Extract from ch.8, The Fall of the Rising Sun, Brendan Green
The battle for Java saw the qualities of the Australians on display. ‘The good spirit of the Australian fighting man,’ said Wavell, ‘was shown many times in this war, and they gained many famous victories. But to my mind they never did better than in this defeat. They knew as well as I that we could not hold the island, and they fought with very little air cover, with little artillery or armour. They knew, moreover, that even once their ordeal in Java concluded, there would be more fighting to come. Despite all this, they maintained their discipline, and never failed to hold their positions for as long as ordered. This 9th Division ranks with Napoleon’s Old Guard and Caesar’s Thirteenth Legion.’
Throughout late March and most of April, the 9th fought successive delaying actions and rearguard actions, before falling back into Sumatra. The Javanese mostly welcomed the invaders - the true nature of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere had not yet become apparent to them. Batavia fell on April 22nd, held to the last by a handful of devoted Dutch KNIL troops, whose sacrifice in protecting the escape of 9th Division should be remembered.
Despite this latest victory, General Imamura had become extremely anxious about the pace of operations. The audacious US raid on Tokyo a few days earlier had shocked everyone in the High Command. ‘Our air power in the Southern Resource Area approaches breaking point,’ he noted. ‘In order to achieve air superiority over Sumatra, we need the Navy. But they are now impatient to fight the Americans.’
The general sense of the Navy high command was that by allowing the Americans to raid Tokyo, and for their ships then to get away, they had failed the Emperor. The need for a decisive battle against the Americans in the central Pacific was now their top priority. First, though, the Navy was willing to commit a carrier division to the Sumatra operation. The Army believed that they had rough parity in the air with the British and Australians; they needed carrier-based planes to give them the edge. Accordingly, Carrier Division 5 went to the Java Sea accompanied by two Kongo-class fast battleships for support.
‘I had many anxieties as April drew to a close,’ wrote Wavell later. ‘My staff believed that the enemy might land on the west coast of Sumatra. Fortunately, they did not risk sending their transports past Krakatoa.’ In fact, Cunningham had stationed several Dutch, French and US submarines to intercept any such move. ‘We also feared landings on the small islands to the east of Sumatra,’ Wavell went on, ‘where for the most part we had few troops. They might have given the Japanese bases much closer to Palembang. We had one Australian brigade on Bangka, and that was it.’
By contrast, the new man in command of the ground forces exuded confidence. ‘Brother Jap has got this far by bluff and air power,’ said General Montgomery. ‘We will not be bluffed and we now fear nothing in the air.’ His manner had offended many officers, who felt their efforts over the previous four desperate months were being disparaged; but the troops in the main liked him better than Percival. He had Australian 9th Division, just escaped from Java and now reunited with its artillery, and eager for a chance to avenge itself on the Japanese. He also had the fresh British 6th Division, and 1st Army Tank Brigade. He also had the remnants of Australian 8th Division; one of its brigades, the worst hit, he broke up to provide replacements for the 9th, retaining one battalion to defend Palembang. The other brigade was the one positioned on Bangka island. These actions caused him some difficulty with the Australian government, which wished to withdraw 8th Division and bring it up to strength; but the operational imperative in the end won out.
...in the end the Japanese assault, commencing on 29th April, was fairly orthodox, with two divisions, 48th and 38th, landing on the east coast of Sumatra. Not all could be landed at once, as landing craft were by now running short. ‘We had hoped to also use 2nd Division from Borneo to land near Parit, on the east coast,’ commented Imamura later. ‘But we could not, as that would be within range of enemy aircraft from Singapore as well as Palembang, and by now we also faced a great shortage of landing craft.’
The Japanese also employed an airborne battalion. The plan was for them to follow up a heavy air raid on Palembang with a direct assault. ‘Even if not fully successful,’ said Imamura, ‘we hoped this would disrupt enemy air operations on the crucial first day.’ The result was memorably recorded by Alan Moorehead, who was at the airfield on the day. ‘It reminded one unavoidably of the stories of the Germans on Corsica, and the Italian parachutists falling to their doom in Thessaly,’ he wrote. ‘Enemy bombers appeared early that day, but we had enough early warning to get fighters into the air, and the base was ringed with flak. I saw two or three bombers going down in flames, and the fighter pilots later told me they had shot down several more over the jungle. It therefore astonished us when, an hour or so later, enemy transport planes flew slowly towards us and paratroopers started to emerge.’ The result was a one-sided battle that was over by lunchtime, with the entire paratroop battalion wiped out. ‘The Japanese also lost more than thirty aircraft in this attack, which they could certainly have better used elsewhere,’ wrote Air Marshal Peirse. ‘After this, and the examples of Corsica and Thessaly, I hope we learn appropriate lessons about the ineffectiveness of paratroop attacks.’
