yasuho IZAWA Translation by Shuichiro Watabiki

Sino-Japanese War – the Beginning

2010-06-23T12:30:00.000+08:00

The old and the new: the Japanese capture of Hsüchow, Honan province, 1 July 1938. Representation of a light tank invites the suggestion that it was the only tank available to the Japanese in this operation: the fact was that the Imperial Army was wholly under-invested in armour and mechanized-motorized forces, as the Soviet Army demonstrated one year later.

A sign of change: Japanese troops disembarking at the Shanghai bund, for long the physical manifestation of western power in China, in November 1937 in readiness for the move against Soochow (abandoned by the Chinese on the 19th) and thence against Nanking.

Japan's ever-closer identification with Germany and Italy in the course of the 1930s was of symbolic rather than practical value: Japan's hope that the Treaty would serve to check the Soviet Union was to prove stillborn. The significance of Japan's association with Germany and Italy was not missed, but in the event this need not have been significant. What was far more significant was the outbreak of war in China following a clash between Chinese and Japanese forces outside Peking on 7 July 1937. At first this encounter did not seem unduly important: there was every possibility that it could be resolved by the Japanese in exactly the same way that numerous incidents in northern China had been resolved over the four previous years. After overrunning Manchuria in 1931-2 the Japanese had set about a deliberate encroachment on Chinese territory: Jehol was invaded and occupied in January-February 1933 and the Chinese squeezed from Hopei in June 1935 and from Charar in the following month.

In the aftermath of the clash of July 1937 the Japanese, by their standards, were restrained, confining themselves to the occupation of Tientsin and Peking. There was good and obvious reason for such restraint, not least the paucity of Japanese forces in northern China, but in the event the determination of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria to further its ambitions in Inner Mongolia and the outbreak of fighting in Shanghai on 13 August pushed Japan towards general war: by the end of September the Japanese Army had dispatched ten divisions to northern China and another five to Shanghai, primarily to rescue the naval formations which had provoked the August clash in an attempt to ensure that the army did not steal a march on its sister service in matters Chinese.

In reality, deeper forces were at work in producing Japan's 'special undeclared war' with China, specifically China's attempts after December 1936 to resolve her civil wars in order to present a united front to future Japanese aggression. Within the Japanese high command, therefore, there were elements that sought to forestall such a development, and with the spread of war, and the inability of Tokyo either to contain the conflict or to end it by negotiation, Japanese operations quickly assumed their own momentum. Within four months of the outbreak of general war, the Kwantung Army had secured Inner Mongolia and installed a puppet regime at Kueisui while by the end of 1937 much of China north of the Yellow River - considered by some of the Japanese military to be the minimum sphere of influence that was acceptable - had been overrun. It was in central China, however, that the main story unfolded, specifically the Japanese capture of Shanghai in November and Nanking, amid scenes of mass murder, rape, torture and pillage, in December.

In the course of 1938 Japanese forces in northern China cleared Shansi and Shantung and advanced to the Pinglu-Kaifeng-Hsuchow-Taierhchwang line, while from their positions on the lower Yangtse the Japanese were able to develop offensives that cleared Anhwei north of the river and moved into the Wuhan cities, the Chinese having ceded the middle Yangtse in order to withdraw into the fastness of Kweichow and Hunan. With the simultaneous seizure of Canton, Japanese success in the course of 1938 was impressive, yet it represented failure, and for obvious reason: the basic dilemmas which had proved so intractable during the Chinese civil wars of the 1920s presented themselves anew. The Japanese were confronted by the basic question of whether to seek to destroy the Nationalist regime of Chiang Kai-shek or to preserve it as the only authority that might deliver a negotiated settlement. They also faced the related problem of whether to sponsor rival regimes in an attempt to put pressure on the Nationalists to come to a settlement, or as genuine alternatives to the Nationalist government in Chungking. But either and both of these sets of alternatives concealed the real problem. Japan did not embark upon the conquest of northern and central China in order to provide alternatives to her own rule: Japan sought to secure the power of decision exclusively for herself, and certainly never understood any force of nationalist aspiration other than her own.

Moreover, success in the field merely confirmed the truth of the Clausewitzian observation that it is easy to conquer but hard to occupy. In the vastness of China it was impossible to force a military victory, while by the beginning of 1938 guerrilla warfare had taken hold in many areas nominally under Japanese control, even as banditry revived inside Manchuria as a result of the reduction of the Japanese garrisons in order to provide for operations in China. With the Nationalists having opted for 'a sustained strategy of attrition' that in the end the Japanese could never counter, 1938 also saw clashes with the Soviets, which in turn presented another conundrum: whether operations in China were to be curtailed in order to ensure the security of Manchuria or developed without reference to the distinct possibility of further, serious clashes with the Soviet Union.

In such a situation, and unable to force battle upon the Chinese Nationalist armies in the wastes of Szechwan, Kweichow and Yunnan, the Japanese undertook the first strategic air campaign in history. Douhet, Mitchell and Trenchard are always paraded as the high priests of air power, specifically strategic bombing, but interestingly the first person to have committed to paper the idea of breaking an enemy's will to resist by a bombing campaign directed against a civilian population was a Japanese naval officer, Nakajima Chikuhei, in 1915. The first such employment of air power came as early as August 1937, and in summer 1938 the Japanese undertook a terror bombing campaign against Canton; in May 1939 the Japanese launched their first attacks on Chungking. In spring-summer 1940, however, the Japanese launched Operation 101, a systematic campaign against Chinese cities in the interior, primarily Chungking, with a view to breaking Chinese morale. A year later, in spring-summer 1941, the Japanese renewed their attempt with Operation 102, but this was a halting affair as Japanese naval aircraft were in the process of being withdrawn from China in readiness for operations in south-east Asia and the Pacific.

The two offensives produced interesting results, although not the ones that the Japanese sought. Chinese cities, on account of their massive concentrations of people and generally flimsy construction, were peculiarly vulnerable to bombing, and a number of them, most obviously Chungking, were all but razed. With their populations either driven out or underground, Chinese morale faltered under the initial blows, but it did not break. Moreover, the Japanese were to find that the effectiveness of their raids was directly dependent upon fighters first having secured air superiority: before August 1940 and the commitment of the A6M Zero-sen long-range fighter to the battle, Japanese losses were all but prohibitive. As it was, both Operation 101 and Operation 102 were conducted on a scale that was too small to have realistic chances of success - the total effort involved in Operation 101 was less in terms of aircraft sorties and bomb load than those directed against Dresden in February 1945 - and, critically, this last-resort option failed. The army and navy air forces were not able to record a result that the Japanese military could not achieve on the ground, and the China war remained thereafter, as it had been since 1937, unwinnable by military means.

Personal Experience IV

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Personal Experience III

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Personal Experience II

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Personal Experience I

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Dixie Mission to Yan’an (Yenan) (July 1944–March 1947)

2010-04-25T11:34:00.000+08:00

The Dixie Mission in Zhongshan suits, a gift from their hosts- no doubt finishing their innocence in the jaundiced eyes of Senator McCarthy.

U.S. Army Observer Group sent to Yan’an (Yenan), China, to establish a liaison with Chinese Communist forces. The Dixie Mission began in July 1944 when a nine-man U.S. Army team flew to the headquarters of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) at Yan’an in Shaanxi (Shensi) Province in north central China. Colonel David D. Barrett, a “China hand” who had studied the language and served as a military attaché to China, headed the mission, which would continue through 1947. It included officer and enlisted personnel from all three services as well as representatives of the U.S. State Department. Barrett’s mission was to collect information about Japanese and their “puppet” Chinese forces order of battle and operations. He was also to determine the extent of the Communist military effort in the war against Japan and to coordinate the search and rescue of downed Allied pilots in Communist-controlled areas.

A U.S. military mission to the Communists had first been suggested in mid-1943. Lieutenant General Joseph Stilwell’s political adviser, John Paton Davies, believed strongly that U.S. advisers to Mao’s headquarters could make a difference by coordinating with Chinese Communists who were fighting the Japanese. Davies drew parallels to the effort of the Allies to assist the Partisans of Tito (Josip Broz) in Yugoslavia. Fearing that American supplies and equipment would be diverted to the Communists and that U.S. leadership might develop a more favorable view of the Chinese Communist movement and operations in the territories held by them, Generalissimo Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) strongly opposed the mission to Yan’an. For the next year, the United States continued to pressure Jiang to allow this mission to go forward, but not until after the June 1944 visit of U.S. Vice President Henry A. Wallace could sufficient pressure be exerted on Jiang to allow the liaison mission to begin.

Communist official representative to the national government at Chongqing (Chungking) Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai), who saw potential in a future collaboration between the United States and the Red Army in the fight against the Japanese, supported an increase in American presence and the liaison effort. By August 1944, Barrett and a team that eventually numbered more than 20 people, including State Department officials John S. Service and Raymond P. Ludden, began to meet with the most senior political and military leadership of the Communist movement and to gather information about the Japanese and their allies as well as the Chinese Communists. The mission also provided the opportunity in November for Major General Patrick J. Hurley, in his capacity as a special emissary of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, to begin an effort to get the two Chinese factions to focus their efforts on fighting the Japanese rather than each other. During the course of the mission, the Dixie group secured the rescue and return of more than 100 American pilots.

The mission served perhaps its most important function after the war as a bridge between the United States and the Chinese Communists. A mission headed by General George C. Marshall brought the two sides to the negotiating table in an effort to secure a solution to the infighting in China that had been going on for decades. The collapse of the Marshall mission in January 1947 led to the end of the observer mission.

References Barrett, David D. Dixie Mission: The United States Army Observer Group in Yenan, 1944. China Research Monograph Number Six. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970. Carter, Carolle J. Mission to Yenan: American Liaison to the Chinese Communists, 1944–1947. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997. Romanus, Charles F., and Riley Sunderland. Stilwell’s Command Problems. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1985.

LINK

Pyawbwe 1945

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Though the Allied force had advanced successfully into central Burma, it was vital to capture of the port of Rangoon before the monsoon rains began. The temporarily upgraded overland routes from India would disintegrate under heavy rain, which would also curtail flying and reduce the amount of supplies which could be delivered by air. Furthermore, South East Asia Command had been notified that many of the American transport aircraft allocated to the theatre would be withdrawn in June at the latest. The use of Rangoon would be necessary to meet the needs of the large army force and (as importantly) the food needs of the civilian population in the areas liberated.

The British 2nd Division and British 36th Division were withdrawn to India to reduce the demand for supplies. The Indian XXXIII Corps, consisting of the Indian 7th Division and Indian 20th Division, mounted Fourteenth Army's secondary drive down the Irrawaddy River valley, against stiff resistance from the Japanese Twenty-Eighth Army. Indian IV Corps made the main attack, down the "Railway Valley", which was also followed by the Sittang River.

British Army Patrol at the Battle of the Sittang Bend.

The Indian 17th Division and 255th Armoured Brigade began IV Corps' advance on 6 April by striking from all sides at the delaying position held by the remnants of Japanese Thirty-Third Army under Lieutenant General Honda at Pyawbwe, while a flanking column (nicknamed "Claudcol") of tanks and mechanized infantry cut the main road behind them and attacked their rear. This column was initially delayed by the remnants of the Japanese 49th Division defending a village, but bypassed them to defeat the remnants of the Japanese 53rd Division and destroy the last tanks remaining to the Japanese 14th Tank regiment. As they then turned north against the town of Pyawbwe itself, they attacked Honda's headquarters but were not aware of the presence of an army headquarters and broke off the attack, to capture the town instead.

The 9th Battalion The Border Regiment at Pyawbwe

By January 1945 the Battalion was at full strength again and on its way back at Imphal, this time no longer in its Light role, but as Motorised Infantry working with Probyn`s Horse of 255 Tank Brigade.

The objective was Meiktila, some 550 miles further South, and in February 1945 it crossed the Irrawaddy near Pagan and swept on to Meiktila, where, after some severe fighting with the remainder of the 17th Division it established itself and cut off the Japanese`s main communication with Mandalay.

General Cowan was not the man to sit tight and let the enemy attack him. Instead he sought to destroy the enemy before they were ready to attack, and this he achieved by attacking them in their forming up places , with combined Infantry and Tank Battle Groups.

The 9th Battalion The Border Regiment took part in several such actions, notably at Wetlet, Yindaw, Kinde and Pywabwe. It was after the last battle that the enemy finally broke and made for the Sittang River, abandoning its hold on Rangoon. The Battalion pursued the enemy some 200 miles to Pegu when it gave up the chase with the onset of the monsoon and the consequent flooding of the Pegu River. It then returned northwards to Penwegon to prevent some 15,000 of the enemy, who were cut off by our rapid advance, from crossing the main Meikila/Pegu road, and from reaching safety on the east bank of the Sittang River.

Sittang Breakout

28 Army had retreated into the Pegu Yomas, a range of low jungle-covered hills between the Irrawaddy and Sittang rivers, after withdrawing from Arakan and resisting XXXIII Corps. It planned to break out and rejoin Burma Area Army. To cover this breakout, Kimura ordered Honda's 33 Army to mount a diversionary offensive across the Sittang although the entire army could muster the strength of barely a regiment. On July 3, Honda's troops attacked British positions in the "Sittang Bent." After a battle for country which was almost entirely under chest-high water, both the Japanese and Indian 89th Brigade withdrew on July 10.

Honda had attacked too early. Sakurai's 28 Army was not ready to start the breakout until July 17. The breakout was a disaster. The British had captured the Japanese plans from an officer killed making a final reconnaissance and had placed ambushes or artillery concentrations on the routes they were to use. Hundreds of men drowned trying to cross the swollen Sittang on improvised bamboo floats and rafts. Burma National Army under General Aung San already had rebelled against Japan in March. So Burmese guerillas also killed stragglers east of the river. The breakout cost the Japanese nearly 10,000 men, half the strength of 28 Army. And after this, many of those survivors had to keep straggling without knowing the Japanese surrender on August 15, 1945.

By the beginning of August 1945 the Battalion was stationed at Waw, just west of the Sittang River, where it received the welcome, but to them the unbelievable news of the Japanese Surrender. By then a further 5 Officers and 69 Other Ranks had lost their lives, and 9 Officers and 122 Other Ranks had been wounded.

In September the Battalion began the task of disarming some 2,000 Japanese and controlling the activity of dacoits on the Mokpalin and Bilin areas. On the 1st December 1945 the Battalion amalgamated with the 4th Battalion, taking on the name of the latter.

Thus after five and a half years the Battalion ceased to exist.

During its short life the Battalion contributed to the adding of 6 Battle Honours to the Regiments List.

Lt Col John Petty was awarded the M.C. when Major of "B" Company 9 Border at PYAWBWE.

His citation said,

During the whole engagement Major Petty`s tactical skill, flexibility in planning, and personal example were outstanding. He seemed to be having the time of his life and all ranks in his Company were imbued with the highest confidence in themselves and in their Company Commander.

The casualty figures for "B" Company for the day were 92 Japs killed for 10 wounded in the Company, six of them in the shelling before "H" hour.

Allied Re-conquest of Burma

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In March 1943, Lt. Gen. Kawabe Masakazu assumed command of the Japanese Fifteenth Army, and, in August, Burmese independence (under strict Japanese control) was proclaimed. For their part, in October, the Allies reorganized the CBI by forming the South-East Asia Command (SEAC) under Slim. A brilliant, resourceful, and aggressive commander, Slim planned what he hoped would be a comprehensive counteroffensive against the many Japanese advances. In Arakan, a long, narrow strip of land along the eastern coast of the Bay of Bengal in southern Burma, British Lt. Gen. Sir Alexander Frank Philip Christison would take XV Corps south against Akyab. Simultaneously, American Lt. Gen. Joseph A. “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell would lead U.S. and U.S.-trained Chinese forces (Northern Area Combat Command) in coordination with forces under Chiang Kai-shek to occupy Myitkyina, a northern Burmese stronghold of the Japanese. The objective of this advance, which would also be supported by Chindits under British commander Orde Wingate, was to allow the completion of the Ledo Road, an alternative supply route into China intended to replace the Burma Road, which the Japanese now controlled. Coordinated with these two operations was a third, on the Assam front in central Burma. The 17th and 20th Indian Divisions, commanded by Lt. Gen. Geoffrey Scoones, advanced on reconnaissance patrols deep into Japanese-held country.

The Japanese responded by creating a new army in Arakan, the Twenty-eighth, and, in northern Burma, the Thirty-third. Operation Ha-Go was launched in Arakan to surround the Allied forces there. It supplemented the Imphal Offensive, a plan to invade India from Burma. To the profound shock of the Japanese, however, both operations were defeated, the failure of the Imphal Offensive in March 1944 proving to be the worst defeat in Japanese military history to that time.

Just to the north of the Assam front, Stilwell led two Chinese divisions and the American volunteer rangers code named Galahad but better known as Merrill’s Marauders (see Frank Dow Merrill). Even as the Japanese were suffering defeat in their Imphal Offensive, in March 1944, Stilwell pushed them out of the Hukawng Valley. By hard persuasion, Stilwell managed to wring from the grasp of Chiang Kai-shek another five Chinese divisions, and he called on Wingate’s Chindits to disrupt Japanese communication to his south. After very bitter fighting, Stilwell secured the airfield at Myitkyina on May 17.

In January 1945, West African colonials attacked and captured Buthidaung, then overran a key Japanese communications center at Myohaung on January 25. The 25th Indian Division landed on the island of Akyab during this month, only to find that the Japanese had already withdrawn. This cleared the way for a steady Allied advance through Arakan, which was secured early in the year, thereby enabling the construction of airstrips to support an all-out assault on Rangoon.

The campaign to retake Rangoon was William Slim’s masterpiece. He deployed his forces with the aplomb of a magician thoroughly versed in the art of deception by misdirection. In mid-January, Slim sent the 19th Indian Division across the Irrawaddy River toward Mandalay, which it approached from the north. The 2nd British and 20th Indian Divisions, as well as the 7th Indian Division, crossed the river elsewhere during February, pulling off the longest opposed river crossing of the war, crossing points where the river’s width varied from 1,000 to 4,500 yards. While these crossings were being effected, the 20th Division suddenly veered southward and cut rail and road routes to Rangoon. Slim sent the 2nd Division eastward to approach Mandalay from the south, even as the 19th Division actually attacked and took it from the north on March 20, stunning the thoroughly confused Japanese defenders.

Yet Slim was also surprised. He had expected the Japanese, as usual, to make a suicidal stand rather than see Mandalay, full of symbolic as well as strategic import, fall. Instead, Lt. Gen. Kimura Hyotaro withdrew and regrouped. Slim responded deftly. He was not seduced by taking Mandalay. He understood that a truly decisive battle would have to destroy the Japanese presence, not merely take even so important a city. Therefore, Slim deployed south of Mandalay and fought Kimura at Meiktila, central Burma. The battle lasted four weeks, during February through March, and resulted in a Japanese defeat and withdrawal on March 28. This opened the way to Rangoon, except for a brief (and fierce) Japanese stand at Pyawbwe. By April 29, Slim’s 17th Division was on the edge of Pegu, just 50 miles from Rangoon. Heavy rains delayed the final push, and when the Anglo-Indian forces arrived in the capital, they were unopposed. The Japanese had pulled out.

During the summer, Japanese forces executed a long fighting retreat. The Japanese Twenty-eighth Army hammered fiercely against the British divisions arrayed along the Mandalay-Rangoon road, but because Japanese battle plans had been intercepted, the British were able to put themselves wherever the Japanese wanted to be, and the Twenty-eighth Army suffered some 17,000 casualties in the space of 10 July days, whereas the British lost just 95 men. It was almost certainly the most lopsided victory of the entire war.

After the Allies retook Rangoon, the Burma Campaign was essentially won, except that the Japanese continued to fight—fiercely, in the case of the Twenty-eighth Army, but more sporadically elsewhere. It was August 28, 1945, two weeks after Emperor Hirohito had broadcasted his surrender message to the people of Japan, before preliminary surrender documents were signed in Burma.

At the beginning of the Pacific war, the Japanese had taken Burma at comparatively slight cost: 2,000 dead in Burma, another 3,500 in Malaya. With this, the Japanese effectively began the dismantling of the British Empire, although they themselves were destined to lose their conquests by the summer of 1945.

Imphal Offensive

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This was the key turning point in the Burma Campaign. Lieutenant General Mutaguchi Renya led his Fifteenth Japanese Army in a high-stakes attack from Burma into India, targeting the Allied supply bases at Imphal in Manipur. His immediate objective in this action was to preempt an offensive by William Slim’s Fourteenth British Army, but his longer-term goal was to gain a purchase for the Japanese-controlled Indian National Army and thereby incite a revolt against the British raj (colonial government) in India. Had the Imphal Offensive succeeded, the British might well have lost control of India, and with India lost, China would have been doomed. Mutaguchi knew that he was outnumbered and lacked air superiority. His only hope, he decided, was to achieve complete tactical surprise and to move with great speed. To even the odds as best he could, Mutaguchi preceded the offensive by ordering Lieutenant General Kawabe Masakazu to attack Arakan in February, thereby drawing off some of Slim’s reserves.

Mutaguchi formulated a plan intended to divide and dilute Slim’s forces. On March 7, his 33rd Division attacked from the south, pushing Slim’s 17th Division from its position at Tiddim and into a fighting retreat. Simultaneously, Mutaguchi’s Yamamoto Force attacked the 20th Division near Tamu but was checked at Shenam Saddle. The following week, Mutaguchi sent his 15th and 31st Divisions across the Chindwin River in an attempt to catch Slim in a pincers action and create a decisive double envelopment of his forces. This might well have worked, had it not been for the defeat of the earlier Japanese Arakan offensive. With this attack neutralized, Slim airlifted his 5th and 7th Divisions to Imphal beginning on March 19.

By this time, the main body of the Japanese advance was a mere 30 miles away. But this was not the only cliff-hanger of the campaign. Although Slim had anticipated that Kohima, just northwest of Imphal, would be attacked, he relied on the rugged terrain here to impede such an action. He calculated that the Japanese would be unable to deploy more than a single regiment in the attack. This proved to be a nearly catastrophic assessment as, astoundingly, Lieutenant General Sato Kotuku was able to field his entire 31st Division, which engaged the vastly outnumbered 50th Indian Parachute Brigade at Sangshak and took Kohima on April 3. On April 12, Mutaguchi’s 15th Division severed the road between Kohima and Imphal and positioned itself above Slim’s 4th Corps.

The achievements of both Sato and Mutaguchi were extraordinary and certainly exploited the element of surprise to the utmost; however, travel and battle over the hostile terrain took a terrible toll on the attackers, victorious though they were, and Mutaguchi’s men were simply too exhausted to press their hard-won advantages. In a counterattack that relied heavily on armor (against which the Japanese, lacking armor themselves, were powerless), Slim pushed back Mutaguchi but could not recover use of the Kohima-Imphal road. Therefore, Slim relied wholly on airlift to maintain supply of his now isolated forces. Desperate as this situation was, Slim knew that Mutaguchi was in an even tougher spot. Starved for supplies, Mutaguchi over-extended his forces in an attack on Dimapur. Slim checked this effort and forced Mutaguchi into a contest of attrition, which favored Slim. As the miserable monsoon encroached in May, Mutaguchi’s men, starving and assailed by tropical diseases, melted away. At last, on July 18, Mutaguchi withdrew back across the Chindwin River. Although Slim’s forces were subject to many of the same miseries, they were not in nearly as dire straits. Slim pursued the withdrawing Japanese and transformed the Japanese retreat into a rout. The result was disaster for the Japanese in Burma. Of 85,000 Japanese troops committed there, 53,000 became casualties. Some 30,000 were killed in combat, and thousands more died of disease and privation. Precious weapons and heavy equipment had to be abandoned. As for the Indian National Army, the reversal of the Imphal Offensive permanently removed it as a threat. Mutaguchi had gambled boldly and lost decisively.

Further reading: Astor, Gerald. The Jungle War: Mavericks, Marauders and Madmen in the China-Burma-India Theater of World War II. New York: Wiley, 2004; Dupuy, Trevor N. Asiatic Land Battles: Allied Victories in China and Burma. New York: Franklin Watts, 1963; Hogan, David W. India-Burma (The U.S. Army Campaigns of World War II). Carlisle, Pa.: Army Center of Military History, 1991; Webster, Donovan. The Burma Road: The Epic Story of the China-Burma-India Theater in World War II. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.

DAI LI (Tai Li) (1895-1946)

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Dai Li was the head of all intelligence and counterespionage services for Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist government. He organized a guerrilla force to operate against the Japanese during the Sino- Japanese War (1937-1945), using his connections to the Shanghai underworld. He was also the director of the Sino-American Cooperative Organization (SACO), in which he cooperated with the U.S. Strategic Services (Office of the Strategic Services or OSS) representative to China, Captain (later Rear Admiral) Milton E. Miles. SACO gathered intelligence, destroyed Japanese supply lines, and conducted guerrilla operations against the Japanese.

Dai Li was born in Jianggshan, Zhejiang Province, in 1895. His exact date of birth is not known. His father failed in business (although the father's family contained several successful businessmen and traders) and died in 1900. Dai Li was raised by his mother, but he left school in 1909 to become a military cadet in the "model regiment" of the Zhejiang Army. Almost nothing is known of his activities between 1909 and 1926. Dai Li became a member of the Guomindang Party in 1926 and entered the fourth class at the Whampoa Military Academy. After graduation from Whampoa in the same year, he became a cavalry officer.

As a cavalry officer during the Northern Expedition, he was sent ahead of the main body of troops to gather information on public attitudes toward the warlords, on the military situation, and on avenues of attack. It is not clear whether his acumen at intelligence gathering brought him to the attention of Chiang Kai-shek, or whether they had a previous association in Shanghai related to the Green Gang, but Dai Li was sent to Shanghai by Chiang in 1927 to work with the underworld gangs and secret societies (principally, the Green Gang [Qing Bang]), in preparation for Chiang's own move to Shanghai in April 1927.

Dai Li served on Chiang Kai-shek's staff and in 1931 was appointed as chief of the Second Department, Bureau of Investigations and Statistics, Military Affairs Commission. In this capacity he was responsible for the conduct of espionage operations against Japan and Japanese forces in China. He also had responsibility for counterespionage operations against Japanese agents in China. He put together a staff of officers drawn from other graduates of the Whampoa Military Academy. In addition to his intelligence work against the Japanese, between 1931 and 1936, Dai Li also carried out clandestine operations against the Communists and their forces.

After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on July 7, 1937, and the formal start of the war against Japan, Dai Li was sent to Shanghai. He used his earlier connections to the Green Gang and the Shanghai underworld to organize a guerrilla force to fight Japan that was known as the "Loyal and Righteous Army of National Salvation" (Zhongyi Qiuguojun). In late 1937, in Nanjing, still the capital of Nationalist China, Dai Li was made deputy director of the successor organization to the Second Department, Bureau of Investigations and Statistics of the Military Affairs Commission. He became the director in 1938. With a powerful network of agents and guerrillas under his control, he penetrated both the Communist New Fourth Army and the puppet regime established by the Japanese in Nanjing in 1939, headed by Wang Jingwei. Within a few years, Dai Li also took over the Anti-Smuggling Bureau, the Commodity Transport Control Bureau, and the Transportation (Jiaotong) Control Bureau. This effectively put him in charge of all commodity distribution for the Nationalist government, an extremely powerful position in a very corrupt regime. Meanwhile, in his capacity as the director of espionage and counterespionage, Dai Li managed to penetrate and control the security and police forces in Nanjing.

When the United States assigned Captain Milton E. Miles, an officer of the Strategic Services, to China in May 1942, in cover as the chief on the U.S. Naval Observer Group, Dai Li accompanied Miles on several covert trips into Japanese-held areas. Miles and Dai Li were the directors (Dai Li was director, and Miles his deputy) of the Sino-American Cooperative Organization, established under a bilateral agreement signed by the U.S. Navy secretary Frank Knox and T. V. Soong on April 15, 1943. Under the direction of Dai Li and Miles, SACO established 14 weathers stations, guerrilla training bases, and intelligence collection sites throughout China.

After World War II, Dai Li undertook the duties of tracking down and arresting those Chinese who had cooperated with the Japanese and the Wang Jingwei puppet government. He is credited with having brought over 3,000 people to trial. Dai Li was elected to the Executive Committee of the Guomindang Sixth National Congress in 1945. As part of an effort to suppress the increasing strength of the Communists as Civil War broke out, Dai Li flew to Qingdao on March 16, 1946. After conferring with the commander of U.S. Navy forces in Qingdao, he returned to Shanghai on March 17 on a plane belonging to the China Civil Aeronautics Commission. The plane vanished but was found crashed in the mountains near Nanjing several weeks later. Chiang Kai-shek ordered a period of mourning for Dai Li's death.

REFERENCES Howard L. Boorman, ed., Biographical Dictionary of Republican China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970); Milton E. Miles, A Different Kind of War (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967).

COOPERATION PLANS, U.S. AND YAN'AN COMMUNIST FORCES

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In 1944, Guomindang recruitment of forces for the Nationalist Army was so poorly managed, and troops were so badly malnourished that the United States attempted a rapprochement with the Communist forces at Yan'an. After General Stilwell's recall and replacement by General Wedemeyer in October 1944, Wedemeyer proposed to Chiang Kai-shek that, in view of the serious Nationalist losses at the hands of the Japanese during Operation Ichigo, greater effort be made to incorporate Communist forces into the war. Wedemeyer suggested that a column of Communist troops, about 5,000 soldiers organized in three regiments, be equipped with American weapons and provided American training. Operating under U.S. command and supervised by 10 U.S. liaison officers, these regiments were to carry out combat operations against the Japanese in areas normally reserved for Nationalist operations. As it was conceived, one aspect of the plan that was designed to make it more palatable to Generalissimo Chiang was that the American presence throughout the force would serve to reassure Chiang that the Communist troops would not operate against the Nationalists. Chiang rejected this concept.

