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    Red Sun at War Part II: Allied Defeat in the Far East
    Red Sun at War Part II: Allied Defeat in the Far East
    Red Sun at War Part II: Allied Defeat in the Far East
    Ebook86 pages1 hour

    Red Sun at War Part II: Allied Defeat in the Far East

    By Nick Shepley

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    About this ebook

    From the sinking of Repulse and the Prince of Wales to the fall of Malaya, Singapore, Borneo, Sumatra and Java and the bombing of Darwin, Japan's armies crashed through poorly defended and ill prepared colonies. With them came a degree of brutality towards prisoners and ethnic cleansing of Chinese civilians that made Japan's war synonimous with cruelty and prejudice. This ebook explores how the European powers made so many avoidable errors and how they were to learn from their mistakes.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAUK Academic
    Release dateDec 7, 2015
    ISBN9781781663011
    Red Sun at War Part II: Allied Defeat in the Far East

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      Book preview

      Red Sun at War Part II - Nick Shepley

      overstretch.

      The Prince of Wales and the Repulse

      If one warship represented Britain’s continued ability to fight on through the troubled year of 1941 it was the Prince of Wales. Launched in 1936 and perhaps the most iconic and powerful British ship of its time, it landed a critical blow on the German battleship Bismarck, during the Battle of the Denmark Strait. The eventual destruction of the Bismarck, whilst having little overall effect of the Battle for the Atlantic, at the very least showed Germany that Britain had not given up the fight and could still inflict humiliating losses on her.

      The second high profile mission of the Prince of Wales in 1941 was the ferrying of Winston Churchill to the Newfoundland Conference, where among other things, the principals of the Atlantic Charter, the vision for the post war world were agreed.

      It seemed inconceivable to Churchill, or to his cabinet, that the battleship could be lost at all, based on the lessons learned in the Atlantic. When facing German naval power, which was often treated by Hitler as something of an afterthought (for more on this see my ebook Hitler, Ribbentrop and Britain), the Royal Navy could afford to think in more conventional terms, Germany had put no investment into building aircraft carriers. However, when in came to facing Japan, the British would have to learn the same painful lessons in the necessity of naval air power they had taught the Italians at Taranto in 1940.

      I turned in the water to face her, it was an unbelievable sight. The bow rose in the air to a tremendous height and with her propellers still turning; slowly began to go under. The saddest thing was that within minutes the sea was calm once again; no sign of her or the epic battle she put up before succumbing to the overwhelming odds that finally destroyed her.

      The sailor who wrote the passage above, in the official reports of the loss to two of the Royal Navy’s flagships, described one of the most shattering blows the navy faced throughout the war. The British public, perhaps cheered by the prospect of America joining the war following Pearl Harbour were stunned by the loss of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse days later. Ironically it was the British failure to give either of the ships air cover that decided their fate, and also indicated that there were still plenty of men in the Admiralty who had no understanding of the new rules of warfare.

      The order to send the Repulse into battle against Japan had come on December 6th, just hours before the attack on Pearl Harbour commenced. Admiral Sir Thomas Phillips the Commander of the Royal Navy, Far East, was being briefed by US Admiral Thomas C. Hart, the commanding officer of the US Asiatic Fleet. The two men were discussing the best way to coordinate US and British naval forces in the Far East so that all strategic objectives of both powers could be met. It was abundantly clear to both men that war with Japan was most likely days or weeks away. Neither was aware that it was only a matter of hours.

      The meeting was interrupted by one of Hart’s subordinates, who had an urgent report from the Admiralty for Phillips. An Australian spotter plane had seen Japanese troop transports sailing from Japanese conquered French Indochina southward. The route they were taking was possibly for Thailand, but more likely British Malaya. The first sighting was of only three warships, but moments later a long column of vessels, twenty five in total, was spotted. Their escorts were a further 13 warships, it was unmistakably and invasion fleet.

      Hart mobilised what ships he had. Four destroyers, anchored in Balikpapan on the Eastern coast of Borneo were sent to intercept the fleet and the battle cruiser Repulse, en route to Darwin, was ordered to return to Singapore as quickly as possible. Both the Repulse and the Prince of Wales had been ordered to Singapore days beforehand, they were meant to act as a deterrent to Japan who had a force that the Admiralty assumed was approximately nine battleships strong. Churchill was more focused on the improving situation in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean and was less concerned about the claims by First Sea Lord Sir Dudley Pound, that the force sent to protect Singapore would be hopelessly outgunned.

      The British were facing a crisis that their enemies in Germany, Italy and even Russia had long anticipated, that of imperial overstretch. Having to defend a global empire and also defend the British Isles, at the same time that new, leaner and more innovative naval powers were flexing their muscles, was an extremely tall order, even for Britain.

      One of the mysteries that lie at the heart of Japan’s initial wartime successes, is the rather last minute and rushed nature of the preparations. As we have seen, a decision to attack Pearl Harbour and then the Dutch East Indies was undertaken only late in 1941, when it became clear that negotiations with America over China had broken down, resulting in an oil embargo. The Japanese had a number of objectives in Malaya, perhaps the foremost of these was its vast resources of rubber and tin. If it seized these, it could control much of the world’s rubber production, a commodity that America was highly dependent on. Singapore was an equally vital objective, as the Japanese knew that much British power in the far east was dependent on their island base, when Singapore fell, General Tomoyuki Yamashita the ‘Tiger of Malaya’ described it as the screw at the centre of a fan, without it, the rest of British power in Asia would collapse.

      Much was made by the Japanese in the prelude to the attack about their laudable and emancipatory goals in the Far East. Prime Minister Tojo pledged that once European settlers had been forcibly evicted, Burma and the Philippines would be given independence and that as long as other regional powers, including Australia, towed the line, there would be little need for violence. Yamashita and his officers are often cited as having professed a desire to see the back of Europeans, and Malays, Burmese, Indians and Indonesians certainly viewed the Japanese if not exactly as liberators, then certainly presenting an excellent opportunity to free themselves from European control. The scale of violence

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