by Peter Brune
Lying approximately eight kilometres from the coast on the Kelantan River, and only about 20 kilometres from the Siamese border, Kota Bharu was, in December 1941, of critical importance to the air defence of Malaya. About two-and-a-half kilometres behind the town lay the main airfield from which the twelve Hudsons of No. 1 Squadron RAAF and six Vildebeestes of 36 Squadron RAF were stationed. The airfield at Gong Kedah with its Vildebeestes of 100 Squadron RAF was a mere 40 kilometres to the south-east of Kota Bharu, while the unoccupied Machang airfield was about 28 kilometres to the west of Gong Kedah.
Brigadier William Key’s 8th Indian Brigade (of Major-General Barstow’s 9th Indian Division) was charged with the defence of Kota Bharu. Key had deployed his brigade along 48 kilometres of beach front. His 3/17th Dogras occupied a sixteen-kilometre front south of the Kelantan River, of which the area between the beaches of Badang and Sabak was considered his vital ground. Each of these beaches was manned by a company of the Dogras and consisted of lines of concrete pillboxes, wire entanglements, machine gun posts, both anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, and some dug-in artillery support. Key’s 2/10th Baluchis—charged with the defence of the Gong Kedah and Machang airfields—occupied a far longer stretch of beach which was not fortified to anything like the standard of the 3/17th Dogras’ vital ground. One sixteen-kilometre area contained nothing more than dummy pillboxes. Brigadier Key also had the 1st Hyderabads and 1st Mysore State Force Infantry to further safeguard the three airfields, while the 2/12th Frontier Force (detached from the 22nd Brigade) and the 1/13th Frontier Force Rifles acted as his reserve.
At about 11.45 pm on 7 December 1941—only an hour before Admiral Nagumo’s carrier task force aircraft initiated their attack upon Pearl Harbor—the transports Awagisan Maru, Ayatosan Maru and Sakura Maru carrying Major-General Hiroshi Takumi’s 5300 soldiers of the 56th Regiment, 18th Division (and supporting units) anchored about three kilometres off Sabang and Badang beaches. The three transports were escorted by two cruisers and four destroyers. If Key regarded this beach frontage as his vital ground, the Japanese prized it no less. They regarded the Kota Bharu airfield just to the rear of the beaches as the major potential obstacle to a successful landing.
As had occurred at Singora heavy seas made the task of loading the troops into their barges a difficult one. At 12.45 am, as the barges began their trip in under a barrage from the Japanese warships, they were met by a combination of shell fire from the dug-in eighteen-pounders and machine gun fire from the Indian pillboxes. Although some barges were either sunk or damaged and casualties taken, the death toll was greatest on the beaches as the troops landed. Here, amidst the wire entanglements, concentrated machine gun fire and mines—and lack of cover—the Japanese sustained heavy losses. But a number of barges were steered through the creek mouth between the two beaches, and it was through this passage, that the Japanese were able to eventually gain the rear of the pillboxes. Eventually, as enemy soldiers both in the front and in the rear intensified their assaults and gained ground through the Indians’ minefield, hand-to-hand fighting ensued. Lieutenant-Colonel Tsuji: ‘Hand-grenades flew and bayonets flashed, and amid the sound of warcries and calls of distress, in a cloud of black smoke the enemy’s front line was captured.’30
Not long after midnight, while these events were unfolding, Wing Commander Davis, the RAAF on-duty controller at Kota Bharu, received a call from Brigadier Key’s HQ alerting him to the sighting of three small vessels moving slowly just off shore. At about 12.30 am, just as he received authority from Singapore to stage a reconnaissance of the area, Davis heard the Japanese shelling of the Dogras’ beach perimeter. Almost immediately, the enemy shelling was confirmed by Key’s HQ and Davis was further told that transports ‘could be seen lying off shore apparently preparing to land troops’.31 This should have been the moment for decisive action, but Davis was prohibited by an order banning offensive action without authority from Singapore—even if a convoy had been discovered. Douglas Gillison: ‘In Singapore Air Chief Marshal Brooke-Popham received the news in his office at the naval base. After a hurried conference with Air Vice-Marshal Pulford he ordered an immediate offensive against the Japanese ships with all No. 1 Squadron’s available Hudsons.’32
Many great moments in history are preceeded by a superfluous, bureaucratic conference. Davis should have been free to use his initiative—and common sense—when both the Japanese presence and intent were so blatantly obvious. Given that Brooke-Popham and Percival, and a whole host of appreciations stretching over years, not months, had unanimously predicted Kota Bharu as a Japanese landing point, the reader could be forgiven for thinking that a shelling of a beachfront only a few kilometres from a strategically prized airfield, closely followed by plainly seen landing craft, might have been the catalyst for immediate action from a responsible officer on the spot. Brooke-Popham and Pulford, and the procedures they had in place, deserve severe censure.