A short time later, in December 1944, while General Wedemeyer was in Burma supervising operations during the Salween Campaign, a second plan was prepared by his chief of staff, Major General Robert B. McClure, and by the head of the Dixie Mission (the U.S. Army Military Advisory Group at Yan'an), Colonel David Barrett. The second plan, which was prepared by McClure at Wedemeyer's direction and with his knowledge, called for sending U.S. airborne regiments into Communist-held areas to operate behind Japanese lines, destroying Japanese installations and supply lines. Jiang's principal representative to the Americans, T. V. Soong, ignored this plan.

A third plan, far more controversial, was then put forth in January 1945 by McClure, Barrett, and officers of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the wartime forerunner of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency). As conceived by OSS officers and Wedemeyer's staff, Americans would work together with Communist guerrillas, in a manner similar to the way OSS officers worked with the French and Yugoslav guerrillas in Europe, to destroy Japanese installations, communications, airfields, and troop concentrations. This plan called for arming and equipping as many as 25,000 Communists and assisting in providing small arms for as many as 100,000 Communist people's militia personnel. The OSS also envisioned forming an intelligence network to operate behind Japanese lines using Communists guerrillas. As the concept for the plan was "floated" in Yan'an to test the reaction of the Communists, it also came to the attention of Ambassador Hurley. Hurley was furious that such a plan would be advanced without his consent and embarrassed that it had leaked to Chiang Kai-shek. Hurley sent a cable back to President Roosevelt and the State Department accusing some of the officers under Wedemeyer's command, including McClure, Barrett, and Foreign Service officer advisers John Davies and John Service, of being Communist sympathizers and of operating without authority. The result was that Barrett was withdrawn and replaced on the observer mission in Yan'an and that American forces were ordered not to "assist, negotiate with, or collaborate with" Chinese political parties unless they were specifically authorized to do so by Wedemeyer. Since both Wedemeyer and Hurley were solid anti- Communists, this firmly committed the United States to support only the Nationalist government.

REFERENCES David Barrett, Dixie Mission: The United States Army Observer Group in Yenan, 1944 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970); Albert C. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports! (New York: Henry Holt, 1958); U.S. Department of State (Far Eastern Series 30), United States Relations with China: With Special References to the Period 1944-49 (The China White Paper) (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1949).

CHINESE TRAINING COMMAND

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American soldiers attached to a Chinese division send a message from the field. (U.S. Army Military History Institute)

In response to Japanese advances during Operation Ichigo, in fall 1944, Lieutenant General Wedemeyer had a small force of about 4,800 American officers and soldiers under his command assigned to various training centers and as advisers to the Y-Force and Z-Force. Wedemeyer reorganized these advisers into two commands: the Chinese Training Command, which was responsible for running training centers for the Nationalist Army, and the Chinese Combat Command, which was actually an advisory force that functioned as a network down to the regimental level of command in the Nationalist Army.

The Chinese Training Command was led by Brigadier General John W. Middleton. It trained both individual soldiers and the cadre and staff of units and divisions that had special roles. This training structure was centered in Kunming, Yunnan Province, at the end of the Burma Road, where resupply was easier, and it was protected from Japanese forces. The center operated a major field artillery training center, which concentrated on teaching Chinese officers and soldiers to use and effectively employ American-supplied artillery, and seven other service schools, concentrating on the logistics structure to provide support for the combat forces of the Nationalist Army.

The United States also began to operate a command and general staff course to school midgrade officers for handling positions on division and corps staffs, a war college to train senior officers for regimental command and in battlefield operational art. Modeled on the U.S. military schools system, the Chinese Training Center opened specialized schools for training troops and officers to use heavy mortars, operated an infantry school and a signal school, and established an English-language training center to train interpreters to assist the American advisers. The effort was short-lived and withdrawn after the surrender of Japan and the opening of the Civil War between the Nationalists and the Communists. Many of the installations used by the Training Center are still operational People's Liberation Army bases in Yunnan today.

REFERENCES F. F. Liu, A Military History of Modern China: 1924-1949 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956); Barbara W. Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45 (New York: Macmillan, 1971); Charles F. Romanus and Riley Sutherland, The United States Army in World War Two. The China-Burma-India Theater: Time Runs Out in CBI (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1959); Albert C. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports! (New York: Henry Holt, 1958).

CLAIRE LEE CHENNAULT, (1890-1958)

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Lieutenant General Claire Lee Chennault led the Flying Tigers (also known officially as the American Volunteer Group, or AVG) during the early part of World War II in China, before the United States entered the war. The Flying Tigers was a group of primarily American, volunteer pilots who flew combat and transport aircraft for the Chinese armed forces in the early part of China's Anti-Japanese War.

Claire Lee Chennault was born in Commerce, Texas, on September 6, 1890. He grew up in Franklin Parish, Louisiana, where his father was a cotton farmer and locally elected sheriff. Chennault attended Louisiana State University and Louisiana State Normal School, from which he graduated with a teaching degree. After graduation from college, Chennault taught high school in his hometown, later accepted a teaching position at a business college in New Orleans, and also taught physical education in Ohio. He married the former Nellie Thompson, a Louisiana native, with whom he had four children.

Chennault entered the U.S. Army near the end of World War I and underwent officer training at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana. He was initially commissioned as a reserve officer, a second lieutenant of infantry but later transferred to the Signal Corps. Chennault was trained as an army aviator and became a rated military pilot on April 7, 1919. With the end of World War I and the ensuring drawdown in the size of the military, Chennault was discharged from the army on April 9, 1920, only a year after finishing his pilot training. After his discharge from the army, Chennault attempted to farm cotton in Louisiana but quickly applied for a commission as an active-duty army officer in the newly organized Army Air Service, in which he was commissioned a regular officer on September 14, 1920.

During the years between the two wars, Chennault served in a variety of flying assignments, including on the Mexican border in support of patrolling U.S. Army infantry units. He also excelled in aerobatics and was a highly successful pilot of pursuit aircraft. After promotion to captain, on April 12, 1929, he was assigned primarily as a pursuit instructor. Chennault served the remainder of his active-duty army career as a flight instructor at Maxwell Field (now Maxwell Air Force Base), Montgomery, Alabama, until his retirement from the Army Air Corps in 1937.

Because Chennault had made a name for himself in aviation circles as an expert in aerobatics and air combat tactics, he was sought after by U.S. aviation companies after his retirement. The Soviet air force also tried to hire him as an adviser; however, he refused that employment. Chennault accepted an offer in summer 1937, after the Japanese armed forces attacked China, to become an aviation adviser to the Chinese armed forces, then under the leadership of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. When Chennault arrived in China, the Chinese air force comprised about 600 aircraft, some from the United States; some from Germany, which had provided considerable aid to the Nationalist government; and some from Italy. In fact, Italian aviation firms were the strongest competition for U.S. industry for aircraft sales to China.

For a number of years prior to Chennault's arrival in China, dating to early 1932, an unofficial U.S. air mission had functioned in that country. The Chinese had already been under attack by the Japanese in Manchuria since the Mukden Incident (Nine One Eight (918) Incident) of September 18, 1931, and were working to develop their armed forces. A former American Army Air Corps colonel, John H. Lovett, had established an aviation training school in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, which helped to develop China as the world's largest export market for American aviation equipment at that time. Before Colonel Lovett's return to the United States at the expiration of his own contract in 1935, exports of U.S. aircraft and equipment to China had reached over $9 million.

After his arrival in China in 1937, General Chennault developed a close and carefully cultivated relationship with Chiang Kai-shek's wife, American-educated Soong Mei-ling, and her brother, T. V. Soong, who functioned as an emissary to the United States for Generalissimo Chiang during World War II. During the period before the war when he served as an adviser to the Chinese air force, Chennault concentrated on refining fighter aircraft tactics for the Chinese pilots. He also coordinated a number of notable, although not tactically effective, bombing raids against the Japanese armed forces, which were already at war with China. The most spectacular of these raids was a May 1938 propaganda leaflet drop on the Japanese ports of Sasebo and Fukuoka (the raid was originally intended for Tokyo, but the aircraft were diverted).

In May 1941, the United States began to deliver Lend-Lease supplies to China over the Burma Road. Lend-Lease aid had been extended to China in March 1941, and the aerial defense of the Burma Road, as China's remaining supply line from the west, became critically important to the war effort. Chennault organized the "American Volunteer Group," or Flying Tigers, with the tacit assent of the U.S. government. From offices in the United States, he recruited pilots to fly against the Japanese. From October 1941 to July 5, 1942, Chennault led the American Volunteer Group against the Japanese air force. He held the rank of colonel in the Chinese air force at that time. After the United States formally entered the war, and the mission of General Joseph Stilwell was sent to China, Chennault turned into one of the strongest adversaries of Stilwell, clashing with him over the primacy of the air war against Japan versus the vigorous prosecution of the ground war. Chennault's strong relationship with Chiang Kai-shek's wife, Soong Mei-ling, and brother-in-law, T. V. Soong, as well as Stilwell's vocal distaste for Chiang as a leader, combined to eventually undermine Stilwell's own effectiveness in China.

On June 28, 1942, Chennault was given command of the China Air Task Force (CATF). This task force was subordinate to the 10th U.S. Air Force, based in India under the command of Major General Clayton Bissell. By the end of World War II, Chennault was a U.S. Army Air Forces major general, with command of the 14th U.S. Air Force in China. Major General Chennault returned to the United States after the surrender of Japan, arriving on August 24, 1945. He soon returned to China in a private capacity to organize the China National Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (CNRAA) Air Transport Service (known as CAT), with 20 C-46 transport aircraft and two C-47s. CAT went on to ferry Nationalist troops into Manchuria to fight the Communist forces, to evacuate the Nationalist Army out of Manchuria when it was taken over by Communist forces, and to assist in the evacuation of the Nationalist government to Taiwan in 1949. It eventually became a U.S. proxy contract air service. Under Chennault's direction, CAT also flew supplies for Far Eastern air forces in the Korean War under contract for the U.S. government and also flew supplies into Dien Bien Phu in support of French forces in Indochina. Chennault returned to the United States in July 1958 and died of throat cancer.

REFERENCES Martha Byrd, Chennault: Giving Wings to the Tiger (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1987); Anna Chennault, Chennault and the Flying Tigers (New York: P. S. Eriksson, 1963); Claire Lee Chennault, Way of a Fighter: The Memoirs of Claire Lee Chennault (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1949); Charles F. Romanus and Riley Sunderland, The United States Army in World War Two. The China-Burma-India Theater: Stilwell's Mission to China (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1953); Roland Sperry, China through the Eyes of a Tiger (New York: Pocket Books, 1990.)

The Origins of the BURMA ROAD

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In September 1931, following up on the defeat of local Chinese forces in Manchuria after the Mukden Incident, Japan invaded and occupied all of Manchuria, turning it into the puppet republic of Manchukuo. Japanese forces later used the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on July 7, 1937, as an excuse to invade and occupy large parts of the Chinese mainland. Japan's attacks forced Chinese industry to move inland, away from the coasts, and cut off coastal commerce and lines of communication that would support the Nationalist government and a war effort against Japan.

China depended on three major supply lines to bring in aid and supplies for the war against the Japanese military in the early part of World War II. Across the Pacific Ocean, supplies could reach China over rail lines leading from Haiphong, Vietnam (Indochina), crossing through Hanoi, and branching to reach Nanning, Guangxi Province, in southeast China, and Kunming, Yunnan Province, in southwest China. From the northwest, through the Soviet Union, supplies moved into China from the trans-Siberian railroad and Turkestan, where they were then moved by road through Xinjiang to Lanzhou, Gansu Province. From Lanzhou, supplies could be moved by rail through Sichuan Province to southwest China, where the Nationalists had moved the government to Chongqing. The third main supply route (MSR) for war materials destined to support the Chinese war effort against Japan ran from Rangoon, Burma, where material entered at the port, to Lashio, Burma, by rail. Finally, at the end of the rail line in Lashio, the supplies flowed into southwest China along the 700-mile Burma Road to Kunming.

With the assistance of its Axis ally Germany, after Germany occupied France in June 1940, Japan pressured the Vichy French government, which controlled Vietnam and Indochina, to close the Haiphong-Kunming and Haiphong-Nanning rail links to China. This shut down one of the three main MSRs available to China. Then, when Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, all Soviet supplies coming into China were diverted to the Eastern Front to support the Soviet war effort against the Nazis. The effect was that, even though the MSR was open, no materiel flowed from the Soviet Union to China from the far West. The consequence of these two German military campaigns was that China was left with only one MSR available to transport war materiel—the Burma Road.

The basic plan to construct a road and rail link between Kunming and Rangoon as a means to develop southwest China was conceived by Sun Yat-sen at the establishment of the Republic of China in 1911. By 1938, after the Japanese main attack into China closed coastal commerce, the highway between Kunming and Lashio, Burma, was still not complete. Between early 1938 and late 1939, however, a workforce of over 200,000 Chinese, working mostly by hand, carved a usable road into 688 miles of mountainous slopes and valleys. Because of the U.S. neutrality act, American aid to China had to come in from "nongovernmental sources." The Nationalist government, therefore, established the Southwest Transport Corporation to manage the road and the supply line through it that began to flow from the United States. The average transit time on the road from Lashio, Burma, to Kunming, China, was about five days.

When the U.S. Congress approved Lend-Lease aid for China in March 1941, American transport specialists working in China studied how to improve the traffic flow on the road. The foremost of these specialists were David Arnstein, a trucking expert from Chicago, and John Baker, who already had considerable experience working in China in the transportation industry. However, Japanese air attacks on the Burma Road proved to be a significant factor limiting the resupply effort. To defend against the Japanese air forces, the Nationalist government recruited U.S. aviators, who formed the Flying Tigers (formally called the American Volunteer Group, or AVG), led by Claire Lee Chennault. For the entire period of World War II, the Allied war effort in the China-Burma- India Theater depended on maintaining a free flow of traffic on the Burma Road. The flow of supplies on the road was also supplemented by flights over the "Hump," which crossed the mountains between Burma and China.

REFERENCES Charles R. Bond, A Flying Tiger's Diary (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1984); Eric R. Craine, Burma Roadsters (Tucson, AZ: Western Research, 1992); Lincoln Li, The Japanese Army in North China, 1937-1941: Problems of Political and Economic Control (London: Oxford University Press, 1975); F. F. Liu, A Military History of Modern China, 1924-1949 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956); Charles F. Romanus, Time Runs Out in the CBI (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1959); Barbara W. Tuchman, Stillwell and the Americal Experience in China, 1911-45 (New York: Macmillan, 1971).

ALPHA FORCE

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Chinese soldier stands guard at "Flying Tigers" (14th Air Force) base during World War II.

American soldiers attached to a Chinese division send a message from the field. (U.S. Army Military History Institute)

After the recall of General Joseph W. Stilwell to the United States by President Roosevelt on October 18, 1944, Lieutenant General Albert C. Wedemeyer was sent to China as the commanding general of U.S. forces in the theater. Wedemeyer arrived in China on October 31, 1944. In the face of a major Japanese offensive that threatened allied Chinese-American control of southwest China, including the major air and ground base areas of Chongqing, in Sichuan, and Kunming, in Yunnan Province, Wedemeyer suggested ALPHA Plan to organize 36 Chinese infantry divisions into a single field force commanded by a Chinese general but staffed jointly by Chinese and American officers. Under the plan, the United States was to train, equip, and supply the force, which was to be known as ALPHA Force. The 36-division commitment to the force amounted to about 15 percent of the total Nationalist Chinese army. Despite his early opposition to the establishment of such a force, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, whose forces were threatened by the Japanese, reluctantly accepted the plan. Nonetheless, because he was afraid that Chinese Communist forces might attack the Nationalists, Chiang kept some of the best Nationalist troops in reserve in the Chongqing area, providing only grudging support and mediocre forces to Wedemeyer.

In January 1945, Wedemeyer, acting in his capacity as the chief of staff to Chiang Kai-shek (he was dual-hatted as commander of American forces and Chiang's chief of staff), established two subordinate commands to man and train the Chinese forces. The first, the Chinese Combat Command, was designed as an advisory group, placing American officers in positions to give advice to Chinese commanders at all echelons, regiment and above. The Chinese Combat Command was led by U.S. Army major general Robert B. McClure. The second command created by Wedemeyer was the Chinese Training Command, led by Brigadier General Joseph W. Middleton. The Chinese Training Command eventually operated seven separate training centers and schools, most of which were located in the vicinity of Kunming, Yunnan Province.

ALPHA Force trained, developed, and concentrated itself in the area surrounding Kunming. It was commanded by Nationalist Army general He Yingjin, who had previously held the position of chief of staff of the Nationalist Army and for whom General Stilwell had expressed great respect.

Taking advantage of air support from Major General Claire Lee Chennault's 14th Air Force, strategic bombing support from the U.S. Army Air Force's 20th Bombardment Group, and the U.S.-established supply and sustainment system, General He Yingjin finally began an offensive against the Japanese in spring 1945. Responding to a Japanese advance toward Kunming from the area of Guilin, in the southeastern province of Guizhou, ALPHA Force divisions began a counteroffensive on April 14, 1945. This ALPHA Force campaign moved east from a locus around Zhejiang, in Hunan, near the Guangxi border. In all, General He Yingjin committed forces of six Chinese armies, the 94th Army, the New Sixth Army, the 74th Army, the 100th Army, the 18th Army, and the 73d Army. Between April 18 and June 7, 1945, ALPHA Force armies and divisions forced Japanese troops to retreat to the positions they had occupied before the offensive. However, Chinese losses in the campaign were heavier than Japanese losses.

The ALPHA Force Plan never had time to reach fruition before World War II ended, but the advisory system, combined with the leadership of General He Yingjin, succeeded in blunting the Japanese advances in the Zhejiang campaign. A subsequent American-conceived campaign, called the BETA Plan, designed to attack Canton and Hong Kong using the ALPHA Force, was never implemented. The Japanese surrender after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war.

REFERENCES John H. Boyle, China and Japan at War: The Politics of Collaboration (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1972); Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Nationalist China at War: Military Defeats and Political Collapse, 1937-45 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1982); F. F. Liu, A Military History of Modern China, 1924-1949 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956); U.S. Army Center for Military History, China Offensive, 5 May 1945-2 September 1945 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995.

China Offensive

Building for Victory : World War II in China, Burma, and India and the 1875th Engineer Aviation Battalion

Sun Liren (Sun Li-jen) (1900–1990)

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Nationalist Chinese general, regarded as one of the best Chinese commanders of the war. Born in Lujiang (Lukiang), Anhui (Anhwei) Province on 17 October 1900, Sun Liren (Sun Li-jen) graduated from Qinghua (Tsinghua) University in 1923. He added an engineering degree from Purdue University in 1924 and a bachelor’s degree from the Virginia Military Institute in 1927. Returning to China, he enlisted as a corporal in the Guomindang (GMD [Kuomintang, KMT], Nationalist) Army, and by 1930 he commanded a regiment. In the 1937 Battle of Shanghai in Jiangsu (Kiangsu) Province, Japanese grenade fragments grievously wounded Sun.

Sun recovered, and in 1942 he and his 38th Division gained fame during the Allied retreat in Burma by rescuing a nearly surrounded British division at Yenangyaung. For this action, London awarded Sun the Commander Order of the British Empire. While other units collapsed before the Japanese onslaught, Sun kept his division together, withdrawing in good order through mountainous northwest Burma and joining Lieutenant General Joseph Stilwell’s training operation at Ramgarh as deputy commander of the Chinese army in India—the so-called X-Force.

In late 1943, Sun led his New First Army into northern Burma to help clear the Ledo Road route. In December, Sun took Yupbang Ga, initiating a six-month drive through the Hukawng and Mugaung valleys, toward Myitkina. Sun had impressed Stilwell earlier as aggressive and professional. But in January 1944, “Vinegar Joe” fulminated at apparent Chinese malingering, convinced that Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kaishek) had ordered Sun not to risk well-trained Chinese forces in Burma’s jungles. Sun countered that American intelligence grossly underestimated Japanese strength, necessitating slowing for more reconnaissance. Scholars substantiate both allegations. Still, in March the 38th fought successfully alongside Merrill’s Marauders in the first joint Sino-American combat operation. Sun took Kamaing, just west of Myitkina, in June and Bhamo, near the Chinese border, in December. Sun’s 38th Division led the X-Force across the frontier, linking up with the Yunnan Province–based Y-Force on 27 January 1945. This action ended the three-year blockade of China and opened the way for the newly christened Stilwell Road to Kunming. In August, Sun took the Japanese surrender in Guangzhou (Canton), Guangdong (Kwangtung) Province.

After combat in the Chinese Civil War, Sun became commander in chief of all Nationalist forces in Taiwan in 1950. In 1955, however, he was forced to resign following a subordinate’s alleged anti-Jiang plot. Although a secret investigation cleared him of any wrongdoing, he was not only forced from his position but was placed under house arrest from 1955 until 1988, after the end of the Jiang era. A tragic and popular figure, Sun died at his home in Taichung, Taiwan, on 19 November 1990.

References

Allen, Louis. Burma: The Longest War, 1941–1945. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984. Dorn, Frank. Walkout with Stilwell in Burma. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1971. Romanus, Charles F., and Riley Sunderland. U.S. Army in World War II: The China-Burma-India Theater. 3 vols. Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1953–1959. Tuchman, Barbara. Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–1945. New York: Macmillan, 1970.

FLYING TIGERS AS THEY REALLY WERE

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Those who recognize the term Flying Tigers, remember it as a unit of volunteer U.S. pilots working for the Chinese in their struggle with Japan before Pearl Harbor. Not so. While there were American volunteer pilots recruited for service in China, the Flying Tigers first saw action in Burma, where they were caught in transit (to China) by the Japanese attacks in December 1941. In those battles, the Americans fought under British control and in a few months most were inducted into the U.S. Army Air Force and continued to serve in China as part of the newly activated U.S. Fourteenth Air Force. The Flying Tigers' name itself did not appear until after Pearl Harbor (in a Time magazine article in late December). The Walt Disney Studios promptly provided a suitable insignia.

Officially known as the American Volunteer Group (AVG), the organization had a curious history. The organizer and leader of the Flying Tigers was Claire Chennault. An able U.S. Army fighter pilot, he made himself unpopular with his theories (largely correct) of how to use fighters. Forced to retire in 1937 (at age forty-four), he cast about for something to do before (as he was sure would happen) America was at war with Germany and Japan and he would be able to get back into uniform. Through his contacts with aircraft manufacturers, he secured a contract to do a survey of the struggling Chinese Air Force and suggest changes that would provide better defense against the rampaging Japanese fighters and bombers. Chennault made an impression on the Chinese and was asked to gather the dozens of mercenary pilots into one unit, train them to act as a team, and give the Japanese a bloody nose. He was also put in charge of training new Chinese pilots. It was a tall order. The largely non-American mercenaries were an undisciplined lot and many did not have a mastery of English. The aircraft were an oddball collection of whatever the Chinese government had been able to buy. Russian, German, Italian, and American manufacturers were all trying to sell additional aircraft (and not always their best stuff). The Russians had their own group of "volunteer" pilots, but the Chinese weren't impressed by the Russians' skill, nor did they trust the Communists. This is understandable, as the Chinese Communists were trying to overthrow the non- Communist Chinese government (a temporary truce was in effect in order to oppose the Japanese).

The U.S. government was also concerned with the hammering the Chinese were getting from the Japanese Air Force. By late 1940 an agreement was made for the U.S. government to provide loans for the Chinese to buy the latest U.S. fighter aircraft, and for U.S. Army and Navy pilots to be recruited for the AVG. Officially, the U.S. government had nothing to do with the recruiting (although the recruiters were free to entice serving pilots to join the AVG). But Chennault and the Chinese didn't care about these technicalities. With the AVG, the Chinese would have trained and disciplined pilots flying modern aircraft. The pilots and aircraft reached Burma in late 1941, and it was in Burma that a training base was set up for the AVG pilots to perfect their teamwork before going north into China. The first taste of combat for the AVG was over Kunming, China on December 20. Three days later on December 23, the 3rd Squadron of the AVG engaged the Japanese over Rangoon, Burma.

In July 1942, the Flying Tigers ceased to exist. Oh, many of the pilots were still flying in China. But they and their aircraft were no longer mercenaries but part of the army air force. In their seven months of existence, the 340 pilots and ground crew of the AVG claimed (and 68 pilots were paid bonuses of over $5,000-in 1994 dollars-per aircraft for) destroying 296 Japanese aircraft. The AVG lost 86 aircraft (only 12 in air-to-air combat), including accidents and 22 were captured when Japanese infantry overran one of their storage facilities in Burma. Twenty-two AVG pilots were killed, captured, or missing. Postwar examination of Japanese records indicates that the AVG actually destroyed 120 Japanese aircraft and killed 400 pilots and aircrew. Many of the Japanese aircraft destroyed were bombers, which had larger crews. Put another way, the Tigers destroyed 21 Japanese aircraft per thousand sorties, while losing only 2 of their own. Their Japanese opponents shot down 6 Tigers per thousand sorties while losing 64 aircraft. The Tigers flew six thousand sorties during this period, versus only two thousand for their Japanese opponents.

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THE WAR IN CHINA’S IMPACT

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Poorly-equipped Chinese Soldiers

Most Americans don't think of the war in China as part of the Pacific war. In fact, the fighting in China was much more intense and bloody than what Americans faced in the Pacific. Casualties in China were in the millions, both before and after Pearl Harbor. It was Japan's invasion of China (which began in 1931 or 1935 or 1937, depending on how one wishes to count various "incidents") that eventually got the United States into World War II in the first place. Japan had been making steady inroads in China and Korea since the 1880s. The Japanese generals running the show in China became more and more independent of the government back in Tokyo. Using subversion and threats, Japanese military leaders gained control over larger portions of China. Through the 1930s, over a million Japanese settlers moved into Manchuria. Yet the Japanese government never made any serious attempts to rein in their ambitious generals in China. In 1936 there was an attempted coup by junior army officers. Several senior civilian officials were assassinated in Tokyo before the coup was suppressed. Those junior officers wanted even more support for the Chinese war, and they got it.

In 1937, Japan began large-scale warfare against China. Attacking from enclaves in Manchuria and along the coast, the Japanese advanced into central China. Japan had 300,000 troops in China at the time, plus 150,000 Manchurian and Mongolians under Japanese officers. The Chinese had over 2 million troops under arms, but these were much less well equipped, trained, and led than the Japanese invaders. For two years the Japanese advanced deeper into China. But progress was slow and casualties mounted. In 1939 they decided to return to their earlier subversion and attrition tactics. This continued until 1944, when they again advanced to overrun U.S. airfields in central China (between May and November). As with the 1937 campaign, the 1944 operation was hampered by logistical problems and constant resistance from the Chinese population. Moreover, China had been receiving more military aid and training from the United States since 1941. The 1944 offensive exhausted Japanese forces in China and made them ripe for rapid defeat by the Russians in the summer of 1945.

Throughout the Pacific war, most of the Japanese Army was in China. While the Chinese troops were not active much of the time, many of Japan's best troops were thusly occupied rather than being sent against Allied troops in the Pacific or in Burma (although later in the war, Japan lacked the shipping to move many of those units anyway). So China's role, though generally neglected, was critical to the Allied victory.

Boarding Party: The Last Action of the Calcutta Light Horse

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This story centers around the destruction of an Axis radio located on a German merchant ship interned in neutral Goa during 1943. The raiders were auxillary force (part-time) members of the Calcutta Light Horse and Calcutta Scottish. With few exceptions they were British businessmen that volunteered to conduct this mission without recognition. The German radio was being used to direct U-Boats operating in the Indian Ocean. The raider traveled across India by rail joining their ship, a dredging barge, at Calicut. The traveled north to Goa overnight and in the early morning attacked the German ship. Three other Axis merchant ships also interned were scuttled by their crews. The raiders continued to Bombay and returned home to Calcutta. Officially the ships were destroyed by their crews which had mutinied.

In March 1943, a ship full of British commandos steamed into a port in Portuguese Goa (India). The commandos then assaulted and destroyed an interned German freighter that had been using a powerful radio transmitter to let nearby German submarines know the comings and goings of British merchant ships in the Indian Ocean. The operation was never officially acknowledged by the British government. The reason was diplomatic. Portugal, though neutral in World War II, was a hotbed of Allied and Axis spies. Many Portuguese officials were pliant, and their cooperation could often be bought. But a major British military operation on Portuguese territory would cause many Portuguese to be more pro-Axis and this would have harmed Allied espionage efforts. Thus middle-aged members of a paramilitary British social organization (the Calcutta Light Horse) were asked to volunteer for an unofficial mission. The volunteers were told that, for diplomatic reasons, they could receive no official recognition. If captured, they were to be considered free-lancers and acting on their own. The raid was a success, but largely due to some preliminary diplomacy. One volunteer visited the port before the raid and paid off a Portuguese official to throw a lavish party the night of the raid and invite the officers of the German and Italian ships in port. Arrangements were then made to make the town's brothels free for the entire week before the raid. These two tasks ensured that few of the officers and sailors were on the ship the commandos attacked.

