It was a very narrow escape the night of the 23rd of February. Just a few days earlier on Feb 21st, a Japanese task force centered on the light carrier Ryujo had covered operations to land elements of the 229th Infantry Brigade of 38th Division, which had embarked from Hong Kong. Their target had been the port and airfields near Palembang on Sumatra, where fighting was already underway with Dutch garrisons sparring with Japanese paratroopers that had landed to seize Airfield P1. Once those troops were ashore, Ryujo had moved into the Malacca Strait to cover further operations against Medan in northern Sumatra. This left a brief window where the British forces could make their dangerous move by sea to Java.
To cover the operation, British squadrons remaining on Sumatra at Airfield P2 flew defensive missions, and the carriers Illustrious and Indomitable, already on the scene in the Indian Ocean, were ordered to slip in towards the Sunda Strait. Somerville was still delayed aboard HMS Formidable and would not get there for some days. Those land based planes, augmented by the F.A.A. squadrons off the carriers, were just enough to provide air cover.
It was also fortunate that Japanese surface units were out of position to intervene or interdict the sea transit. The Ryujo Group was still far to the northwest with Rear Admiral Jisaburō Ozawa’s Western Covering Fleet, composed of five cruisers and an equal number of destroyers. Other Japanese surface units in the region were gathering at Balikpapan, where shipping was already assembling for the planned invasion of Java. Commander Ohashi in submarine I-56 spotted the convoy, designated SJ.3 for “Singapore-Java 3.” He was able to put a torpedo into the ammo ship Derrymore, but could do little more that night.
The following morning Montgomery’s relief force, and now the heart of his new Java Command, would arrive safely in the harbor of Batavia and begin debarking. They had left much of their heavy equipment behind, leaving as many guns in place as possible to support the Singapore defenders. Yet they found that several of their own artillery regiments had finally reached Batavia to join them, diverted there in those halcyon days just before the main battle at Singapore.
Advised on the planned British troop arrivals, the Dutch forces in and around Batavia had begun moving east by rail towards Semarang, Cirebon, and Surabaya. Montgomery would then plan to send additional troops by rail east to bolster the Dutch defense as needed.
As it happened in the history Fedorov knew, Java fell in a matter of days once the rag-tag Allied surface fleet under the Dutch Admiral Doorman was defeated in the Battle of the Java Sea. This time, that battle might be very different. The Japanese might find a much stronger Allied naval presence ready to oppose the Java landings, including two fleet carriers.
On the night of February 24th, Illustrious and Indomitable moved back out to sea, intending to wait for Somerville and the remainder of the Eastern Fleet. Though the battleship Royal Sovereign had come round the Cape to Colombo, the Admiral elected to assign it to the vital convoys carrying the Australian 7th Division. The British had hoped to divert them to Rangoon in an attempt to save that city, and by extension, Burma, but Australian Prime Minister Curtin would not hear of it, demanding the unit return home.
Churchill relented, but made one last attempt to salvage this veteran unit for the impending operations now gathering like a bad storm in the Java Sea.
“Your government might see the defense of Java, a prize dearly coveted by the Japanese, and one for which we have put our most important base in the Pacific at risk, as being instrumental to the defense of the Australian mainland. For if Java and the remaining barrier islands should fall, it would be no great leap of either logic or imagination to see the Japanese putting troops ashore at Port Darwin within 30 days time.
“To forestall this dreadful possibility, I have ordered the stalwart defenders of Singapore to make a hazardous journey to strengthen the Dutch position on Java, and make another gallant stand on that wall, imposing themselves between the enemy and your homeland. Might the leading elements of the 7th Division now join their brothers on Java and fight side by side with Brigadier Bennett and his heroes of Singapore? Might they now join the New Zealand Brigade, which we have released at great sacrifice from our dwindling forces in the Middle East in this grave hour? If, however, your government still insists on repatriating these troops, then, at the very least, I strongly urge you to consider debarking them at Darwin, where their presence will act as a strong deterrent to invasion there, and also place them close to Port Moresby on New Guinea, where you will unquestionably need them should we fail to stop the Japanese here and now.”
