Here is a simple POD I have always liked - On 7 December 1941 local time (remember Singapore is 18 hours ahead of Pearl Harbor) a PBY from No. 207 Squadron was shot down by Ki-27s while it was shadowing the Khota Baru invasion convoy. What if it is only shot up bad but makes it back? Does the few hours of additional warning help?
Improve the Singapore Strategy
- Thread starter MatthewB
- Start date
Exactly - also having even a flight or 2 of fighters (I believe that the plan suggested was for 6 fighters arriving every hour?) would have prevented the attacking aircraft from making textbook attacks ie hammer and anvil attacks as they would be subject to fighter attack as they formed up and the attacks far less cohesive and less effective.
If there was a CAP POW and Revenge likely survive
For the south China Sea are not land based aircraft good enough? In fact are they not better than carrier based fighters?
We will do our best to not blow your cover Agent C
Percival was surrounded by 4th 'string' defeatists including Gen. Gordon Bennett
I am always a bit sceptical of those claims about low supplies - I just cannot help shake the idea that the Japanese made the claim to make themselves sound better (most interviews I have seen of Japanese Veterans shows that they are not shy of bigging themselves up) and the Commonwealth forces sound worse.
The Japanese are no mugs - they know how to conduct warfare. And that includes having bombs bullets and Rice. While they often pushed hard right to the brink in many cases they were still no less vulnerable to the cruel limitations of logistics (as they would later find out to their cost). Would they have chanced a major attack against a stronger foe with not enough logi?
It's a great idea though and many accounts I have read of Commonwealth soldiers who were present at the surrender say that they were stunned when they were ordered to lay down their arms.
But at worse the Japanese are thrown back onto the mainland and bide their time.
Meanwhile how long can Singapore sustain a siege which includes the city being bombed from the air?
It would be near impossible for any supplies or reinforcements to make it to Singapore before late 42 IMO at the earliest.
They cocked up 'every element' on the 10th/11th - Didn't attack, Didn't defend, didn't retreat just sat their 'in their transports' while the senior officers had buggered off to reconnoiter the next defensive position (WHAT THE FUCK HAD THEY BEEN DOING FOR THE LAST 12 MONTHS!!!!????). And that's how the Japanese Vanguard (with tanks) found them.
Impotent, without leadership or orders, sitting in their transports.
There are so many elements of the Malaya Campaign that had someone on here written it as an 'Alt History' there would be an outcry of people demanding it be moved to the ASB forum!
It always stuns me how many poor decisions Mr Churchill was allowed to get away with - how he was allowed to interfere so much and how much it cost the military.
Wavell was highly criticized by Churchill for not fighting for Somaliland and instead evacuating the few troops he had there - and yet it was the correct decision.
It should have been HMG telling the military what they wanted done and for the Military to tell them how they were going to do it or to tell them it could not be done!
A great POD would be for someone to be on hand to sit on him harder earlier like Alanbrooke and Cunningham did when they got the top jobs and for WSC to be introduced to the 2 words "No Winston!"
I agree - and it should have fallen to his subordinates to take over
He was fully aware of the forces required to defend Malaya and Singapore and was fully aware that he didn't have it.
He was going to be the man that lost Malaya and Singapore!
That might have helped if Admiral Philip's had asked for help from the squadron that was on alert to provide cover for Force Z.
Quite.
I am sure that there are some excellent reasons why this did not happen - I cannot think of any of the top of my head!
The airfield goes on full alert, sends out scouts to find the Japanese which are either shot up or shot down. Once is a mistake, twice is an act of war and bombers are sent to attack, including torpedo bombers. OTL Khota Baru nearly failed, this time they're driven off and divert to Siam. The extra aircover in the north of Malaya possibly buys the British an extra week. They may still be in Johor when the Japanese have to halt their advance due to lack of supplies.
Supposedly he wanted to maintain radio silence and felt that a constantly arriving and department squadron of fighters would signal clearly to the Japanese where the British were. It was felt that any cap was sufficiently small and poorly armed (brewster bufalloes) that they wouldn't make any difference.
It's a view. It's not as stupid as many people suggest it is but it's probably not right. If you want to keep radio silence you need a better plan than going without escort.
Even if the fighters kept radio silence and operated cap on their best guess of where the fleet was it would be better.
Shortly after arriving in Singapore Repulse was sent to show the flag in Australia.
Prince of Wales was drydocked to scrape her bottom and clean her tubes.
The problem with Indomitable was, even without her grounding off Jamaica, she wasn't scheduled to complete her work-up until Jan 10 1942. So she won't be joining the Eastern Fleet for a while.
This thread
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/all...t-should-have-been-sent-east-in-41-t8559.html
and the map therein of RN dispositions in October 1941 might be of interest. My own conclusion towards the end was to build an Eastern Fleet based on Ceylon and put a cruiser squadron with a carrier in Singapore.
Phillips force was inadequate, and he knew it. On December 8th, he was in Manila asking Tommy Hart to loan him a DesDiv of US destroyers to bolster his forces. The problem was, that once the balloon went up, was he had the ONLY force capable of slowing the Japanese. The Army was incapable and the RAF in Malaya was a joke. He had two capital ships and a handful of destroyers to counter a navy with over a million tons of warships, including 10 capital ships and 9 aircraft carriers. He sailed anyway, and with luck, he and his ships might even survive. That they didn't should come as no surprise to anyone.