Many of the volunteers and their uniformed trainers later spoke freely about it. A film was made about the operation (starring David Niven, himself a graduate of the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, with a distinguished war record). Yet the raid was never officially recognized. But that's how diplomacy works.

Wings for the Dragon

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by Charles Barton

HOW CHINA DEVELOPED ITS AIR FORCE DURING THE 1930s AND THE AMERICAN WHO MADE IT POSSIBLE

China in the 1930s was torn by the struggles of feudal warlords, by revolution, civil war and invasion by Japan. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek needed an air force built from scratch with a few miracles thrown in. One of the miracle workers was Allen "Pat" Patterson.

Canadian-born in 1900, Patterson's early life read like a film script. Tall, ash blond, blue-eyed and slender, Patterson had been a World War One aviator, barnstormer, operator of Dycer Airfield in Gardena, California, and flyer in Howard Hughes' Hell's Angels. He also introduced that eccentric movie maker to another talented blonde - Jean Harlow. Afterward, he became vice president and sales manager of General Airplane Company of Buffalo, New York, before the stock market crash of 1929.

In the early days of the Depression, Patterson accepted an offer from Carl Knamacher, Hudson car dealer in Shanghai, to join him in selling American airplanes to the Chinese Air Force.

"I had no difficulty getting the rights to represent the air companies in China," Patterson recalls. “Everyone thought I was crazy. I got all the big representations including United Aircraft, Sikorsky, Boeing, Lockheed and Douglas."

Patterson and Knamacher's new office for their China Airmotive was in Shanghai's International Settlement, just down the hall from that of William D. Pawley, head of Intercontinent Corporation, local representative for Curtiss Wright. Just three years older than Patterson, Pawley was socially charming, handsome, and ruthless. When he barged into Patterson's office he wasted no time on pleasantries.

"You don't think you're going to sell any airplanes here do you?"

Patterson looked him up and down and asked, "Why not?"

"Because I have an exclusive. Go ask H.H. Kung or General Mao," said Pawley.

Kung was Nationalist Minister of Finance, Mao Chief of the Air Force. Without another word Pawley turned and walked out. Patterson came to realize that Pawley used cash and favors freely to smooth his way, and both of these officials had been well greased.

When Patterson had made his arrangements to come to China, he had bought a Bird primary trainer to use as a demonstrator in China, but when the Bird Company went broke and the deal fell through, Reuben Fleet heard about it and shipped a Fleet biplane trainer to Shanghai at his own expense.

When it arrived in 1931, Patterson had it assembled at Shanghai's Hung Jao Airfield and demonstrated it to a select group of Chinese. The first aircraft sold by China Airmotive were 20 of these Fleet Trainers.

By 8 July 1932, when Major John H. Jouett, US Army Air Corps, retired, head of a special American training mission to China, and his handpicked group of first-class instructors and mechanics arrived in Shanghai aboard the President Hoover with 15 Fleet Trainers, China Airmotive had sold some 120 Fleets to the Chinese. Final sales totaled over 200, a big boost for Reuben Fleet's new Consolidated Aircraft Company.

Despite Pawley's machinations, China Airmotive was thus well afloat by 1932 and being drawn inexorably into the chaos of Chinese politics. In addition to his dealings with Chiang Kai-shek, Patterson sold airplanes to a rival Chinese air force based in Canton.

At that time the National Government of China at Nanking was "national" in name only. One of the most important groups who had not joined with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang-dominated government was headquartered at Canton. Their air force, aided by a German air mission, was bigger and better than the air force belonging to the Nationalists. During an early trip to Canton looking for business, Patterson wandered in and out of hangars on the airfield. Suddenly, the senior German advisor accosted him. wI can tell you right now there is no possibility of doing any business here. Save your time and go home." The manner was Prussian. The accent heavily German. Patterson left.

About two months later, Patterson was back in Canton walking through a hallway in the administration building when a voice boomed through an open doorway.

"Hey, Pat!

"Who the hell knows me here?" he thought. Inside was a Chinese officer in full uniform with stars on his shoulders.

"You don't remember me, do you?"

"No, sir, I don't."

"I am General Wong Kwong-yue, the Chief of this Air Force. To you, I'm Freddy Wong. You taught me how to fly at Dycer Field in California. Remember?"

"Well, I'll be damned -- Freddy Wong!"

This lucky meeting helped Patterson to trump some of Bill Pawley's aces. Later, when the Nationalist government was still in Nanking and the Japanese had not yet chased China Airmotive out of Shanghai, Wong handed Patterson a sealed envelope and said, "Guard this with your life, Pat, Give it to Madame Chiang and no one else."

Madame Chiang headed the Aeronautical Commission that controlled the Nationalist Air Force. The sealed envelope contained an offer she couldn't refuse. Shortly, the entire Cantonese Air Force flew to Nanking, Freddy Wong to a place on the Aeronautical Commission and all his pilots to promotions as officers of the Republic of China Air Force. Without air power, the Cantonese military could only climb aboard the bandwagon, enabling Chiang Kai-shek to make real progress toward unifying China under one government.

Chiang, greatly pleased with this coup, was disturbed at how easy it had been to shift air power from one faction to another. Thereafter, one of his most trusted generals kept close watch over the Air Force.

One day, Patterson's partner, Knamacher, who drank too much too often, showed up at the airport while Pat was away. The United Aircraft mechanic, imported to assemble 17 Vought Corsairs (export versions of the US Navy's 03U biplane bought by the Chinese as "diving bombers") greeted him.

"Let's try the Corsair you just assembled," Knamacher said. They strapped on their parachutes and took off. Knamacher was in no condition to fly that day and had very little flight time, At 10,000 feet, he entered a steep dive. At pull-out, the Corsair's wings came off, "The next thing I knew I was hanging from my chute," the mechanic told Patterson. "I don't know how I got there."

Knamacher left a sizable brokerage debt, so his Eurasian broker, Leslie Lewis, whose office was down the hall from China Airmotive, went to Patterson and said, uI guess I'm your new partner."

The new partners were made for each other. Lewis, born in China of a Chinese mother and an English father, had the manners and education of an English gentleman, spoke fluent Chinese, and handled office management, paper work and business affairs. Patterson took care of sales and contracts.

During the Shanghai years, Patterson entertained frequently. Lewis, a gentleman jockey at the Shanghai race track, borrowed horses for Patterson's week-end guests. Sunday-after-saddle brunches became a regular social event.

Meanwhile, the Jouett Mission built and ran the Central Aviation School at Shien Chiao Airfield in Hangchow some 100 miles down the coast from Shanghai. When the mission fulfilled its contract in June 1935, the contract was not renewed because Chiang Kai-shek was angered by the American's refusal to participate in attacks on the dissident 19th Route Army under General Tsai Tingkai during the Fujian (Fukien) rebellion of late 1933.

Considering that this was the army and the commander who had put up such surprising resistance to the Japanese during the 1932 Shanghai Incident, Chiang's vindictiveness is illuminating. China was as much at war with itself as Japan. The Americans considered themselves advisors, not mercenaries. In addition, the State Department advised President Roosevelt not to approve renewing the agreement because of Japanese objections!

For several years thereafter, an Italian air mission was active in China, but the Central Aviation School carried on with Chinese instructors and three American holdovers, Roy Holbrook, W.C. "Foxy" Kent, and William A. "AI" Spencer. Patterson often had his aircraft serviced at Shien Chao, and filled in as a ground and flight instructor when regular instructors were sick or absent.

In 1935, Patterson and Lewis imported a single-engine Porterfield, a two-place, high-wing cabin monoplane to facilitate visiting military airfields throughout China. This posed special problems for the Nationalist Government as there was no private flying in China in those days. The problems were resolved when the Air Force issued them private licenses, the first ever issued in China. The two men drew straws to see who would be number one. Patterson lost and so came to hold the second civilian flying license issued in China.

In 1934, Patterson had been designated United States Department of Commerce Inspector Stationed in Shanghai, China, with "all ratings authorized for performance of duty.' In 1938, this duty involved him in what the Hong Kong Standard called "the first major commercial aviation disaster in Hong Kong."

Patterson was giving an en route check flight to CNAC (China National Aviation Corporation) pilot Ed Smith in a flying boat bound down the coast to Hong Kong. Smith made great water landings at Swatow and Amoy, but as they approached Hong Kong at low altitude off Chilang Point, Patterson saw an ugly black squall in their path.

"Don't you think you'd better go around?" he said

"I'm in command," sak Smith and continued as before. They hit the squall at an altitude of 500 or 801 feet. Almost immediately they were in the sea. Patterson and Smith were thrown clear and they and the passengers were picked up by junks. But three Chinese crew members died. Smith didn't get his license.

About this time, the saga of Chennault in China got underway. Patterson first met Claire Lee Chennault, redheaded, freckled-faced John H. "Luke" Williamson and chubby William C. "Billy" MacDonald when the "Three Men on a Flying Trapeze" parked their aircraft on Patterson's field between performances at a 1920s airshow in Los Angeles. After the Jouett Mission left China in the summer of 1935, Roy Holbrook, who had stayed on, wrote his old friend Chennault, then an Air Corps Captain in charge of tactical training at Maxwell Field, Alabama, and asked him to recommend new pilot instructors and engine specialists for the school at Shien Chiao. Among those Chennault recommended were his old aerobatic teammates, "Luke" Williamson and "Billy" MacDonald.

On 30 April 1937, Chennault retired from the Army Air Corps and in May left for China on a three-month contract from the Chinese. He stayed eight years, first as an advisor, 1937-- 1941; second as organizer of the First American Volunteer Group (Flying Tigers), 1941-42; third as commander of the United States China Air Task Force, 1942-43; and finally as commander of the 14th Air Force, 1943-45.

Shortly after arriving in China, Chennault confided to Patterson, "Pawley told me that he has an exclusive on all major sales of aircraft to the Chinese Air Force and that he will make it worth my while to concur."

This was a major mistake on Pawley's part. Chennault was not for sale. Furthermore, Chennault strongly favored the Seversky P-35 over the Curtiss Hawk that Pawley was trying to sell to the Chinese.

Patterson was planning to attend the 1937 National Air Races in Cleveland, Ohio, as he did every year, and Chennault made two requests: "Pat, I want you to look for a primary trainer to replace the Fleets. It's too big a jump from the old biplanes to the new pursuits coming into service. And get an agency agreement from Sasha (Seversky). I'm recommending the P-35 to the Gimo and Madame Chiang."

Chennault and Seversky, a World War One combat pilot in the Russian Air Force who lost a leg after his bomber was shot down but went on to score 13 victories as a one-legged fighter pilot, were friends. When Chennault talked about his ideas for new pursuit tactics, Seversky listened. The P-35 was the result. But Seversky had not been able to sell the plane to the Air Corps, even though the test team at Wright Patterson, of which Chennault had been a member, rated the P-35 a better plane than the Curtis Hawk 75.

General Henry "Hap" Arnold, Chief of the Army Air Corps, thought that heavily-armed bombers, "flying fortresses", unescorted, would be decisive in modern war. Pursuit aviation languished. Chennault's differences with these prevailing views plus his hearing loss and his overage in grade led to his early retirement from the Corps. Seversky, to publicize the performance of his new plane, made a civilian version available to famed woman flier, Jacqueline Cochran, who flew it to victory in the 1937 Bendix Transcontinental Trophy Race.

At the 1937 National Air Races, Patterson liked the looks of the sleek, low-wing Ryan monoplane that Tex Rankin used for his spectacular aerobatic performances and accosted Rankin on the flight line after a performance.

"Tex, I'm looking for a new trainer for the Chinese. How about letting me try your Ryan?"

Patterson loved the airplane. "Just right for the Chinese," he thought. His 1939 sale of 70 Ryan Primary Trainers to the Chinese put Claude Ryan in business. When the Army Air Corps saw the planes being produced for the Chinese, they ordered their own version that became the tremendously successful Ryan PT-22.

By the time of Patterson's return to China with an agency agreement from Severy, whom he had known since they both worked for the General Airplane Company in the late 1920s, Chennault had gained the approval of the Gimo and the Madame for the airplane and told Patterson to make a proposal to H.R. Kung, Minister of Finance, for the procurement of 50 Seversky P-35s. Kung, of course, knew of Pawley's use of money to buy high-level support within the Air Force for Curtiss planes and expected forceful opposition to the proposal.

"Mr. Patterson," Kung said when approached on this matter, "this proposal must be kept top secret. Work up all the details and submit them to me personally."

In December 1937, five months after the start of the Sino-Japanese War, Patterson's life as an airplane salesman in China was interrupted by the all-out Japanese attack on Shanghai. Leslie Lewis moved the office records to Hong Kong. Patterson moved up river to Nanking and into a ground floor room in an abandoned hotel.

On the morning of 11 December, a Japanese 75-millimeter round jolted him awake as it roared in through one wall and out the other. Morning light filtered past the blinds. Small arms fire cracked and stuttered in the distance. He grabbed his suitcase and bedroll, ran to a side exit, and set off at a trot toward the Yangtze River and the safety of the American gunboat, USS Panay.

Sandbags at the river gate restricted passage through the 45-- foot-high city wall. The Chinese, struggling to escape through this narrow exit, shrieked in pain and terror as a Japanese shell exploded in their midst. Patterson veered to one side. At a safe distance, he climbed the wall, tied a makeshift rope to a stanchion, dropped his baggage to the river bank and descended.

A sampan lay concealed in vegetation. Flashing a fistful of cash to the surprised boatman, he pointed to the Panay. Reaching the ship, he secured the sampan's bowline so the frail craft remained tethered in the river's current downstream.

For some days, Panay had acted as the communications center for the skeleton embassy staff left in Nanking. At 5 pm, because of artillery shells falling near the ship, commanding officer Lt. Cmdr. James Hughes ordered the anchor raised and headed up river. Three Standard Oil tankers whose skippers had been anxious to leave but hadn't dared do so without an escort, accompanied Panay.

Shortly before dusk, the ships anchored about twelve miles upstream. Because of crowded conditions, Patterson slept on deck. Ashore, the Japanese ran amok in the infamous "Rape of Nanking."

The next morning, because random firing by Japanese artillery began again, the ships moved further upstream and dropped anchor about 15 miles above the anchorage of the previous night.

Shortly after midday, Patterson stood at the fantail of the Pansy talking with a friend who had just come across from an adjacent Standard Oil tanker. Suddenly, Patterson heard the sound dive bombers make when starting a run. He glanced up, saw planes diving toward them, pushed his friend over the side, kicked his suitcase and bedroll in their waterproof wrappings overboard, and jumped.

As he surfaced in the turgid brown water, the first bombs hit. Patterson felt the concussion.

Towing his baggage, Patterson swam with his friend to the tethered sampan and struggled into the wooden craft. Dripping, gasping for breath, they signaled the boatman to head for the far shore. Overhead, Japanese planes continued bombing and strafing the American ships.

The 14 December 1937 San Francisco Examiner carried a two-- inch banner headline: "96 Lost in Panay Bombing.' Subheads read: "Roosevelt protest sent direct to Emperor. Britain consulted."

Actually, casualties were much lighter than reported. Panay had two killed and about 30 wounded. Listed as missing was A.L. Patterson of Washington, DC.

But Patterson survived, and after a saga of escape and evasion arrived in China's wartime capital, Chungking, to again represent his company, now called Consolidated Trading Company Limited.

Negotiations for the sale of the Seversky P-35s had bogged down. In Hong Kong, Leslie Lewis received a confidential letter from H.H. Priestly, Foreign Exchange Manager of the Shanghai Banking Corporation, saying that Pawley had visited the bank's manager. Secrecy had been short-lived.

"Mr. Pawley was well equipped with details of the pending contract," Priestly wrote, adding that Pawley had used "very convincing arguments" in an effort to persuade the bank to turn over the credit proposition arranged by Lewis and Patterson to his own company, Intercontinent. Secondly, Pawley had said he could obtain better credit terms from the Chinese if the bank would cancel negotiations with Patterson and Lewis.

The bank manager turned down both of Pawley's proposals. While Patterson and Pawley continued their all-out struggle, there was no Chinese decision during the first months of 1939.

Finally Kung broke the deadlock. With uncharacteristic directness he summoned the Chief Engineering Officer for the Chinese Air Force, Colonel Chien, and several of his staff to a meeting in Chungking with Chennault, Patterson and Lewis, and gave them 24 hours to tell him why he should not buy the P-35. As Kung suspected, Chien and his staff were already in Pawley's pocket. They raised objection after objection to the model and proposed extensive, unfeasible modifications.

On the second day, Kung came to the table and said, "Since I have heard no valid objection to this purchase, it has been decided to sign."

As Patterson flew back to the US in mid-April 1939, his briefcase bulged with the largest single order for military airplanes ever placed by the Chinese Government. In addition to 54 Seversky aircraft, Patterson had orders for 25 Vought SB2U-1 Scout Bombers, 70 Ryan Primary Trainers, and 50 North American NA 16-4 Combat Advanced Trainers.

His satisfaction was shadowed by nagging doubt about the Seversky order. Down, but far from out, Pawley was taking advantage of faulty wording in the contract. "Guaranteed bond," a British term, probably should have read "surety bond." In the end, US banks would not accept this term and the Chinese Ambassador to the US would not sign for a change in wording -- because Pawley got to him first.

Victory was tinged with defeat. Without the Chinese contract the Seversky Company was in the red. In May, Seversky was displaced as president and the company was renamed Republic Aviation. His P-35 design, however, evolved into the highly successful Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. Chennauft was forced to work with Pawley because the latter's Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company (CAMCO) was used as a cover for hiring and administering the volunteers who came to work with the Flying Tigers.

Later, Pawley delayed shipment of P-40s to Chennault's American Volunteer Group, and CAMCO maintenance work for the AVG fighting in Burma took second place to work on airplanes that Pawley was selling to the Chinese. Little wonder that AVG veterans resent Pawley's claims of responsibility for their successes. After the war, when Pawley sent a $ 10,000 check to the Flying Tiger Association with a request to join, it was refused.

BUFFALOES AND CAP(NOT)

2010-02-19T12:16:00.000+08:00

8-10 December 1941

"In my whole experience, I do not remember any Naval blow so heavy or so painful as the sinking of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse." Prime Minister Churchill

At dawn on the morning of 8 December, following the first bombing raid on Singapore, a JNAF C5M two-seater reconnaissance aircraft flew over that island, its crew reporting on visible effects of the bombing raid and confirming that the apparently undamaged capital ships were still in harbour. Whilst delighted with the news that they had not sailed, the Japanese High Command decided that they must not be allowed to interfere with the landings at Singora, where they would wreak havoc amongst the transports, and a torpedo-bomber attack against them was planned. The Japanese were fully aware of the threat posed by the two mighty ships, which they considered to be more powerful than their own battleships Kongo and Haruna, which were currently patrolling off the south coast of Indo-China as distant cover to the landings.

Later that same day, at 1735, the Prince of Wales and Repulse belatedly put to sea with an escort provided by four destroyers; this small but potentially powerful fleet was designated Force Z. Heading northwards at full speed, Admiral Phillips' declared intention was to intercept the large concentration of Japanese transports off Singora. He had requested that air reconnaissance of the area be made on the 9th and 10th, and that his force be afforded fighter protection while in the vicinity of Singora, where he expected to be at daylight on the 10th. The loss of Kota Bharu, Gong Kedah and Machang airfields, together with the unserviceability of Alor Star due to demolitions and Sungei Patani due to bombing, made this latter request now little more than a pious hope. Indeed, even as Force Z sailed, Phillips was advised that fighter protection was not possible. Unfortunately, the signal failed to make it clear that the lack of available fighter protection applied only to the morning of the 10th off Singora, as had been the specific request, whereas it would seem that Phillips was under the mistaken impression that fighter protection would not be available under any circumstances.

Initially luck was with Force Z when, early next morning, the crew of a JNAF reconnaissance C5M reported that Prince of Wales and Repulse were still in harbour, having mistaken two large merchantmen for the warships, but at midday a Japanese submarine signalled Japanese Naval HQ with the news that the ships were in fact at sea. All Japanese cruisers providing cover for the landing were ordered to launch their spotter floatplanes to search for the British fleet, while torpedo-armed G3Ms and G4Ms of the 22nd Air Flotilla at Saigon were scrambled to carry out a night attack. However, despite long searches subsequently carried out by the strike force, no sightings were made. The reason for the Jack of Japanese success in locating Force Z was due to a sudden change of course and plan by Admiral Phillips. During the early evening the task force reached a point level with Kota Bharu when the Prince of Wales' aircraft-warning radar picked up blips of three approaching aircraft. Then, at 1720, the rain clouds cleared and a Japanese floatplane was seen. Before long two more floatplanes appeared. With surprise gone, Phillips decided that the risk of continuing was too high and, at 2015, set course for Singapore at top speed.

At around midnight Phillips received a signal from Singapore advising him of a reported landing at Kuantan. Force Z changed course to intercept, but the reported landing proved to be no more than a probable light reconnaissance. Meanwhile, the British fleet had been tracked by another Japanese submarine and, at 10 15, was spotted by a C5M floatplane. Time was now beginning to run out for Force Z. At 1113, the first bombers and torpedo-bombers appeared - eight G3Ms of the Mihoro Ku, followed by nine torpedo-armed G3Ms of the Genzan Ku - which targeted Repulse. The Prince of Wales was the target of the next wave of Genzan Ku torpedo bombers, two torpedoes striking the ship; one struck home on the port side aft, the other abaft Y turret: her steering failed and both propeller shafts stopped. The pride of the Eastern Fleet rapidly took a list to port, and her speed dropped. By 1230, it was all over except for the suffering of the men in the sea. Both ships had been sunk.

A total of 51 torpedo-bombers and 34 bombers participated in the attacks on the two ships, two G4Ms of the Kanoya Ku and one G3M of the Genzan Ku being shot down (with the loss of all 18 crewmen), while a third G4M crashed due to battle damage on its return to Saigon. In addition, at least seven G3Ms and a similar number of G4Ms returned with varying degrees of battle damage. Although a total of 2,081 men survived the sinking of the Prince of Wales and Repulse, 840 were lost including Admiral Phillips.

Singapore was not aware of the attack until Captain Tennant of Repulse sent an emergency signal at 1158, and due to Force Z's radio silence and Phillips' change of plan, GHQ had no idea where the ships actually were. On receipt of the signal two Buffaloes from 243 Squadron were immediately scrambled from Kallang, as was a 4PRU Buffalo, while close behind followed ten 453 Squadron Buffaloes in two flights of five aircraft from Sembawang. First on the scene was FIt Lt Mowbray Garden of 243 Squadron:

"I received a signal from Ops on the telephone to scramble my flight and take off in pairs at intervals of 20 minutes, and fly on a bearing 100 from Kallang, which would take us into the China Sea. I did not know what to expect, but I had been told (on the telephone) that I had to look after an 'important' ship which was being bombed. "There was a certain amount of mist but quite quickly I noticed that the sea had not only traces of oil, but increasingly was one mass of oil, and then I saw it - one large battleship floating helplessly in the choppy sea, without steerage and listing badly to one side. With its four gun turrets it could only have been one ship - the Prince of Wales, and she was sinking. All around her the sea, as far as the eye could see, was oil - and men were jumping off the ship into the oil, some with and some without pieces of debris, like chairs, planks, etc, with which to support themselves when in the oily sea. There were a few small Navy ships of one kind or another standing by to try to help. On my approach, the remaining workable anti-aircraft guns on the Prince of Wales opened fire on me, which was hardly surprising, but I was able to release the colours of the day (through the Very pistol) and the firing stopped. There was nothing I could do except to patrol the area in case of a fresh Japanese attack, and wait for my second section of Buffaloes to come and relieve me."

Garden's No.2, Sgt Geoff Fisken, commented:

"As our planes reached the rendezvous point, I could see below me a grey metal bow sticking out of the sea, surrounded by an oil slick and many bodies:'

On reflection he added:

"Could just two squadrons of Buffaloes have saved the battleships? The meandering Jap bombers and torpedo-bombers, laden down with their deadly cargo, would have been easy targets for a Buffalo."

Also in the vicinity by now was Sgt Charlie Wareham in the PR Buffalo (W8136), busily taking pictures of the carnage below, whilst close behind came the 453 Squadron Buffaloes led by Fit Lt Tim Vigors, who recalled:

"By the time my Squadron arrived on the scene the battle was over. I just saw the Prince of Wales sink on the horizon, and by the time I was over the remnants, there was not a Japanese aircraft in sight."

Sgt George Scrimgeour remembered:

"Tim Vigors went down to have a look at the ships and we stayed above to give him cover at about 6,000 or 7,000 feel. I saw one Japanese aircraft leaving as we arrived. That was the only aircraft we saw [this was probably a reconnaissance G3M that had remained behind to witness the fates of the capital ships]. Before we left both ships had turned over and one was sinking. After that we flew back to Singapore. On that particular flight we had no idea of what our mission was because the pilots did not have that much knowledge of what they would see. We were just told to take off. The time of the flight was two hours and 15 minutes and this was pushing the Buffaloes to the limit of their endurance. I was flying too high to see survivors, but I did see the destroyers and corvettes standing alongside to pick them up. If there had been Japanese aircraft about there was not a great deal that we could have done."

As the Buffaloes flew over the mass of struggling men, Tim Vigors believed he was witnessing survivors waving and cheering:

"I witnessed a show of the indomitable spirit for which the Royal Navy is so famous. I passed over thousands who had been through an ordeal, the greatness of which they alone can understand ... It was obvious that the three destroyers were going to take hours to pick up those hundreds of men clinging to bits of wreckage and swimming around in the filthy, oily water. Above all this, the threat of another bombing and machine-gun attack was imminent. Yet, as I flew round, every man waved and put his thumb up as I flew over him. After an hour, lack of petrol forced me to leave, but during that hour I had seen many men in dire danger waving, cheering and joking, as if they were holidaymakers at Brighton waving at low-flying aircraft. It shook me, for here was something above human nature. I take off my hat to them, for in them I saw the spirit which wins wars."

In retrospect it would seem more likely that the survivors he saw waving and cheering were, in fact, shaking their fists at the belated arrival of British fighters, or that they were simply gesticulating to be seen in the vain hope of discovery and rescue by others. An entry in 453 Squadron's war diary added:

"Both Flights were ordered into the air - first Right [led by] Tim Vigors proceeded northwards past Mersing, and shortly afterwards came upon the scene of a major Naval disaster. Large patches of oil covered the water and two large warships were observed to be sinking - other Naval vessels were standing off picking up survivors. The Flight patrolled the area in search of enemy aircraft but none were sighted, so returned to base. The other Flight [led by] Van came along a bit later but they had no luck either. Discovered on landing that the two ships were the Prince of Wales and Repulse."

Sgt Greg Board was similarly amazed at the scene below:

"A giant warship with its long, curving wake still showing was rolling over on its side. I had never seen such a huge battlewagon before. The ship kept rolling over while it was still moving, and I saw hundreds of men scrambling frantically up along the keel. [We] cheered wildly at the sight of the Japanese battleship [sic] as it began to go down, and circled, watching in suspense as the bow of the huge vessel began (0 go lower and lower. Then the stern lifted high into the air, the propellers glistened briefly, and the monster plunged to the bottom. 1 saw another part of the sea filled with wreckage and the forms of men in the water. Without any Japanese aeroplanes in the air, [we] turned and headed back ... [we] had no radios, but waved happily to each other. That must have been one hell of a fight, with the Japanese Navy taking it right where it hurt the most."

On their return to Sembawang, the pilots leaped from their cockpits, cheering and laughing. They walked back in high spirits to their bamboo huts, eager to drink to the smashing defeat of the Japanese naval force. They had just filled their glasses when the intelligence officer walked in. One look at his face stopped the pilots cold in their tracks. Then the officer began to talk. Quietly, he broke the news to his audience: ''Those weren't Japanese warships."

When Sgts Weber and Powell of 243 Squadron reached the area, the battle was long over; Weber wrote:

"I went on an aerial patrol from which I had my doubts about returning. We arrived only in sufficient time to see a huge slick of oil. The enemy planes had departed. Actually, we had to travel 160 miles to this point, and orbit for 20 minutes over the sea, and many miles out of sight of the land. Jf we had struck a fight, and it seemed very likely that we would, petrol may have been insufficient; and in any case I did not relish the idea of finding my way home after tearing round over the ocean. I am pleased to be able to say that as far as J was concerned, there was no question of fear nor even nervousness, and J enjoyed the flight out. However, J was very happy to recognise Mersing on our way back, still more happy to pancake at base."

488 Squadron also sent out pairs of Buffaloes to search the area, Fit Lt Jack Mackenzie (W8223) and Sgt Jim MacIntosh making up one section, as the former recalled:

"We went to a point we had been given and when we arrived there was nothing but a destroyer which was picking up survivors - there was no sign of anything else. Jimmy and J then escorted a destroyer that picked up some survivors; we were out three and a half hours in our old Buffaloes - a terribly long time ... Our Buffaloes were absolutely hopeless."

Sgt MacIntosh added:

"We went out as the first section to give cover to the cruiser and destroyer that were picking up the survivors. By the time we arrived there, which was about 170 miles from memory up the east coast of Malaya, and well out, both the warships had been sunk. There were just very large oil patches and a lot of debris floating around. We covered quite a large cruiser that was picking up survivors and steaming down towards Singapore. We stayed there providing cover for an hour during which time two aircraft approached from the north. They didn't come in close enough for us to recognise because once they observed us they turned away. They could have been Jap reconnaissance. It was rather a devastating experience to say the least. The times were pretty grim. It was rather devastating for morale to know that those two ships. which had been at the Naval base at Singapore just a few days before, and which we had been flying past and over, were gone. We thought that they were indestructible. It was unbelievable."

