by Chris Brown
Much more could have been done to protect the island; mines and barbed wire were available in the sense that there were extensive stocks of both, but poor record keeping meant that no one knew where they were stored and a general lack of urgency meant that no one tried very hard to find them. In the final days before the battle there was a little more urgency, but some of the arrangements and propositions smacked of fantasy. There were not enough searchlights to cover all the likely landing areas and there were plans to use car headlights. Providing power for headlights other than by leaving them mounted on cars with the engines running would obviously be a challenge, but the illumination would have been marginal anyway.
The civil defence arrangements were equally poor. During the first air raid on the city all the lights were left on because no-one knew how to swtich them off, aircraft were not scrambled for fear of friendly fire and there was a general lack of night-fighter training. There was very little in the way of an Air Raid Precautions (ARP) system and very few shelters. The latter was, admittedly, something of a challenge given the very low water table: the floors of even relatively shallow slit trenches tended to become a soggy quagmire in no time at all.
The appointment of a resident minister to ensure all was being done that could be done did not help. Sir Alfred ‘Duff’ Cooper arrived in 1941 but found he was obstructed at every turn by the governor, Sir Shenton Thomas. Cooper probably did not have the relevant skills or experience to make a great impression on the situation, and he certainly did not have the powers to do so. Although he did manage to secure the appointment of one person to co-ordinate all civil defence efforts in Singapore and Johore, Shenton Thomas ensured that the appointee – Brigadier Simpson – was denied the powers to do the job. Other than a desire to preserve his own authority as governor in all matters, it is impossible to see why Thomas should have been so obstructive; however, he did not get on well with Cooper and may have acted out of nothing more than resentment.
The Japanese Army
The general ethos of the Japanese Army could hardly have been more different to those of Britain, India or Australia. Encouraged to be self-reliant and treated with ruthless brutality, the Japanese soldiers’ training instilled confidence in battle and a high degree of physical fitness. Prior to the invasion, only one regiment had engaged in any degree of jungle training, so the average Japanese soldier was no more familiar with the combat environment than his British or Indian counterpart; the difference was that he had been taught not to fear the jungle, whereas most Allied troops had been conditioned to avoid it.
Japanese Army staff work and the ability to improvise had been honed by years of fighting in China, where considerable distances and a poor transport infrastructure posed major problems with supplies. The term ‘army’ as in ‘Twenty-Fifth Army’ really equates to the term ‘corps’ in other armies. An ‘army’ was not so much a permanent administrative structure as a group of divisions brought together for a particular campaign. The Twenty-Fifth Army consisted of the three infantry divisions, 5th, 18th and the Imperial Guards, supported by elements of four medium and light tank regiments.
21. Waxwork effigy of a Japanese soldier with an Arisaka rifle at the Si!oso Fort Museum, Singapore.
The Japanese divisional structure varied considerably throughout the war and from one theatre to another, but 5th and 18th Divisions in 1941 each had two infantry brigades, each of two regiments comprising three battalions; some twelve infantry battalions in total. Each division had an artillery regiment, a reconnaissance unit and various divisional troops. The Imperial Guards Division and 5th Division were entirely motorised, but 18th Division’s transport was horse drawn and the reconnaissance unit was a cavalry battalion. The division started the campaign with nearly 6,000 horses, which may seem anachronistic, but in fact almost all of the German divisions other than those in North Africa had horse-drawn transport and artillery throughout the Second World War. The Guards Division had nine battalions in three regiments and although the formation enjoyed a certain status, it was, arguably, the least effective of the three divisions in the Twenty-Fifth Army.
With about thirty officers and a little over 1,000 men at full strength, the Japanese infantry battalion was rather larger than its Commonwealth counterpart and consisted of a headquarters company, a machine-gun company and four rifle companies. The companies, again bigger than their Commonwealth equivalent, had a headquarters company, three rifle platoons each with three squads of thirteen men commanded by a corporal or sergeant, and a grenade discharger squad of thirteen men to give a total company roll of about 200. The standard rifle was the Type 99 Arisaka, a bolt-action weapon of 7.7mm calibre; however, some of the earlier Type 38 models (6.5mm calibre) were still in use, which complicated ammunition supply. The Japanese infantrymen had a rather ramshackle appearance which belied their fighting ability. Their cotton uniforms came in a wide variety of shades of khaki, green and grey, and the puttees worn by many gave them a somewhat old-fashioned look. Steel helmets were issued as standard, but some chose to wear ‘solar topi’-type sun helmets. Soft rubber-soled shoes were popular and gave the advantage of virtual silence on the battlefield, but most soldiers wore slightly curious footwear with a separation to accommodate the big toe.
22. Japanese machine-gun crew.
The standard squad light machine gun was the dependable and accurate Type 99, which was very similar in appearance to the British Bren gun, even to the thirty-round curved magazine. Japanese officers were expected to purchase their own pistols and many favoured foreign-made weapons over the underpowered and unreliable Nambu models. Japanese officers and NCOs were much more inclined to carry swords into battle. Some were treasured antiques handed down through generations; others were mass-produced weapons of poor quality. One squad in each platoon was equipped with the Type 89 grenade discharger, which could fire a fragmentation grenade or a high-explosive shell weighing about 2lb. The platoon’s offensive power went some way to compensate for the lack of a mortar platoon at battalion level, as was common practice in most armies.