Seven Hudsons were bombed up and on stand-by as a matter of routine at this moment, while the ground crews hurriedly prepared the remaining serviceable planes.33 The Hudson crews were ordered to undertake independent low-level attacks. At 2.08 am—90 minutes after Davis had heard the shell fire at the Dogras’ perimeter—No 1 Squadron’s first flight took off, led by Flight Lieutenant John Lockwood’s Hudson and followed at two-or-three-minute intervals by the remaining six aircraft.
Lockwood’s first target was the transport Awagisan Maru. On his second approach at around 50 feet, two of his four 250-pound bombs hit the transport amidships. During these Hudson attacks the Awagisan Maru was hit again and later abandoned to sink—sustaining around 40 dead and 70 wounded—while hits were also scored upon the third transport, causing a casualty count of three dead and sixteen wounded. The bombing and strafing of the Japanese transports and barges continued throughout the early hours of 8 December. When at 5.00 am, Wing Commander Davis called a break in the operation so that his aircraft could refuel, rearm and be inspected for damage, interrogation of his crews revealed that one of the Japanese transports had been blown up (the Awagisan Maru) and that 24 barges had been either overturned or sunk.34 Troop casualties either on the transports or in the landing barges are not known, but must have been significant.
Alan Warren, in his Singapore 1942, makes the important point that the Hudson operations on the night of 8 December ‘badly disrupted the disembarkation of the third and final wave of infantry’.35 He also gives an example of how little time it took for the Hudsons to deliver their bomb loads, strafe the enemy barges and return to Kota Bharu airfield—‘in less time that it takes to smoke a cigarette’.36 Warren is referring to an account given by Flying Officer Don Dowie, who was the only survivor of Flight Lieutenant Ramshaw’s Hudson which was shot down during its second strike: ‘We took off and bombed the convoy. The entire mission must have taken only a few minutes as when we landed from the first run, I realised that I was still smoking the same cigarette I had lit just before take off.’37 If Warren is correct in his assessment that the Hudsons of No. 1 Squadron attacked the third wave of Japanese troops at Kota Bharu—and the sequence of timing between the first shelling of the beach (around midnight) and the time that the Hudsons were first airborne (at 2.08 am) would seem to support his view—then given that one sortie might be over in ‘the time it takes to smoke a cigarette’ what damage upon the Japanese shipping and landing infantry might have been accomplished had the Hudsons been allowed to contest the first wave of barges and their rearward transports? The time taken between Davis requesting permission to undertake the obvious, and Brooke-Popham and Pulford’s permission to be given, was absolutely critical to the Japanese landing at Kota Bharu. It had been the first Japanese infantry wave that had understandably floundered on the beaches in the face of the Dogras’ intense shell, machine gun fire, wire entanglements and mines, and therefore, had the first sorties of Hudsons contested the landing earlier (ideally against the first wave), far greater carnage may have been inflicted. Nonetheless, th
e performance of the Hudsons of No. 1 Squadron RAAF on the night of 8 December 1941 was exemplary.
