by Chris Brown
Last Stand
12 February
0800hrs 8th Brigade come under attack by Japanese.
13 February
Perimeter formed by the Allies, but very congested area.
Combat continues throughout the day.
1430hrs Percival calls a conference at his headquarters to discuss battle prospects.
14 February
0830hrs 1st Malaya Brigade attacked.
1600hrs 1st Malaya Brigade forced back to the Brickworks.
15 February
0930hrs Percival calls a conference at his headquarters.
1130hrs Percival sends deputation to make contact with the Japanese to arrange terms of surrender.
1810hrs Percival signs the capitulation document.
At about 0800hrs on 12 February, 8th Brigade came under attack and for a while the Japanese were close to breaking through toward Nee Soon village and the Sembawang Airfield, only 2 miles from the naval base. The situation was eventually restored by a spirited counter-attack by 2/9th Ghurkhas from the 28th Brigade. Even so, the situation was critical here as well as in the Western Areas and Percival now decided it was time to withdraw all forces from the Northern and Eastern Areas and to form a defensive perimeter around the city. He envisaged a roughly hemispherical, nearly 30-mile long line that would stretch from Pasir Panjang in the west to the race course, then east to Thompson village and Bidadari, then south to Geylang and finally south-west to the coast at the Singapore Swimming Club.
At noon, 11th and 18th Divisions began to move to their allotted positions, which was achieved with little interference from the enemy other than an attack from Japanese tanks at the Nee Soon/Mandai Road junction. Elsewhere, 22nd Brigade – now under the command of Brigadier Varley – had repelled several attacks but was clearly at risk of becoming isolated and withdrew successfully to their perimeter position, which forced 44th Brigade and 1st Malaya Brigade to adjust their own positions or leave their flanks ‘in the air’.
By early morning on the 13th the perimeter had been formed, but the area it described was now dreadfully congested. A steady tide of refugees had increased the population of Singapore city to about 1 million people and the concentration of service personnel and materiel within the perimeter was so great that there was hardly a space that did not constitute a legitimate military target for Japanese artillery and aircraft.
Combat continued throughout the day, including a determined action at Bukit Chandu on Pasir Panjang Ridge in which Lieutenant Adnan Bin Saidi won a posthumous Military Cross for his gallant efforts; however, the Japanese made modest but significant advances in several sectors, forcing the retreat of 44th Indian and 1st Malaya Brigades that night. At a 1030hrs meeting with Sir Shenton Thomas, the colonial governor, Percival made it clear that he still intended to carry on the fight, but the defensive perimeter was already under threat.
At 1430hrs on the 13th Percival called his subordinates to a conference at his headquarters at Fort Canning to discuss the prospects of the battle. Food supplies were now down to about seven days’ worth, but there were still reasonable amounts of ammunition available, though the anti-aircraft batteries were running rather low. None of those present expressed any confidence that a counter-attack was a feasible proposition. Many of the front-line units were exhausted and a number had received little training and – especially 18th Division – no opportunity to adjust to the climate since they had arrived so recently. Although Bennett and Heath were in favour of surrendering, Percival maintained that the situation ‘… though undoubtedly grave, was not hopeless’, and decided to continue the battle. It is difficult, if not impossible, to see what hope Percival thought there might be. The Japanese were on the island in great strength with plenty of tanks, they had total air and sea superiority, their morale was high and they held the tactical initiative in every sector of the front. Percival was well aware that there was no relief force en route to Singapore, and there was no realistic possibility of holding out beyond a couple of days at most. Even if the arrival of a powerful relief force had been imminent, the power of the Japanese at sea and in the air would almost certainly have prevented it being disembarked and brought into action.
Singapore town.
At 0830hrs on the 14th, 1st Malaya Brigade had come under attack and, though this was repelled, by 1600hrs they had been forced back to the Brickworks only a mile or so west of Mount Faber, which overlooked the western edge of the city. Although there were Australian artillery units in the area which could have provided support, General Bennett had given strict orders that Australian guns were only to fire in support of Australian troops due to the growing ammunition shortage. Clearly this was not going to be of any help if the battle as a whole was lost so it is difficult to see what Bennett could hope to achieve by conserving ammunition.
Surrender
Although he was inclined to continue the fight, Percival realised that the end was in sight and that there was a limit to the value of further resistance, so he sent a signal to Wavell outlining the situation and asking for permission to seek terms when conditions deteriorated. Wavell’s reply was far from helpful:
You must continue to inflict maximum damage on the enemy for as long as possible by house-to-house fighting if necessary. Your action in tying down enemy and inflicting casualties may have vital influence in other theatres. Fully appreciate your situation but continued action essential.
Major General Woodburn Kirby, The War Against Japan,
HMSO, 1957
Clearly Wavell did not ‘fully appreciate’ the situation at all. Had he done, he would have understood that the campaign was over; that Percival’s troops could achieve nothing by fighting on and that the plight of the civilian population was becoming desperate. Furthermore, fighting to the bitter end would have no appreciable effect on the Japanese in other theatres. Hong Kong had already fallen, the Japanese were making good progress in Burma and the Philippines and the war in China would not be greatly affected by transferring the relatively small numbers of troops in the Twenty-Fifth Army.