One of the tragedies of this disaster was that fighter cover could have been provided had Singapore known sooner that Force Z was operating off Kuantan. Admiral Phillips had not informed Singapore of his change of plan on the evening of the 9th. FIt Lt Vigors was bitter about the whole shambles, and later wrote:

"I reckon this must have been one of the last battles in which the Navy reckoned they could get along without the RAE A pretty damned costly way of learning. I had worked out a plan with Lhe liaison officer on the Prince of Wales, [Wg Cdr Chignell, who was left behind when the ships sailed] by which I could keep six aircraft over him all daylight hours within 60 miles of the east coast to a point north of Kota Sharu. This plan was turned down by Admiral Phillips. Had I been allowed to put it into effect, I am sure the ships would not have been sunk. Six fighters could have made one hell of a mess of even 50 or 60 slow and unescorted torpedo-bombers. As we could do nothing else. we kept virtually the whole Squadron at readiness at Sembawang while the Fleet was out. I was actually sitting in my cockpit when the signal eventually reached us that the Fleet was being attacked. Phillips had known that he was being shadowed the night before, and also at dawn that day. He did not call for air support. He was attacked and still did not call for help. Eventually it was the captain of Repulse who called for air support just before his ship sunk."

This was a view similarly held by Colonel Masatake Okumiya, Staff Officer at JAAF HQ in Saigon, who wrote:

"It was completely incredible that the two warships should be left naked to attack from the skies. Interception of our level and torpedo-bombers by British fighters might have seriously disrupted our attack and perhaps permitted the two warships to escape destruction. The battle of Malaya illustrated in the most forcible manner that a surface fleet without fighter protection was helpless under enemy air attack. The battleship, long the ruler of the seas, had been toppled from its dominant position and was now just another warship to be destroyed by aerial assault."

243 Squadron's CO, Sqn Ldr Howell, summed up the tragic fiasco when he later reflected:

"243 Squadron was ordered to patrol an area 'about 150 miles' north of Singapore, where ships were being attacked. No position was given; no information about the number of ships, or the number or type of attacking aircraft could be obtained. Two aircraft were sent to locate the exact position, and to try to solve the riddle. They found two very large circular patches of oil on the sea and several ships including destroyers.

The distance was so great, over 170 miles from base, that a patrol of only two aircraft could be maintained for a period of a quarter of an hour only, over the area. However, no further attacks were made by the Japanese on the destroyers, which had picked up the survivors, and these were escorted south until dusk.

It is probable that if information had been given to us as soon as the ships were attacked, together with their exact position, we could have sent a Flight, at least, to their aid. It is doubtful, however, if they would have arrived in time. However, if the destroyers had been subsequently attacked, we could have been there very much sooner if we had the above information."

On his return to Singapore, the rescued Captain Tennant of Repulse was greeted by an equally distressed Air Vice-Marshal Pulford, who exclaimed:

"My God, 1hope you don't blame me for this. I had no idea where you were."

The loss of Force Z marked the death knell for British hopes of holding on to their Far East possessions. When informing the House of Commons of the tragedy, Prime Minister Churchill commented:

"It is a very heavy loss that we have suffered . .. It may well be that we shall have to suffer considerable punishment, but we shall defend ourselves everywhere with the utmost vigour in close co-operation with the United States and the Netherlands Navies. The naval power of Great Britain and the United States was very greatly superior, and is still greatly superior, to the combined powers of the three Axis Powers."

The effects were profoundly psychological as well as material, creating a feeling of hopelessness and a tremendous impression of total superiority in all arms of the enemy. The general effect on British morale and confidence was disastrous. In many, the will to resist now deteriorated rapidly. Worse was to come.

Sinking of Kongo - Audio Recording

2010-02-19T12:13:00.002+08:00

USS Sealion, unusually, was carrying a recording device in her conning tower during this patrol and some others. Audio recordings (in places hard to make out) of the conning-tower conversations during this attack, and another sinking on a later patrol, are on-line at the Historic Naval Ships Association website at

http://www.hnsa.org/sound/index.htm

There is a detailed analysis of this attack by Anthony Tully on the Nihon Kaigun website created by him and Jon Parshall. Among other things, this piece indicates that the battleship with Kongo was actually Nagato, not Haruna as stated in other sources.

http://www.combinedfleet.com/Kongo01.html

Images of Burma and the Far East III

2010-02-19T12:10:00.000+08:00

Far East prisoners of war, given the bare minimum of food and shelter, were often worked hard and were subject to frequent brutal assault, in part because of the Japanese conviction that surrender was disgraceful. These prisoners were liberated in Rangoon.

James M. Kim, a Chinese member of the Hong Kong Defence Force, left this poignant last testament on the wall of his cell in Stanley Prison before his execution in 1943.

A month after her liberation, British internee Wendy Rossini shows the daily ration of rice and stew given to all five occupants of her room in Stanley Camp, Hong Kong.

Images of Burma and the Far East II

2010-02-19T12:06:00.000+08:00

British and Indian paratroops were dropped near Rangoon on May 1 and an amphibious force moved up the Rangoon river to take the Burmese capital on the May 3.

A Japanese private carrying a white flag at Abya on the Sittang during mopping-up operations, August 30.

The price of victory: men of 4th Battalion, The Royal West Kents, visit the graves of their comrades at Kohima.

Images of Burma and the Far East I

2010-02-19T12:00:00.001+08:00

A British 3-inch mortar in action during the fighting for Meiktila.

The battle of the last ten yards: Sikhs rush a Japanese position still smoking from phosphorous grenades.

During the advance down the Arakan a Garhwali (an Indian soldier often confused with a Gurkha), covered by a rifleman on his left, throws a phosphorous grenade.

320mm Type 98 (M1938) spigot mortar

2010-02-06T00:02:00.000+08:00

Type 98 was first used in Singapore and the Philippines in the early Pacific War. After that, Type 98 was used on Okinawa and Iwo Jima.

Independent artillery mortar battalions (Dokunitsu Kyoho Daitai) in Burma were issued with a ponderous 320mm Type 98 (M1938) spigot mortar which could throw a 675 lb bomb over 1,000yd. This weapon was clearly akin to the 320mm spigot mortar designed specifically for demolition work. (Few of them were made and they were little used).

In both cases the spigot mortar itself comprised a steel spigot, a domed steel mounting plate — supported by a dome-shaped wooden block, and a steel baseplate; these were all bolted to a heavy wood block base. The spigot was a steel cylinder with a cavity at the upper end for the propellant. The wooden base consisted of three sections of rectangular baulks of timber, the top section, the middle and the bottom sections — alternate sections being laid at right angles to one another.

Provision was made for a limited amount of traverse and the spigot-seating bolts were so constructed as to permit setting up for line. Changes in range were obtained by varying the propellant charge.

Bombs were in three parts which screwed together; an HE warhead fitted with a nose-fuse, a cylindrical central portion with an internal cavity for a secondary filling, and a cylindrical finned tail unit. The primary and augmenting charges were contained in a brass case which fitted into the spigot cavity; ignition was by means of an electric ignitor through a flash channel in the side of the spigot and the bomb tail.

Type 98 32cm Spigot Mortar

Introduced Year : 1938

Caliber : 320 mm

Barrel Length : -

EL Angle of Fire : Fixed at 45 Degrees

AZ Angle of Fire : 16 Degrees

Shell Weight : 300 Kg

Muzzle Velocity : 110 m/sec

Weight : 1.215 ton

Range : 1,100 m

Production Qty : 2,000 (Shells)

British strategy during World War II and imperialism

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Crossing the Irrawaddy River

Winston Churchill is frequently quoted as saying that he did not become the King’s First Minister in 1940 to preside over the dissolution of the British Empire, implying that his primary aim in the war was to see that the Empire emerged intact. But this comment, his public backing for the Empire and his extremely prickly reactions to efforts by US President Roosevelt and his Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, to involve themselves in Indian affairs give a misleading impression of British policy towards Asia and the Pacific during World War II (James 1970: 179–215; Sherwood 1949: 516; Charmley 1993: 495; Hull 1948: 1482–95). Government Ministers knew that they would have to accept Indian independence after the war, however much Churchill himself disliked this. Ministers were only too well aware that Britain’s position in South East Asia had been undermined by the loss of Malaya and Burma. As ministerial diaries make clear, the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, took seriously both Roosevelt’s idea of Britain, China and the US sharing control of Malaya after its recapture, and Chinese demands to regain Hong Kong (Barnes and Nicholson 1988: 831, 833, 851). In terms of defence, Ministers focused their attention on the protection of Britain itself, on the battle of the Atlantic to keep Britain’s supplies coming despite the U-boat offensive and on the desert war to protect the Middle East, with its precious oil resources. Offensively, they planned to intensify the strategic bombing of German cities in order to undermine their morale, clear the whole of French North Africa of Axis forces, support the Soviet struggle with weapons and supplies, invade Italy and subsequently liberate France and the rest of Europe. Asia and the Pacific were to be left until every one of these other goals had been achieved, or were well on the way to achievement. As the Commander of British Forces in Burma, William Slim, put it after the war:

It was unavoidable that the Fourteenth Army should be the Cinderella of all the Armies, receiving only what the richer sisters in Africa and Europe could spare. As a result throughout the campaign, we were short of men, equipment and ammunition. (SLIM 2–3, 6 February 1946)

Thus, the 750,000 Anglo-Indian forces involved in desperate fighting along a 700 mile front in Burma considered themselves ‘forgotten’ by London and, as a result, allegedly voted against the Conservatives in the 1945 general election. Slim said that he told Churchill before the election that 70 per cent of the men in his army would vote Labour and the other 30 per cent would abstain out of affection for the Prime Minister (Young 1980: 716).

The way in which the India–Burma theatre was marginalized by London was epitomized by the allocation of aircraft. Amery and Slim were in agreement that air power was crucial in Asia. Because of the great size of the theatre, Amery wanted more transport aircraft and towed gliders for assaults (AMEL 2/1/33 file 3, Letter of 18 November 1941). Slim believed that British troops could achieve superiority over their enemies in Burma only if they made extensive use of transport and ground support aircraft. Backed by Churchill, the Royal Air Force (RAF) responded unenthusiastically, as it was doggedly husbanding resources for the strategic bombing campaign against Germany. But the value of the air transport which the Indian authorities managed to prise loose from London was demonstrated overwhelmingly in Burma for evacuating casualties and for keeping his forces supplied even when surrounded by Japanese. Using 340 transports, Slim moved six of his divisions by air, landing 2,000 tons of men and supplies daily. There was nothing like it again until the Berlin airlift in 1948–49, when the whole of US and British air power was involved (SLIM 3–2; Barnes and Nicholson 1988: 804; Calvocoressi et al. 1989: 532; RAF Historical Society 1995: 89–91). According to Slim, the great Japanese advantages were in the courage and mobility of their troops: ‘our one real advantage over the Jap – air supremacy gained by the sheer skill and courage of the allied air forces – gave us the answer’. Desperate struggles to penetrate thick jungle, at which the frugal and courageous Japanese excelled, could be avoided to some extent by air supply (SLIM 3–2, Lecture to the Press Club).

Irrawaddy, 13 Feb 1945: Operation EXTENDED CAPITAL

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Beginning in late 1944 Mountbatten began his final offensive–Operation CAPITAL–to drive the Japanese from Burma. The crucial phase would be the difficult river crossing of the wide Irrawaddy. Detailed planning and command of this phase–Operation EXTENDED CAPITAL–was in the hands of the 14th Army under Lieutenant-General Slim.

As his army neared the Irrawaddy, Slim assumed–correctly–that the enemy would realize that his next move would be to cross the river. They would also station a light screen of garrisons and patrols–to act as a detection-tripwire– along their lengthy river-bank. Moreover they could–and would–deploy their main force as mobile reserves able to quickly descend on and destroy the British beachhead before it could consolidate. Nevertheless, Slim achieved a strategic surprise by his crossing on 13 February that so disrupted the Japanese strategy that they were forced into complete withdrawal from their generally favorable defensive positions along the river. He achieved surprise only because of a most successful, comprehensive deception plan.

Slim’s 14th Army deception plan was the key to surprise and victory. Knowing that the Japanese expected an offensive, expected it soon, and expected it to involve only a single main crossing at one point, Slim wisely concentrated his effort to mislead his enemy about the site of his real crossing at Nyaungu.

The 14th Army used the same sort of comprehensive, carefully coordinated deception operation first used by Montgomery at Alamein: camouflaged bases, covert deployments, counterfeit units, fake radio traffic, and a premature feint attack to draw the enemy’s reserves to the wrong end of the battle-line. Each unit, from corps to division, had its own part to play and was responsible for designing and carrying out its own deception operations synchronized and coordinated with the general plan. The key was CLOAK, the specific deception plan devised by IV Corps to mask its crossing.

The degree of surprise is measured by the fact that with approximate parity in unit strength–5 divisions in British 14th Army to 5 divisions in Japanese Burma Area Army–along the active portion of the Irrawaddy-front, the British were able to concentrate and move 2 divisions and 1 brigade across at a point where the Japanese mustered only a single understrength regiment.

This case is of special interest because it is the only one for which the actual text of a British deception plan (the IV Corps’ CLOAK plan) has been published.

References

• Deception

– Kirby, IV (65), 173-175, 255, 254-257, 258, 263-266, 271-273, 422. The complete text of the CLOAK plan is given on pp. 501-505.

– Field-Marshal Sir William Slim, Defeat into Victory (London: Cassell, 1956), pp. 411-431.

– Charles F. Romanus and Riley Sunderland, Time Runs Out in CBI (Washington, D.C.: OCMH, 1959), p. 221.

Bill Slim

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General William Slim

Sir William Joseph Slim, (First Viscount Slim) (1891–1970)

British army general and commander of the Fourteenth Army in India and Burma. Born on 6 August 1891 in Bristol, Slim came from humble stock. He joined the Officer Training Corps, and in August 1914, he was commissioned a second lieutenant. At Gallipoli in 1915, he received a serious wound, but he made a full recovery. He deployed to Mesopotamia in 1916, earning the Military Cross for valor before being wounded again and sent to India to convalesce.

Between the wars, Slim served with the Indian army, honed his writing doing part-time journalism, and distinguished himself as an instructor at the Staff College at Camberley and as a student at the Imperial Defence College. By 1940, he was a brigadier general commanding the 10th Indian Infantry Brigade. At Gallabat in the Sudan, his brigade retreated in the face of inferior Italian forces. After this error in judgment, he adopted a marked preference for offensive boldness. The next year, he rose to major general and command of the 10th Indian Division in Iraq and Syria.

With the Japanese invasion of Burma, Slim returned to the China-Burma-India Theater in March 1942 to command the Burma Corps. Overwhelmed by the superior skill and mobility of attacking Japanese forces, Slim oversaw a 1,000-mile retreat, the longest in British army history. Throughout, he kept his demoralized and seriously outclassed corps together, preserving 12,000 men to fight another day.

Promoted to lieutenant general and given command of XV Corps in April 1942, Slim worked to instill in his soldiers resilience and an aggressive attitude. By emphasizing fitness, night and jungle training, small-unit tactics, and self-reliance, he restored the confidence of a badly shaken army. As with the more famous Bernard Montgomery, Slim had the advantage of being not quite a gentleman. He spoke to his troops using their language (he knew Urdu and Gurkhali), and he shared their sacrifices. A solid physique and strong, lantern-jawed mien lent authority to his tough talk. As he mingled with his men, he transmitted the forcefulness of his own personality to the units under his command. Slim continued his personalized brand of leadership when he assumed command of the Fourteenth Army in May 1943.

Slim’s Fourteenth Army faced its sternest challenge with the Japanese HA-GÙ and U-GÙ offensives in March 1944, the latter aiming for Imphal and Kohima. Initially caught off balance, Slim’s army fought doggedly, forcing the Japanese to expend their momentum and limited supplies in costly attacks. Counterattacking, Fourteenth Army pursued the Japanese across the malarial mountains of Burma during the monsoon season. In its headlong retreat, the Japanese Fifteenth Army lost nearly half of its initial force of 150,000 men. Fighting a unified Japanese army with an aura of invincibility about it, Slim’s multiethnic and religiously diverse army inflicted the largest land defeat on Japan up to that time. Slim then led the reconquest of Burma until war’s end.

After the war, Slim served as chief of the Imperial General Staff, and in 1949 he earned promotion to field marshal. From 1953 to 1960, he was governor-general of Australia, becoming in 1960 the First Viscount Slim. His memoir, Defeat into Victory (1956), is regarded as a classic. Slim died in London on 14 December 1970.

Bill Slim, but from what I have read he seems to have done pretty well in the Middle East. In East Africa he led an assault that he didn't agree with until he got shot (in the ass,). The attack baulked at that point.

In Syria he led a long-range penetration that was successful in dislocating Vichy positions and contributed to the success of the operation - one of the few successful British feats of arms to that point. He led from the front, too. Rather in front of the front. There is a story about the lead recon unit of his force advancing along a winding mountain road in Syria. They heard a vehicle approaching and set up an ambush. The vehicle they stopped was Slim's staff car, coming from in FRONT of them. Slim said, "By the way, there's an AT gun on the third bend ahead of you." He then drove off, leaving the Recon officer gaping at a rather large hole in the back of the General's staff car.

As 14th Army CO, he took a ragtag bunch of people who had been 'abandoned' by Higher Authority and turned them into a winning force. OK, the Japenese were outgunned and starving; such did not keep them from inflicting approximately equal casualties in any other campaign (the difference is the Allied casualties included dead and wounded, the Japanese were almost all DEAD). 14th Army did better than any other force facing Japanese opposition, and did it while "Sucking Hind Teat" on the supply chain even worse than SWPA and SoPac were. I mean, who else conducted successful mobile warfare using Grants?

PS: When Slim succeeded Montgomery as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Monty gave him a detailed gripe session about the many things wrong with the British Army.

Slim's response was, "And what have YOU done about it?" He then proceeded to straighten things out during his term as CIGS (insofar as anyone can straighten out an organization dominated by the bureaucrats of MoD).

References

Calvert, Michael. Slim. New York: Ballantine Books, 1973.

Evans, Geoffrey C. Slim as Military Commander. London: B. T. Batsford, 1969.

Lewin, Ronald. Slim the Standardbearer: A Biography of Field- Marshal the Viscount Slim. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1976.

Slim, Sir William. Defeat into Victory. London: Cassell, 1956 (rev. ed. 1961).

SINGAPORE

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Naval Base

Pre-war Singapore

In 1827 George Windsor Earl, a British colonial official and ethnographer, having completed his tour of Java, Borneo, the Malay Peninsula, and Siam, had this to say of Singapore:

Singapore is situated on an island at the extremity of the Malay peninsula which affords communication between the China Sea and the Bay of Bengal. In addition to the extensive commerce carried on by Europeans, native traders encouraged by freedom from duties enjoyed there, flock from all parts of the world, while the manufactures of Hindustan are there exchanged for rich productions of the archipelago. This port is visited by vessels of all nations and the flags of Britain, Holland, France and America may be seen intermingled with streamers of Chinese junks and fanciful colours of native prahus. (EARL 1837, P . 345)

Earl’s observations were both penetrating and accurate. His description summed up the telescopic growth of Singapore in less than a decade after its establishment and suggested the immense potential the city had for its future expansion. From its very inception, Singapore was conceived of as a free port, a status that contributed to its rapid development.

The early history of Singapore remains obscure. Chinese sources refer to Temasek as an outpost of the Sumatran Sri Vijaya Empire; in the succeeding centuries, Singapore remained part of the sultanate of Johore.

The history of Singapore as a modern port city may be dated to the year 1819, when Sir Stamford Raffles (1781–1826), lieutenant governor of the English East India Company’s settlement at Bencoolen (present-day Bengkulu, Indonesia), successfully persuaded company authorities to give him permission to find ports south of Malacca and thereby to further British trade in the Southeast Asian archipelago. In 1819 Raffles hoisted the British flag in the island, and established Singapore as a trading post and settlement after signing a treaty with the ruler of Johore. According to the treaty, British jurisdiction would extend over a limited part of the island. Five years later, final arrangements were made for the entire cession of the island and a treaty was concluded between the English East India Company with the sultan of Johore whereby ‘‘the island of Singapore together with the adjacent seas, straits and islets to the extent of 10 geographical miles from the coast of Singapore were given up in full sovereignty and property to the English East India Company.’’

For the first years of its founding, Singapore was one of the dependencies of Bencoolen. The city subsequently came under the control of the Bengal government and thereafter in 1826 was incorporated with Penang and Malacca to form the Straits Settlements under the control of British India. By 1832 Singapore had become the center of government for the three areas. On April 1, 1867, the Straits Settlements became a crown colony under the jurisdiction of the colonial office in London.

The founding of Singapore was largely intended to protect the China trade of the English East India Company and of its private servants, which consisted largely of the exchange of tea from Canton (present-day Guangzhou) with the opium of Bengal. The two principal routes for the trade between Europe, India, Southeast Asia, and China were the Straits of Malacca in the north and the Straits of Sunda in the south. The southern route had been under Dutch control, but with the founding of Penang situated at the southern Straits of Malacca in 1781 and Singapore in 1819, both entrances to the straits came under British control, thereby assuring Britain full control over the China trade.

The Anglo-Dutch hostilities in the second quarter of the nineteenth century kept the situation fluid, but Singapore flourished, encouraging the English to press for its retention in the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1825. The treaty secured a division of the spheres of influence— with the British controlling the northern sector of the Straits of Malacca and the Dutch the southern segment. Even by this time, Singapore had become a much sought after port by the English private traders who in 1813 had secured the opening of the India trade and had begun to participate extensively in the trade with China.

Singapore became a valuable transshipment base— Europeans picked up Chinese silks from Singapore and left English cloth to be shipped to China by Chinese traders. In 1833 the China trade was also thrown open with the result that Singapore’s role as a transshipment center came to an end. But by this time, the status of Singapore as a free port had already established its potential for spectacular growth both within the region as well as within a larger global network.

The initial phase of Singapore’s commercial development accommodated local and Asian enterprise, with the Chinese dominating the scene. The Bugis, for instance, were important carriers; from their headquarters in the Celebes (present-day Sulawesi, Indonesia), they made their way in sailing boats called prahus, collecting and distributing the produce of the eastern half of the archipelago to Singapore and taking away in exchange European and Indian textiles and other products. After 1837 the Chinese dominated the trade of Singapore. Around this date, Singapore was recorded to have imported British manufactures to the annual amount of several hundred thousand pounds and to have attracted a polyglot population of Chinese, Malays, Indians, Javanese, Bugis, Balinese, and Arabs.

With the advent of steam shipping, Singapore’s advantages increased even further due to its location as a coaling depot. The expansion of steam-based commercial transport threatened to increase congestion and undermine trade, but this was averted with the development of the New Harbour (later known as Keppel Harbour), which began in earnest in the 1860s. Between 1860 and 1912, a number of companies competed against each other for contracts related to dock building and wharfing facilities. In 1912 the Singapore Harbour Board was reconstituted and the government began an extensive program of wharf accommodation and dock building.

The emergence of Singapore as the seventh largest port in the world in 1916 was a consequence of its strategic location as the hub of Southeast Asian steamship communication, lying as it did in the mainline shipping routes. Singapore’s trade, as well as the trade of the Straits Settlements, was divided almost entirely between European and Chinese merchants. The Europeans handled the trade centered at New Harbour, while the Chinese monopolized the trade of Singapore River. These two sectors of trade were carried on in two different languages, English in the foreign markets and Chinese in the bazaar.

Singapore’s trade flowed along two channels that may be called the east-west axis—that is, trade directed toward Europe involving the import of European manufactures and the export of Southeast Asian produce. In 1897 there were twenty European import-export firms engaged in the trade westward; the number had increased to sixty by 1908. These export-import firms took on the management of business enterprises, usually tin mines and rubber estates that were owned by companies located in Europe, England, and elsewhere. European merchants worked through Chinese intermediaries on two to three months’ credit. They bought from their Chinese connections the raw materials and foodstuffs for exportation to the West.

Chinese merchants were middlemen in a middleman’s economy. They stood between the European merchants who imported Western manufactures and the producers of Southeast Asia, who bartered their produce for the manufactures. The Chinese merchants distributed manufactured goods by adopting three modes of exchange. One method was to barter cotton piece goods; a second method was for the merchant to dispose of goods to agents in Southeast Asia. Finally, the Chinese merchant could sell directly to native consumers, and this was occasionally done in the Malay Peninsula. Here, a greater degree of enterprise was required; besides textiles, the merchant took along necessities.

The ability of the Chinese to trade directly and effectively in Southeast Asia was due to the fact that they had established connections in all these islands and that they had agents stationed in Sumatra, Borneo, and the Indonesian mainland. The Chinese were also able to command corresponding facilities, which were enjoyed by European firms in the trade westward. Shipping in particular gave the Chinese a big advantage—Chinese steamers shipped European manufactures or intra-Asian commodities, such as fish and rice, and brought the produce to be sold to the Europeans. The development of Chinese shipping was encouraged by legislation passed in the colony in 1852, whereby old Chinese residents could become naturalized British subjects. By the 1860s Chinese-owned vessels flying British colors plied the ports between Singapore, Siam, Cochin in China, and the archipelago.

European and Chinese merchants complemented each others’ activities. Europeans depended on the Chinese to dispose of their imports of manufactured goods and for a supply of exports of Southeast Asian produce. The Chinese depended on the Europeans for their credit facilities.

Euro-Asia trade constituted only one segment of Singapore’s trade. A second component was the intra- Asian trade that involved huge exchanges with Southeast Asia, rice and fish being the most important commodities. Here, too, British political control was an important factor in the expansion of the colony’s trade with the larger region. British control over Malaya had an appreciable effect on the trade of the Straits Settlements, whose merchants had substantial investment in tin and rubber, the natural resources of Malaya. Imports from and exports to Thailand were of equal value in 1870; imports increased thirteen times by 1915, exports increasing only by four and a half times. Thailand exported rice to Singapore and the Straits Settlements, while Malaysia exported rubber and tin.

Exports from Burma (Myanmar) were not appreciably significant; Burmese rice exports were diverted to the British and European market after the opening of the Suez Canal. The case of Borneo was different: Exports (rice, fish, cloth, opium, machinery, and railway materials) from Singapore made their way to Borneo, while the port received substantial imports of rattan, gambier, sago, gum, copra, coffee, and tobacco. Among the other items of Southeast Asian produce that entered Singapore’s trade, mention must be made of such Indonesian imports as pepper, rattan, gambier, and small amounts of rubber.

Between 1870 and 1915, the trade of the Straits Settlements had become one of trade in Southeast Asian produce. By the end of the period, Malaysia had become Singapore’s single most important trading partner, with tin and rubber figuring as the key imports. The phenomenal commercial expansion of the city was reflected in an impressive development of infrastructure related to expansion of dock facilities and civic amenities.

By the 1920s, Singapore became increasingly important in British perception as they began building a naval base in the city in 1923, partly in response to Japan’s increasing naval power. A costly and unpopular project, construction of the base proceeded slowly until the early 1930s, when Japan began moving into Manchuria and northern China. A major component of the base was completed in March 1938, when the King George VI Graving Dock was opened; more than 300 meters (984 feet) in length, it was the largest dry dock in the world at the time. The base, completed in 1941 and defended by artillery, searchlights, and the newly built Tengah Airfield, caused Singapore to be hailed in the press as the ‘‘Gibralter of the East.’’ The floating dock, 275 meters (902 feet) long, was the third largest in the world and could hold sixty thousand workers. The base also contained dry docks, giant cranes, machine shops, and underground storage for water, fuel, and ammunition.

The outbreak of World War II did not affect most Singaporeans until the first half of 1941. The main pressure on the Straits Settlements was the need to produce more rubber and tin for the Allied war effort. However, by 1942, following sustained bombing by Japan, Singapore came under Japanese control. During the period of Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945, Singapore remained a witness to Japanese aggression and brutality. The occupation produced a huge wave of anti-Japanese agitation in Singapore, particularly among the Chinese population, which had borne the brunt of the occupation in retribution for support given by Singaporean Chinese to mainland China in its struggle against Japan.

The Japanese surrender in 1945 did not immediately guarantee Singapore’s slow recovery to normalcy and prosperity. The end of the British Military Administration in March 1946 was followed by Singapore becoming a crown colony, while Penang and Malacca became part of the Malayan Union in 1946, and later the Federation of Malaya in 1948.

Postwar Singapore saw its merchants clamoring for a more active political role. Constitutional powers were initially vested in the governor, who had an advisory council of officials and nominated nonofficials. This evolved into the separate Executive and Legislative Councils in July 1947. The governor retained firm control over the colony, but there was provision for the election of six members to the Legislative Council by popular vote. These developments were followed by Singapore’s first election on March 20, 1948.

The efforts of the Communist Party of Malaya take over Malaya and Singapore by force produced a state of emergency. The emergency that was declared in June 1948 lasted for twelve years. Towards the end of 1953, the British government appointed a commission under Sir George Rendel (1889–1979) to review Singapore’s constitutional position and make recommendations for change. The Rendel proposals were accepted by the government and served as the basis of a new constitution that gave Singapore a greater measure of self-government.