Two side notes: Phillips was a staff officer, and he had studied the war so far. He knew torpedo bombers were the greatest threat to his capital ships, he knew fighters were the best defense against torpedo bombers (hence his request for fighter cover on the 10th, which the RAF failed to provide) and he knew he would be operating outside the longest range a torpedo bomber attack had yet taken place. What he didn't know was the Japanese were using long-range land-based bombers AS torpedo bombers. That's a failure of intelligence, not his.
Second, Phillips told the Admiralty he intended to attack the enemy forces off Kota Bharu and eight hours later, he sailed, 1005 on the 8th London time. The Admiralty did not reply to his message, and at 2200 on the 9th London time, when Force Z had been at sea for some 36 hours, there was a staff conference on naval dispositions in the Pacific. Churchill, Alexander (First Lord of the Admiralty) and Pound were in attendance. Churchill favored withdrawal, but at the late hour, it was decided to settle things in the morning. It was already too late. If deterrence had failed, why not immediately order him to Ceylon or Australia? That's a failure of the Prime Minister and the Admiralty.
To return to the original question, what was really needed was an equal commitment by all three services. The Army should have provided artillery, including AAA (when the Japanese bombed Singapore on the 8th, the only guns that could reach the altitude of the bombers were the 5.25in aboard Prince of Wales), and some light and/or medium tanks, and the RAF needed to provide more modern fighters and some twin-engine medium bombers A squadron or two of heavy bombers, even Short Stirlings would have helped as well. Vickers Vildabeest were not exactly the planes to give the Japanese pause. Ad those to a cruiser squadron with supporting destroyers, and larger carrier/capital ship fleet in the Indian that could be in Singapore in a number of days (even if it doesn't do so, the threat is there) and the Japanese calculations for their southern move would be very different, in my opinion.
My thoughts,
A lot of what you are suggesting here was in the process of happening. A larger fleet was being assembled (and eventually was assembled in late March) but these things take time, and not every ship was available (especially the carriers). And there was considerable debate as to when the war would start and the forces would be needed. The situation for the British is not too dissimilar to that to of the US. Plans were going forward, reinforcements were flowing into theater, and boy they could have used a few more precious months.
The wiki on the subject is actually pretty good - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_Z
One thing WRT Phillips' lack of knowledge of the range of Japanese aircraft or what the Japanese used for torpedo bombers. That was a failure across the board for the Allies. Captain Agar of HMS Dorsetshire admitted that the reason his cruisers got caught where they did is he thought they were safe because he was not aware of the range of Japanese naval aircraft.
All true Zheng. Japan was a closed society, and the various allied intelligence services definitely had their work cut out for them. But there were hints of Japanese capability out there; someone might have listened to Claire Chennault, for example.
If you took a look at the "What should have been sent East" thread on the BC board, I reviewed some of the RN completions in the first quarter or so of 1942. A number of ships were assigned to the Eastern Fleet or worked up with the Home Fleet and then went east. So as you say, forces were building, they just weren't in place when the war started.
In that same thread I referenced a post I made on Stuart Slade's forum a number of years ago. Someone asked 'what went wrong with Force Z?' and I responded it was a cascade failure, and provided points to back up that position. Stuart thought it was good enough for his "Essays" forum, so I polished it a bit and posted it there. I've touched on some of the points I made then here, but Henry Leach, a young midshipman on Mauritius and son of John Leach, Captain of Prince of Wales, had this to say about the deployment to Singapore:
Henry Leach said:
You might recognize the name Henry Leach as the admiral of Operation Corporate fame.
Tom Phillips gets very poor treatment from historians and amateurs, in my opinion. He would have had to have been delusional not to see the situation in the same light as his flag captain and most senior captain. And if he were that delusional, he wouldn't have been in Manila asking for destroyers to shore-up his light forces.
My additional thoughts,
MatthewB
Banned
I think one of the elements missing in the Singapore Strategy was proof of concept to demonstrate the feasibility of the strategy. If the idea was to send a battlefleet to Singapore in times of danger, why not send one every few years, or at least once to see if it can be done? The Singapore base was completed in 1938, but a fleet could have been sent after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931.
Money.......?
1931.... the low point of RN budget with depression....
post 1935 the Abyssinian crisis makes deploying east impossible......
With full hindsight? Occupy Saigon simultaneously with Operation Catapult. The 35 million will be spent on the infrastructure and equipment needed to field and sustain a mobile force capable of that.
I hate to bring this up, but no one has mentioned any consideration of gas. In the 1930's when the planning was done they must have at least thought about it. Especially as the Japanese were known to have used it in China. Getting caught by Mustard Gas in the heat and humidity of Malaya would not be pleasant.
MatthewB
Banned
Britain has just begun spending a total of £28 million (£1.9 billion in 2019) to build the base. What’s the point if you’re not going to use the base? And how much can it really cost to send four to six battleships, a pair of carriers, ten cruisers and a dozen destroyers from Britain and the Mediterranean to Singapore in the 1930s? You already own the ships and are already feeding and paying their crews and have global network of support ports. Isn’t it just the cost of fuel and wear and tear on the vessels?
Barry Bull
Donor
A fleet is useless without a base for R&R. There was no RN base after Ceylon if Singpaore was not developed and HK was too exposed.
The USN only perfected the Fleet Train in 1944 after spending a vast amount of resource.
Barry Bull
Donor
Was it available BEFORE or divert from somewhere else BECAUSE the shootings started in Singapore?
Barry Bull
Donor
RN was a pioneer on AA, but the technology really change too quickly and what made sense in early 30's became nonsense in the 40's