At dawn the next morning, with the Japanese having driven a wedge between the Dogras on Badang and Sabak beaches, Brigadier Key tried to reinforce them with the 1/13th Frontier rifles at Badang, and the 2/12th Frontier Regiment at Sabak, with the intention of them linking and destroying the intervening enemy troops in the ‘wedge’. The attacks failed, largely because the arrival of the reinforcements was delayed by several creeks behind the beaches. When a further effort later in the morning met the same fate, the situation on the coast at Kota Bharu remained obscure.
At around 6.00 am on the morning of 8 December 1941, a Hudson reconnaissance flight confirmed that the Japanese fleet, with nine bombers now screening them, was retiring from Kota Bharu. Just before it landed, the Hudson also reported that there were numerous power-driven Japanese boats off shore and further confirmed the position of a disabled and burning transport. In response to this reconnaissance, Vildebeestes from Kota Bharu and Kuantan flew off in heavy rain to attempt a torpedo attack upon the retiring Japanese ships. They were unsuccessful.
At dawn three flights of Hudsons from No. 8 Squadron RAAF and eight Blenheims of No. 60 Squadron RAF left in heavy fog from Kuantan to the Japanese landing points at Kota Bharu. A bombing of the already disabled and still blazing Awagisan Maru and some strafing of landing craft continued for some time before one flight picked up a message from the control room at Kota Bharu ordering that the Hudsons leave the landing sight and detect and attack the retiring Japanese convoy. But a heavy rain storm shielded the Japanese vessels and the Hudsons thereby returned to Kota Bharu to continue their attacks at the landing site.
On the morning of 8 December, the Japanese took the air war to the RAF and RAAF with an aircraft performance and a level of pilot skill that made an instant impression on their enemy. Brooke-Popham’s assertion given to the Australians in Canberra in February 1941 that the Japanese were ‘not air minded’—and especially against ‘determined opposition’—was cruelly shattered. Kota Bharu was their first target. Just after 9.00 am, navy ‘Zeros’ and army ‘Nates’ flying in formations of five to ten fighters arrived over the airfield. Douglas Gillison:
. . . “peeling off ” at between 5,000 and 7,000 feet, [they] dived recklessly to fire their guns from almost tree-top level. The enemy pilots left the defenders of the airfield in no doubt of their skill in handling their aircraft. The first attacks were against the antiaircraft posts, but later they concentrated on men and aircraft on the ground. From then on, at intervals throughout the day, these raids continued and though casualties were few they greatly hampered the work of the maintainance crews and the aircrews landing and taking off.38
The above-described attack(s) upon Kota Bharu airfield were matched in both timing and ferocity across the main airfields of northern Malaya. In the west the airfield of Sungei Patani was attacked with the loss of two Buffaloes destroyed and six others damaged, while at Alor Star four Blenheims were destroyed and a further five damaged. By the morning of 9 December the remaining planes and pilots of those two airfields had been understandably ordered back to Butterworth. And that evening, the total aggregate of serviceable bombers and fighters was ten. On the east coast, in addition to the attacks made at Kota Bharu, Gong Kedah and Machang were bombed and soon evacuated. At Kota Bharu the evacuation of aircraft and personnel was marked by a degree of confusion over the presence of enemy troops either at or near the airfield. Amidst some confusion, the aircraft were flown off, the buildings were set ablaze, but the station’s petrol and ammunition dumps were mistakenly left for the enemy.
If there was a degree of disorder over the possible presence of enemy infantry at Kota Bharu, no such immediate threat existed at the airfields to the west. When Sungei Patani was abandoned by its ground crews on 8 December, and Kuantan two days later, the Japanese were presented with both airfields’ supplies of petrol, oil and surplus stores. But at Alor Star, the denial to the enemy of the same commodities was so rigorously undertaken that the resulting explosions and dark smoke cloud caused unease amongst the troops forward of the airfield. The army now issued orders that all future destruction of petrol and oil would be undertaken by simply opening the tanks, and further, that all required demolitions must be left to them.
