The History of the Asian Theatre of Operations in WW2 (aka. History of the Malaya Campaign – Part V)
1943 the first: Plans, Politics and other Perils
Late November 1942 in Hanoi, FIC:
The allies take stock. Present are:
General Sir Arthur Percival, CINCSEAPAC (Commander in Chief, South East Asia and Pacific)
Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham (Allied Air Officer Commanding South East Asia)
Major-General Lewis H. Brereton (Deputy Allied AOC SEAPAC)
Air Marshal Miles Browning, 1st Baron Browning (AOC China,
CIC CAF)
Major-General
George Kenney 10th Air Force
Major-General Claire Lee Chennault 14th Air Force
Lieutenant General Gordon Bennet, 14th Army (UK)
Lieutenant General George Patton 6th Army (US,
4 star general in the NRA)
Luitenant-Admiraal
Conrad Helfrich (Dutch, CO of
ABCDFT Naval Forces)
Plus liaisons with the British Pacific Fleet (Admiral Sir Thomas Phillips) and the U.S. Pacific Fleet (Admiral Chester Nimitz)
Now that the railheads in Kunming and Nanning are secure its time to discuss the next steps. The Kuomintang’s forces are naturally centre stage:
First Admiral Helfrich reports. His multi national force is a patchwork of new, obsolescent and obsolete warships that has retaken the entire DIE and his submarines forces have largely isolated the garrison of Rabaul. He now has the task to integrate and expand the Chinese naval forces. Since these forces are a number of river gun boats Adm. Helfrich can’t promise anything Chinese crewed above the size a PT boat or
Patrol Craft anytime soon.
MG Chennault has better news. He is well acquainted with the Chinese Air Force and while the CAF is short of modern warplanes is ground personnel is skilled and thus the allied can deploy air units to China fairly easily. However Chinese flying personnel is short in supply. Before Dec.7th 1941 most of the CAF´s air units had been mostly destroyed by the Japanese.
LG Bennet and Patton have really bad news. While the KMT has over 300 divisions, most are just 5,000–6,000 men strong; an average Army has 10,000–15,000 troops, the equivalent of a Japanese division. And the shortage of heavy weapons means that three to four Chinese armies had the firepower of only one Japanese division. The relative fighting strength of a Chinese division is even weaker when relative capacity in aspects of warfare, such as intelligence, logistics, communications, and medical services, are taken into account. And to complete the mess there is the command structure: The so called Central Army is commanded by officers loyal to Chiang Kai-shek and the Provincial Army under de facto control of local warlords. Since re-training and –equipping a force of this size would take till 1950 at best the generals recommend a high-low approach.
The average(=regular) division will be given some automatic and heavy weapons, a quick “how to use them” lesson and than numbers and support by allied air and ground units will enable them to do their job which is pinning down the Japanese and punching holes in their frontline if required.
App. forty Chinese divisions have been equipped with European-manufactured weapons and trained by foreign, particularly German and Soviet, advisers. Particularly the
divisions reorganised and trained by the Germans are of interest for future use as the spearhead. 8 completed the process in 1937, but a third were lost since then. Another 12 divisions equipped with Chinese arms and reorganized by German advisors had some training by the time the time the Sino German cooperation ended.
General Patton intends to turn the surviving five divisions into armoured and motorized units with a US TO&E. The 12 partially trained divisions will convert into something like a US infantry division minus organic transport.
To ensure a unified doctrine of the “mobile force” all training needs to be done by one nation’s instructors. Given that most L&L is coming from the US, US doctrine is the logical choice. And here more problems start. Washington is not willing to provide more instructors, citing that Patton already has more than units doing training in the USA. Plus the request for a third US Army division has been turned down. Everything is going to the UK or the Med in the foreseeable future. The only combat units available are
ASB (=airfield security battalions), of course “black” ASB. Since airfield security comes with the territory such units are not needed for securing airfields and given the exceptional performance of the 2nd Cavalry Patton is confident the ASB –black or not- can teach Chinese soldiers more than one lesson.
And now to the concrete military operations:
- Invasion of Hainan: It’s just 160 miles off Haiphong and anything that could become a Japanese Malta can’t be tolerated.
- Invasion of Rabaul: Currently supply convoys from the US go south around Australia making it a 12,000 nautical (!!) mile trip. If they could proceed through the Coral Sea and Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea 2,000 miles or more than one week sailing time could be saved.
- The Japanese railhead Liuchow 130 miles away from the allied railhead Nanning needs to be taken and both need to be connected by rail.
- Intensify air raids on Taiwan and continue preparations for an eventual invasion.
1 to 3 can be conducted simultaneously. Hainan is so close to allied held territory that a seaborne landing does not require carrier support and so large that not all landing sites can be defended. ABCDFT naval and Empire ground forces can conduct that operation on their own.
