Second World War, The

by Corrigan, Gordon

  On 14 October, Paulus attacked again, and after two weeks of savage fighting the Germans, headed by pioneers with flame-throwers and engineers with explosives to blow holes in walls and supported by precision bombing by the Luftwaffe, captured the tractor factory and cut what was left of Chuikov’s army in two. At this stage, the Germans had captured most of the city and regular Russian counter-attacks, mounted from bridgeheads on the west bank of the Volga, were being as regularly beaten off. Despite the apparent successes, the army group commander, von Weichs, was unhappy that his army had been sucked into street fighting, always expensive in men, ammunition and water, and that the battle was going on for far longer than had been anticipated. He advised OKH to call the battle off and to concentrate on merely blocking the Volga. His advice was rejected. The battle had now become almost a personal one between Hitler and Stalin. Hitler did not need Stalingrad, and he had said that he had no wish for a ‘Verdun on the Volga’, but German soldiers were on the Volga and there they must remain; the city had been attacked and so it must be taken.

  Paulus himself was still confident that he could take Stalingrad, despite all his logistics having to be delivered from a very long way away along one railway line. For the Russians resupply was equally difficult as the Germans had cut the only rail link from Stalingrad to Moscow, so reinforcements and supplies had to come the long way round via the Russian interior, but the Red Army was rapidly making up the losses of the winter of 1941/42 and of those divisions squandered in the offensives of the early part of 1942. The factories out of range of the Luftwaffe were churning out tanks – 2,000 a month by now – sub-machine-guns and aircraft, but, instead of feeding massive reinforcements into Stalingrad, the Stavka reinforced Chuikov – whose army was suffering terribly – with just enough to keep him fighting, while Zhukov and Rokossovsky created a massive reserve, so far uninvolved in the battle. The Red Army soldiers in Stalingrad fought from a mixture of hatred of the Germans, fear (NKVD troops shot those who were reluctant to go forward) and genuine patriotism, the Germans through professional pride, trust in their leaders and a belief, at least amongst the younger officers and men, that the Führer would provide ultimate victory. Paulus intended one final effort to complete the capture of Stalingrad before winter. Casualties so far had been heavy; the army was tired and rifle companies were down to around sixty men, but morale was still high and the men were in no doubt that with one final push they could do it. Paulus committed nine divisions and 180 tanks and on 11 and 12 November captured the Red October steel works.

  Meanwhile, Colonel Gehlen and his intelligence apparatus in Foreign Armies East had picked up that something was going on behind the Russian front, and they were right. Zhukov and Rokossovsky had by now assembled over a million men, 900 tanks and 12,000 artillery pieces, supported by 1,200 aircraft. And on 19 November the first heavy snow fell.

  9

  THE ASIAN WAR

  DECEMBER 1941–MAY 1942

  Japanese coordination could hardly be faulted. Attacks 6,000 miles apart on Siam, Malaya and Hawaii all occurred within a period of one hour and forty-five minutes, and a further attack – that on Hong Kong – four hours later. The first blow fell on Malaya, where in August the British Commander Land Forces Malaya Command, Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival, had calculated that he needed forty-eight infantry battalions and two battalions of tanks, with associated engineer, artillery and anti-aircraft support, properly to defend his command, which included Brunei and British Borneo. What he actually had were thirty-six battalions: fifteen Indian, six British, six Australian, three Gurkha, five Indian State Forces (ISF)* and one Malay. He had a few armoured cars manned by the local part-time volunteer units but not a single tank. The British units had spent long years in garrison duty and had little chance to take part in all-arms training as part of a brigade or division, and in some cases had been in the Far East for many years. Because the Indian Army wartime expansion had been so rapid, its battalions in the Far East had been milked of experienced British and Indian officers and NCOs to man the units sent to North Africa, and while the Australian units had been in training for well over a year, most of their senior NCOs and officers had no experience other than as part-timers. The ISF and the Malay battalions, although willing, were capable of little more than local defence. The best operational battalions were the Gurkhas, but there were only three of them and even they were short of many of their British and Gurkha officers, who had been extracted to manage the raising and training of new battalions. Nevertheless, the army in Malaya mustered a total of 88,600 men and should surely be more than a match for the Japanese, whose soldiers looked like a badly wrapped brown paper parcel.53 The Royal Air Force too was considerably weaker than its commander would have liked. Altogether, there were 158 aircraft with the squadrons, and another 88, without crews, held in reserve. The fighters comprised sixty American Brewster Buffaloes, inferior machines with a top speed of only 295 mph, which made them 40 mph slower than the Japanese Zero. Of the bombers, only the twenty-four Vildebeest biplanes could carry a torpedo to launch against shipping but, unlike their Japanese counterparts, they were slow, lumbering and totally obsolete.