The IJN carriers in the Java Sea launched two heavy raids on 29th, and two more on the 30th. These did great damage to the RAF and RAAF airstrips in the south-east, which were much less well protected than Palembang. At least twenty aircraft were destroyed on the ground, for little loss among the IJN air groups. The IJN dive-bombers also sank a group of destroyers that were passing between Sumatra and Bangka in the hope of attacking the transports; there would be no repeat of the Bali Sea battle.
However, the IJN could not develop the use of its air power to its fullest extent, as Admiral Hara insisted on withdrawing well to the east by night, fearing night torpedo attack. The location of the Eastern Fleet concerned him greatly, though in fact it was well to the north, ‘loitering with intent in the Malacca Straits’, in Cunningham’s words. This proved costly - the submarine I-19 torpedoed and sank the Repulse on the night of the 29th after she had straggled owing to mechanical problems. However, I-19 never had chance to send a report of its success, being sunk almost immediately by British and American destroyers. Hara therefore remained in ignorance of Eastern Fleet’s strength, location and intentions, and this evidently weighed on his decision-making.
Cunningham did not plan to risk his main force, however, unless the situation became desperate. At this point he had only Formidable and the hastily patched-up Victorious available, with barely fifty serviceable aircraft. Instead, he had sent his T-class submarines into the Java Sea, and six of them were waiting for an opportunity to strike. The pattern of IJN operations - approaching Sumatra for air raids in the morning, then retreating eastwards before dusk - became apparent rapidly, enabling the T-boats to assume an ambush position. In the event, just before midnight on the 30th, Trusty had the opportunity of seeing the enemy pass before its bows, and hit the Hiei with three torpedoes. The Japanese counter-attack missed the Trusty but caught and sank the Thunderbolt. Initially the Hiei appeared to have avoided fatal damage. However, in the small hours she suffered an internal explosion and sank not long afterwards.
As far as Hara was concerned, this was enough. ‘The Army had reported that its landings were successful,’ he reported later, ‘and in view of the ongoing threat from enemy submarines and aircraft, I believed the Navy had played its part.’ He therefore withdrew to Surabaya. Hara’s comments were typical of the buck-passing and sniping that characterised relations between the IJN and IJA, a tendency that the pressure of war had only intensified. In fact the Army’s operations on Sumatra were not going well, though they did not wish to confide this fact to the IJN.
‘I never worried about anything in the war more than the fighting on 29th and 30th April,’ wrote Wavell later. ‘With hindsight, I can see my fears were overblown and General Montgomery’s appreciation was correct. The enemy had no overall superiority in numbers, and a distinct inferiority in armour. Where our armour was able to get into action they proved very effective.’ The biggest of the very few tank battles of the DEI campaign occurred on the 30th, when a troop of Matildas engaged eight Japanese light tanks near Ketapang, knocking out six of them without loss.
‘The enemy also lacked the other crucial ingredients for effective amphibious landings,’ Wavell went on, ‘since naval gunfire support was mostly lacking, and above all the enemy had only local and temporary air superiority. Indeed by night we had the advantage.’ Radar-equipped Beaufighters, Swordfish and Wellingtons raided the Japanese invasion fleet’s anchorages on the first two nights, disrupting their operations and damaging several vessels. ‘By sundown on May 3rd,’ he concluded, ‘I no longer had doubts of the outcome.’ Fighting would continue on and near the coast for another week, the Japanese proving very tenacious. ‘They just won’t surrender,’ commented one Australian officer. ‘Mind you, in any case, we might not be all that interested in capturing any of those 38th Division bludgers. We know what they did in Hong Kong.’
By the end of the first week of May, a lull of exhaustion settled over the entire south-east Asian theatre. The Allies licked their many wounds and continued to strengthen their defences. The Japanese for their part turned their attention to the Pacific, where the vast naval battles of the summer were about to unfold. As it proved, the IJN would never return in force to the DEI region.
