The strategy of the garrison commander, Major-General Maltby, was to hold on to the leased territories along the semi-fortified Gidrinkers Line until the port installations had been destroyed, and then to withdraw to the island to withstand the siege. Yet this policy was shattered within a few days of the outbreak of war. Already on the morning of 8th December (the 7th at Hawaii), Japanese bombers had destroyed the RAF's few planes and her troops were crossing the colony's borders. The 38th Division under Lieutenant-General Sano had been given the task of seizing Hong Kong, and he was determined to lose no time in implementing this order. Numerically the Japanese were superior, but perhaps even more important was their absolute command of the air and their strong artillery and mortar support. By 9th December, the British were back on the Gidrinkers Line and early on the next morning the important redoubt of Shing Man was seized by troops led by a Colonel Doi, a success which surprised Sano as much as Maltby. With their line breached, the British hastily withdrew to the island, the last contingents crossing from the mainland on the 14th.
Since the garrison had to be spread out to cover an assault from any side (including the south, which the Japanese also threatened), there was little chance that a determined attack on one flank could be successfully resisted. On the night of 18th–19th December the whole three regiments of 38th Division landed on the north shore and soon drove through to Deep Water Bay in the south. The defence was thus split into two and gradually forced back. On the 25th the western sector surrendered, followed by the eastern sector the next day. Japanese killed and wounded amounted to 2,754 while the total British casualties were approximately 4,400. But the garrison of 11,848 men and the colony itself was lost, and this in only eighteen days instead of ninety. Of course, the Japanese had enjoyed the advantage in numbers, artillery and aircraft, as well as their excellent knowledge of the terrain; but the swiftness of this assault was an ominous pointer to the fate of other British territories in the Far East.
The most important of these were Malaya and Singapore, the former producing much of the world's rubber and tin, and the latter dominating the trade route from the Orient to India and the West. Neither territory was easily defensible: Malaya had a mountainous jungle-covered backbone, which split any lateral lines of defence in two, and was dependent upon large rice imports to feed the more than 5-million population; and defending Singapore if Malaya fell was like defending the Isle of Wight from an enemy based in Hampshire. This, however, had not been the problem when the great naval base was constructed there in the years after 1924. Believing the Malayan jungle to be a barrier to any invasion force, Singapore's defences were constructed with an attack from the sea very much in mind and this idea was carried into the 1930s also. By that time it was clear that the great fleet for which the base had been built would not be available, due to inter-war economies and then to the growing threats to Britain in Europe. However, it was hoped that a large and efficient air force would be able to hold Malaya and Singapore until relief from home arrived, and consequently several fine airfields were built on the western side of the peninsula; but it soon transpired that the necessary aircraft were also lacking. Instead of the 566 modern planes demanded as a minimum by the local commanders, only 158 first-line (but still rather mediocre) aircraft were stationed there when war broke out.
The ground forces, it was true, were considerable, some thirty-one battalions and support units totalling 88,600 men; but the GOC Malaya had asked for another seventeen battalions and two tank regiments to make up a minimum force. In any case, most of the existing units were poorly equipped and badly trained for jungle warfare. They possessed no tanks and their commander, Lieutenant-General Percival, had neither the experience nor the toughness for high command in war. Moreover, what in fact was happening was that ground forces were guarding airbases (containing no air fleet), which were built to guard a naval base (containing no naval fleet). The British had constructed installations which, under the economic and political circumstances, were no use to them, yet immensely useful to the Japanese; and which might easily fall to a determined attack. Singapore, in theory the most important base outside the United Kingdom, was hardly being treated as such and in fact after 1938 London had knowingly given priority to the Mediterranean in the hope that Japan would not provoke war in the Far East. By 1941 this was a vain hope indeed, although Churchill's government was too involved in the Middle East to do anything about it.
By that time, however, the local commanders were well aware of the threat which a northern invasion could pose, and Japan's move into Indo-China heightened this concern. Troops were stationed along the northern border, although few of the senior commanders and none of the politicians believed that the Japanese could seriously sweep down to Singapore. Furthermore, their defences were not fixed at all, for it was hoped to rush forces northwards to seize the key Siamese port of Singora as soon as the Japanese attacked. Unfortunately for this scheme, labelled 'Matador', the latter could reach southern Siam from Indo-China in thirty-three hours whereas it would take up to thirty-six hours for the British to arrive at Singora; if ever a strategy was dubious from the beginning, this was it. In fact, all it did was to unhinge the British defences for northern Malaya.