  The Eastern Fleet, commanded by Admiral Sir Tom Phillips, consisted of one battleship, the Prince of Wales, one battlecruiser, the Repulse, three cruisers, four destroyers and a handful of gunboats and armed trawlers. The Prince of Wales and the Repulse had left England in October, and their arrival in Singapore on 2 December was intended to show the Japanese that the British meant business. The brand-new aircraft carrier HMS Indomitable should have arrived too, but she ran aground in the West Indies in November during her work-up, and the other ships sailed without her. The Eastern Fleet was therefore entirely reliant on land-based aircraft for air cover. Altogether, it was not an impressive display of British imperial might, but the priority was the defence of the United Kingdom and operations in and around the Mediterranean and there was little left over for the Far East. The only slight flicker of light in the whole gloomy situation was that six months’ worth of reserve stocks – ammunition, rations, fuel – were held in depots around Malaya, and, if the Japanese did attack, reinforcements would surely arrive well within that time.

  The conquest of Malay was entrusted to the forty-six-year-old Lieutenant-General Tomoyuki Yamashita’s Twenty-Fifth Army. He had four divisions, but elected to use only three, as that was the maximum that he calculated he could supply through the Malayan jungle. Of these, 5 Division and 18 Division were stationed in China and were veterans of years of fighting there, and the elite Imperial Guards Division was in French Indo-China. Altogether, Yamashita would deploy 70,000 men, a lot less than the British had in Malay, but Yamashita also had 150 tanks – not very good tanks, as it happens, but they were a lot better than none, which is what his opponents had. Yamashita’s plan was to effect landings at Singora and Patani on the east coast of Siam and at Kota Bharu on the east coast of Malaya. His men would then push south using the roads and tracks, take the capital Kuala Lumpur, and then advance on to Singapore. Some warning of the Japanese landings was received: reconnaissance aircraft flying in foul weather had identified Japanese troop transports moving down the coast of Siam on 6 December, but whether they were heading for Malaya or intended for a landing in Siam was not clear, and it was not until the afternoon of that day that Percival ordered General Heath’s III Corps to stand to. In fact 5 Division, which would make the initial landings, embarked in nineteen transport ships at Hainan Island in the early morning of 4 December and, escorted by light cruisers and destroyers, headed down the coast.

  At 1715 hours on 7 December 1941 Greenwich Mean Time, or 0045 hours on 8 December local time, the sepoys of 3/17 Dogras, part of 8 Brigade of 9 Indian Infantry Division, who were in position along the coast off Kota Bharu, suddenly found themselves subjected to severe shelling from ships offshore. Shortly afterwards Japanese troops began to land under cover of their own naval gunfire, and the defenders, unable to prevent the landing, be
gan a fighting withdrawal. The RAF, reacting rather more swiftly than anyone else in the chain of command, did mount an attack on the Japanese ships, and did some damage, sinking one of the three transport ships and damaging landing craft. Useful for morale of the air crews though it was, this came too late to interfere with the landing. At 0400 hours Singapore experienced its first taste of what the Japanese could do when seventeen bombers, operating from Indo-China, appeared overhead and began their attack; the bombs were intended for the airfields but they fell in civilian residential areas too. Although British radar had given around thirty minutes’ warning of the raid – information which was passed to all military units – the civil defence plan could not be implemented as the Air Raid Precautions headquarters was not manned, and hence the Japanese completed their mission with all of Singapore’s street lights and commercial and domestic illumination shining brightly into the sky. Night fighters were on standby, but, as there was considerable (and justified) suspicion as to the ability of the anti-aircraft and searchlight teams to avoid shooting down friendly aircraft, they were not allowed to take off. No Japanese aircraft were hit.