Each regiment had an integral gun company with two sections, each with two 75mm guns, and an anti-tank gun company of six 37mm or 47mm guns. Each division would normally have one regiment of field artillery, one of engineers, a transport regiment, a signals unit and a medical unit; however, divisional structure varied widely depending on location and the nature of the formation. A division with horse transport required a lot more manpower so, for example, with strength of 22,000 men, 18th Division was almost half as large again as 5th Division with 15,000.
ARISAKA
The Arisaka was the standard rifle of the Imperial Japanese Army throughout the war, though in practice a large number of its predecessor, the Type 38, remained in use because Japanese industry could not meet the demands of the army. The Arisaka took a 7.7mm cartridge and had a five-round box magazine. Introduced in 1939, the Arisaka was, overall, a good-quality weapon, though neither as sturdy nor as accurate as the Allied Lee-Enfield and with only half the magazine capacity; the quality of production also declined after 1942. Over 3 million Arisakas were made; many saw service with Indonesian nationalists after the war.
23. Riflemen with the Arisaka rifle.
JAPANESE PISTOLS
The Japanese Army adopted only one revolver, the model 26. It was a double-action, 9mm, six-shot weapon based largely on Smith and Wesson designs of the late nineteenth century. The most common automatic pistol was the Type 14 Nambu, which fired a low-velocity 8mm round. Neither model was especially popular and, since Japanese officers were obliged to provide their own side arms, many of them chose to purchase foreign models privately or to acquire them on the battlefield. The Nambu was quite accurate, but was prone to jamming. Something in the region of 200,000 Nambus were produced between 1906 and the end of the war in 1945.
A divisional field artillery regiment would usually have one howitzer and two field-gun batteries. The gun battalions consisted of three batteries each with
three sections of two 75mm pieces, a total of eighteen guns. The howitzer regiment would normally have four batteries each with two sections of two 105mm weapons, a total of sixteen.
Estimates of the number of tanks available to the Twenty-Fifth Army run as high as a little over 300. The British Official History gives figures of 70 medium and 100 light tanks but makes no mention of armoured cars at all, though some were certainly in use with reconnaissance units. The Japanese never really developed an armoured doctrine as such and the normal practice was to deploy tanks as infantry support. Since they encountered very little in the way of enemy tanks in China and none at all in Malaya, Japanese armoured units enjoyed great success and carried out some daring and devastating forays penetrating positions, seizing bridges before they could be demolished and overrunning columns of Allied transport or artillery units that were still limbered up. Bicycles – either army issue or seized from civilians – were used in great number and to great effect. As tyres wore out, they were discarded and the troops cycled on the bare rims of the wheels. On at least one occasion the grinding, rattling mechanical noise generated was mistaken by Allied troops for tanks.
KNEE MORTARS
The Type 89 Grenade Discharger was widely known as the ‘knee mortar’ by Allied troops throughout the Asia and Pacific theatres, from the widely held belief that the weapon could be fired when braced against the thigh; a practice which would almost certainly result in a broken femur or hip. The discharger was issued in large quantities – often fifty or more to a battalion – and was in service from 1929 until the end of the war. Smoke, incendiary, fragmentation and high-explosive rounds were available and large numbers were used by the Indonesian forces during the war of independence against the Netherlands from 1945.
24. The Japanese knee mortar grenade launcher.
The Japanese military establishment did not include a separate air service, but two bodies: the army air force and the navy air force. In late 1941 the two air arms had well over 4,000 combat aircraft, but low industrial capacity meant that losses could not be made good – a problem that was exacerbated by the increasing difficulty of getting materials to the factories because of attacks on Japanese shipping and bombing raids on the factories themselves.
25. Making gas masks in Singapore.
In Malaya the Twenty-Fifth Army was supported by 3rd (Army) Air Division. Air divisions nominally consisted of two or three ‘Air Brigades’. Each brigade would generally consist of either three of four ‘Air Regiments’ and often with more than one type of aircraft in each regiment. The regiment would normally have three squadrons of either nine bombers or sixteen fighters so one regiment might have anywhere between twenty-seven and forty-eight combat aircraft in total. Airfields were staffed by specialist battalions with responsibility for the defence and maintenance of the airfield and the provision of ordnance for regiments on their station, while the air regiment staff tended the aircraft.
HURRICANE FIGHTER
Designed by Sydney Camm and brought into service in 1937, the Hurricane was the workhorse fighter of the Royal Air Force. Over 14,000 Hurricanes were built – 10 per cent of them in Canada – before production ceased in 1944. The Hurricane was a big improvement on the Buffalo fighters which had been deployed to Malaya and Singapore, but struggled against the Japanese ‘Nate’ and ‘Zero’ fighters. The Hurricane was normally equipped with four 20mm cannon, had a maximum speed of 340mph and a range of 600 miles.