To the Japanese, the seizure of Malaya and Singapore was very important indeed. Not only would this expel the British from their main position in South-East Asia, but it would provide a great base and much-needed rubber and tin; and it would dominate the Dutch East Indies, from where Japan could obtain more tin and rubber, as well as the essential oil supplies. It was therefore planned to overrun Malaya in a swift rush, using three divisions and supporting units, the advanced section of which would be landed in Siam and northern Malaya. This total force of about 70,000 combat troops (110,000 all told) was placed under General Yamashita and called the Twenty-fifth Army. The three divisions (the Imperial Guards, the 5th and the 18th) were the cream of the Japanese army, and had been well trained in jungle warfare and amphibious landings. Also, they had 211 tanks while the British had none; and since taking Malaya was such a key part of the southern operations, 560 aircraft were allocated to support Yamashita. Clearly, much depended upon how quickly the beachheads were developed but it was hoped that the monsoon weather would cover the convoy's approach and hinder the British troop movements.
In the event, this calculation was to prove well justified. Although air reconnaissance had revealed a Japanese fleet in the Gulf of Siam on 6th December, Operation Matador dare not be launched until a landing took place, and bad weather did obscure all ship movements. In Japan's first real action of the war (seventy minutes before the Pearl Harbor strike began), 5,500 troops were landed on the north Malayan port of Kota Bharu at 0045 on the 8th. Two hours later, further forces disembarked at Singora and Patani in southern Siam and were preparing to move south. Meanwhile the Imperial Guards Division had crossed the Siamese border from Indo-China and was inducing the Thai government to accept Japanese control. Despite bombing by the RAF and the valiant opposition of 800 Indian troops, a bridgehead was soon established at Kota Bharu and the nearby airfield captured by the invaders. Moreover this development on the east coast was to take some attention from the west side, where the Japanese intended to make their main effort. British morale was already depressed by the air raids on Singapore and by the cancellation, after a few days' wait, of Matador.
A far greater blow to morale occurred on the 10th, with the sinking of the battleship Prince of Wales and the battle-cruiser Repulse by Japanese aircraft. These vessels had arrived in the Far East only a few days earlier as a 'deterrent force' but had plainly failed in their purpose. This was all that could be sent from home due to the critical situation in the Mediterranean and Atlantic and following Churchill's decision to override the Admiralty plan of assembling a group of older battleships at Ceylon. Moreover, the grounding of the Formidable had robbed this more modern force, known as 'Force Z' and commanded by Admiral Phillips, of its attendant aircraft carrier. Air cover was therefore to be provided by the RAF but we have seen how scanty their numbers were. In fact, when Phillips announced on the 8th that he was setting out to attack a Japanese convoy heading for Singora, he soon learned that little fighter protection could be expected since all aircraft were being withdrawn from the northern bases.
Nevertheless, Force Z sailed with an escort of four destroyers. Spotted by Japanese planes on the next day, Phillips turned south but was then diverted by a false report that a landing was taking place at Kuantan. His change of course remained unknown to the RAF but it was spotted by the Japanese, who had flown torpedo-bombers to Indo-China especially to sink these ships. Shortly after 1100 hours on 10th December, fifty-one such bombers together with thirty-four high-level bombers struck at Force Z with devastating accuracy. Both capital ships were torn apart by torpedoes and sank within a matter of hours; 2,081 men of the 2,821 total were picked up by the destroyers but Phillips himself was lost. Ironically, British fighters, alerted far too late, arrived on the scene just as the Prince of Wales sank. At a cost of only three aircraft, the Japanese had dealt a crushing blow to the Royal Navy and to British morale in general; and, even more than at Pearl Harbor, had demonstrated the vulnerability of the battleship to air attack. After this, it was clear to all that the big-gunned ships had had their day.