They were certainly going to be needed, because the Japanese offensive continued to sweep south like an unstoppable wave, and even Montgomery was going to soon wish he was back in the relative calm of the Libyan desert.
Part IV
Feather Light
“Loyalty and honor are heavier than a mountain,
and your life is lighter than a feather.”
― Samurai Code
Chapter 10
It was an argument that John Curtin found difficult to dismiss. The movement of the British 18th Division from Singapore was certainly audacious and risky, and the fact that the 22nd Australian Brigade and 6th New Zealanders were also included in that withdrawal was difficult to overlook. Yet Curtin still had grave reservations. If Timor were to be taken by the enemy, Japanese air and naval units operating in those waters would sever sea lane communications between Darwin and Java, isolating the latter. Curtin therefore cabled Churchill:
“Deployment of our 1st Expeditionary Corps to Java is seen as a risky proposition, for it demands that all the barrier islands between Batavia and Timor be held as well. Enemy occupation of Timor, or any of the other islands, would effectively cut off our forces in Java, and make the prospect of their safe withdrawal to Australia a less than encouraging proposition. Notwithstanding the value of resources in Java itself to the enemy, it is the considered opinion of this government that any ‘last stand’ to be made in this theater would best be fought in Australia itself, for only here will there be found a base of sufficient strength to build up forces arriving from the United States, and plan the inevitable counterattack against Japan.
“To therefore risk our most capable and combat effective divisions on Java would seem to be unsound strategy. We would rather suggest that every available unit in theater should be moved to Australian soil as quickly as possible. To that end, we now find it necessary to insist the 7th Division return home, followed by the 6th Division, and request the immediate withdrawal of the 9th Australian Division presently operating in Libya as well. We will, however, strongly consider debarking this division at Port Darwin as you have suggested.”
In trying to hold one cat by the tail by tussling for the 7th Division, Churchill was now about to see two others slip out the back door. It was all a clear case of supposed allies unable to come to a common view of the purpose before them. Upon receipt of his orders, Wavell had looked the situation over and come up with a grand plan employing not only those forces he was receiving from Singapore, but both the 6th and 7th Australian Divisions as well. One would be sent to hold southern Sumatra and keep open the left flank of the vital Sunda Strait that led to Batavia, and the other would go to central Java. While he was floating this grandiose idea past the Australians, Churchill had been wrangling to get the 7th Division to Burma, and Curtin was dead set on clearing the board of all his pieces and then setting up a new game on the home soil of Australia.
They were all like blind men about the elephant, each with a different view of how this massive, unwieldy animal should look. Yet it was not Churchill, nor Wavell, nor Curtin who would decide the matter. It was not even Brooke in his new post as Chief of the Imperial General Staff. Weeks ago, a Sergeant was managing the loadout of the 7th Australian Division in the Suez Canal. His name was Bill Thornton, and he was a stickler Stevedore with an eye for detail, and a short temper when anything that mattered to him was botched or overlooked.
Sergeant Tho
rnton was supervising the embarkation of the Australian 7th Division, flipping through a clipboard of unit registries, cargo manifests and other information relating to the movement. It was his job to get the troops loaded on the troop ships, the guns and heavy equipment loaded on the cargo ships, and it was a fine art that was called “tactical loading.” In a nutshell, it aimed to group ships with guns and equipment belonging to the proper brigades and battalions in the same convoy. If this was not done correctly, the troops would arrive without their equipment, and it could then take weeks for the division to sort itself out.
The interesting thing about Wild Bill Thornton, as he was called on the docks at Suez, was that he was not supposed to be there. He was to have been down with a bad case of dysentery, laid up for nearly a month, but in this retelling of events, the malady had not struck him, and he was fit and on the job when the 7th Division got orders to move. Four separate convoys would end up moving the troops, some composed of just a few ships. The first of these was just a single ship, the Orcades, which had pulled into the harbor at Batavia in spite of an order from the homeland advising it not to disembark there.