Rabaul is a tougher nut to crack as the Japanese have send significant ground forces there before the naval sort-of blockade and can fly in planes via their bases in the Bonins, Marians and Marshalls. The next semi-decent allied base is Port Moresby and that’s 500 miles away. So that job requires the services of the Marines and both Pacific fleets as Port Moresby is too far away for anything except a P-51 or a P-38. But the supply of the former has dried up after barely 300 were delivered and the latter are coming forth slowly.
Speaking of which we shall take a look at the
Flying Machines those magnificent Men in the US aviation industry have come up with.
P-39N: BG Bear is really warning up to this plane after he took a test flight. The P-39D was quite a fast climber as long as the supercharger was working and reached 10,000 feet in 4 minutes. As fast as the latest Lighting (P-38G). Now he passes 10,000 feet after just over three minutes and 20,000 after seven and reaches 25,000 feet in 12 minutes. After touch down he remakes in a solemn vice:
“It was as though angels were pulling!”
P-40M: The “ugly duckling”. It has the same engine and SC as the P-51B, but “just” 170 gallons of internal fuel and no fancy laminar flow wings even in the thin air at 25,000 feet the top speed is well below 400mph. But it does not matter because this version of the P-40 never went to the front. With all Allison engines first going to P-51 and than to P-39, Curtiss focuses on Merlin powered P-40 fighters be default and starts production of the P-40L in January. The more powerful Merlin engine makes the “L” reach 390mph@25ft, internal fuel has been increased to 190 gallons.
P-51B: As indicated by the P-51A the V-1710-85 engine and the Merlin´s 2-stage, 2-speed supercharger are an excellent match. A top speed of 415mph is maintained even above 25,000 feet. Sadly for South East Asia BG Bear has closely watched RAF-MD´s plane pimping operations and noticed 50 gallon P-40 fuselage tanks were installed into P-51 airframes bringing the internal fuel capacity to 230 gallons. Presented with a 100% reliable, long range, high speed, high altitude fighter the USAAF immediately impounds all P-51 airframes within the USA, so the Chinese orders go unfulfilled.
In the early months of 1943 P-39N arrives in SEA, its prime mission is to replace the Spitfires as base defence interceptors. The various P-40 versions (E,K,L) perform the all day escort and attack work and the small supply of P-51 and P-38 go to the belly of the beasts.
And after the perils of planning now to the political perils:
Chiang Kai-shek and his advisers understand they have a golden opportunity once China became the No.1 battle ground in the war on Japan. They even realize this come at a price, but the details are irritating to say the least. Its not that the NRA now needs to fight. With heavy and automatic weapons arriving by the shipload from Haiphong the NRA will soon have the power to defeat the Japanese and keep the communists under control. It is the degree to which the allies interfere in what used to be domestic issues.
One idea the Allies have is supply drops for guerrillas, including to the communists since they are fighting the Japanese too. Plus
Nguyễn Ái Quốc is a communist too and a very trustworthy ally, not to mention the Russian who tie down over one hundred German divisions. So much political naiveté makes Chiang want to pull his hair out. Nguyễn Ái Quốc off all people. Anybody knows the guy would sign on to any ideology as long as it gets the French out of Indo-China. Chiang would like to kill supply drops altogether as he has no control over the often the strictly local insurgents behind the Japanese lines, but has a hard time even directing the drops away from commie strongholds.
Early attempts to exert political influence over his air and ground commanders (Browning and Patton) have not just failed, but backfired. In recognition of his recent victory in FIC Chiang gave Patton a cash bonus of such proportions that even a George S. Patton was put off balance. Once he regained it, he donated the money to charities and relief organisations and requested more personnel form the Judge Advocate General's Corps to combat corruption, because to say that the KMT is corrupt is like saying the desert is not humid, or the artic cool. And now Patton got an idea about the reasons for these deficiencies.
Lord Miles also had his Close Encounters with corruption times three. Like Patton he flew to the Chinese wartime capital of Chungking. He was driven a long way from the airport to the palatial headquarters of RAF China and another long way to the Chinese air ministry but unlike Patton he was not surprised by the pay of a Chinese Air force general. After all he spend some years in China selling planes to the Chinese, so KMT corruption is something he knows and had to accept, had to. But not any more. After the return to the “Place” he announces to pack up everything any get moving. The instructors will move into Nissen huts near the airfields and the paper pushers into Chungking. Plenty of bombed out building there that can provide adequate lodging once repaired. After all, if the AOC resides in a Nissen hut –albeit a larger one with good heat- and soundproofing- the staff does not need to live in the Emperor’s Place. Said palace will be turned into a hospital and orphanage for Lord Miles just knows both will be needed.
And we shall close this part by addressing one of the most sati… errrr… aspects of service in SEA most appreciated by allied servicemen. The very friendly civilian population. It’s not just the fact that Filipinos, Vietnamese and Chinese hate the guts of the Japanese and thus the cooperation of the civilians in military matters is guaranteed, it’s more the close interpersonal relationships with certain parts of the local population that the young men from all over the world really, really like.
Comments are always sati ... err ... appreciated.