26. Hawker Hurricane Mk IIC. (Ad Meskens)
ZERO FIGHTER
The official Allied code name for the Mitsubishi A6M Zero was ‘Zeke’, though the name is seldom used. The Zero was built for the Imperial Japanese Navy as a carrier-borne fighter and entered service in 1940. For the first two years of the war the Zero enjoyed great success in combat, being more than a match for the Buffalo and Hurricane fighters deployed against them in Malaya. Although the Zero was not as fast as the Spitfire or the Hurricane, she was more manoeuvrable and had a better rate of climb. The Zero weighed about 2½ tons when fully fuelled and armed, carrying two 7.7mm machine guns, two 20mm cannon and two 60kg bombs. As the war progressed, naval fighter development failed to match that of the Allies. Over 10,000 Zero fighters were built between 1940 and 1945.
27. A long-wrecked Japanese Zero fighter plane of the Second World War. (Bartosz Cieslak)
The most well known of the Japanese aircraft of the Second World War is the A6M Zero, a carrier-borne fighter. The Imperial Army’s Nate and Oscar fighters were probably a more familiar sight over the skies of Malaya and Singapore. The Nate was somewhat dated by 1941 but was still widely used as a bomber escort, but the Oscar was a first-rate aircraft more than capable of taking on the Brewster Buffaloes (the only Allied fighters in the theatre at the beginning of the campaign) and were a match for the Hurricanes, which arrived in the closing stages of the fighting. The Zero was completely underestimated by the British, despite the fact that they had been given all of the information relating to the aircraft by Chinese government sources after a Zero had been captured intact.
Perhaps the single most telling strike by air power in the whole conflict was the destruction of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse (Force Z) as they steamed toward Kuantan with the intention of disrupting reported Japanese landings there. Force Z was struck on the morning of 10 December 1941 by a succession of ‘Nell’ torpedo bombers operating from airfields in French Indo-China. Sinking the two ships was not simply a blow to the power of the navy; it was a great blow to both civilian and military morale and rather set the tone for the rest of the campaign. Of all the navies in the world, the British should have been more aware of the power of aircraft at sea since just the year before a force of obsolete Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers had destroyed one Italian battleship and severely damaged another two in an attack on Taranto.
The Type 99 ‘Sally’, Type 99 ‘Lily’ and Mitsubishi G4M ‘Betty’ bombers, among others, were used extensively throughout the Malayan campaign. Due to poor surface-to-air communications, the army air service provided little in the way of integrated air support for troops on the ground and much of its effort was focused on bombing towns and cities. The scarcity of anti-aircraft guns and limited quantities of ammunition, coupled with the sheer overwhelming numbers of Japanese aircraft, meant that there was little the Allies could do to prevent them from attacking. Although considerable damage was done to harbour facilities in Singapore, the chief purpose of the raids was to disrupt communications and demoralise the military and civilian population, a process which became more and more successful as it became apparent that the Allies could do nothing to prevent the attacks.
28. The rescue of Force Z survivors, 10 December 1941.
‘BETTY’
With a top speed of about 250mph and a weapon payload of over ¾ ton, the ‘Betty’ – or Mitsubishi G4M – was comparable to other twin-engined bombers of her class, but was very vulnerable. To keep overall weight down – and consequently achieve a better speed – there was virtually no protection for the crew and the lack of self-sealing fuel tanks made the ‘Betty’ very vulnerable in combat. A number of ‘Bettys’ were used in the torpedo-bomber role against the Prince of Wales and the Repulse.
29. An Imperial Japanese Navy Mitsubishi G4M ‘Betty’ bomber.
THE DAYS
BEFORE BATTLE
Percival’s general policy was unsuitable and unworkable in the circumstances of late 1941, and was not especially consistent. His initial troop commitments were not particularly rational and became increasingly irrelevant as the campaign developed. The prize – at least in the British view – was the great Singapore naval base, which could only be protected if there was adequate air power available, and the air power could only be maintained and adequately deployed if there were enough airfields to support the aircraft, but defending the airfields meant a heavy commitment of army resources. The necessary aircraft were not available, so protection of the fields was, essentially, redundant from the very beginning o
f the campaign. In addition to airfield protection, Percival also had to find the means of repelling an invasion wherever a force might land.
Percival did not develop a consistent policy for the campaign, but also failed to adjust his thinking to the situation, often endeavouring to make the circumstances fit the plan rather than the other way around. He alternated between plans to develop a strong defensive line, which would force the Japanese to concentrate their forces where his own troops would be able to take advantage of the superior British artillery, and a policy of slowing the Japanese advance while preparing for what he called ‘the main battle’ further south. Neither policy was really valid since neither gave any real consideration to what the enemy intended to do or how he intended to achieve his aims. Some of the ‘wishful thinking’ among the British command generally – not just Percival – was the product of unrealistic assessments of both the Allied and Japanese capabilities – the belief that the Japanese advance could be stopped in its tracks by artillery being a case in point. The British and Commonwealth forces did have a considerable quantity of high-quality artillery, but had not developed the necessary integration within divisional structures to make it effective.