Once Orcades arrived, Wavell wanted to unload the AA guns and troops all neatly mated up and sent off by Sergeant Thornton, so that they could “protect the aerodromes” on Java. The Australians advised him that once disbursed on Java, it would seem impossible to ever safely withdraw the unit. It was a bit like quibbling over the movement of a pawn in the early stages of the game. Once pushed forward, the Australians argued it could never take a backward step, and they feared it would soon be lost in the fray.
Behind Orcades, three other small convoys were strung out between Bombay and Colombo. These “flights,” as they were called, were composed of larger troopships coming from the Suez that would first offload the men at Bombay, and then re-load them onto smaller ships for the final leg of their journey to Colombo and points further east. These were the heavy pieces in the division, carrying the 25th, 21st, and 18th brigades in that order.
Yet this was a chess game where there were two players on the same side vying for control of the Knights and Bishops. Churchill actually gave orders for the lead flight to divert north to Rangoon, only to find Curtin countermanding those orders and sticking to his guns that the troops should come home. One argument he would make was that the units had not been “tactically loaded,” and if the division went to Burma or Java it would still not be able to organize for operations until all the other flights arrived and all the equipment could be sorted out. In Curtin’s mind, the final destination of the first flight was going to determine where all the others would have to end up, and so his hand was heavy on the mane of that Knight’s horse, and he tugged the reins firmly to lead it east to Australia.
This time, however, Curtain’s argument could not be made, at least to Churchill. Sergeant Bill Thornton had seen to all of that in Suez, and the flights were all tactically loaded. In what would now become a perfect illustration of the maxim that amateurs talk strategy while the experts talk logistics, Thornton’s intervention had swept away Curtain’s arguments before they could matter. His methodical mind for logistics had seen the ships off in proper order, with all equipment correctly assigned to each brigade flight. Because of this, each flight was now capable of landing at any friendly port, and of functioning as a fully effective combat unit the day it arrived.
Yet Curtain did not know that, and assumed the hasty withdrawal from Suez would have seen the division embarked willy nilly, and scattered all over the seven seas. He had a subordinate issue a cable that Orcades should not debark at Batavia, and instead return home, and that all other flights should follow this same course.
At this point, another methodical man came on the scene at the quay in Batavia, demanding to know why the Orcades was sitting there idling about when it might be unloaded in a matter of hours. His name was General Bernard Law Montgomery, fresh off the boat himself and rubbing his hands together as he contemplated his new command and the defense of Java.
“Good show,” he said when he learned this ship had the leading elements of the Australian 7th Division. 2/3rd MG Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Blackburn and 2/2nd Pioneer Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Williams would be a most welcome addition to the forces now building up on Java. He was lucky the ship was even there, for in the history Fedorov knew, it had been diverted to Oosthaven on the southern tip of Sumatra, where its units would act on orders to form a provisional brigade and advance north on Palembang and the vital airfields then under threat from the Japanese.
Montgomery knew the men of the 7th Division, for this was a unit he had in his corps in North Africa, and he also knew its fighting merit well. With it, and the troops he was already sorting out from Singapore, he had every confidence that he would hold Java secure.
“See here,” he said, collaring the dock master at Batavia. “Get that ship unloaded at once. What is all this dawdling?”
“But sir,” the man protested, “we’re still waiting for authorization on that one. It’s not yet on my clipboard.”
“Damn your clipboard!” Monty fumed. “Get the men to work on it this very instant. I am your authorization, and I won’t hear of any further mucking about. The Japanese will be on our backs in a hot minute, and those troops will do us no good on those ships. What if the Japanese bomb this port? They’ll be sitting ducks.Now get it done!”
Faced with the wrath of a full General, and with Montgomery’s unflinching will applied to the task, Orcades was summarily unloaded—the very day that the Japanese bombed Port Darwin. Curtin and the Australian War Cabinet were all caught up in the news, and the word sent back concerning the fate of Orcades never got through the chaos of that day.