The 1955 election was the first political contest in Singapore’s history. David Marshall (1908–1995) became Singapore’s first chief minister on April 6, 1955, with a coalition government made up of his own labor front, the United Malays National Organization and the Malayan Chinese Association.

Marshall resigned on June 6, 1956, after the breakdown of constitutional talks in London on attaining full internal self-government. Lim Yew Hock (1914–1984), Marshall’s deputy and minister for labor became the chief minister. The March 1957 constitutional mission to London led by Lim Yew Hock was successful in negotiating the main terms of a new Singapore constitution. On May 28, 1958, the Constitutional Agreement was signed in London.

Self-government was attained in 1959. In May of that year Singapore’s first general election was held to choose fifty-one representatives to the first fully elected Legislative Assembly. The People’s Action Party (PAP) won forty-three seats, gleaning slightly more than 50 percent of the total vote. On June 3, the new constitution confirming Singapore as a self-governing state was brought into force by the proclamation of the governor, Sir William Goode, who became Singapore’s first yang di-pertuan negara (head of state) from 1959–1961. The first government of the state of Singapore was sworn in on June 5, with Lee Kuan Yew (1923– ) as Singapore’s first prime minister.

The PAP had come to power in a united front with the Communists to fight British colonialism. The contradictions within the alliance soon surfaced and led to a split in l961, with pro-Communists subsequently forming a new political party, the Barisan Sosialis. The other main players in this drama were the Malayans, who in 1961 agreed to Singapore’s merger with Malaya as part of a larger federation. This federation was also to include the British territories in Borneo, with the British controlling the foreign affairs, defense, and internal security of Singapore.

On May 27, 1961, the Malayan Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman (1903–1990), proposed closer political and economic cooperation between the Federation of Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak, North Borneo, and Brunei in the form of a merger. The main terms of the merger, agreed on by Abdul Rahman and Lee Kuan Yew, were to have the central government responsible for defense, foreign affairs, and internal security, but local autonomy in matters pertaining to education and labor. A referendum on the terms of the merger held in Singapore on September 1, 1962, showed the people’s overwhelming support for the PAP’s plan to go ahead with the merger.

Malaysia was formed on September 16, 1963, and consisted of the Federation of Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak, and North Borneo (now Sabah). The merger proved to be short-lived. Singapore was separated from the rest of Malaysia on August 9, 1965, and became a sovereign, democratic, and independent nation.

Independent Singapore was admitted to the United Nations on September 21, 1965, and became a member of the Commonwealth of Nations on October 15, 1965. On December 22, 1965, it became a republic, with Yusof bin Ishak (1910–1970) as the republic’s first president.

LINK

JAPANESE EMPIRE

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The Japanese never accepted that defeat indicted policy. To the minds of the surviving leadership, extension of the Emperor's benevolence to the Greater East Co-Prosperity Sphere was either a sacred duty or the natural right of the leading regional power, depending on the philosophical inclinations of the individual. To paraphrase what David Bergamini wrote many years ago, they will wish to proclaim before the shades of their ancestors Japan's gamble to control half the world. –after all, their mentors the British (Navy) and Germans (Army) managed or aspired also!

Japan was the only non-Western nation to construct an empire in the Age of Imperialism. Modeled in large part upon European empires, the Japanese Empire by 1914 included Taiwan, the adjacent Pescadore Islands, Korea, southern Sakhalin Island, and nearly 1,400 islands in the Marshal, Mariana, and Caroline Island chains in the South Pacific. In China, Japan occupied 1,300 square miles of territory in South Manchuria (Guandong) and 200 square miles of land in Kiaochow Bay, Shandong. The Guandong leasehold included the South Manchuria Railway, a first-class naval base at Port Arthur, and Dairen, one of the best ice-free ports on the coast of Northeast Asia. The Kiaochow lease included another first-class naval base and commercial port, Qingdao, and rights to the Shandong Railway.

Japan acquired the Guandong lease and Kiaochow Bay from Russia and Germany, respectively. But Japanese empire-builders themselves were responsible for constructing much of the modern infrastructure of Taiwan, Korea, southern Sakhalin, and the South Pacific Islands. A renewed spurt of empire building from 1931 added enormously to the geographic scope of the Japanese empire. But military defeat in 1945 stripped Japan completely of her overseas territories.

A Timeline of Japanese Expansion

The modern expansion of Japanese borders began during the Tokugawa Shōgunate between 1600 and 1868. The nominal authority of the Japanese archipelago was the Shōgun—the strongest warrior in the land—whose government was headquartered in Edo, present-day Tokyo. In 1807, the Shōgun assumed administrative control of the northern-most of the four main Japanese islands, Ezo, present-day Hokkaido. The Treaty of Shimoda, concluded in 1855 with Russia, added the southern half of the Kuril Island chain up to Iturup to Japan’s northern border and recognized joint Russo-Japanese occupation of Sakhalin Island in the Sea of Okhotsk. To the southeast, the Shōgun dispatched immigrants and established administrative control over the Bonin Islands in 1861.

The geographic scope of Japanese rule expanded apace with the emergence of modern Japan after the Meiji Restoration of 1868. In 1875, another treaty with Russia traded Japanese interests in Sakhalin Island for ownership of the entire Kuril island chain. To the west, Tsushima Island became part of Nagasaki Prefecture. To the south, the Ryukyus, present-day Okinawa, were incorporated into the new state in 1879. In 1880, the Bonin Islands became part of the Tokyo metropolitan prefecture. Japan acquired her first formal colonies after her successful participation in three modern wars. After the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), Tokyo received title to Taiwan and the Pescadore Islands; as a result of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), Japan acquired its first foothold in China in the former Russian leasehold in southern Manchuria. By 1913, almost 90,000 Japanese lived in the leasehold, including a division-strength garrison of the Japanese Army at Port Arthur —named in 1919 the Guandong Army— and six battalions of special guard troops in the Railway zone. In 1905, Japan also received full title to the southern Sakhalin Island of Karafuto and preponderant political and economic influence in Korea. More than 42,000 Japanese resided in Korea in 1905, when Japan established a protectorate there, and she annexed the peninsula formally in 1910. In the first month of World War I in 1914, the Japanese navy chased the German East India Squadron out of the Marshal, Mariana, and Caroline Islands, establishing Japan for the first time as a Pacific empire. In November of the same year, Japanese troops ejected German forces from Qingdao, China.

The Japanese Empire and Western Imperialism

Although commercial activity between the Matsumae fiefdom in southern Ezo and the Ainu peoples who inhabited the rest of the island steadily expanded Japanese political and economic reach in the eighteenth century, the modern expansion of Japanese borders came overwhelmingly in response to the growing imperial activity of the Western powers in Asia. The Shōgun authorized a geographic survey of Ezo and explorations of the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin Island in response to several intrusions by Russian ships in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Administrative control of the Bonin Islands in 1861 followed earlier claims to the islands by Britain in 1827 and the United States in 1853.

The immediate context for the founding of modern Japan was the renewed Western imperial thrust to the east after the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. Seeking an expansion of the highly lucrative tea trade, London abolished the British East India Company monopoly of trade with China in 1813 and in 1834 dispatched an official representative of the British crown, a superintendent of trade at Canton, to oversee a liberalization of commerce. When Beijing attempted to eradicate opium, Britain’s principal currency of exchange for tea, a fleet of 16 British warships set sail for China. China’s crushing defeat in the Opium War transformed the balance of power in East Asia. The Chinese had for more than 80 years confined trade with the Western maritime powers to Canton and maintained a tight control on foreign commerce. After 1842, Beijing was forced to conclude a series of “unequal treaties” with the Western powers that opened several Chinese ports to foreign commerce and residence and deprived China of its ability to set its own tariffs or to try foreign nationals in domestic courts.

Just 11 years after China capitulated to British firepower, U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry steamed into Uraga Bay outside of present-day Tokyo to make similar demands of Japan. Like China, Japanese leaders were compelled to conclude a series of treaties, beginning with the Treaty of Kanagawa with the United States in 1854, which opened Japanese ports to foreign commerce and residence on disadvantageous terms. Yet unlike China, the capitulation incited a civil war that brought down the Shōgunate and spurred the founding of modern Japan.

Modern Japan’s founders understood the projection of power as an integral symbol and prerogative of a modern nation. Just one year after the Meiji Restoration, influential statesmen urged an invasion of Korea in response to Seoul’s refusal to normalize relations. By 1873, a “Conquer Korea” debate among the Japanese ruling circle had rejected invasion in favor of industrial development at home, but in 1874, Japan nonetheless sent 3,600 samurai warriors to Taiwan in retaliation for the massacre of 54 shipwrecked Ryukyuans by Taiwanese aborigines. Originally aimed at colonizing eastern Taiwan, Tokyo soon abandoned the scheme for fear of war with China and possible intervention by the Western powers. In the Peking Treaty of 1874, China instead agreed to pay an indemnity to the Ryukyuans, thereby weakening Chinese claim to suzerainty over the Ryukyus and paving the way for incorporation of the islands into the Japanese empire.

Although the Korea debate of 1873 had rejected an immediate invasion, Japanese policymakers continued to seek Korean recognition of Japan’s newfound status as a modern nation, and Japanese warships made periodic forays to the Korean coast after 1873. In 1875, Japanese troops seized a Korean fort on Kanghwa Island, south of Seoul, after being fi red on by Korean shore batteries. The next year, Tokyo sent an emissary with military support to demand a normalization of relations. On the model of Commodore Perry’s 1854 “opening” of Japan, Kuroda Kiyotaka forced Korea to conclude the Treaty of Kanghwa in 1876, which, like earlier treaties forced on China and Japan by the Western powers, compelled Korea to open its ports to international commerce on disadvantageous terms.

The Kanghwa treaty marked the beginning of a long-term Japanese interest in Korea that would bring Japan to successive blows against two other regional rivals, China and Russia. First, having upset Korea’s traditional deference to Chinese regional hegemony, the treaty marked the beginning of almost two decades of Sino- Japanese jockeying for position on the peninsula. Although Tokyo had negotiated the Kanghwa treaty directly with Seoul, a new Chinese Imperial Commissioner for Northern Ports concluded the remainder of Korea’s treaties with the Western powers in the early 1880s. From the late 1870s through the early 1890s, Japan and China allied with rival Korean political factions to vie for political, economic, and diplomatic influence in Seoul. By 1882, Japan had 700 and China 1,500 troops stationed permanently in the Korean capital to safeguard their burgeoning interests.

Japan’s military defeat of China in 1895 marked the end of Chinese regional hegemony. It also spelled the beginning of a new round of Great Power competition that would noticeably expand the influence of a formidable new Western presence in Asia, that of Russia. After the initial conquest of Siberia in the seventeenth century, Russian pressure in Northeast Asia eased until after the Second Opium War, when St. Petersburg joined the powers in the unequal treaty regime imposed on Beijing. Most conspicuously, the Supplemental Treaty of Peking in 1860 granted the tsar almost 400,000 square miles of territory in the Maritime Provinces northeast of Manchuria and Korea. The start of construction on a Trans-Siberian Railway in 1891 confirmed St. Petersburg’s commitment to colonization of the Russian Far East. By 1895, Vladivostok, the proposed terminus of the railway, had become a substantial port city. Having amassed a fleet of 29 warships there, Russia confidently initiated the Triple Intervention in that year, allying with France and Germany to force Japan to relinquish claims to the Liaodong Peninsula in south Manchuria at the peace conference with China. By the Treaty of Li-Lobanov in1896, China permitted Russian construction of a railway through north Manchuria, the Chinese Eastern Railway, shortening the route of the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok.

One year later, using the murder of two German missionaries in Shandong province as a pretext, imperial Germany began a scramble for “spheres of influence” in China, whereby the powers vied for exclusive rights to build railways, mines, and fortified ports in strategic areas throughout the continent. By 1898, Germany had acquired a leasehold in Kiaochow Bay, the British in Weihaiwei and Kowloon near Hong Kong, the French in Kwangchow near the border of French Indochina, and Russia in the Liaodong Peninsula. Japan obtained only a simple pledge from Beijing not to grant special rights to any other power in Fujian province, across the straits from Taiwan.

The growing Russian presence in Northeast Asia also placed new pressure on Korea. Forever in search of a warm-water port in the Pacific, St. Petersburg had sent a warship to Tsushima Island in 1861 and proceeded to build permanent shore facilities. Although two British men-of-war foiled the mission, Russia began making demands for trade at the Korean border after the 1860 acquisition of the Maritime Provinces. The tsar joined the unequal treaty regime in Seoul with the 1884 Russo- Korean Treaty. Japan therefore moved aggressively after the Sino-Japanese War to consolidate its position in Korea. But in 1895, when the new Japanese minister in Seoul supported a plot to assassinate the Korean queen, the crown prince sought asylum in the Russian legation. During the year that the prince remained with the Russians, he looked to St. Petersburg for substantial political, economic, and military advice. In 1896, Russia received mining and timber rights near the Russo- Korean border, in North Hamgyong province and the Yalu Basin and Ullung Island, respectively. The Li-Lobanov Treaty between Russia and China also outlined mutual military assistance in the event of a Japanese attack on either signatory or Korea.

American, French, German, and British concessionaires joined the Russians after the Sino-Japanese War in the rush to construct and finance railway, mining, electricity, and waterworks projects in Korea, just as they proceeded in China. Initially, Russian pressure excluded Japanese interests from this competition. In 1898, however, Russian demands for a coaling station at Deer Island in Pusan Harbor in southern Korea provoked a backlash from the Western powers that spelled opportunity for Tokyo. In the same year, Japanese interests received rights to finance and construct two rail lines in Korea, from the capital to Pusan on the south coast and to Inchon on the west coast. The Nishi-Rosen Agreement concluded with Russia in the same year barred both signatories from direct interference in Korean internal affairs yet recognized Japan’s preferential economic and commercial position in Korea.

Like the Sino-Japanese War, the Boxer Insurrection (1899–1901) transformed the balance of power in East Asia. Responding to the penetration of Western missionaries into rural China after the 1858 Treaty of Tianjin, the Boxers United in Righteousness arose in northwest Shandong province in 1898 and in 1900 laid siege to the foreign legation quarters in Beijing. The Great Powers dispatched a combined a force of 20,000, 8,000 of whom came from Japan, to liberate their respective countrymen. But like the Sino-Japanese War, the Boxer disturbance sparked a renewed scramble for position among the intervening powers. In the south, the Japanese civilian administrator in Taiwan plotted an expedition to seize the principal port of Fujian province, Amoy, across the straits from the Japanese colony. Tokyo eventually vetoed the scheme for fear of upsetting Great Britain, a potential ally in the accelerating rivalry with Russia. In the north, Russia had used the outbreak of the Boxer uprising to flood Manchuria with 200,000 troops. This dramatic new military presence became the immediate catalyst for the Russo-Japanese War, in which Japan’s spectacular victories on land at Mukden and at sea in the Straits of Tsushima marked its coming-out as a power of the first rank.

Japan again followed military victory in 1905 with swift efforts to consolidate control in Korea. With no remaining regional rivals after Russia’s defeat, the door now stood open to Japanese hegemony on the peninsula. Even before the Treaty of Portsmouth ended the war, the United States concluded an executive agreement with Tokyo recognizing Japanese “suzerainty over Korea,” the Taft-Katsura Agreement of July 1905. Four months later, Japan compelled Korean officials to sign a Protectorate Treaty, calling for a Japanese resident-general in Seoul. The new executive head possessed sweeping powers to supervise Japanese officials and advisers in Korea, intervene directly in Korean decision making, issue regulations enforceable by imprisonment or fines, and use Japanese troops to maintain law and order. Seoul continued to resist Japanese encroachments, but the assassination of Resident General Hirobumi Itō in 1909 led to formal incorporation of the peninsula via the 1910 Treaty of Annexation.

One month after the Protectorate Treaty with Korea, China confirmed a new position for Japan in South Manchuria. Japan had been shut out of the scramble for spheres of influence in China after the Sino-Japanese War, but the Sino-Japanese Treaty of December 1905 now recognized the transfer to Japan of Russian rights and leases in Liaodong Peninsula. The South Manchuria Railway, Dairen, Port Arthur, and the Guandong Army would become the backbone of Japanese power and influence in China until the end of World War II.

In light of the country’s steady expansion through successive wars, Japan’s leadership looked to the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914 as another opportunity. By November 1914, Japan had made two notable additions to her burgeoning empire: the Japanese navy occupied German Micronesia—the Marshal, Mariana, and Caroline Islands—while Japanese troops ejected German forces from Kiaochow Bay. Although Tokyo formally returned its Shandong possessions to China in 1922, the islands of German Micronesia remained in Japanese hands as Class C mandates under the League of Nations covenant through 1945.

Japanese Empire through Western Inspiration and Aid

If the Japanese Empire grew largely within the context of Western imperialism in Asia, it was also inspired by the same principals that underlay the rapid expansion of Western power in the late nineteenth century. The first full Japanese-language translation of Henry Wheaton’s 1836 classic, Elements of International Law: With a Sketch of the History of the Science, appeared in 1869 and became a critical guide for Japan’s crusade to behave and be treated like a “civilized” nation. Herbert Spencer’s evolutionary theories came to Japan through the University of Tokyo, where Toyama Masakazu, who had become devoted to Spencer after several years of study at the University of Michigan, began lecturing in 1876 on Spencer’s ideas on biology, psychology, and sociology. At the same time, American Ernest Fenellosa taught philosophy at Tokyo University through a distinctly Spencerian lens. Spencer’s Principles of Sociology and Charles Darwin ’ s Origin of Species were both translated into Japanese in the early 1880s.

Although Japan did not enjoy the racial disparity with its subject peoples typical of Western colonialism, Japanese empire-builders shared with their Western counterparts a faith in human progress and the universality of the principles defined by international law, a belief in the “survival of the fittest” and a conviction that they, as members of a “civilized” race, possessed both the right and responsibility to uplift their less enlightened neighbors. In 1875, Fukuzawa Yukichi, a Japanese man of letters, published the wildly popular Outline of Civilization, which defined civilization as intellectual and moral progress. Just one year earlier, Japanese policymakers had contemplated the colonization of eastern Taiwan to bring civilization to an area where China exercised no legal jurisdiction. Kuroda Kiyotaka was dispatched to Korea in 1876 to negotiate a treaty based on the “law of nations.” And on the eve of the Sino-Japanese War, Japan demanded of Seoul the removal of “old, deep-rooted abuses,” which “endangered peace and order.”

Taiwan, South Manchuria, southern Sakhalin, Korea, and German Micronesia were eventually incorporated into the Japanese empire in the name of civilizing the “lesser peoples” of Asia. Japanese statesmen meticulously established legal title to all territories through internationally recognized treaties, and they exported to their colonies those institutions that had, by their introduction into Japan in the late nineteenth century, come to define a modern nation: a modern bureaucracy, national education, taxation, policing, and a new industrial infrastructure of railroads, telegraphs, and factories. Even the physical layout of Western capitals and colonial territories that had made their way to Japan in the nineteenth century were re-exported to Japanese colonies in the form of large, Western-style stone buildings with imposing columns and arches and wide, tree-lined boulevards.

In its initial forays into colonial governance, Japanese imperialism clearly looked West for much of its inspiration. Early efforts to raise Japanese influence in Korea through railway construction and loans identified British Egypt as a suitable model. The first Japanese civilian administrator of Taiwan and later head of the South Manchuria Railway, Goto Shinpei, encouraged his subordinates to read widely about British colonialism and commissioned a Japanese translation of Sir Charles Lucas’ Historical Geography of the British Colonies. Having spent several years of study in Germany in the 1880s, Goto also avidly subscribed to German ideas of “scientific colonialism.”

If Japanese empire-builders referenced the same literature on international relations and colonial governance as their Western counterparts, they equally received critical direct guidance from leading Western practitioners of empire building. The Japanese policymakers who had advised against the invasion of Korea in 1873 did so after close observation of the West. During a 22-month sojourn to the United States and Europe, these men had surveyed every trapping of modern national power: parliaments, factories, foundries, and shipyards. And they listened intently as the leader of a powerful newcomer to the international stage, German chancellor Otto von Bismarck, advised them to build up and rely on Japan’s own strength. When conversely Japan’s young leaders decided in 1874 to send a military expedition to colonize eastern Taiwan, they did so on the advice of former U.S. consul to Amoy Charles LeGendre. A French legal adviser to the Japanese government, Gustave Boissanade, aided the 1874 negotiations with China that recognized de facto Japanese suzerainty over the Ryukyus. And the conversion of Japan’s modern army from small-scale garrisons to a large, mobile force capable of projecting Japanese military strength was facilitated by the Prussian officer, Major Klemens Meckel, who in 1885 began teaching at Japan’s new army staff college that Korea was a “dagger pointed at the heart of Japan.” In 1895, Japanese negotiators at the peace conference with China followed the guidance of veteran American legal adviser to the Japanese Foreign Ministry, Henry W. Denison. Four years later, Denison helped arrange the transfer from American to Japanese interests of a concession to build the Seoul- Inchon rail link in Korea.

Japanese imperialism also received inspiration and direct guidance from abroad, often relying on Western technical and material support. Through advice and help from the Netherlands, the only Western power with which the Tokugawa regime engaged in active trade, Japan had already constructed Western-style ironworks, steam engines, and dockyards by 1868. In the waning years of the Tokugawa era, Russian interests advised the construction of a series of Western-style sailing vessels, and French technicians helped build the Yokosuka Foundry and Shipyards.

Western technical support swelled with the advent of modern Japan and the arrival of more than 6,000 foreign technical experts in the late nineteenth century. In 1876, the Japanese government employed more than 100 British engineers and technicians to advise the construction of a modern rail system. Until 1912, all steam locomotives running on Japanese rails came from foreign factories, and two of the six ships that comprised Kuroda Kiyotaka’s show of strength to Korea in 1876 were piloted by foreign captains. British engineers helped construct the first Japanese integrated ironworks in the late 1870s and, in 1901, German know-how produced Japan’s first modern steelworks. Japanese technicians regularly received training in major Western armaments firms, such as Vickers and Krupp. By the turn of the century, Japanese arsenals and dockyards used sophisticated imported techniques. Nonetheless, all four Japanese battleships in the Japanese armada that decimated the Russian Baltic fleet in the Battle of Tsushima Straits in 1905 came from British shipyards. British diplomatic and financial support, facilitated by the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902, also played a critical role in Japan’s victory over tsarist Russia.

The Japanese Empire as an Anomaly

Although the Japanese empire fit comfortably within the late nineteenth-century scramble for colonies and strategic position initiated in the West, certain factors distinguish Japan from its Western counterparts. Most fundamentally, as a former victim of Great Power imperialism, Japan’s rise in international status lagged behind that of the other industrial nations, and Japanese empire-building through 1914 remained an exercise in catch-up. Heavy reliance on Western models, and technical and material support was an important consequence of the particular timing of Japan’s emergence on the world stage, as was the intensely political and top-down quality of Japanese expansion. Japan remained primarily an agricultural economy until the eve of the Sino-Japanese War in 1894, whereas emigration to subject territories did not lead but rather followed the Japanese flag.

Another fundamental contrast with Western colonialism, geographic proximity to new territory, facilitated Japanese expansion. Whereas most European powers vied for influence in the far reaches of the globe, Japanese policymakers had the luxury of expanding into contiguous territory. Although Japan lagged behind the other powers in the level of industrial maturity, military capacity, and capitalization, it greatly benefited from lower transportation costs, rapid communications, and familiarity with the climate and cultures of its subject territories. Cultural affinity would become the foundation of an entirely new Japanese imperial enterprise from 1931 to 1945. The architects of empire in 1930s, Japan built on earlier territorial acquisitions. The Manchurian Incident, which inaugurated the new era, sprang from an explosion on the South Manchuria Railway, and during the 14 years of war that followed, Tokyo tightened its control of its original territories in Taiwan, South Manchuria, Korea, Karafuto, and German Micronesia.

The new Imperial Japan at its farthest reach dwarfed the scope of the original empire. By 1942, in addition to the original territories, Tokyo controlled all of Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, the entire Chinese coast and industrial centers, most of Southeast Asia, and the South Pacific to the Solomon Islands. More important, the new Japanese Empire grew not as an expression of compliance with international legal norms but as an explicit rejection of Western imperialism in Asia. Rather than seek open association with the Western powers and distinct detachment from “lesser” Asian neighbors, Japanese expansion in the 1930s unambiguously played on the historical and cultural affinities enjoyed with many of its subject peoples to call for “Greater East Asian Co-prosperity.”

LINK

INDIAN OCEAN, JAPANESE NAVAL OPERATIONS IN (MARCH–MAY 1942) –AN OVERVIEW

2010-02-02T20:38:00.000+08:00

Among British casualties in Aichi D3A1 'Val' attacks were HMS Hermes (the world's first carrier to be sunk by carrier aircraft), and the cruisers Cornwall and Dorsetshire. The first British carrier actually designed as such, HMS Hermes was built along the lines of a light cruiser. She carried six 140-mm (5.5-in) guns, as it was not believed that aircraft alone could repel enemy surface attack.

Mogami-class Japanese Heavy Cruiser: From 1 April 1942 CruDiv 7 based from Mergui, Burma joined with CruDiv 4 to participate in the Indian Ocean raids. Mikuma, Mogami and destroyer Amagiri detached and formed the "Southern Group", which hunted for merchant shipping in the Bay of Bengal, while Chokai, DesRon 4's light cruiser Yura and destroyers Ayanami, Yugiri, Asagiri and Shiokaze covered the northern areas. During the operation, the "Southern Group" claimed kills on 7,726-ton British merchant vessel Dardanus and 5,281-ton British merchant vessel Ganara and the 6,622-ton British merchant vessel Indora, en route from Calcutta to Mauritius..

By late March 1942, the Japanese placed primary importance on the elimination of British naval forces in the Indian Ocean that might threaten the oil-rich East Indies. Imperial Headquarters therefore decided to attack Colombo and Trincomalee on Ceylon (Sri Lanka), off India. The Japanese hoped this move would force the British westward; spread panic in India and cause the British to divert resources there from Burma; and open the way to the conquest of Madagascar, which would enable them to cut Allied supply lines to the Pacific, Egypt, and the Soviet Union.

British Vice Admiral James Somerville commanded the Eastern Fleet, with 29 ships. He split his ships into Force A and Force B. The main body, Force A, consisted of his fastest ships: 2 fleet aircraft carriers, 1 battleship, 2 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers, and 6 destroyers. Force B consisted of 1 light carrier, 4 old R-class battleships, and a hodgepodge of 11 old cruisers and destroyers. Somerville faced a superior Japanese force under Vice Admiral Nagumo Chüichi. His First Air Fleet consisted of 5 large aircraft carriers (the Kaga remained in Japan), 4 battleships, 2 heavy cruisers, 1 light cruiser, and 11 destroyers.

En route to Ceylon, the Japanese attacked Port Darwin in Australia and, on 27 February, sank the U.S. seaplane tender Langley, bound for Java with aircraft. On 23 March, the Japanese took the Andaman Islands, securing the sea route to Rangoon from Singapore. Two days later, Nagumo’s ships entered the Indian Ocean.

Earlier, on 7 March, the battleships Haruna and Kongo had shelled Christmas Island, located 190 miles southwest of Java and considered important for its phosphate resources. A Japanese task force, commanded by Rear Admiral Kyuji Kubo and consisting of 3 cruisers, 2 destroyers, and transports, then arrived. Japanese troops forced the island’s surrender on 31 March. The U.S. submarine Seawolf scored a hit on Kubo’s flagship, the light cruiser Naka, which had to be towed to Singapore for repairs. Several months later, the Japanese withdrew from Christmas Island because it was unsuitable for any military facilities.

The attack on Ceylon, code-named Operation C, consisted of a strike against Colombo on 5 April and another on Trincomalee on 9 April. The British believed the Japanese planned to attack Ceylon beginning on 1 April, and Somerville stationed his ships south of Ceylon on 31 March.

Late on 2 April, however, Somerville, who feared a Japanese submarine attack and a daylight air attack on his ships, split his fleet. He sent the majority to Addu Atoll, a small refueling base in the Maldives some 600 miles southwest of Ceylon. He also dispatched the cruisers Dorsetshire and Cornwall to Colombo and the light carrier Hermes and the destroyer Vampire to Trincomalee. Immediately after the British ships reached Addu Atoll on 4 April, the Japanese were sighted 360 miles south of Ceylon. The main British force was now too far away to attack the Japanese, but bases on Ceylon were put on high alert. Somerville realized that he had blundered and recalled the two cruisers to Addu Atoll. The Hermes and Vampire were to rendezvous once they were finished fueling.

At 8:00 A.M. on Easter, 5 April, Japanese aircraft struck Colombo. Forty-two British fighters met the attackers, which were protected by escorting fighters. The Japanese planes destroyed shipping and paid particular attention to shore installations: railroad yards, repair shops, and the airfield. High-altitude Japanese bombers sank an immobilized armed merchant cruiser and a destroyer, and they severely damaged a submarine tender. The raid, completed by 8:35, cost the Japanese only 7 aircraft, whereas the British lost 25. Once the Japanese had recovered their planes, a floatplane spotted the Dorsetshire and Cornwall at sea, and Nagumo launched 88 aircraft against them. The Japanese sank both British heavy cruisers in short order. Somerville had set out from Addu Atoll to engage the Japanese but failed to locate them. When Force B joined him the next day, he regarded it as a liability and promptly dispatched it to Kenya.