  Now, at last, the Governor of Malaya received permission from London to launch Matador, the pre-emptive invasion of Siam, which had hitherto been hung about with all sorts of caveats to ensure that the British could not be accused of invading a neutral country. By the time that all concerned had verified that the Japanese were actually landing in Malaya, and that they had or were intending to land in Siam, it was too late for Matador, which was scrapped, but a small detachment of two infantry battalions, named Krohforce, was sent off to take up a defensive position well inside Siam in order to block the expected Japanese advance from Patani. Confusion and muddle reigned, and it was after 1500 hours on 8 December when the force moved. Inside Siam they found to their consternation that the Siamese were not welcoming them as protectors from the Yellow Peril but had actually established roadblocks manned by the armed constabulary. It took time to deal with them and by the time Krohforce approached the area of the Japanese landings, they found the Japanese already in possession of the ground that they had hoped to turn into a blocking position. Krohforce tried to block the roads south but, when the Japanese began to attack with tanks and work their way round the British flanks, there was little option but to withdraw, with considerable casualties to both battalions, and, although some delay was imposed on the Japanese by blowing up bridges on the way back, the operation achieved little.

  At Kota Bharu the RAF returned at first light, to find that the Japanese shipping had withdrawn and there were no targets to attack. Landing on the northern Malayan airfields to refuel, the British machines were then caught on the ground by Japanese aircraft which were now systematically attacking airfields in the area, to the extent that the RAF had little option but to withdraw all its machines to Singapore, hoping to use what airfields that might remain serviceable in the north for refuelling only. This was to have a serious effect on the Royal Navy’s Force Z, HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse which, escorted by three destroyers, had left Singapore Harbour as soon as they heard of the landings, in order to cut the Japanese supply lines to the beachheads. When it became apparent to Admiral Sir Tom Phillips, flying his flag on the Prince of Wales, that land-based air cover would not be available because the airfields in northern Malaya had been abandoned or rendered unusable, he decided to turn back, but, when he was told by radio that there were reports of more landings at Kuantan, on the east coast and about halfway between Kota Bharu and Singapore, he turned to investigate, yet, keeping radio silence, did not tell Singapore of his intentions nor ask for air cover (which might have been possible from Singapore). There were no landings at Kuantan, but the next day, 9 December, Force Z was sighted by a Japanese submarine, which then lost contact, only for it to be renewed by another submarine the next day. On 10 December a Japanese reconnaissance aircraft confirmed the position of the British ships, and now it was just a matter of time. From late morning the two capital ships were subjected to torpedo and bombing attacks from the air, and, when Phillips broke radio silence (it was unnecessary now) to ask for air cover from Singapore, it was too late. At 1233 hours the Repulse was sunk, and at 1320 hours the Prince of Wales followed her to the bottom. True to the code of the Royal Navy, Admiral Phillips went down with his ship, along with the 840 officers and men of both ships who lost their lives. The escorting destroyers, in a superb example of seamanship under fire, rescued over 2,000 survivors. This was the first time in the history of warfare that any capital ships at sea and under way had been sunk by air power alone, and with the loss of only three aircraft it was greeted with jubilation in Japan as a notable victory – as indeed it was. The sinking of the two ships came as a severe shock to the British public, not least because it had been executed with considerable skill by Asiatics, who were supposed to be poor pilots with even worse eyesight and to lack any understanding of complex technical matters such as bomb-aiming or synchronized torpedo attacks. It was a final confirmation, if any were needed, that the battleship was no longer the queen of the seas, and that ships without air cover were horribly vulnerable. Phillips knew that, as did most thinking naval officers, but Churchill was still living in the age of the dreadnought: the ships should never have been sent to the Far East without a carrier to accompany them and the idea of providing them with land-based cover was never going to work once the Japanese air force began its campaign to destroy the British airfields. As it was, Japanese land forces were now thirty miles into Malaya and seemingly unstoppable.