Even Wavell had not been informed that the Orcades had debarked, and that the other flights carrying 7th Division had all altered course to Batavia. Australian officers on the scene came in to make a formal protest to Montgomery, but left that meeting knowing the meaning of yet another well turned line in the annuals of history—‘ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die.’
In effect, the efficiency of Sergeant William Thornton, and the meddling intransigence of Montgomery, had effectively taken hold of the Australian 7th Division by the nose. Even while Curtin and Churchill exchanged long cables laying out arguments and counter arguments as to why the 7th Division should or should not go to Burma, it was steadily moving to Batavia, and then one more unaccountable fact would determine its destination point once and for all—fuel.
It was going to come down to the level of fuel oil remaining in the ships after their long Journey from Suez. All the strategy and high level wrangling that had pulled in heads of state as far as Washington DC when Churchill appealed to Roosevelt to pressure the Australians, would come to nothing. Strategy was now the servant of a fuel hose. Once diverted in that odd meeting of Thornton’s mindfulness and Montgomery’s iron will, the flights of the 7th Division could not easily turn about to other ports. They needed more fuel to reach Australia, and Batavia was now the best place to find it. The only other place they could land would be Colombo.
By the time this was all realized by the higher ups in both governments, the 25th Brigade was nearing the Sunda Strait, and the Japanese were hastily preparing to launch a series of blows that were intended to deliver the real prize in this region, the resource rich island of Java.
* * *
In sharp contrast to the divided and sometimes chaotic dispositions of the Allies, the Japanese war machine continued to move with a single minded purpose, and ruthless efficiency. The forces they had arrayed to strike the barrier islands would form nearly three full divisions, a force the size of the army that had conquered Malaya. A full regiment of the 38th Division was already on Sumatra, forcing scattered British and Dutch units there to flee south to Oosthaven and get aboard any ship available in the harbor to make good their escape to Java. Among them was a small detachment of light tanks, the British 3rd Hussars, and it
would soon employ the services of the Orcades to make the trip over to Batavia.
For the attack on Java, the entire 2nd Infantry Division would form the Western pincer aimed at Batavia, and it would be reinforced with a fourth regiment, the 230th ‘Shoji Detachment’ from 38th Division. This force was covered by the light carrier Ryujo returning from the Malacca Strait, light cruisers Natori, Yura, and Sendai, along with three destroyer divisions, (12 ships), and mine sweepers. Beyond this, the entire 7th Heavy Cruiser Squadron was present with Kumano, Mikuma, Mogami, and Suzuya.
The Eastern Task force would bring the entire 48th Division to attack central Java west of Surabaya, again augmented by a fourth regiment, the 229th Regiment of 38th Division. It would be covered by light cruisers Naga, Kinu, and Jintsu, another dozen destroyers, and the 5th Heavy Cruiser Division with Haguro, Nachi, Ashigara, and Myoko.
Yet that was not all. The Japanese were leaving nothing to chance here, and after its successful covering for Operation R at Rabaul, 5th Carrier Division sailed under Admiral Nagumo to support the attack on the barrier islands. This would bring the new fleet carriers Zuikaku and Shokaku into the Arafura Sea, escorted by battleships Kirishima, Kongo and Haruna. Another three heavy cruisers led the way, Atago, Maya and Takao, and the force was screened by light cruiser Abukuma with another ten destroyers.
All told, the Japanese were sending three carriers, three battleships, eleven heavy cruisers, seven light cruisers, 34 destroyers, four minesweepers and a number of auxiliaries. It was an overwhelming naval presence, and the reason why the Japanese advance had been unchecked up until that moment. It would also be backed up by no fewer than 420 aircraft based on land and sea. When it came to planning and execution, there was no quibbling, no equivocation, no misread orders at cross purposes, and nothing more than a skillful concentration of force and will that had produced one victory after another.
Turning Point (Kirov Series Book 22) Page 9