Nagumo, meanwhile, moved his ships toward Trincomalee. Believing the Japanese were next going to attack Addu Atoll, Somerville positioned his ships off the atoll, 1,000 miles from the Japanese fleet. With the threat to India’s coast and the sinking of merchant ships, the British decided to cede the eastern Indian Ocean to the Japanese and sent Force A to the western coast of India. The Hermes and Vampire were ordered to hug the coast and join Force A.

The Japanese raid on Trincomalee, beginning at 7:25 A.M. on 9 April and conducted by 91 bombers and 38 fighters, was met by 23 British aircraft. The Japanese planes found no warships in the harbor, but they did sink a merchant ship there. They concentrated on the shore installations and airfield and shot down 9 British Hurricane fighters, as well as 5 Blenheim bombers sent against the Japanese carrier Akagi as she retired (the British bombers scored no hits). That afternoon, Japanese aircraft spotted the Hermes and Vampire at sea. Nagumo sent 90 aircraft against them, and the Hermes, with no planes aboard, and her escorting destroyer were promptly sent to the bottom.

As part of this same operation, the Japanese convoyed their 18th Infantry Division to Rangoon without incident. It arrived there on 7 April. Also, a Japanese raiding force attacked the sea-lanes off India’s east coast. This Malaya Force, commanded by Vice Admiral Ozawa Jisaburo, consisted of the light carrier Ryujo, 5 heavy cruisers, 1 light cruiser, and 4 destroyers. Between 5 and 6 April, it sank 19 merchant ships (92,000 tons) and damaged 3 others. Air strikes by Japanese aircraft flying from Burma brought this total up to some 185,000 tons of shipping sunk, and Japanese submarines operating off India’s west coast sank an additional 32,000 tons.

By 10 April, the Japanese had pushed the British navy out of most of the Indian Ocean, created a buffer against British naval raids on the East Indies and other Japanese possessions, and destroyed significant British military assets. Nagumo concluded that he had achieved his objectives and ordered the First Air Fleet to return to Japan. His fleet had been at sea for many months, and its ships badly needed refitting.

Ultimately, their Indian Ocean victory fueled a belief in their own invincibility among the Japanese and led to the overexpansion of their empire. The extended Japanese Indian Ocean operation also meant that many of the ships were unavailable for the next big sea fight, the Battle of the Coral Sea in May.

References

Andrieu d’Albas, and Emmanuel Marie Auguste. Death of a Navy: Japanese Naval Action in World War II. Trans. Anthony Rippon. New York: Devin-Adair, 1957.

Dull, Paul S. The Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1978.

Roskill, Stephen W. The War at Sea. Vol. 2, The Period of Balance. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1956.

Thomas, David A. Japan’s War at Sea: Pearl Harbor to the Coral Sea. London: A. Deutsch, 1978.

Story of the battle for Burma revealed in new book

2010-02-01T23:16:00.000+08:00

The struggle of British, Commonwealth and American-Chinese troops against the Japanese in Burma was one of the decisive campaigns of the Second World War. British India was threatened by the Japanese advance, the fate of the British Empire in the East hung in the balance. The tropical climate – dense malarial jungle infested with vermin and swept by monsoon rains – made the fighting, for both sides, a remarkable feat of arms. Yet the war in Burma rarely receives the attention it deserves. Roy C. Nesbit, in this highly illustrated account, traces the entire course of the campaign. In vivid detail he describes the British retreat and humiliation at the hands of the Japanese invaders in 1942. The Japanese were fanatical and trained in jungle warfare, well-equipped and backed with an overwhelming air power. The Allied response was to build up their forces on a massive scale – eventually over 1,300,000 personnel were involved – and to train them to fight in the jungle conditions. Their counter-offensive, launched in 1944, culminated in the battles at Imphal and Kohima which turned the course of the conflict, and the reconquest of Burma was achieved just before the atom bomb was dropped.

By Barrie Hudson

A SWINDON-based Second World War veteran and author has published his 25th book.

The Battle For Burma is the latest, exhaustively-researched non-fiction work by Roy Conyers Nesbit, 88, who lives in central Swindon.

All of his books have been well reviewed, and his Amazon listings feature a swathe of five and four-star ratings.
His new book tells the story of the Burma Campaign, in which the Allies fought bitterly in disease-ridden jungle terrain to prevent Japan from overrunning India and dominating the Far East and Asia.

Mr Nesbit chose the subject because he feels it isn’t given the prominence it deserves.

He said: “I think events in Burma were almost of equal importance to events in Europe.

“There were more people involved in the battle for Burma than were involved in the battle for Europe.

“The Japanese achieved an equivalent amount of success to the Germans until we learned how to deal with them.”
Essex-born Mr Nesbit is himself a veteran of the Second World War, having joined the RAF at about noon on September 3, 1939, an hour or so after Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced on the radio that Britain was at war with Hitler’s Germany.

He said: “After war was declared the sirens went off, but we knew it was just a test.
“I rang up a friend and we met and volunteered for the RAF.

“At the time I was working for Lloyds Bank and my father was with the Bank of England in Threadneedle Street.
“I didn’t like my bank studies – I wanted some adventure. I also didn’t like the Germans, so I volunteered!”

Mr Nesbit initially trained as a pilot, only to discover that there was a glut of pilots but not of certain other crew positions.

That was how, at the age of 19, he found himself in the role of navigator and bomb aimer in Bristol Beaufort aircraft targeting German U-boats in low-level attacks on their heavily-defended pens on the French coast.

After 50 hazardous missions he became an instructor in navigation and related skills, eventually seeing service in Rhodesia – now Zimbabwe – and later throughout the Far East.

He left the RAF as a 24-year-old Flight Lieutenant in 1946 and studied at the London School Of Economics before working as a director of various manufacturing and retail firms in London until he retired at 63.

He then moved to Swindon, where a number of his friends lived.

Mr Nesbit’s writing career began in the early 1970s when political strife led to three-day weeks, which in turn left him with time on his hands, although he had previously had an article published in the magazine Aeroplane.

He said: “I was sitting there, wondering what to do. With tongue in cheek, I wrote a personal account of my experiences in the RAF.”

That book, entitled Woe To The Unwary after the motto of his old squadron, was published in 1981 and opened the floodgates for publishers’ requests for more.

Since then he has written not just another two dozen books – three more are in preparation – but also more than 100 articles, and has made numerous radio appearances and several on TV

RAF Defeats: Malaya and Burma

2010-01-27T16:34:00.000+08:00

Malaya is a long peninsula, not as mountainous as Greece, but covered with tropical jungle and many streams that hinder north–south travel. Rainfall is heavy throughout the year, and there are frequent violent thunderstorms, with heavy, low clouds that were impenetrable to the aircraft of the day. Kuantan is 300 miles south of Singora, which is roughly 500 miles north of Singapore. There were 18,000 Europeans living in Malaya in 1939, of whom 42 percent were women and children. This population was reduced in 1941 to 9,000, nearly all of whom were in government service. This was a cumbersome structure unsuited to war and certainly did not have the makings of a pool of reliable, local labor.

Having failed for almost two decades to appreciate Japanese ambitions, neither London nor the local authorities had done much to improve or modernize the region’s defenses against that empire, apart from those guarding the seaward approaches to Singapore. In a way, this was understandable: none of Britain’s traditional imperial rivals would have been expected to attack overland through the Malay states, and Japanese capabilities to do so were seriously underestimated. Moreover, the difficult terrain, lack of roads, and long coastline suggested that the defense of the mainland was a task primarily for the air force rather than the army. The general policy of the Far East Command was therefore to construct as many airfields as possible, grouped to allow the concentration of the aircraft expected to be available. Twenty-six were completed by December 1941 on both coasts, but of these, fifteen were grass fields that became treacherously muddy in the wet climate. Two, at Kota Baharu and Kuantan, were located in close proximity to good invasion beaches, where they would immediately fall into enemy hands given a successful assault. Improvements to the grass fields could not be made because of the small labor pool; most “native” workers were employed in the tin mines and rubber plantations. In addition, overcoming the drainage problem would have required heavy equipment that was simply not available. Furthermore, although everyone knew that the airfields needed their own air defense artillery, by December 1941, only 17 percent of that required had reached Malaya, and most of the forward, vulnerable airfields had no antiaircraft defenses at all.

Air defense was also critical to the security of Singapore. Although four radar stations had been installed there and an observer corps created, there were gaps in coverage, and the lack of telephone lines limited their effectiveness. Efforts to promote civil defenses on the island were hampered by the water table; blackout was considered impossible due to ventilation needs; and although enough food supplies for 5 million people to survive a six-month-long siege had been imported, they were stored around Alor Setar, in the northwest, and would likely fall into enemy hands almost immediately. In short, from the standpoint of managing and caring for the civilian population, the island was not a firm base.

At the outbreak of war on 8 December 1941, there were four daytime fighter squadrons and one night squadron, limited to the defense of Singapore. In addition, there were two light bomber, two general reconnaissance, two torpedo bomber, and one flying boat squadrons— a combination of RAF, Royal Australian Air Force, and Royal New Zealand Air Force units, with Dutch air force reinforcements (twenty-two Glenn Curtiss bombers and nine Brewster Buffaloes) promised. There were only eighty-eight aircraft in reserve. Of the newly arrived Buffaloes (each of which needed twenty-seven modifications), only three squadrons were ready operationally. Not all the pilots were well trained when hostilities began, nor, due to unprocessed intelligence, did they know that the enemy’s Zeros were faster. The other types of aircraft available were old and, in the case of the Vildebeeste torpedo bombers (two squadrons), long overdue for replacement. The light bombers (the four Blenheim I and IV squadrons) and the GR Hudsons (two Australian squadrons) were trained for overseas work but lacked reserves and had too many possible roles. Most important, the number of aircraft available was far below the 330 the British chiefs of staff considered minimal and the 566 requested.

Given this shortfall, primary responsibility for defense was suddenly switched to the army, which meant that the airfields became a defense liability and a danger if taken by the enemy. They had been prepared for demolition by sinking concrete cylinders into the runways and then adding metal canisters of explosives, but these would prove to be less than effective measures when the airfields were overrun. Meanwhile, repairing bomb craters on the runways before the Japanese arrived was an endless, nearly impossible task, given the water table and the continuing lack of native labor. Conscription of the civilian population was never implemented.

The army was not prepared for this unexpected role. Trained for neither jungle nor mobile warfare, many of its 87,000 personnel were afraid of the ground they would have to fight over. Yet, at the same time, they were sublimely overconfident and led largely by officers who did not appreciate the lessons of France and the Middle East and underrated the Japanese. (Overall command was vested in Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, who handed control over to Lieutenant General Sir Henry Pownall on 23 December 1941. In an attempt to produce a coordinated theater effort, General Sir Archibald Wavell became the supreme commander of the American, British, Dutch, and Australian area on 29 December. The air officer, commanding [AOC] was Air Vice-Marshal C. W. H. Pulford; he became ill and was eventually replaced by Air Vice-Marshal P. C. Maltby. The army commander in Malaya was Lieutenant General A. E. Percival.) The high command was faced with a Hobson’s choice: it could meet the Japanese landings well forward and defend the airfields, or, in anticipation of landings at Mersing (close to Singapore) or even on the island itself, it could hold forces farther to the south. The former option was chosen, but the ground commander in the north had too few forces in an area unsuited to a strategic and tactical defense. It went without saying that the two sets of airfields had to be defended, but his lines of communication were limited to a single-line railway. Thinking broadly and imaginatively, the high command conceived of Operation Matador, a preemptive action into Siam; planning for this operation so absorbed the staff that little attention could be paid to the defense of the airfields. In theory, at least, preemption was one way around the army’s weakness—it might catch the Japanese off balance—but since it involved a violation of Thai neutrality, Matador required advance authorization, and on 5 December London told the governor and the commander in chief that Matador could be launched only after the Japanese had landed in Siam or in the Dutch East Indies. By then, it would be too late, as the initiative would be in enemy hands. And that is what happened. Despite the warnings of impending Japanese operations, political concerns about Thai neutrality led to the cancellation of Matador on 7 December.

During the night of 7–8 December, three experienced divisions of the Japanese army landed both north and south of the Thai–Malay border, with one regiment intending to push on into Burma. Their objective from the beginning was to seize the British airfields in northern Malaya as well as that at Victoria Point, Burma—the first step in their attempt to gain overall air superiority in the theater, as well as to cut off the reinforcement and resupply chain from India. Singapore was also attacked in the early morning. Radar gave adequate warning, and the antiaircraft defenses went to immediate readiness (the searchlight units were slower to react). Although there was no blackout and the moon was full, damage at the main targets, the Tengh and Selatar airfields, was slight.

Night fighters were not scrambled against the Singapore raid because they had not practiced with the air defense organization, but there was an active response against the invasion force reported at Kota Baharu. Indeed, an initial attack by the Australian Hudsons was successful, sinking one transport, damaging two others, and killing as many as 3,000 Japanese; a second attack, this time by Vildebeestes, arrived after most of the Japanese transports were gone. The pilots therefore chose to land at Kedah and Kelantan airfields to refuel, but they were caught on the ground by the Japanese, and most of their aircraft were destroyed.

As in France, the nature of the British air campaign was now profoundly shaped by events on the ground. Having failed to stop the amphibious landing, the army could not keep the Japanese from the fringes of Kota Baharu airfield, and the five Hudsons and seven Vildebeestes there withdrew to Kuantan. Other airfields in the north were hit before the Allies could bomb the landings at Singora and Patani, and all but two Blenheims were destroyed on the ground at Alor Setar. With only 50 of 110 aircraft still serviceable in the north, it was time to withdraw and implement the airfield denial scheme, but the demolitions were incomplete, leaving the runways intact. At little loss to themselves, the Japanese were well on their way to establishing air superiority.

The AOC now decided to use his depleted bomber forces against the newly established Japanese base at Singora—the most dangerous of all the Japanese landings. Six Blenheims, lacking fighter support, attacked and lost three of their number; the Buffaloes at Butterworth on the west coast were fully engaged in standing patrols over that airfield. Another attempt, this time with fighter escorts, was clobbered by high-level bombers and low-level fighters before it got off the ground. Two days later, on 10 December, Admiral Tom Phillips’s attempt to intervene against the Japanese landings without air cover met with disaster, as the capital ships Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk, lending additional credibility to the enemy’s aura of invincibility. The Butterworth base was evacuated, with only eight aircraft having survived. The AOC tried to reestablish a network of fields in central and southern Malaya using improvised administrative and maintenance arrangements and whatever stores had been successfully transported from the north by rail. Even so, priority had to be given to the defense of incoming convoys.

The battle continued to go poorly on all fronts. The Indian army’s Eleventh Division, for example, was driven out of its position by just two Japanese battalions and a company of tanks. Although air reinforcements were arriving—six Hudsons and five Blenheims by Christmas Day, and fifty-one crated Hurricanes early in the new year—the lack of air transport into Singapore meant that there was a shortage of servicing personnel. And when they did arrive, superior Japanese forces took their toll. Although some of the Hurricane reinforcements had success on 20 January against an unescorted Japanese raid on Singapore, the next day, five fell victim to the escorting Zeros, shot down at low level, where the Hurricane’s performance was decidedly inferior.

The Allied air forces’ inevitable defeat was hastened as the Japanese army continued to overrun abandoned airfields that had not been fully demolished—and the radar sites. The loss of early warning made life difficult for the Hurricane pilots and practically impossible for the Buffalo squadrons, which needed more than thirty minutes to reach incoming bombers at their normal 25,000 feet. At the same time, offensive operations against the Japanese landings continued to be costly: thirteen Vildebeestes were lost in two attacks on the Japanese landings at Endan on 26 January. Their efforts were praised by the army commander, who noted that they had proceeded “unflinchingly to almost certain death in obsolete aircraft which should have been replaced many years before.”

The Japanese success at Endan rendered all further defense of the Malay Peninsula impossible, and the army began to withdraw into the island fortress. With the airfields there under attack, his bomber force practically written off, and only twenty-seven fighters left—twenty-one Hurricanes and six Buffaloes—Pulford knew that the battle was lost. On 27 January he ordered his remaining bombers to Sumatra, and Wavell concurred that only eight fighters should remain to defend Singapore itself. The last aircraft flew off on 10 February, and the island was surrendered five days later. The air force continued the fight on Sumatra until it too became untenable; most survivors withdrew to Java, and a smaller number escaped to Australia.

Ever since 1918, but particularly after 1922, Singapore and Malaya had been far distant places less known in Britain than even Czechoslovakia had been in 1938. Authorities in the prosperous and vital region were commerce-minded and did not wish to be disturbed by such practicalities as preparing for defense—an issue on which, in the event, the three services could not agree. Even as Japanese power grew, the area seemed secure until the fall of France, when French Indochina ceased to be a barrier and British forces had to be concentrated nearer to home. That fact that no powerful (and charismatic) generalissimo was appointed, along with the shortage of trained staff officers, reduced the potential to do more with less.

The Japanese occupation of southern Indochina in July 1941, which gave them access to airfields within striking distance of Singapore, might have been a final indicator that more had to be done to boost the region’s ability to defend itself, but the misreading of Japanese intentions (it seems that despite U.S.-led provocations, everyone everywhere believed that the enemy would strike somewhere else) meant that wishful thinking (and poor staff work) prevailed. The likely course of Japanese action was missed, and no intelligence network to transmit enemy progress in the north to Singapore, 500 miles away, was established. After the two capital ships were lost and the air forces were withdrawn south, the Japanese army had a much freer hand. Allied troops were aware that everything was crumbling and began disintegrating themselves, both physically and psychologically, too often abandoning their positions to inferior attacking forces. Suffering the fate of a colonial outpost, receiving the dregs of equipment and the least-experienced officers, staff, and pilots, the Allied air force in Southeast Asia became essentially irrelevant, its operations no more than a pinprick. Malaya fell in seventy days because its only real chance for survival had been an absence of war in the Far East.

As many as 400 aircraft supported Japan’s 1941 thrust into Burma near Mandalay, where they would initially be opposed by 16 RAF Buffaloes, 41 Curtiss P-40s of Claire Chennault’s American Volunteer Group, and some horribly outdated de Havilland Moths of the Burmese air force. Infrastructure in Burma was actually much better than in Malaya, and reinforcements did arrive: a Blenheim squadron and 30 Hurricanes just after Christmas. Furthermore, the AOC there demonstrated a strong offensive spirit, ordering his crews to lean forward against the enemy. In the beginning, the Allies won temporary air superiority over Rangoon, but in the end, the Japanese army prevailed, taking over their airfields. The Allied squadrons engaged in a “fighting withdrawal” as they made their way back to India, but on 27 March a Japanese attack essentially wiped out all that was left of their aircraft. Personnel retired by rail and road into India and China. The Japanese, meanwhile, were now within range of Calcutta. It was never bombed, but the Indian east coast and the huge British base at Trincomalee, Ceylon, were attacked in April.

Basic tactics adopted with P-40s against Japanese fighters

2010-01-27T16:32:00.000+08:00

Basic tactics adopted with P-40s against Japanese fighters of superior maneuverability: 1.) Never Use Climbing Maneuvers unless you have excess speed from a dive because the Jap plane can outclimb you. 2.) Use the P-40s best characteristics; namely- speed, diving and fire power (head-on runs). Never use maneuverability. Avoid aerobatics because the Jap planes can do them faster and in much less space. Never Dogfight Them. 3.) Altitude is good life insurance. If the enemy has two or three thousand feet altitude advantage on you, turn at right angles to his course, or even directly away from him and avoid him until you have enough distance to climb safely at least to his altitude. Climbing straight up into an enemy formation at 150 MPH is almost a sure way to lose pilots and equipment. 4.) If you have to bail out while the enemy is in the vicinity, wait as long as possible before opening your chute, because if a Jap sees you, he will machine-gun you. 5.) Be patient; use the clouds and sun, and wait until you have an altitude advantage before attacking. If you have to dive away from the attack, it will take you twenty minutes to get back into it again. If you have an initial altitude advantage, you can dive, fire and climb again and repeat at very close intervals, thus doing more damage.

Combat techniques developed by the Flying Tigers in China, Summer 1941–Summer 1942, quoted in Bergerud, Fire in the Sky, 450–451.

China WWII: An Introduction

2010-01-21T23:31:00.003+08:00

Like the conflict in the oceans of the world, the war in Asia and the Pacific-or the Greater East Asia War, as the Japanese knew it-covered a vast range of operations. Japan did not possess a coherent military-expansionist policy that it pursued without wavering. Instead, there was not one war but several campaigns, opportunistically pursued in Manchuria, China, South-East Asia, and the Pacific Ocean. Allied responses to Japan's expansion can be divided into the Central Pacific campaign, aimed at attacking Japan from the east, the south-west Pacific campaign attacking from the south and east, and the China-Burma-India campaign, attacking from the north and west.

The war in the Far East was a bitter and vicious war and second only to the war on the Eastern Front in Europe as far as civilian suffering was concerned. It was a war of attrition, guerrilla clashes, and punitive expeditions, in which the Japanese policy of ‘Three Alls' ('take all, burn all, kill all') was pursued with ruthless efficiency. The war cost China 2 million military personnel dead and 1.7 million wounded. However, 15 million Chinese civilians also died between 1937 and 1945. Eighty-five per cent of them were peasants, killed mainly by starvation and exposure rather than by direct military action. Deaths were disproportionately high amongst women and female children. Not only did the conflict devastate the Chinese population and economy; it was decisive in a global context as well. After all, of the 2.3 million Japanese troops overseas, 1.2 million were tied down in China. Although often sidelined by Western historians of the Second World War, the war in China was at the heart of the 'world war'. Japan's Attack on China.

Initially, the Japanese were reluctant to go to war against China, but the resurgence of Chinese nationalism and a strengthening Chinese economy were seen as direct threats to Japanese influence in the region. The Japanese took action in 1931, when their troops occupied Manchuria, a border province of China, and turned it into a puppet state. This had wider implications than simply an attack upon Chinese sovereignty. The Japanese takeover of Manchuria directly threatened the interests of the Soviet Union. Would Japan turn its expansionist ambitions northward-to Siberia, for instance? It was strongly in the interest of the USSR to bolster Chinese resistance to the Japanese. Indeed, in the period prior to 1941, China had benefited from more military aid from the USSR than from the western Allies. Nevertheless, instead of expanding north, the Japanese moved south. By 1937, the conflict had spread to all of eastern China and the war had begun in earnest. Anti-Japanese feeling was exacerbated by the attack by the Japanese on Chinese soldiers and civilians at the Marco Polo Bridge, next to which was a vital railway line, in July 1937. Because of its strategic importance (it was only ten miles west of Beijing), Japanese troops in northern China had been conducting maneuvers in the area. However, on 7 July 1937, after a Japanese night maneuver during which the Chinese had fired some shells, a Japanese soldier went missing. In retaliation, the Japanese attacked and war commenced. This may rightly be designated the first battle of the Second World War.

By the end of July, Japanese soldiers had not only seized the bridge but taken control of the entire Tientsin-Peking region. The speed with which Japanese troops conquered parts of China was astounding. By 1938, Canton had 'fallen' and, despite notable military victories, including one in the town of Taierzhuang in southern Shantung, where 30,000 Japanese soldiers were killed by Nationalist Chinese troops, the Chinese were at a distinct disadvantage. The Japanese military was vastly superior. As late as 1940, China had only 150 military aircraft compared with the Japanese total of over 1,000. By the end of 1939, the whole of the north-eastern quarter of China was under Japanese occupation. Still, the Chinese did not surrender, forcing Japan to move still further inland, lengthening supply routes and stretching manpower to absolute limits. What followed was a war of attrition.

Chinese Resistance

The Japanese had hoped for a short war, but they under- estimated the tenacity of Chinese resistance. Protest by the Chinese against the Japanese invasion and against the weak response of the Nationalists to the Japanese encroachments began immediately after Manchuria had been occupied. It culminated in 1935 with the 'December Ninth Movement', during which tens of thousands of students protested in Tiananmen Square in Peking. Students were crucial to the resistance, moving into rural areas attempting to stimulate revolt. Thus, in 1936, the Peking-Tientsin Student Union produced leaflets written simply in the vernacular, encouraging revolt. These leaflets proclaimed: Men, women, children! Listen to what we say: have you seen those things flying overhead every day? Those things are called aeroplanes. Sitting in them are the devils of the Eastern sea, the Japanese devils. They speak in a foreign language, live in the Eastern sea, and fly their aeroplanes over here. Do you know what they are coming to do? . . . They are coming to kill every single man and woman with guns and knives, and to ravish our daughters and wives.

Exhortations like this were produced by resisters from all political persuasions-in particular, the Chinese Communist Party (the CCP) under Mao Zedong and the Kuomintang (the Nationalist Party, or KMT) under Chiang Kai-shek. These two parties had been vigorous enemies, but by 1937 Chiang was forced to give up his fight against the Communists in order to focus attention on defeating the Japanese. A truce was called and a 'united front' formed. This 'united front' was always fragile, but was crucial to the war and, in the end, to the fate of China itself.

Together, the Communists and Nationalists mobilized the Chinese population to resist the extraordinarily powerful Japanese military. Most persuasively, Mao argued that the only way to beat the Japanese was through guerrilla warfare. At some stage, he conceded, the Japanese army would have to be attacked head on, but he warned that premature engagement would be devastating. The guerrillas ensured that much of Japanese strength was employed protecting the railways (a central focus of guerrilla activity) and in 'mopping up' isolated guerrilla units. Attrition proved a successful strategy. The Japanese were seriously overstretched by mid-1938.

Nevertheless, in the early years of the war, large numbers of Chinese were collaborating with the Japanese and the puppet governments. As one peasant patiently explained: 'The Japanese soldiers are coming and we only need to complete the harvest and pay taxes in the same way to live in peace as ordinary people.' By 1938, however, Chinese resistance was massive, particularly amongst the Communists.

What led to this change?

Historians are split on how best to explain the success of the Chinese Communists in attracting support. Some argue that the skill with which the Chinese Communists led resistance to the Japanese made them popular. Particularly from 1941, the Communist-led guerrillas were scoring numerous victories over the Japanese. Japanese brutality meant that the peasants lauded these Communist victories. There is no question that terror was central to Japanese policy in China. As one Japanese regimental commander boasted: 'Our policy has been to burn every enemy house along the way we advance. You can tell at a glance where our forward units are.'3 Chinese civilians who were not killed (and in some areas 40 per cent of the population died during the Japanese occupation) were made to perform slave labour or, if young men, forced to serve in the army of one of the puppet governments. Millions of refugees fled to areas still held by the CCP, placing further pressure on resources in Communist-held areas (by 1941 the Communists' Eighth Route Army in the north was in charge of 44 million people).

Other historians argue that it was the CCP's economic programme that brought it support. The peasants and poor suffered an unbearable reduction in their standard of living during the war. Between 1939 and February 1941, for instance, the price of a bushel of rice rose from 2.3 to 32 Chinese dollars. In despair, the poor turned to the Communists for succour. Mao was popular, and able to fuse the rhetoric of communist restructuring with that of nationalism. In other words, the Chinese Communists had a good reputation for attacking the Japanese, but they were also engaged in the struggle for a 'people's resistance' and a peasant revolution. They supported the peasants in their struggle with the land- lords. The CCP's policy of reducing rents gave the peasants something they considered well worth fighting for, thus encouraging participation in the resistance. Their slogan, 'there must not be a single idle person, horse, or ox', summed up the Communist campaign, particularly during harvest time.

These two explanations for the popularity of the Communists are not mutually exclusive. In reality, the reason for the growth of Communist resistance in China was most probably a combination of anti-Japanese feeling bolstered by economic promises. As Mao admitted: 'Here [by resisting Japan] there is also a revolutionary movement, because the anti- Japanese struggle is accompanied by a struggle for democracy, better livelihood, and economic construction. Both go together in China. . . . It is also true that along this road the Chinese revolution gains.'

Or, as he reiterated just over a year later, the war was 'being waged to drive out imperialism and transform the old China into a new China'. Support from the Western Allies The Chinese resisters did not have to fight alone. Admittedly, Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt had all agreed on a 'Europe- first' policy. Even dissenters from this policy placed victory in the Pacific higher than China's tribulations. Churchill regarded resources sent to China as simply a diversion from India.

Nevertheless, the Chinese were given some help, partly because, in the longer term, China was seen as central to stability in Asia after the war. Only China could hold Japan in check-at least, this was what the Allies (particularly America) believed. In addition, although the other Powers had looked on while Japan invaded parts of China, when the Japanese turned to French Indo-China it became clear that American interests in the Philippines, British interests in Malaya and Singapore, and Dutch interests in the East Indies were threatened.