  * * *

  Six thousand miles away and one hour and ten minutes after the landings in Malaya, at 1825 7 December GMT and 0755 local time, the Japanese navy struck at Pearl Harbor, the main base of the United States Pacific Fleet. The commander of that fleet, Rear Admiral Kimmel, knew that a Japanese carrier force had sailed but had no idea where it was. Plan Orange, the war plan in the event of hostilities with Japan, required Kimmel to raid the nearest Japanese territory, the Marshall Islands, and as these were south-west of Hawaii that is where Kimmel concentrated his reconnaissance efforts. Admiral Nagumo, with four fleet and two light carriers, and their escort of two battleships, a destroyer screen and eight support ships, had sailed all the way across the Pacific to a point 275 miles north of Hawaii, without being detected. Strict radio silence, bad weather (or good, if you want to sail without being seen) and a route that was generally avoided by commercial shipping had all helped, but so had inter-service rivalry and general incompetence in Washington.

  The Americans had broken some of the Japanese codes, including the one used to communicate with their spies in Hawaii, and had deciphered those asking for detailed descriptions of Pearl Harbor. This information was never passed on to Kimmel, and anyway American intelligence still thought that, if war came, the first move would be an attack on the Philippines, which had led to the transfer of most of Pearl’s P-40 fighters to Wake Island and Midway, from where they could assist in attacks on targets in the Philippines. Kimmel himself was of the view that a conventional attack on Pearl Harbor was highly unlikely: the harbour was too shallow for torpedoes to run, and so no anti-torpedo nets were in place. In fact, as we have seen, the Japanese had taken note of the British success at Taranto – it had merely confirmed much of their own thinking – and modified their torpedoes. Some sort of submarine attack might be possible, however, and an American destroyer did detect a midget submarine near the entrance of the harbour and sank it an hour before the air attack came in, but no conclusion seems to have been drawn from this, and no heightened state of readiness was ordered.

  The army commander at Pearl, sixty-one-year-old Lieutenant-General Walter Short, thought that the threat was from saboteurs, and so army anti-aircraft guns were not on standby, while on the ships only a limited number of AA machine-guns were manned and the ammunition for the larger guns was stored in locked magazines. Both commanders had seen no reason to alter the peacetime Sunday routine, whereby the o
fficers played golf and/or had lunch parties, while the Other Ranks recovered from the previous night’s excesses. A mobile radar unit, whose soldiers were under training in the use of their equipment, spotted the incoming raiders and reported unidentified aircraft approaching to their duty officer. That officer did nothing, as he was expecting American aircraft from the same direction, but, even if he had realized what the radar signal really presaged, there would not have been time to do anything about it.

  Nagumo’s first wave of 183 aircraft – forty-nine bombers, forty torpedo-bombers, fifty-one dive-bombers and forty-three fighters – approached Pearl Harbor in thick cloud, guided by the music being played by a local radio station. Then, just as they arrived over the island, the cloud broke, giving every pilot and bomb-aimer a clear picture of what was below. From now on they used the target grid map supplied by the Japanese consul-general’s spies, and for thirty minutes the bombers attacked the ships below them while the fighters strafed the airfields. Then, after a pause of fifteen minutes, in came Nagumo’s second wave of fifty-four bombers, seventy-eight dive-bombers and thirty-six fighters, which attacked the American ships before departing at 0915 hours local. In just one hour and twenty minutes the Japanese navy had sunk four battleships and badly damaged two more; they had sunk three light cruisers and three destroyers and sunk or damaged a host of lesser fry. It had either destroyed or badly damaged 292 American aircraft, nearly all caught parked up on the ground. Japanese losses were negligible; twenty-one aircraft, one submarine (out of the sixteen employed) and five midget submarines. It was a brilliant operation, although it could have been even better if Nagumo had launched a third wave (which he could conceivably have done) against the repair and fuelling installations, which would have put Pearl Harbor out of use as a naval base for a considerable time. Some of Nagumo’s staff urged him to do just that, but, with his fuel levels running low and deciding that he had chanced his luck sufficiently for one day, he ordered the fleet to head for home.