At 0930hrs on the 15th, Percival held another conference with his senior commanders, the Director General of Civil Defence and the Inspector General of Police. He was informed that shelling and bombing had caused extensive damage to the reservoirs and the distribution system, and that water supplies would last for forty-eight hours at best, and more likely only half that. Percival now accepted that there was no value to maintaining a defence since the Japanese were clearly capable of breaking his line at any point and decided that the only options were an immediate counter-attack or to surrender. His commanders’ opinions on a counter-attack had not changed since the previous meeting. Although there were still ample quantities of small arms ammunition, there was little for the field artillery, almost none for the anti-aircraft batteries and a shortage of mortar bombs for the infantry battalions. Additionally, the stamina and the morale of the combat troops was causing concern, as was the now widespread failure of discipline among other personnel. Percival could have chosen to follow Wavell’s orders and pressed his commanders to fight for every street and house. This would unquestionably have led to massive casualties among the residents as well as the combatants, but close combat of that nature tends to benefit the defenders, who have to be driven out of their positions by artillery and costly close attacks. It also demands the expenditure of very large amounts of ordnance, and Yamashita felt that he had neither the men nor the ammunition to conduct such a battle. He described his situation thus:
My Attack on Singapore was a bluff – a bluff that worked. I had 30,000 men and was outnumbered three to one. I knew that if I had to fight for long for Singapore I would be beaten. That is why the surrender had to be at once. I was very frightened all the time that the British would discover our numerical weakness and lack of supplies and force me into disastrous street fighting.
P. Elphick, Singapore: The Pregnable Fortress, London, 1985
In this respect Yamashita�
�s analysis of the situation was cautious or even pessimistic. The ground force available to the Allied commander was unquestionably much greater than the Twenty-Fifth Army in number, but most of the troops had been engaged in a long retreat that had caused the loss of a great deal of their equipment and, perhaps more significantly, of any confidence that they were capable of defeating the Japanese on the battlefield. Allied troops could be fairly certain that any aircraft overhead were likely to belong to the enemy and could be utterly confident that if they heard tanks in the distance, they would be hostile ones. Moreover, if Yamashita’s ammunition supply was limited, Percival’s was not really much better. The shells, grenades and bullets may have existed, but there was no means of getting them to where they needed to be.
Percival was also obliged to consider the civilian population. Regardless of Churchill’s cable to Wavell urging him to reject any thought of sparing the civilians, the practical reality was that there was something in the region of a million people concentrated in just a few square miles. If Yamashita was to adopt a policy of shelling and bombing the Allies into surrender the death toll would be horrendous. Percival had no reason to assume that the Japanese were so short of ammunition that this would not be a viable proposition. Even if Yamashita did not choose a policy of bombardment, Percival was all too aware that with the major reservoirs either captured or damaged, there would soon be a drastic shortage of water.
With Percival’s own troops short on supplies of all kinds, increasing evidence of a breakdown in discipline and with no prospect of relief, Churchill and Wavell’s instructions to fight on to the very last were utterly unrealistic. Although there was a still a huge reservoir of men on hand, there was no means of organising them into anything like a viable force. Many had lost or abandoned their rifles; quite a large number of air force and navy personnel had never been issued with a weapon in the first place and many had had little weapons training, let alone tactical training of any kind. Large numbers of men from infantry battalions had become detached from their units – some quite deliberately in the hope of escaping by ship or simply to take cover until the fighting came to an end. Men from the other branches of service had come to the same idea, but even those who had remained with their units were at a loss. A great many of the artillery units had lost some or all of their guns during the retreat and those which had kept their guns had little or nothing in the way of ammunition.
41. The Japanese victory parade in Fullerton Square, Singapore, 17 February 1942.
With the decision to surrender accepted by all of his senior staff, Percival started the process of capitulation. At about 1130hrs he sent a deputation consisting of a staff officer, an interpreter and the colonial secretary to make contact with the Japanese to arrange terms. They came back with instructions that Percival should make his way to meet Yamashita at the Singapore Ford Factory at Bukit Timah and that the flag of Japan should be raised on the Cathay building, the tallest edifice in the city, to show that the battle was over. Yamashita was not interested in discussing terms; he wanted an immediate and unconditional surrender. The discussions lasted less than an hour and at 1810hrs Percival signed the capitulation document.
THE FORD FACTORY
What is now called the ‘Old Ford Motor Factory’, but in the past was known simply as ‘The Ford Factory’, was the first Ford assembly plant in Asia. Completed just a few months before the Japanese invasion, it was the scene of Percival’s surrender to Yamashita. During the occupation it was used by Nissan for the assembly of vehicles for the occupation forces. Ford continued to use the building from 1947 to 1980 and since 2006 it has been a museum and archive storage facility for the National Archives of Singapore.