The Americans were the first of the western Allies to offer military aid. Even prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, they provided help through the same lend-lease scheme that had been so important for the British. Then, in July 1941, the USA imposed a financial and oil embargo on Japan, making America Japan's most formidable enemy. After Pearl Harbor, American aid no longer had to be clandestine. Large loans of money were made, and the OSS provided weapons and training to Mao and Ho Chi Minh (leader of the Communist Party of French Indo-China, later known as Vietnam). Henceforth, the resistance forces were heavily dependent upon American aid, especially after 1941, when the Soviet Union was preoccupied with its own fight against Germany. If China was to be helped, severe logistical problems had to be solved. By 1941, the only way the western Allies could assist China directly was over the mountains through eastern India and north-east Burma. Yet, as we shall see in the next chapter, within hours of bombing Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, the Japanese had attacked British Malaya and Thailand, thus posing a direct threat to British Burma. Finally, in 1942, Burma was invaded by the Japanese, who needed to close the Burma Road, which was being used to provide supplies, including precious oil, to Chinese resistance. By early March 1942, the Japanese were in Rangoon, forcing the British, Indian, and Burmese units to retreat northwards into India, while Chinese divisions returned to China. That same month, the Japanese shut off the Burma Road, effectively isolating China from the outside world. The response of the Allies was twofold: find some way of keeping supplies flowing to the Chinese resisters while continuing to harass the Japanese through small-scale military operations. The first of these problems was ingeniously solved by employing British airbases in India to fly in weapons and other military supplies. These operations came to be termed 'The Hump', because planes flew over the Himalayan mountains. Between December 1942 and VJ Day, the Air Transport Command (one of the main groups trans- porting supplies) made more than 167,000 trips over 'The Hump', carrying 722,000 tons of supplies.

Japanese Cavalry during Malaya Campaign 1941-1942

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...LIKE FOAM ON THE CREST OF A WAVE

In the first week of December, while the Russian cavalry was making life difficult for the German troops in the deep snow and severe frost outside Moscow, a convoy of ships was ploughing through the waves of the Pacific Ocean 10,000 km to the east. Crammed into the hold of one of the vessels were the horsemen of the Japanese cavalry, huddled together on the way to their distant destination.

The 5th Mounted Reconnaissance Regiment had been formed from the reorganized 5th Cavalry Regiment (Lieutenant-General Takuro Matsui). Its commander, Colonel Shizuo Saeki, had distinguished himself in the Chinese campaigns as commanding officer of the 40th Cavalry Regiment. Sakei's new regiment included two motorized and two armoured companies, a machine-gun company and a number of quick-firing field guns. At the beginning of October 1941, the reconnaissance regiment, attached to the 5th Division, was posted to the Shanghai region where it was prepared for jungle warfare.

While these training were going on, the commanders of some other units questioned whether Colonel Saeki's regiment would achieve the same success in the Malayan jungle as it did in sand-table exercises. Saeki boiled with indignation. Gritting his teeth and folding his arms over his chest, he answered that the ridiculing of his combat ability would spur on his cavalry to great self-sacrifice.

At the beginning of November, the 5th Reconnaissance Regiment left Shanghai harbour one misty night and sailed southwards. On the way, on the island of Hai-Nan Tao, the last preparations for their mission were completed, using the practical experience of the research centre for tropical war. The cavalrymen suffered uncomplainingly the ordeal of a sea crossing deep in the ship's hold, with three men crowded onto two square metres of straw matting at times, and with food rations limited to a bucket of rice or barley a day per section. Their horses fared little better.

It was only when they were well under way that Colonel Saeki was allowed to open the sealed envelope containing his secret orders:

"The 5th Regiment, minus its armoured company, will land in southern Thailand at the harbour of Singora and will proceed to the railway junction of Hat Yai." Strictly speaking, the Malayan operation was beginning a few hours before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The first Japanese landing took place on December 8th at 3AM local time. Suprise was complete and the troops landed like foam from the crest of a wave.

A rough sea created difficulties for the unloading of tanks and trucks, but nevertheless the 5th Reconnaissance Regiment advanced immediately. Soon after, it ran into heavy fire from Thai forces based in the mountains west of Singora, but Colonel Saeki continued his advance towards Hat Yai. A Thai company which barred their way was beaten back, and the Japanese approached the town of Tonri unchecked. As the enemy had 2,000 men entrenched in the mountains east of Tonri, the Japanese gave them the offer of capitulating. When this was refused, the Japanese went into the attack, and unexpectedly met with only minor resistance.

Various trucks and motor vehicles were captured by the Japanese at the barracks at Tonri and with these they reached the Hat Yai railway junction, which they occupied without difficulty. The mounted reconnaissance regiment had managed to carry out its advance as planned; and it then took up positions in the Hat Yai area to protect the advance of the main Japanese force. That evening, the army headquarters staff arrived at Hat Yai with the remaining sections of the 5th Reconnaissance Regiment, a company of field artillery and some tanks. Here the staff learned that strong British and Indian motorized units had just crossed the Thai-Malay border and occupied Sadao. The mounted reconnaissance sections were then ordered to spy out the Sadao area and explore the situation on the frontier ...

Source:
J. Piekalkiewicz: "Cavalry in World war Two, 1939-1945"

The break down of a Japanese Cavalry regiment was
Hq (82 men)
Regimental train(200 men)
3 rifle and sabre companies(170 men each)
Machinegun company(150 men)
total manpower was 950 menCavalry Group:
Formed 21 April 1933 consisting of the 1st Cavalry Brigade and 4th Cavalry Brigade. The 3rd Cavalry Brigade was added in October 1937. Disbanded on 1 December 1942 with the formation of the 3rd Tank Division.
Assigned to Kwantung Army: April 1933
Assigned to Northern China Area Army: June 1938
Assigned to Mongolia Garrison Army: February 1939
21 Apr 1933 - 1 Aug 1934: Maj. General Okiie Usami
1 Aug 1934 - 1 Aug 1935: General Shigeru Hasunuma
1 Aug 1935 - 2 Aug 1937: Lt. General Heijuro Kasai
2 Aug 1937 - 1 Dec 1937: Lt. General Shiro Inaba
1 Dec 1937 - 7 Jan 1939: Lt. General Shoichi Naito
7 Jan 1939 - 2 Oct 1939: Lt. General Shin Yoshida
2 Oct 1939 - 2 Dec 1940: Lt. General Kichizo Kojima
2 Dec 1940 - 1 Oct 1941: Lt. General Masao Baba
1 Oct 1941 - 1 Dec 1942: Lt. General Isaku Nishihara
1st Cavalry brigade: (Formed 3 November 1901)
13th Cavalry regiment
14th Cavalry regiment
1st Horse artillery regiment
Brigade machine- gun unit
Brigade anti-tank unit
Brigade tank unit
Brigade transport unit
4th Cavalry brigade: (Formed 1 April 1909)
25th Cavalry regiment
26th Cavalry regiment
4th Horse artillery regiment
Brigade machine-gun unit
Brigade anti-tank unit
Brigade tank unit
Motorised infantry battalion
Brigade transport unit
3rd Cavalry brigade: (Formed 1 April 1909)
23rd Cavalry regiment
24th Cavalry regiment
3rd Horse artillery regiment
Brigade machine-gun unit
Brigade anti-tank unit
Brigade tank unit
Brigade transport unit

Book Review: Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941-1945

2010-01-21T23:28:00.002+08:00

Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper. _Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941-1945_. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005. xxxiii +

555 pp. Illustrations, maps, index. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-674-01748-1; $18.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-674-02219-5.

Reviewed for H-Albion by Steven Patterson, Department of History, Lambuth University

Still Forgotten

_Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia 1941-1945_ by Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper has quickly established itself on the must-have list of British imperial history. The work is a magisterial and panoramic account of the war in the Far East, focusing on the region stretching from Calcutta to Singapore. This crescent of the British Empire produced an abundance of rubber, tin, rice, gold, and oil, which in turn supported a very narrow elite who sought (ultimately in vain) to retain their prestige, even while the Japanese overran Malaya, "impregnable" Singapore, and Burma. For the British, the loss of "face" in the East was perhaps as important as the military losses, and the apparent ease of these Japanese conquests would reverberate long into the postwar world, since defeat and dishonor could never be compatible with empire. The death rattle of the British Empire could be heard by almost everyone but the victim, who blissfully tried to cling to its worldly possessions and to its reputation for avenging every defeat suffered at the hands of Asians. Accordingly, one of the most important themes of _Forgotten Armies_ centers on the ascension of the Japanese as they were transformed, in the British imagination, from being misfits in modern society to relentless and frightening exemplars of military technology.

Bayly and Harper ably untangle the strategic issues in the Far Eastern theater, which rarely seem straightforward, since the "good war" of World War II historical imagination has never seemed fully applicable to the campaigns in the region, neither at the time of the fighting nor during the recent deification of the "greatest generation." The British armies in India and Burma dubbed themselves "forgotten" early in the war, and they are to a large extent still forgotten today. According to Bayly and Harper, British officers quickly realized that the Far Eastern Theater was not the place to make one's reputation, and even General William Slim, one of the ablest commanders of the war, was dismissed by Winston Churchill for being a "sepoy general," since Slim had been a Gurkha officer. Moreover, some of the historical neglect of this theater can perhaps be attributed to the nature of the two governments fighting for supremacy in the East. In a war between Japan and England, portraying this theater as a Grand Crusade proved to be difficult, especially when Churchill had decreed that the Atlantic Charter and self-determination for all peoples did not--curiously--apply to Indians, nor to the Burmese or Malayans ostensibly to be liberated by the British and returned to the imperial fold. In the Far East, the war against fascism and totalitarianism was bound to reveal the contradictions of one empire fighting against another, as two authoritarian governments squared off, with disastrous consequences for those caught in the middle.

Although the soldiers in this campaign remain largely forgotten, the experiences of Asian civilians are even less well known, especially in the West. Close to 80,000 Indian civilians died on the walkout from Burma, and transit camps set up in Burma lacked adequate food and medicine. Even worse, the famine in Bengal in 1943 claimed some three million lives, partly due to a cyclone the previous year which ruined the rice crop, but also because of the ineptitude of the government there. The government of Bengal was weak and corrupt and had no famine code, and Bayly and Harper relate the familiar tale of food from India being shipped overseas, and that even the word "famine" had been forbidden in the press for as long as possible. To Churchill, Bengalis were the next worst people after Germans and the prime minister was determined not to help, and he "heeded the advice of his scientific adviser Frederick Lindemann, who thought Bengalis were a weak race and that overbreeding and eugenic unfitness were the basic reasons for the scarcity" (p. 286).

Although many of these narratives are well known to historians, Bayly and Harper untangle all these historical threads and deftly describe the complexities of the war, both from a panoptic and microscopic point of view. They likewise synthesize most of the relevant sources, masterfully merging the military history of this theater with the political, social, and cultural implications of the war. As such, this is no mere military history, but a social and cultural history of the effects of the war on their respective societies, and the work bears all the hallmarks of the best history writing--it is incisive, in places witty, and with a great eye for the telling detail. Bayly and Harper continually link individual acts to the larger historical picture, and they relate many anecdotes that in part explain why many of these episodes have been forgotten, at least in the West. During the evacuation of Singapore, for example, one Chinese judge was removed from a ship while the fortress commander managed to get his car onboard (p. 120). Easily caricatured, the "modern Pompeians" of Singapore did not seem to be "putting up a good show, and the manner of their withdrawal was long remembered, and never forgotten or forgiven," and these "tales of despair and betrayal were never erased, even by the striking British victories of 1944" (pp. 120, 187).

Ultimately, the garrison at Singapore with 85,000 troops would surrender to a Japanese force of around 30,000 men. Yet, with no aircraft carriers in the region and only outdated Brewster Buffaloes ("flying Beer Barrels"), Singapore had little chance. Churchill nonetheless initially ordered Singapore to fight on until the end, and the sense of betrayal by the British stranded there lingered on. Bayly and Harper even dig up a ditty concerning the flawed leadership:

"Never before have so many Been f***ed about by so few And neither the few nor the many Have f*** all idea what to do" (p.132). The authors have furrowed through the archives to turn up such amusing and illuminating anecdotes, but one very slight criticism of the book is the curious omission of diaries or other sources for the British armies who fought in these campaigns. The authors employ a Japanese soldier's diary to great effect to tell the story of Japanese occupation, but the experiences of the British Other Ranker are surprisingly missing. Brian Aldiss's unjustly forgotten novel _A Soldier Erect_ (1971) and George McDonald Fraser's _Quartered Safe Out Here_ (1992) could have added compelling narratives to story of the British Other Ranker. There are also several diaries in the Imperial War Museum from soldiers in India and Burma, many of them with titles like "Nobody Gave a Damn," and such sources could have augmented the authors' considerable research. As it is, the voice of Tommy Atkins is still somewhat muted and forgotten in _Forgotten Armies_, (although surely he would be used to that by now).

Resentment, in fact, resurfaces often in _Forgotten Armies_, and from all sides. It almost seems to be the dominant mode for understanding the war in the East. One Anglo-Indian (in this sense meaning someone of mixed European and Asian ancestry), staggered from the "green hell" of Burma emaciated and near death, but he was refused treatment at the first British club he encountered due to his dark skin. Such ideas would not survive the war, at least not as part of a ruling ideology, and the high-handed treatment that Asians suffered under the British and the Japanese would be the catalyst that spawned the independence of India, Burma, and Malaya. (The postwar struggles for independence are told in the authors' just-published _Forgotten Wars: Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia_.) _Forgotten Armies_ has provided a long-needed overview of this "forgotten" theater, and this is sure to remain the standard work on this topic for the foreseeable future.

OVER HIMALAYAS AND INTERNET, LOST FLIGHTS FOUND

2010-01-21T23:26:00.000+08:00

Seen here flying above the Himalayas (the famous 'Hump' between India and China), the Curtiss C-46 Commando was capable of carrying 50 troops, compared with about 28 by the C-47.

By Jay Price

The Hump, American air crews called it. Or, when they were in a darker mood, the Aluminum Trail. The World War II supply route from India into China was dotted with their wreckage. By whatever name, the route was critical, an aerial highway over some of the world's highest mountains, a path flown by hundreds of U.S. aircraft ferrying supplies to the Chinese Army so it could stay in the fight against Japan. The cost in planes and lives was staggering. More than 400 U.S. aircraft carrying nearly 1,400 troops disappeared there during the war. For decades, no one tried to recover their remains. But now two men -- a self-financed Arizona adventurer and a Cary computer expert -- are fighting to make sure the U.S. government brings those missing fliers home. And they may be winning. Night comes suddenly to the Himalayas in winter, so at dusk Clayton Kuhles was ready to give up. It was Dec. 7, 2006 -- Pearl Harbor Day -- and he had been rummaging for five hours among snow, shredded aluminum and bent propellers on the side of a nameless mountain nearly 2 miles up. He had found pieces of parachute, whole engines, even an intact landing gear retracted into a wing. Kuhles had not, though, found the one reason he had hiked to this remote corner of India: an identification number for the shattered World War II-era bomber. The businessman from Prescott, Ariz., started hunting such wrecks almost by accident. On his way home from a mountaineering expedition in Nepal, he made a side-trip to explore Burma. A guide that Kuhles hired there noticed his interest in World War II sites and asked if he wanted to see a wreck. Sure, he said. A reason to climb only later, after Kuhles got home, did he read up on The Hump. The number of wrecks, and the number of families who still didn't know what happened to their loved ones, surprised him and gave him an idea. Climbing just for the sake of bagging another difficult peak had begun to lose its luster. But here, he thought, was a way not only to feed his hunger for adventure but also do some good. Before the 2006 expedition, Kuhles had identified four wrecks on other trips to the region. This time he hoped to find numbers that would lead to names, but he was having no luck. As he wrapped up his final fruitless inspection that Dec. 7, he knew the winter weather was about to force him out of the mountains for the year. Time to go, he told the local tribesmen who had guided him to the site. The men started down the trail to their high camp for the night. They were hungry, cold and already thinking about the 10-mile slog the next day over frozen ridges and through jungle-clogged valleys to the nearest village. Then Kuhles noticed another pile of wreckage beside the trail. One last stack of torn aluminum, one last chance to figure out who had died here. One last stab at an answer for aged brothers, sisters and widows back home who had wondered for six decades about the fate of the plane's crew. He switched on his headlamp and began flipping over the panels. Googling in Cary Six months later, Gary Zaetz idly booted up Google on his home computer in Cary. On a whim, the IBM software technician typed "1st Lt. Irwin Zaetz" into the search field. His uncle -- along with the rest of an eight-man crew that included Sgt. James Hinson of Greensboro -- had been missing for 63 years, but with the speed of a broadband Internet connection, that family mystery was about to end. Up came Kuhles' Web site, www.miarecoveries.www, and with it a startling array of information. There were photos of scattered wreckage, the GPS-measured longitude and latitude of the crash site and a copy of the government form that Kuhles filled out in his concise, almost scientific style for the U.S. military unit that recovers missing remains. "... construction number was researched, crosses to serial #4277308." Also on the site was the crew manifest for the plane that bore that serial number, a B-24J dubbed "Hot As Hell" by its crew. The navigator was Irwin Zaetz. Gary Zaetz didn't think much about the ramifications of the plane being found, of the steps that remained before the story would end. He picked up the phone to break the news to his father, Larry, a younger brother of the missing man. "It's quite a thing," Larry Zaetz said in a recent interview. "For 63 years, we didn't know anything, and there wasn't really any way for us to find out much." After the initial news sank in, it became clear that the story was far from done. Not only did the U.S. government not have a plan to investigate the site, but didn't even have an arrangement with India for U.S. military teams to recover remains there. Kuhles had used his unusual expertise to good effect. Now it was Zaetz's turn.

Families join effort At his keyboard, he harnessed the Internet to hunt for surviving relatives of the other seven crew members. He Googled genealogy experts and asked them for help, searched online census records for the names of the fliers' siblings and Googled contacts at libraries in the crew members' hometowns. Then he e-mailed the library researchers to find the missing men's newspaper obituaries. With those, he could glean the names of their survivors. Along the way, he enlisted family members in a campaign to open India to U.S. recovery teams. The group has contacted military officials, members of Congress and newspapers in the United States, as well as journalists and government officials in India. With every new article they sparked, every electronic letter to the editor, every blog posting, the visibility on the Web of their multi -pronged lobbying effort grew. Zaetz and other members of crew families also began appearing at the monthly meetings for MIA families held around the country by the military, and they joined forces with a group that is pressing the government to put more emphasis on recovering World War II missing. The Hawaii-based unit responsible for recovering the remains of missing U.S. service members was formed in response to public pressure to find troops who went missing during the Vietnam War, and still concentrates its missions in Southeast Asia, where its three foreign satellite offices are located. Heat is on Pentagon The Pentagon is feeling new pressure from the World War II families, pressure made possible by the Internet, said Larry Greer of Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office in Washington who is familiar with the "Hot as Hell" case. "These are the nieces and nephews and grandchildren, and they've discovered how effective they can be with modern means of communication, "These are the nieces and nephews and grandchildren, and they've discovered how effective they can be with modern means of communication, " Greer said. "They have d The United States devotes more money -- about $105 million annually, Greer said -- to recovering and identifying missing troops than any other country, but the mission is vast. There are 1,700 troops still missing in Vietnam and surrounding countries from the war there, about 8,100 from the Korean War and 78,000 from World War II, with 35,000 from that war thought to be recoverable.

Along the Hump alone, there are nearly as many missing U.S. troops as in Southeast Asia. Many can be recovered, Kuhles thinks. In just a few months of searching spread over the past few years, he has positively identified eight wrecks and has at least 14 more solid leads to investigate on future expeditions. Because he's having to pay for the trips himself, it will be a while before he can check them all. He has talked with the government about funding his expeditions, but to no avail. The military thinks about 430 U.S. planes are missing in the areas where Kuhles has been searching. The missing include more than 100 in India, about 100 in Burma, now called Myanmar, and more than 170 in China, said Troy Kitch, spokesman for the Joint POW/ MIA Accounting Command.

There also are British, Canadian and Chinese aircraft missing along that route, too. The missing troops in Burma are probably out of bounds until the totalitarian regime there ends, and Kitch's unit has recovered only a handful of remains in China and none in India. The Hump in a fog U.S. air crews flying The Hump were sometimes attacked by Japanese fighters, but their toughest foes were the mountains and weather. In summer, monsoon rains made the mountains hard to see. In winter, fierce storms and heavy icing knocked planes out of the sky. It was that winter weather the crew of "Hot as Hell" must have been pondering as it boarded the boxy bomber on Jan. 25, 1944, at their base in Kunming, China. While most planes that flew The Hump were transport aircraft moving supplies to bolster the Chinese military, "Hot as Hell" was a bomber. Like the others in its unit, said Gary Zaetz, the crew had to ferry in its own bombs and other supplies. It took about three trips over The Hump to supply each combat run. First Lt. Irwin Zaetz, 26, had already flown a host of harrowing combat missions and had earned the Distinguished Flying Cross. It was just chance, though, that he was flying on this mission. His regular plane was another B-24, "Chug-a-Lug Junior," but for some reason he was asked to fill in on "Hot as Hell." His family isn't sure why. According to different sources, the plane's regular navigator was either late or sick. Zaetz, a star athlete in three sports at Burlington High School in Burlington, Vt., had earned the nickname "Zipper" because of the way he moved up and down the basketball court. A sharp dresser, he had always been careful to act the gentleman, to say and do the right things, even in high school, said Larry Zaetz, who idolized his athletic sibling and attended not just his games but even his practices. Irwin Zaetz had been married for less than two years to his high school sweetheart, Ethel. The other crew members were single, Gary Zaetz said, but two were engaged, including one of the gunners, Hinson of Greensboro. There was reportedly thick fog that day over part of the route, almost down to ground level, said Zaetz, who has scoured federal archives and practically every other available record for information about his uncle and the crash. It was one of those days that The Hump lived up to its deadly reputation. Five planes flew the same route that day, Zaetz said, and all five crashed. Some crew members on three of the planes survived, but those on "Hot as Hell" and another plane vanished. India to allow recovery In January, during a regular meeting in Washington between officials from the United States and India, the Indians agreed to host American recovery teams for the first time. Next month, the commanding general of Kitch's unit will travel to India to negotiate the details of the first recovery efforts there. And among the first six wrecks to be officially investigated, Greer said -- all of them found by Kuhles -- will be "Hot as Hell." Still, there are enough wreck sites to keep Kuhles busy for several lifetimes, and Zaetz said his battle isn't over, either, because the Pentagon has said it will probably be 2009 before it can send its first mission to India. First would come a small group to assess the site, and only afterwards could a recovery mission be scheduled. What's more, the military ID lab is meticulous -- it has to be -- and even after remains are recovered, it can take a year or more to identify them properly. Time is short. Meanwhile, the last family members who knew missing World War II troops are dying off quickly. Among those for the "Hot as Hell" crew, a brother of the bombardier, 1st Lt. Robert E. Oxford, is 95 years old, Zaetz said. A sister of co-pilot Sheldon L. Chambers is 90, and two brothers are in their 70s; Larry Zaetz is 83 and Irwin Zaetz' widow, Ethel Wolfe, is 89. "That's just way too long to make us wait," Gary Zaetz said. "The families see no reason to delay it that long." There are two weather windows between the winter storms and the summer monsoons, he said, and there is time to organize, at the very least, for the fall window, from September to November. Kitch, though, said that JPAC's work for 2008 is already scheduled. The Pentagon is trying to be fair, but with limited resources and the need to plan the complex expeditions far in advance, it can't move more quickly. "It's really exciting that we're getting into India, but when you are dealing with other families who have also been waiting decades, how do you put one above the other?" he said. "We bend over backwards to be as fair as possible to meet all the families' expectations, but it's just not possible." The military hopes to set its schedule for initial site checks in India during the meeting there next month. And Gary Zaetz said he won't be finished even when the government schedules a recovery expedition to the "Hot as Hell" site. He wants to shift from pursuing his uncle's fate in cyberspace to hunting it in person, to step into Kuhles' world. He has begun getting inoculations, with an eye toward flying to India and hiking to the crash site.

The Hump

Impenetrable jungles and the towering mountain passes of the Himalayas, coupled with Japanese advances on the ground in Burma, forced the Americans to rely on supplies airlifted from India to sustain Allied operations in China. Begun in April, 1942 the “Hump” airlift over the Himalaya Mountains struggled against terrible weather, dangerous high-altitude flights through mountain passes, shortages of aircraft and crews, inadequate maintenance, and occasional attacks by Japanese fighter aircraft. During the first two months, it airlifted 196 tons of cargo to China. By the end of 1943, Air Transport Command aircraft and crews finally reached their goal of moving ten thousand tons each month.

To improve flight safety and increase tonnage, Brig. Gen. William H. Tunner, who had successfully run ATC’s enormous global aircraft-ferrying operation, assumed command of the operation in mid-1944. Under his able leadership, morale, safety, and cargo tonnages improved dramatically. By war’s end, his aircraft inventory had increased from 369 to 722, while its assigned personnel had grown from twenty-six thousand to more than eighty-four thousand. Accident rates fell more than 50 percent. In July, 1945, Tunner’s force delivered a wartime peak of seventy-one thousand tons to China. Nevertheless, the Hump airlift operation had been extremely dangerous, with losses of 460 aircraft and 792 men.

LINK

BOOK REVIEW: Thailand's Secret War: OSS, SOE and the Free Thai Underground During World War II

2010-01-21T23:23:00.000+08:00

E. Bruce Reynolds. _Thailand's Secret War: OSS, SOE and the Free Thai Underground During World War II_. Cambridge Military Histories Series.

Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2005. xx + 462 pp.

Illustrations, maps, notes bibliography, index. $85.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-521-83601-8.

Reviewed for H-War by Phillip J. Ridderhof, U.S. Marine Corps, III Marine Expeditionary Force, Okinawa, Japan

A Complex Proposition: Thailand and the Allies in World War II

Compared to the campaigns in the Pacific, the Southeast Asian campaigns of World War II have received limited attention in military history (the possible exception being the campaign in Burma). In his second book on the role of Thailand in the war, Dr. Reynolds has provided a well-written and fascinating addition to the relatively small body of scholarship in this area. Reynolds first book, _Thailand and Japan's Southern Advance, 1940-1945_ (1994), provided an account of the Thai-Japanese relationship in the war. In _Thailand's Secret War_, Reynolds discusses the other side of the Thai experience in World War II--the courting of and surreptitious cooperation with the Allies.

Prior to the war, Thailand had maintained its independence through a combination of adequate defense against regional aggressors in Burma and Indochina, and skillful diplomacy that played the colonial powers of France and Great Britain off one another and kept the great neighbor to the north, China, at bay. At the start of World War II, a primarily military government sensed the winds of change and succumbed to Japanese pressure in acceding to an alliance and allowing the Japanese to use Thailand as a base for operations against Burma. In exchange, the Japanese allowed the Thai to maintain their government and armed forces and supported them in achieving some of their regional territorial ambitions.

Almost immediately after the start of the war, however, certain factions of the Thai government and of the large Thai population overseas, which was primarily in western countries, lobbied for and began forming ties to Japan's enemies. While some in the Allied countries saw this as opportunism, it merely carried on the tradition of policy that had kept Thailand independent for the previous centuries. Against a backdrop of internal political friction between Thai military and civilian government leaders, Reynolds' research reveals that the outreach to the Allies was complicated by the widely different goals and perceptions of those countries: the United States, Great Britain and China.

The tangled web that Reynolds unravels is worthy of a good spy novel; there are myriad plots and sub-plots. In the largest sense, the Thai situation highlighted fundamental differences between the Allies regarding the future of Southeast Asia after the war. The British wanted to regain their colonial holdings and saw Thai cooperation with Japan as a direct challenge. They did not trust or want to cooperate with emissaries from the Thai government. The United States, on the other hand, perceived the Thai efforts much more positively. It saw the Thai outreach in terms of its potential to assist the war effort in China and Burma. For their part, the Nationalist Chinese saw the opportunity to use the large ethnic Chinese population in Thailand and the historic Chinese-Thai relationship to extend their influence after the war. Within the struggles among the Allies, were subordinate struggles within the individual Allied camps. U.S. commanders and Office of Strategic Services (OSS) leaders based in China had differences with those based in India. The British Special Operations Executive (SOE) was hampered in its efforts to establish positive contacts with the Thais because of the policies that emanated from British political leaders and the Foreign Ministry.

Owing to the very positive cooperation between the U.S. State Department and the U.S. military (primarily the OSS), and to the fact that the Thai perceived the Americans as the party with the least regional ambitions, the United States had the most success in establishing a presence in Thailand during the war. OSS teams formed and trained Thai guerilla units and, through the Thai, gathered valuable intelligence on Japanese activities in the region. The lack of real U.S. interest during the war, however, resulted in an ironic situation after the war. When the civilian-led government, which was largely responsible for inviting the Americans in, was overthrown by the military, which had cooperated with the Japanese, the postwar United States embraced the military junta due to its strong anti-communist policies. The Thai leadership that provided strong support and basing to the United States during the Vietnam conflict represented this faction of Thai politics, not that of the "Free Thai" who fought side by side with U.S. operatives in World War II.

As previously stated, Reynolds' earlier book, _Thailand and Japan's Southern Advance 1940-1945_, covered the Thai-Japanese relationship in detail. I assume that is the reason that the Japanese are really in the background in _Thailand's Secret War_. It is not necessary to have read Reynolds' earlier book to understand his present book (this reviewer has not), but it probably is the only way a reader would obtain a complete picture of Thailand's unique role in the war. It would also help to have a general knowledge of the course of the war in Southeast Asia in order to place events in their proper context.

_Thailand's Secret War_ is well researched: a review of the sources indicates that Reynolds accessed both U.S. and British official sources, many western and Thai secondary sources, and has interviewed an impressive number of American, British and Thai participants. It is also a well-written book. Reynolds did an outstanding job in providing a clear narrative of what could be a very confusing story. In many cases, a western reader of Asian military history can get lost in long place and proper names that all seem to sound the same. This is not the case in _Thailand's Secret War_. I never had a problem tracking and differentiating between the many personalities and locales. A small criticism is that some locations mentioned in the text are not indicated on the maps provided.

