How to avoid fall of Singapore and the after-effects

hipper

Banned
Redbeard said:
I we imagine we could rerun history from say December 1940 a number of times I think Singapore in most reruns would stay British. The OTL Japanese victory appears a single string of unlikely events. Possible but not likely.

The PoDs to change outcome are numerous:

1. Churchill must take a large part of the blame. He had literally scared the shit out Brooke-Popham, telling him to under no circumstances provoke hostilities with Japan. B-P had good intel. on Japanese movements before 7th of Dec, but didn't dare act on them. I do not suggest we remove Churchill, that's really incomprehensible, but putting Alan Brooke in command as CIGS some time before OTL (Dec 1941) will probably mean a much more sound British strategy. If anyone could filter Churchill's silly ideas it was Brooke.

Regards

Redbeard
Click to expand...


That's not actually true Brook Popham had orders that allowed him to take offensive action against the Japanese prior to any declaration of hostilities.

("They're going to make me responsible for starting the bloody war" was I believe his comment)

Granted his Hudsons were ill equipped (no torpedo's) and Wildebeests (obsolete) poor aircraft to attack the Japanese fleet.

To effectively defend Singapore There should have been an effective maritime attack capability backed by long range fighters

also required would be an RN fleet able to take on the KB in a one to one brawl

The ships just existed to fight the Japanese, However the RN had to keep the KM and Italian navies in check and severe losses could not be replaced.

so to answer the Question I suspect that the creation of the RAF (no focus on anti shipping tasks) and late rearmament in the 1930s doomed Singapore.

regards

Hipper
 

Riain

Brooke-Popham, Percival and heath and later in Burma Hutton were all 3 star officers in the far East command. I wonder if there was a reshuffle and these men were in different positions within the command would it have made any difference.

Also B P was governor of Kenya from 1936 to 39 and made good progress preparing the defense of Kenya against the Italian threat from Ethiopia. Perhaps if he was made governor of malaya instead of commander he would have gotten a better result.
 

Redbeard

Banned
hipper said:
That's not actually true Brook Popham had orders that allowed him to take offensive action against the Japanese prior to any declaration of hostilities.

("They're going to make me responsible for starting the bloody war" was I believe his comment)

Granted his Hudsons were ill equipped (no torpedo's) and Wildebeests (obsolete) poor aircraft to attack the Japanese fleet.

To effectively defend Singapore There should have been an effective maritime attack capability backed by long range fighters

also required would be an RN fleet able to take on the KB in a one to one brawl

The ships just existed to fight the Japanese, However the RN had to keep the KM and Italian navies in check and severe losses could not be replaced.

so to answer the Question I suspect that the creation of the RAF (no focus on anti shipping tasks) and late rearmament in the 1930s doomed Singapore.

regards

Hipper
Click to expand...

Yes Brooke-Popham had been given the formal authority to launch Matador by 5th of December, but was so scared by Churchill's directives about avoiding conflict with Japan (and Thailand), that he didn't dare do anything on the intel.

I think the problem was Churchill's very keen focus on quick results in the Med., in which game any potential conflict with Japan would be very disturbing. Nobody dared cross Churchill's "strategic" follies until Alan Brooke got firmly seated in his CIGS chair.
 

Riain

I think if the likes B-P, Percival, Phillips and Heath had more planes and some armour they still would have lost because of poor training and poor preparation.

What was required was a civilian and military leadership preparing Malaya for war; conducting large training exercises and strengthening defences in light of current threats.
 
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