AFTER THE BATTLE
It is often easy – or at least tempting – to assume that any major defeat was a foregone conclusion. The failure of successive British governments to take a realistic approach to defence in the Far East went a long way toward making the fall of Singapore inevitable. Even in the last days of the campaign there was a general tendency to ignore the practicalities of the situation. This signal from Churchill to Wavell exemplifies that tendency:
I think you ought to realise the way we view the situation in Singapore. It was reported to cabinet by the CIGS (Chief of the Imperial General Staff – Sir Alan Brooke) that Percival has over 100,000 men, of whom 33,000 are British and 17,000 Australian. It is doubtful whether the Japanese have so many in the whole Malay Peninsula … In these circumstances and in a well-contested battle they should destroy them. There must at this stage be no thought of saving the troops or sparing the population. The battle must be fought to the bitter end at all costs. The 18th Division has a chance to make its name in history. Commanders and senior officers should die with their troops. The honour of the British Army is at stake.
Major General Woodburn Kirby, The War Against Japan,
HMSO, 1957
The cable shows Churchill’s complete misunderstanding of the entire situation. Apart from the fact that he seems to have retained some confidence in the ideas of racial superiority in disregarding the Indian, Malay and Chinese service personnel, he had seemingly failed to grasp that the Japanese had been able to seize and retain their initiative due to better training, better leadership, better air support, their daring use of armour and a better understanding of what could and could not be achieved on the battlefield. None of these issues could be remedied simply by demanding a ‘do or die’ attitude. Defeat in the air meant that movement by day was extremely vulnerable to Japanese air strikes. Since neither Allied fighter strength nor anti-aircraft capacities presented very much of a challenge, Japanese pilots could afford to take their time seeking targets of opportunity. On the ground, the Allies had no real answer to Japanese armour. Yamashita’s tanks may have been old-fashioned, lightly armoured and under-gunned, but the Allies had lost a great many anti-tank guns during the campaign, and even if the guns had been replaced the general approach to training had been so basic that most units had very little idea of how to deal with an armoured threat.
Percival went to The Ford Factory ostensibly to seek terms, though in practice he must have been aware that neither he nor Yamashita really had much room to manoeuvre. Realistically, Yamashita could only accept an unconditional surrender and Percival had nothing else to offer.
Percival’s surrender was unconditional, though not strictly speaking, without terms, since there were a number of practical issues to be addressed. Neither Percival nor Yamashita had effective communications with all of their units, so a ceasefire deadline was set for 2030hrs to allow news of the surrender to be relayed to units out of radio contact. The surrender document explicitly required Percival to ensure that all military materiel – arms, ammunition, supplies of all kinds, transport, papers, ships and aircraft – was surrendered undamaged immediately. Yamashita accepted Percival’s word that there were no aircraft or ships left in Allied hands, but in fact he had already given instructions that all heavy artillery and documents were to be destroyed before 1600hrs.
42. Lt Gen. Percival and party en route to surrender Singapore to the Japanese.
Clearly there was already a good deal of disorder in the streets with soldiers and civilians looting shops and homes across the city. It would be some time before Japanese troops could be deployed all over the city, so Percival was allowed to retain 1,000 armed men to maintain law and order pending Japanese takeover.
Percival can certainly be counted among the losers in any examination of the 1941–42 campaign. To a considerable degree the dice were heavily loaded against him from the outset. An inexplicable tide of political and diplomatic constraints prevented him from taking positive courses of action from the very beginning of the campaign. Although a plan (Operation Matador) had been formulated to slow the Japanese advance in one of the few real ‘choke’ positions, diplomatic and political considerations conspired with poor communications and a lack of clarity to prevent the operation being put into action in time for it
to be successful. He was obliged to follow strategic and tactical policies that were not remotely suited to the situation. The belief that the material production on the Malayan Peninsula, as well as the prestigious naval base and vital commercial facilities of Singapore, could be only protected by maintaining a strong air force may have been well founded, but that forced Percival to scatter his troops to protect the airfields. However, the airfields were only valuable if there was an adequate supply of modern fighter aircraft and pilots to fly them. Neither of these were to be had in 1941.
The absolute and wilful blindness in Whitehall and the British Army on the question of armoured vehicles was another problem. Simply assuming that the terrain was unsuitable for armoured warfare did not make it so. It was certainly true that tanks would struggle to cope with jungle and swamps or oil palm and rubber plantations, but the reality is that tanks mostly stick to roads, and without a good road system the produce of Malaya could not have been transported to Singapore for export around the world. Percival’s problems did not stop there. A powerful belief on the part of various individuals in the civil authority that the Japanese would never attack impeded any progress toward an adequate civil defence policy. Similarly, a refusal to offer a living wage for local labour meant that very little was done to prepare defences in Singapore. The policy of defending the Singapore naval base continued to be a factor in Percival’s planning, even when there were no ships left for the base to tend.