This was a very engaging read. I've already mentioned its value in casting light on previously unheralded parts of World War II. It is also a valuable history to help understand the present state of Thailand and Southeast Asia. Thailand is now under a civil government, but is still a strong partner of the United States. Thailand currently faces many issues, including violence in the heavily Muslim southern provinces, and the rise (or taking the long Asian view, the reappearance) of China as a regional power. Southeast Asia is not a singular entity and Thailand especially is a unique country that has remained independent based on its ability to navigate among the great powers. _Thailand's Secret War_ is an excellent case study of such navigation during World War II. There is no reason to believe that Thailand will not follow a similar course when faced with future challenges.

SUBHASH CHANDRA BOSE

2010-01-21T23:22:00.000+08:00

(1897–1945), Bengali political leader. Hailed as Netaji (Leader) of the Indian National Army he founded, with Japanese support, during World War II, Bose is considered by many to be India’s greatest Bengali leader. Born in Cuttack, Orissa, brilliant Bose entered Calcutta’s Presidency College at the age of sixteen, launching his revolutionary career by leading a student protest against a racist English teacher. Bose was suspended as a result, but he was able to complete his education a year later in Bengal’s Scottish Churches College. In l919 his successful father sent young Bose off to London, where he learned enough Latin to pass the Indian Civil Service examinations, shortly before Mahatma Gandhi launched his first satyagraha (nonviolent resistance) movement against the British Raj. Bose decided then to abandon his ambition of joining the British Service, sailing home instead to join Gandhi’s revolutionary opposition to British rule. He met with Gandhi in Bombay, but found him too nebulous about the goals of his movement, and too worried about avoiding all violence in the national protest he led in 1921.

Bose returned to Calcutta, where he organized a student boycott against the Prince of Wales in 1921, and worked under Bengal’s great “nation-unifier,” Deshabandhu Chitta Ranjan Das, who became his political guru. When Das was elected as Calcutta’s mayor, he appointed Bose to serve as his chief executive officer, and together they began work to clean up the slum districts of that “City of Dreadful Night,” as Rudyard Kipling called it. Bose, however, was accused of “aiding terrorists” by the British and was shipped off to Mandalay prison for three years. After 1927, he returned to Calcutta a popular hero, elected to preside over Bengal’s Provincial Congress Committee. A decade later, Bose was elected president of the Indian National Congress, which met in 1938 in the village of Haripura. Mahatma Gandhi, along with a majority of more conservative members of the Congress Working Committee, had expected Bose to step down after his presidential year ended, but fiery Bose wanted another year in office, urged by many of his devoted Bengali supporters to contest the National Congress elections held in Tripura in 1939. It was the first contested election since the Congress was created in 1885, and Bose won, despite Gandhi’s silent disfavor and the open opposition of his Working Committee, which immediately resigned. Bose was then obliged to step down, his health failing him in the aftermath of that exhausting struggle.

Bose had lived for several years in western Europe during the early 1930s, and was attracted to the ideals of socialism and communism. He later preferred fascism and Nazism, which he thought he could humanize with an admixture of Indian philosophy, then introduce to India as a potent form of national Indian socialism, first forcing the British out, then eliminating poverty and the inequities of caste and class. His Forward Bloc Party, which he started with his brother Sarat Bose after leaving the Congress, was very popular in Bengal, but when World War II started, the Bose brothers were placed under house arrest in Calcutta. On January 26, 1941, though closely watched, he escaped from his Calcutta residence in disguise and, traveling via Kabul and Moscow, eventually reached Germany in April. He had managed to fly to Berlin,[1] met Adolf Hitler, and adopted as his title Netaji, “Leader,” hoping someday to become India’s “Führer.” He broadcast daily appeals to India in Bengali and Hindi, urging those who heard him to rebel against “British tyranny,” insisting that the Axis powers were winning the war and that the Allies would soon be routed.

After Singapore fell to the Japanese, the British Indian army of some 60,000 troops surrendering without a fight early in 1942, the Nazis decided that Bose would be much more useful to them there than he was in Germany. He was sent by submarine in the spring of 1943 from Hamburg, around the Cape of Good Hope, to Singapore, and when he arrived was given command by the Japanese of all Indian troops willing to join his Indian National Army (INA). In October 1943, Netaji inaugurated his Provisional Government of Azad (Free) India, leading his army on its epic march up the Malay Peninsula and Burma to Rangoon, where they began their advance toward eastern India, his battle cry taken from the 1857 Sepoy Mutineers: “Chalo Delhi!” (Let’s Go to Delhi!). Bose and his INA reached the outskirts of Manipur’s capital, Imphal, in May 1944. Had heavy monsoon rains not bogged them down long enough for British and American planes to fly in troops and arms, forcing them back, Bose might have reached Bengal, where Netaji would have been welcomed as his nation’s savior. Instead he marched back to Saigon, flying off to Taiwan (Formosa) on the last, overloaded plane to escape the Allied army that recaptured Burma and Malaya and routed the INA in May 1945. His plane crash-landed and burned, and Bose died in a Taiwan hospital. His ashes were taken to Japan.

So many Bengalis and ardent Indian patriots believed, however, in the myth of Subhash Chandra Bose’s “immortality,” refusing to think of him as dead, that as late as 1957 the government of India sent a special deputation of members of Parliament to Japan to examine his ashes, reporting that they were in fact those of Netaji Bose.

Subhash Chandra Bose's death over Taiwan

The aircraft took off from Saigon on 17 August 1945 carrying Bose, his secretary Rehman, the Japanese crew of three and several IJA officers; total compliment was 12 or 13.

Aircraft landed at Tourane for an overnight stop where the crew attempted to lighten the aircraft which was judged to be overloaded. Two heavy strong boxes of 'treasure' had been loaded onto the aircraft, supposedly gifts to Bose from local Indians as he was about to board. About 500 lbs of weight were removed at Tourane. The aircraft took off again at dawn on 18 Aug for Taihoku, Taiwan. It landed at Taihoku at noon, refuelled while the crew and passengers had lunch and took off again just after 1400 hrs.

Less than 5 minutes after takeoff the left engine and propeller were seen to fall from the wing and the aircraft careened right and dived into the ground. It burst into flames. Bose egressed the aircraft with the help of Rehman but was on fire. He was taken to Nanmon Military Hospital south of Taihoku where he lapsed into a coma. Within a few hours he had died of third degree burns. The highest ranking Japanese officer on board, General Shidei, and the two pilots also died in the crash. Shidei was en route to Dairen as Kwantung Army chief of staff. Some sources give Dairen as a regular stop-off on the Taihoku to Tokyo route.

There is some speculation about the true destination of the flight which is a bit too complex to go into in any detail here. Bose was allegedly trying to get to Dairen in Manchuria to go on to Russia and this was certainly supported by Terauchi who had made the arrangements for the flight. Bose went to Saigon on 16 August from Bangkok and was planning to take Col Rehman, Ayer, Col Pritam Singh, Devnath Das, Col Gulzara Singh and Maj Abid Hassan with him. At Saigon Bose was told he could take only one other Indian with him and chose Rehman.

Some accounts (Lebra) describe the aircraft as a 'Sally' heavy bomber but judging from the number of passengers and Bose's reported position on the flight it was more probably a Ki-57 'Topsy'. Cannot confirm the unit at this time.

[1] According to an item on the History channel, Subahas Chandra Bose made his way across India after escaping from jail and was met by an Abwher team in Kabul who had him flown from Kabul to Germany. If he was flown out then how and by military or civilian aircraft? Possibly Lufthansa (DLH) or an Italian aircraft? Or perhaps a Soviet aircraft, civilian or otherwise, during the ‘friendly’ period of the Nazi–Soviet pact of nonaggression – April 1941.

LINK

TATEO KATO

2010-01-21T23:19:00.000+08:00

(1904–May 22, 1942)

Japanese Army Fighter Pilot

Popularly hailed as the “War God,” Kato was the most celebrated pilot of the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force in World War II. He put up formidable opposition to the famous Flying Tigers in Burma before losing his life in a minor skirmish.

Tateo Kato was born in Japan in 1904, the son of a soldier. His father, Tetsuo Kato, was killed in the Russo-Japanese War of that year, which spurred his orphan son to himself seek a military career. Accordingly, Kato graduated from the Imperial Army Military Academy in July 1925, with dreams of becoming a pilot. He next underwent flight training at Tokorozawa in May 1927 and proved so gifted a flier that he performed demonstration flights for the graduating audience. Kato was then posted with the Sixth Hiko Rentai (flight regiment) in Pyongyang, Korea. For several years thereafter, he served as a flight instructor at several fighter schools, and by 1936 he had advanced to squadron commander. The Sino-Japanese War erupted in July 1937, and Kato, flying Kawasaki Ki 10 biplanes, distinguished himself by downing four Russian-made Polikarpov I-15s on March 25, 1938. Soon after, his unit was equipped with the modern Nakajima Ki 27 monoplane fighters and Japanese air supremacy over China was complete. By May 1938, Kato’s unit had claimed 39 enemy craft for a loss of only three Ki 27s—with Kato himself claiming four more kills. He then rotated back to Japan with a final tally of nine, which made him the leading ace of the war. Kato spent the next two years attending the Army Staff School and also visited Europe to inspect the German Luftwaffe.

Prior to the Pacific War in December 1941, Major Kato became head of the 64th Sentai (fighter group), soon renowned as one of Japan’s best outfits. At this time the unit was equipped with brand-new Nakajima Ki 43 Hayabusa (Peregrine Falcon) fighters, which Allied forces later designated the “Oscar.” This was a radial-engined, lightly built craft equipped with special butterfly flaps and legendary maneuverability. Kato himself was a fearless, charismatic individual, unique among officers of his grade for accompanying his men into combat. Without exception, he always led by example and was highly prized by squadron mates. Kato began the war by escorting naval vessels to Malaysia in preparation for the conquest of Singapore.

Over the next few weeks the 64th Sentai skirmished repeatedly with Hawker Hurricanes and Brewster Buffalos of the Royal Air Force (RAF), driving them from the sky. However, Japanese aerial units were particularly hard-hit over Rangoon, Burma, defended by aircraft of the American Volunteer Group (AVG) of Gen. Claire L. Chennault, better known as the Flying Tigers.

For this reason, the 64th Sentai was transferred 2,000 miles from Malaysia to Bangkok, Thailand, as reinforcements. On December 23, 1941, he escorted several heavy bomber formations on a large raid over Rangoon—and straight into an AVG trap. In the ensuing scrape, the Flying Tigers claimed 16 bombers and two Ki 43 fighters in exchange for four British and two American craft, a stunning reversal. The secret of Chennault’s success lay with his tactics: Knowing that his heavier Curtiss P-40 Warhawks could not dogfight their more nimble adversaries, he instructed his pilots to climb high, then dive upon their intended targets. This was a tactic that the Japanese—including Kato himself—never countered. Soon after the Rangoon debacle, the 64th Sentai transferred back to the East Indies for additional fighting, but they would settle old scores with the AVG soon enough.

Throughout February 1942 Kato’s men performed sterling work eliminating British and Dutch aircraft from Sumatra and Java. He then gained a promotion to lieutenant colonel in March, and his aerial exploits caused such public adoration that Kato became hailed as the “War God.” This is a singularly unusual tribute for a culture that traditionally discounts individual acts in favor of the group—but also a good indication of his national celebrity. Kato subsequently flew back to Chang Mai, Thailand, where the AVG was still active and giving Japanese aviation fits. This was underscored on March 24, 1942, when a flight of six P-40s staged a surprise attack upon Chang Mai, destroying several aircraft. But two could play at this game, and on April 8, 1942, Kato led 11 fighters on a stately raid against Loiwing, the main AVG base. Chennault by that time had perfected an early-warning network to alert him to Japanese attacks, so several Flying Tigers were scrambled and awaiting Kato’s approach from high altitude. A sharp fight erupted over the field, and four Ki 43s were shot down without loss. Both sides then paused to receive reinforcements before renewing the struggle.

On April 10, Kato again led eight Hayabusas against Loiwing, only this time on a nighttime flight over the mountains. Arriving over the American airbase at dawn, the Japanese repeatedly strafed long rows of Allied aircraft, inflicting some damage, before flying home without loss. That same afternoon the 64th Sentai made another appearance over Loiwing, but Chennault this time was ready for them. A swirling dogfight erupted, and two Japanese craft and two RAF Hurricanes were downed. The AVG, as usual, took no losses. The final slap occurred on April 29, 1941, Emperor Hirohito’s birthday, when Chennault anticipated that the Japanese would mount a major effort against Loiwing in his honor. He guessed correctly, and that afternoon Kato led 20 Hayabusas and 24 Ki 21 heavy bombers on a run. The AVG ambushed them again, shooting down two fighters and several bombers. But the day after, Japanese ground forces captured nearby Lashio, forcing the Americans to abandon Loiwing altogether. In their repeated skirmishes with the 64th Sentai, the AVG had the better of it, shooting down 11 Ki 43s for a loss of six P-40s. It was a display of skill and sacrifice reflecting the greatest merit to both sides.

By comparison, the Japanese land campaign in Burma was startlingly successful. To stem the Japanese advance, the RAF frequently sortied light bombers from airfields in India to harass them. On May 22, 1942, a flight of three Bristol Blenheims took off to attack Akyab airfield, but mechanical problems forced two to abort. The final craft approached low over the Bay of Bengal and dropped its bombs, triggering a quick Japanese response. Several flights of the 64th Sentai were on hand to intercept this lone intruder, which pluckily beat them off. At length Kato arrived in company with two other Hayabusas. The three made raking passes at the British aircraft, but as Kato pulled up from his dive, the British tailgunner sent a long burst into his exposed belly. The Ki 43 started burning, and Kato realized that his craft would never make it back to Akyab.

Without hesitation, he quickly half-looped the stricken craft and dove directly into the ocean, killing himself. His death came as a shock to the Japanese people, who perpetuated his memory through the song “Kato Hayabusa Sentoki Tai” (Kato’s Fighter Air Group). At the time of his passing, Kato was credited with 18 kills. The “War God” was also posthumously elevated two grades to major general, a standard Japanese practice. More important, the lessons he taught the 64th Sentai allowed it to continue fighting successfully without him. It would emerge as the most famous Japanese army air force unit of World War II.

Bibliography

Busechel, Richard M. Nakajima Ki–43 Hayabusa. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Military/Aviation History, 1995; Ford, Daniel. The Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and the American Volunteer Group. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1991; Izawa, Yasuo. “Japan’s Red Eagles: The 64th Flying Squadron.” Air Classics 8 (July–August 1972): 11–17, 38–47; 9 (1973): 24–29, 74–75, 82; Sakaida, Henry. Japanese Army Air Force Aces, 1937–1945. London: Osprey, 1997; Scott, Peter. Emblems of the Rising Sun: Imperial Japanese Army Air Force Unit Markings. Aldershot, Hants, UK: Hinoki, 1999; Shores, Christopher F., and Yasuho Izawa. Bloody Shambles. 2 vols. London: Grubb Street, 1992–1993; Stanaway, John. Nakajima Ki-43 “Hayabusa”: Allied Code Name Oscar. Bennington, VT: Merriam Press, 2000.

SATOSHI ANABUKI

2010-01-21T23:18:00.000+08:00

(1921–)

Imperial Japanese Army Fighter Pilot

The youthful Anabuki emerged as the leading ace of the Imperial Japanese Army’s (IJA) air force during World War II, one of only a handful of pilots to be publicly decorated. During his most intense combat he single-handedly shot down three B-24 bombers and two P-38 fighters over Burma.

Satoshi Anabuki was born in Japan in 1921, the son of farming parents. Like many young men of his generation, he expressed interest in flying and passed through the Army Youth Preparatory Flight Program. It should be noted that the imperial army (rikugun) maintained it own aerial service, totally independent from the better-known naval (kaigun) air arm. Anabuki gained admittance to the Tokyo Army Aviation School in April 1938 and three years later was assigned to the 50th Sentai on Formosa as a fighter pilot. At that time his squadron was equipped with the Nakajima Ki 27, a slow but highly maneuverable fighter craft. Allied intelligence assigned it the codename Nate. When World War II commenced, Anabuki participated in the air campaign against American forces stationed in the Philippines. On December 22, 1941, he claimed his first kill, a Curtiss P-40 belonging to the 17th Pursuit Squadron. American fighter pilots such as Ed Dyess and Boyd D. Wagner fought bravely but were outnumbered and outgunned by Japanese aviators. On February 9, 1942, Anabuki shot down two more P-40s, one of the handful of Americans fighters still operational. Shortly after, he transferred back to Japan and transitioned to a new and better aircraft, the Nakajima Ki 43 Hayabusa (Peregrine Falcon), better known to the Allies as Oscar. Anabuki dubbed his machine Kimikaze after his wife, Kimiko.

In June 1942, the 50th Sentai transferred to Rangoon, Burma, then the principle theater of IJA air operations. This meant almost daily contact with aircraft of the Royal Air Force staging out of India. In time Anabuki acquired the reputation of a shrewd fighter pilot who possessed excellent flying skills and fanatical bravery. On December 24, 1942, while taking off in response to a British raid upon his airfield, Anabuki’s Hayabusa was damaged and had to fight with its landing gear still extended. Nonetheless, in the ensuing fray he managed to claw down three British Hawker Hurricane fighters. As the months rolled by, American air strength in the China-Burma-India theater also increased, and the Japanese found themselves locked in combat with aircraft that were more modern than their own. On January 24, 1943, Anabuki destroyed his first Consolidated B-24 Liberator, a massive four-engine bomber that was heavily armed and dangerous to engage. But despite their losses, the Americans kept showing up in ever greater numbers.

The defining moment in Anabuki’s flying career occurred on October 8, 1943, over Rangoon. The 50th Sentai was scrambled to meet an incoming raid by American aircraft, but Anabuki’s fighter was delayed by faulty spark plugs. Several minutes later, he roared skyward alone, only to lose sight of his compatriots in the heavy mist. Flying on, he looked around in vain until encountering a force of 11 B-24s and two Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter escorts. Anxious to engage the enemy, young Anabuki single-handedly dove Kimikaze straight down upon the enemy formation. Four successive passes then added two of the lumbering bombers and both fighters to his tally. However, Anabuki severely injured his left hand, and gasoline vapors began filling Kimikaze’s cockpit. He remained determined to fight. “To go into combat now may mean my demise,” Anabuki reflected. “Mother forgive me! But then I thought I heard her say ‘Charge, Satoshi, and the way will open.’ I had no regrets. The enemy was there. I will charge.” Struggling for consciousness, he made a final ramming attack upon a third B-24, hitting the giant bomber’s tail, bouncing off, and landing on the rear of its fuselage! Kimikaze flew piggyback in this manner for several minutes, and Anabuki confessed, “I was seriously worried about being carried to their base like this!” The fighter slid off its opponent’s back and the bomber began spiraling to the ground. Anabuki managed to restart his struggling fighter before crash-landing on the beach. He was the first Japanese pilot to down so many American aircraft in a single action.

The norms of Japanese military behavior are predicated upon group effort, with little attention to individuals. Therefore, awards for bravery were usually granted to entire units, rather than pilots, although individuals who die in combat might be commemorated posthumously. However, Anabuki became an object of such public acclaim that the High Command singled him out for good conduct—a distinction rarely accorded to live individuals. He thus became the first IJA pilot to receive a certificate of merit. They also reasoned that a pilot of such prowess would be better utilized as an instructor. Anabuki protested his rotation back to Japan, but in 1944 he joined the Akeno Fighter School with a rank of master sergeant. There he was credited with imparting a personal tactic known as the “Anabuki run,” whereby a Japanese pilot would climb, roll into a inverted position, and suddenly dive upon enemy aircraft, firing at a range of 300 feet. He also frequently served as a ferry pilot, bringing badly needed Nakajima Ki 84 Hayates to army units stationed in the Philippines. The Americans were then approaching those islands with their carrier forces, and in the course of several skirmishes Anabuki bagged six of the formidable Grumman F6F Hellcat fighters. After the fall of the Philippines, he commenced home-defense duties flying the superb Kawasaki Ki 100, one of Japan’s best interceptors. He was closely engaged in combat until the end of the war, including among his final kills a giant Boeing B-29 Superfortress for a total of 51 kills in 173 missions. This established him as the leading IJA air ace, although Anabuki’s score has since been pared down to 39.

After the war, Japan was stripped of military forces and forbidden to possess military aircraft. This policy was amended in the wake of the Korean War (1950–1953), and the Japan Self-Defense Force was created in the mid-1950s. Like many former army personnel, Anabuki was allowed to join, and he flew helicopters for many years. Retired from service, he lives in Japan.

Bibliography

Bueschel, Richard M. Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa I-III. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Military/Aviation History, 1995; Coox, Alvin D. “The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Air Forces.” Air Power History 27 (June, 1980): 74–94; Harvey, A. D. “Army Air Force and Navy Air Force: Japanese Aviation and the Opening Phase of the War in the Far East.” War in History 6 (1999): 147–173; Sakaida, Henry. Imperial Japanese Navy Aces, 1937–45. Oxford: Osprey, 1999; Scott, Peter. Emblems of the Rising Sun: Imperial Japanese Army Air Force Unit Markings. Aldershot, Hants, UK: Hinoki, 1999; Stanaway, John. Nakajima Ki-43 “Hayabusa”: Allied Code Name Oscar. Bennington, VT: Merriam Press, 2000.

China-Burma-India (CBI)

2010-01-12T19:50:00.000+08:00

Theater General geographic reference for the immersion of East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia in the war against Japan. China-Burma-India (CBI) also refers to an Allied military command structure in the Pacific Theater that was established early in the war. At the December 1941 ARCADIA Conference in Quebec, British Prime Minister Winston L. S. Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed to set up the American-British-Dutch-Australian Command (ABDA) under General Sir Archibald Wavell in India. Separate from but nominally equal to the ABDA was the China Theater under Generalissimo Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) as supreme commander, in recognition of China’s role in fighting Japan since at least the start of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. Lieutenant General Joseph Stilwell, who had more experience in China than any other senior U.S. Army officer and spoke Chinese fluently, became the senior Allied officer in the region. His two titles were “commanding general of the United States Army Forces in the Chinese Theater of Operations, Burma, and India” and “chief of staff to the Supreme Commander of the Chinese Theater” (Jiang Jieshi). The chain of command was confusing because American forces in China came under the authority of Wavell’s ABDA Command. Wavell also commanded forces in Burma, whereas Stilwell was to have direct command of Chinese forces committed to Burma (initially, three armies of up to 100,000 men). From the beginning, Stilwell and Jiang did not get along, and Stilwell was repeatedly handicapped by Jiang’s interference in military matters.

In February, following the loss of most of the Netherlands East Indies, the ABDA Command was done away with. From that point forward, the Pacific became an American responsibility, with the British assuming authority from Singapore to Suez. Jiang continued to control the China Theater, and Wavell, headquartered in India, had authority over India and Burma. At the same time, Stilwell formed a new headquarters, the American Armed Forces: China, Burma, and India. The command included the small prewar U.S. military advisory group and Major General Claire Chennault’s American Volunteer Group (AVG, known as the Flying Tigers), later a part of Tenth Army Air Force.

This command structure continued until the August 1943 Quebec Conference, when Churchill and Roosevelt agreed on the establishment of the more integrated South- East Asia Command (SEAC), with British Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten as commander and Stilwell as his deputy. Operations in Burma were separated from those in India, now under command of General Claude Auchinleck, commander in chief there since June 1943.

Designed to improve Allied military operations in the region, the new command structure did not achieve that end. Conflicts and different goals remained, with Jiang being the chief problem in Allied cooperation. But the British and Americans also had different priorities. The British were mainly concerned with the defense of India and preventing the Japanese military from exerting an influence on growing Indian nationalism. London saw defeating the Japanese in Burma as the chief means to bring about that end, rather than as a means to channel supplies to China. British military efforts in Burma would thus ebb and flow. The United States was primarily interested in building up China’s military strength, and Burma would be a chief route for these supplies to reach China; indeed, President Roosevelt saw China taking its rightful place as a major world power at war’s end. U.S. military planners also saw China as a potential location for heavy bombers to be used in the strategic bombing of Japan. These conflicting views were exacerbated by the personalities involved. Stilwell continued to feud with Jiang, and he also held that the British were more interested in defending their Asian empire than in fighting Japan. Stilwell wanted to recover Burma, and he worked hard to improve the fighting ability of those Chinese army units he could influence. The only way to get substantial military heavy equipment to China—which was essential if its fighting ability was to improve dramatically—was by way of Burma, and so construction of the so-called Ledo Road there became imperative. In the meantime, the United States undertook a massive logistical air supply operation to China from bases in India over “the Hump” of the Himalaya Mountains, the highest in the world. The ubiquitous C-47 (DC-3) aircraft was the workhorse for much of this campaign.

Construction of the 478-mile-long Ledo Road to connect the old Burma Road from Ledo, India, to Bhama, Burma, took 25 months. The new road ran through jungles, over mountains, and across 10 rivers. U.S. Army Brigadier General Lewis A. Pick had charge of this vast project, one of the major engineering accomplishments of the war.

Meanwhile, Jiang refused to yield operational command of the growing Chinese military establishment to General Stilwell. Jiang saw the Chinese forces as much as a means to defeat the Communists in China after the war as to destroy the Japanese forces in the current conflict. Stilwell fervently believed that, properly trained and equipped, Chinese soldiers could be the equal of any in the world, but all of his efforts to eradicate corruption, weed out ineffective leaders, and end political interference in the Chinese military were rebuffed by Jiang. The Chinese Nationalist leader repeatedly promised reforms but delivered only sufficient compliance to keep up the flow of U.S. military aid.

General Chennault and airpower advocates believed that Japan might be bombed into submission from bases in eastern China. Stilwell dismissed such views and pointed out that the Japanese could simply carry out an offensive to wipe out the bases. Nonetheless, the first production B-29 Superfortresses were sent to China from India, and an ambitious base-construction program was undertaken. Although a few air bombing missions were carried out, the Japanese responded by mounting a great ground offensive, the ICHIGÙ Campaign, in mid-1944, during which all the bases were captured without significant Chinese ground resistance. The B-29s were shifted from CBI to the Marianas in the Central Pacific. Roosevelt now applied heavy pressure on Jiang to carry out the reforms advocated by Stilwell and place an American general, preferably Stilwell, in command of the Chinese army. Frustrated by its inability to turn China into a major theater of war, the United States increasingly used its massive naval strength to invest in the highly productive “leap-frogging” strategy of securing important islands as stepping stones toward Japan across the Central Pacific. As a result, China was more and more marginalized and downgraded to a minor theater of war, chiefly important for its role in tying down a million Japanese troops.

Stilwell, now at wit’s end, reached an impasse with Jiang and was recalled to Washington in October 1944. He was replaced by U.S. Army Major General Albert Wedemeyer, a far more tractable individual bent on getting along with Jiang. The demands for reforms in the Chinese military came to an end. In effect, CBI ended in October 1944 when it was divided into two spheres of command, India-Burma and China. Stilwell’s deputy, General Daniel L. Sultan, became the commander of U.S. forces in India-Burma and directed the Allied military effort in northern Burma.

The CBI featured unique air, guerrilla, and logistical operations. Among innovative military and air tactics originating in the CBI was the establishment of Long-Range Penetration Groups, more popularly known as Wingate’s Chindits and Merrill’s Maurauders. Utilizing air assets, British and U.S. commanders projected ground troops far behind Japanese lines, their communication and supply provided by air. Here and elsewhere, guerrilla operations were developed and intelligence and insurgency operations carried out. William Donovan and the Office of Strategic Services were active in the theater.

Finally, the CBI was a major scene of postwar confrontation. Early in the war, Japan had conquered and overrun much of China and most of the European and U.S. colonies in the Pacific. The arrival of Japanese forces in Indochina was a great blow to French influence, and the defeat of the British at Singapore had an even more powerful impact on British prestige. President Roosevelt envisioned the end of colonization after the war, but with the arrival of the Soviet threat, new U.S. President Harry S Truman was less sympathetic. Although the Philippines, India, Burma, and some other states gained independence just after the war, the process of decolonization was actually delayed in some areas, resulting in costly wars in the Netherlands East Indies and French Indochina. As for China, American efforts by Roosevelt’s inept ambassador to China, Patrick J. Hurley, to mediate between the Chinese Nationalists and Communists came to naught; that vast country soon disintegrated into civil war. The United States, which had already committed to Jiang, found itself unable to adopt a neutral stance and paid the price in influence when the civil war ended in a Communist victory in 1949.

References

Ienaga, Saburo. The Pacific War: World War II and the Japanese 1931–1945. Oxford: Blackwell, 1968.

Levine, Alan J. The Pacific War: Japan versus the Allies. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995.

Rasor, Eugene L. The China-Burma-India Campaign, 1931–1949: Historiography and Annotated Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998.

Romanus, Charles P., and Riley Sunderland. United States Army in World War II: China-Burma-India Theater. 3 vols. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1952–1958.

Schaller, Michael. The U.S. Crusade in China, 1938–1945. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979.

Spector, Ronald H. Eagle against the Sun: The American War with Japan. New York: Free Press, 1984.

Thorne, Christopher G. The Approach of War, 1938–1939. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1967.

———. Allies of a Kind: The United States, Britain, and the War against Japan, 1941–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.

———. The Issue of War: States, Societies, and the Far Eastern Conflict of 1941–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Tuchman, Barbara. Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–1945. New York: Macmillan, 1970.