Japan had obtained complete air and naval control of the Malayan area within a remarkably short time, and made the British task of defending their territories even more difficult. In any case, once the few remaining planes had been withdrawn from the northern airfields, the reason for the presence of the troops also went. The superior tactics and equipment of the Japanese soon forced the British into an almost continuous retreat after the Jitra position was given up on 13th December. Engineer battalions quickly repaired the road bridges which the British had demolished. Road blocks were either brushed aside by Japanese artillery and tanks (some of the Indian troops had never seen tanks!) or by Japanese infantry infiltration through the jungle; flank attacks and night operations in monsoon rain were the latter's speciality. The lack of sufficient well-trained jungle forces and commanders, of adequate artillery or air cover, and of any tanks at all, plus the fear of being outflanked, caused the British to keep moving backwards down the west coast; and this in turn caused the forces on the east coast to be withdrawn from the whole of Kelantan. After Jitra, a stand had been made on the Perak river line but it was soon turned by flank action, while the next position, at Kampar, was given up when the Japanese landed troops behind the front, using captured small boats.
As these early positions crumbled, the British began to rush reinforcements to Malaya and the Indies. Hurricane fighters were diverted from the Middle East but they proved to be less manoeuvrable than the Zeros and in any case were always outnumbered. Troops were sent from India, Burma, Australia and the Middle East to Singapore. Three brigades arrived by 25th January 1942 and some excellent Australian divisions were promised from Suez; but the early arrivals were usually poor-class or badly-equipped. Since all these reinforcements were piecemeal, they did not stem the tide: the majority arrived only in time to swell the Japanese haul of prisoners. In addition to these troop moves, the command system had been changed and the theatre was placed under General Wavell, who had been appointed to head ABDA (American, British, Dutch, Australian) Command, covering all of South-East Asia. However, he did not know the terrain and his instructions had to go through a complex chain of command—often via Pownall, his Chief of Staff, Percival, and then the leaders of the east and west coast forces. Communications between the front line and Singapore were poor.
By 6th January the British had evacuated Kuantan on the east coast and were still falling back southwards. On the other side of the mountain ridge, a firm line was being built up around the Slim River in order to keep the airfields near Kuala Lumpur and Port Swettenham out of enemy hands. However, after desultory probings, a Japanese tank attack on the night of 7th–8th January broke through the front line and raced for the Slim River road bridge twenty miles to the rear. In seizing and holding that position, this force not only broke yet another defence barrier but also prevented an organised British retreat. 4,000 troops were lost in the scramble to get south, and the 11th Indian Division was shattered. Moreover, Percival's plan to hold central Malaya had been destroyed and the pace of the withdrawal greatly upset. Indeed, this pace was accelerated after Wavell's visit on the 8th since he ordered the defence to be concentrated upon Johore, where the incoming reinforcements were being stationed. Yet at this point in the peninsula the mountain ridge slopes away, and the Japanese were able to deploy two of their divisions in the attack along the better roads of northern Johore. The fierce Australian defence at Gemma was of little use, therefore, since a Japanese flank move down the west coast led to the fall of Muar on 16th January and the weakening of the whole British position. When further Japanese troops arrived from Singora (using captured trucks) the stand made at Bata Pahat was abandoned and the garrison had to make their way back through the jungle, although a good number were rescued by sea. But the loss of equipment and, more important, of morale at the repeated retreats was telling among the British and British-controlled troops. The Japanese dominance of the air, interrupted by the valiant but pathetic efforts of the few RAF planes, was also having its effect. The headlong withdrawal continued towards the black clouds of the burning fuel tanks on Singapore Island.
By 20th January Wavell had already decided that a retreat to the island was in sight but he was appalled by the lack of defence preparations there and had hoped that a long stand in Johore would give him a chance to build them up. At the same time, he was attempting to explain to Churchill that Singapore was no 'fortress' and that only a miracle could save the city, which was wide open to an attack from the north. This apparently came as a complete surprise to the Prime Minister, who continued to insist upon a 'no surrender' defence—obviously with the prestige considerations still uppermost in mind. Reinforcements were pouring into Singapore, too late and too disorganised to do much, although others were now being diverted to Burma or to the East Indies. On 30th–31st January the remaining British forces were withdrawn from the mainland and the causeway demolished, without much hindrance from the Japanese. It had taken the latter only fifty-four days to gain Malaya, with all its airfields and raw materials. In fact, the Japanese advance would probably not have been so swift had they not been able to use so many captured trucks, bicycles and small boats! They had lost 4,565 killed or wounded, whereas the British losses were approximately 25,000, chiefly as prisoners, together with an incalculable amount of equipment.