Within 24 hours the Japanese had crippled their enemy’s ability to wage an effective air war in northern Malaya. They often coordinated their attacks with either the departure or arrival of planes at those fields, or attacked as they were on the ground being rearmed. Moreover, by employing lighter bombs loads that were effective in the destruction of aircraft and the killing and maiming of personnel, but which caused less damage to the airfields themselves, the Japanese further displayed proficiency in both the planning and execution of a modern air war. In The War in Malaya, General Percival best summed up the war in the air on that first fateful day:
The rapidity with which the Japanese got their attacks going against our aerodromes was quite remarkable. Practically all the aerodromes in Kelatan, Kedah, Province Wellesley, and Panang, were attacked, and in most cases the bombers were escorted by fighters.
The performance of Japanese aircraft of all types, and the accuracy of their bombing, came as an unpleasant surprise. By the evening our own air force had already been seriously weakened.39
To Percival, these events might well have come ‘as an unpleasant surprise’, but they should not have been such to the senior officers in the RAF in Singapore—nor Brooke-Popham. At the outbreak of hostilities, there were but four radar stations in operation in Malaya and Singapore, and none of these were in northern Malaya; adequate anti-aircraft guns for airfield protection had still not yet been supplied; the internal communication system was inadequate; and, when these limiting factors were allied to the poor quality and number of British aircraft, the inexperience of most aircrews when compared with the Japanese, the crushing defeat in the skies—and destruction of aircraft on the ground—on 8 December 1941 is not hard to fathom. Douglas Gillison has recorded that by the end of that first fateful day Brooke-Popham had:
. . . sent a telegram to the British chiefs of Staff warning them that it was unlikely that the R.A.F. air effort could be maintained as it then was for more than two or three weeks, and asking that air reinforcements should be sent urgently, particularly two squadrons of long-range bombers and two squadrons of night fighters.40
And all this within 24 hours.
While these events in the air war had been in train, Brigadier Key and his 8th Indian Brigade had had a testing time. General Barstow had authorised Key to withdraw from his Kota Bharu dispositions should he deem it necessary. By around 8.00 pm on 8 December, with the airfield abandoned and therefore the chief reason for his presence on and near his beaches gone, Key decided to stage a withdrawal north of the town, while his southward 2/10th Baluch were to also withdraw inland to Peringat. It was a tough movement for exhausted troops who, amidst the confusion and obstacles of heavy rain, darkness, the crossing of numerous streams and swamps, poor communications and some contact with enemy patrols, arrived at their new positions around dawn on 9 December. But when the Japanese aggressively followed up his withdrawal and began to infiltrate his new lines, Key staged a further movement in stages to the line Peringat–Mulong. There was a fortunate lull in the fighting the next day, which enabled Key to recover small parties of his troops who had been cut off or lost during the withdrawal. On this day, so as to protect his tenuous line of communication, he wisely staged a further withdrawal to a position just south of Machang, along the way having carried out demolitions at Gong Kedah and at Machang airfields and upon roads and the railway. During 11 December, this 48-kilometre withdrawal had been completed. And it had been fortunately aided by little contact with the enemy.
But while these events had been unfolding, a massive disaster had befallen the British defence of Malaya and Singapore.
Lieutenant-General Sir William Dobbie
(centre) when Governor of Malta. (AWM MED0411)
Lieutenant-General Bond (AWM 007912)
Major-General Keith Simmons (left) and Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham. (AWM 134879)
Lieutenant-General A.E. Percival. (left) (AWM 134877)
The Governor of Singapore (left), Sir Shenton Thomas, and Lady Thomas (centre) welcome the 22nd Brigade AIF to Singapore. Lieutenant-General Bond is behind Lady Shenton. (AWM 005908)
Major-General Gordon Bennett, GOC 8th Division AIF. (AWM 003616)
Brigadier H.B. Taylor, OC 22nd Brigade AIF. (AWM 005512)
Lieutenant-Colonel H. Rourke, 8th Division HQ. (AWM 001507)
Lieutenant-Colonel Broadbent (left) and Lieutenant-Colonel J.E. Thyer, 8th Divisions HQ. (AWM 005516)
Major-General Gordon Bennett (left) and Major-General Murray Lyon, GOC 11th Indian Division. (AWM 005954)