Now that Malaya was in enemy hands, the defence of Singapore was a forlorn undertaking. With air supremacy lost, water and supplies running short, a large civilian population to look after, and no prospect of relief, it was quite hopeless before the attack started. Percival had 85,000 troops under him but these were either exhausted by the retreat or quite inexperienced; only a few good units remained. In any case, Singapore was tactically very hard to defend. There were no established fortifications along the thirty-five miles of north coast and the width of the straits averaged only 1,000 yards and was much narrower in places. This north coast was split by many creeks, swamps and dense groves, and there were no lateral communications. Yet no attempt had been made to build up the defences even in December and January, such was the unreal state of thinking on the island: Japanese fears of the British extensively using mines, or burning oil on the waters, would have been dispelled had they seen the lack of preparations until the very last moment. Only the naval base, the raison d'etre of the troops' presence, had been partially destroyed and evacuated.
On reaching the south of the peninsula, Yamashita's staff quickly formulated an invasion plan. The main assault was to be on the north-west side of the island, the area most split up by creeks; and, incidentally, weakly held by five Australian battalions along a 4 1/2-mile front. Having gathered up all the small craft available whilst at the same time pounding the island with aerial and artillery bombardments, the Japanese prepared to assault it with sixteen front-line and five reserve battalions.
On the night of 8th–9th February the first crossings were made almost without opposition due to a number of failures on the defence side. Searchlights and artillery were not properly used, if at all, and communication with headquarters was poor; also, the British were misled by a Japanese feint on the east side. Isolated and greatly outnumbered by the invaders, the Australian battalions could do little. By the next morning, 13,000 Japanese troops were across the straits and by the 10th the area near the causeway had also been taken by landing forces and their total numbers on the island had risen to 30,000.
The British reaction was slow and disorganised, and when all counterattacks failed they were forced to fall back upon Singapore town in the south-east. This gave them the handicap of one million civilians to deal with, and placed the water supply in enemy hands. The Japanese were now employing tanks, and their capture of the important Bukit Timah area on 11th February sealed the city's fate. Four days later, with the water supply running out, Percival negotiated with the Japanese. At 1830 on the 15th, 'Black Sunday' as it was to be called, hostilities formally ceased and Singapore surrendered.
To Yamashita, this step was very welcome indeed, for his ammunition was running low, his troops on the island were in fact heavily outnumbered, and he did not wish to get involved in bloody house-to-house fighting. Now, he could claim to have inflicted the greatest defeat upon the British Empire in the 20th Century; the expulsion from France and Belgium, the fall of Tobruk, could not compare with this. Not only had 138,708 British servicemen been lost (mainly as prisoners) in the Malaya/Singapore campaign for total Japanese casualties of 9,824, but this had all been done in seventy days instead of the estimated one hundred. Moreover, this great loss to Britain was great gain to Japan, in tin, rubber, airfields and a naval base.
Most important of all in the long run was the political and psychological aspect. It is clear that the responsibility for the fall of Malaya and Singapore lay as much with the economy-minded inter-war governments of Britain and with Churchill's greater concern with the Middle East as with the poor commanders and badly-trained troops of the 1941–42 campaign; and secondly, that the lack of a decent air force was decisive. But despite these very legitimate excuses, much more had been expected of the defence. Instead, the Japanese had pushed them continuously backwards in one brief, humiliating rout; and the consequent blow to British prestige was enormous. Singapore in particular had been a symbol, admittedly a false one, of the military and naval might of the Empire. When it fell, so too did much of the mystique and glamour of that institution. The reoccupation in 1945 after three years of Japanese rule could not restore the old colonial empires in the East along the previous lines, for their prestige could never be recovered. Percival's surrender to an Asian power on 15th February 1942 meant not just the end of a campaign: it meant the end of an age.
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