Munich Shuffle: 1938-1942

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Addendum: Hong Kong 8th -26th December 1941
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    Addendum: Hong Kong 8th -26th December 1941

    ‘The fall of Hong Kong was undeniably a blow, but the unpalatable truth was that in the larger scheme of things it was one that we had already discounted.’​

    From the Memoirs of Anthony Eden​

    The reasons why Hong Kong was judged indefensible could be found by simply looking at a map. The Japanese occupied the area of China immediately adjacent to Kowloon and the New Territories. The island of Formosa to the northeast of Hong Kong had been a Japanese colony for decades and they also held the island of Hainan to the south of Hong Kong. The occupation of Indochina in 1940 meant that Hong Kong was surrounded and the IJAAF was well placed to interdict any attempt to resupply the colony while the IJA could bring overwhelming force to bear from the mainland, potentially backed up by their own amphibious operations. The British colonial inhabitants of Hong Kong apparently could not read a map, or simply refused to believe that the physically and intellectually inferior Japanese would dare to attack an outpost of the British Empire. Even when the reinforcements scheduled to arrive in the autumn of 1941 were diverted to Malaya this was not seen as an ominous sign, rather the armchair experts in Hong Kong chose to interpret it as meaning that the likelihood of a Japanese attack had diminished and that a diplomatic resolution to the tensions between the USA and Japan was in the offing, ignoring all evidence to the contrary.

    The British garrison in Hong Kong was advised that this was a wildly optimistic assessment at best and that they should remain on guard against an attack, though with barely 7500 troops to defend the entirety of the colony the best that was hoped for was that they would be able to hold out long enough for a relief force to be dispatched from Malaya, or if the US was drawn into a more general war they might be able to dispatch some assistance . All of this was based on a series of improbable assumptions about how such a conflict with the Japanese would unfold, including that some form of Plan Orange would be enacted and the IJN would be drawn into a major naval battle near the Philippines, allowing the Royal Navy considerable latitude in conducting its own operations.

    Efforts had been made to improve the defences of the colony, especially with respect to holding Hong Island itself. What was called the ‘Gin Drinkers Line’ was a defensive perimeter that took advantage of the mountainous terrain north of Kowloon to construct a series of fortified positions linked together by paths to allow troops to move swiftly between different parts of the line, as there simply weren’t enough troops or equipment to properly man the whole of the line. Despite the obvious differences prior to 1940 the Gin Drinker Line was referred to in approving terms as the Maginot Line of the Orient. Even after the utter failure of the French fortifications there was still confidence that the Gin Drinker Line would hold as unlike the Maginot Line it could not easily be flanked. The Japanese initially agreed with the British assessment of the Gin Drinker Line, see breaking it as a considerable challenge and fearing it could hold them up for months. This changed as their intelligence and reconnaissance efforts revealed just how thinly the line was held. The persistent belief among the local commanders, who in turn persuaded a number of politicians in London, that the Gin Drinker Line might be held with enough manpower committed was the reason Churchill had been persuaded to reverse his position on sending reinforcements to Hong Kong and it took the combined efforts of Montgomery and Alanbrooke to convince the Prime Minister that it was still a forlorn hope.

    The final plan for the Gin Drinker Line called for the British forces to destroy bridges and any other infrastructure to impede the Japanese advance before retreating to the fortified line and digging in there. When the Japanese attack on Pearl harbour took place, the order went out to detonate the charges that had been set to destroy the bridges. This was carried out but did not do much to slow the Japanese advance and disaster struck the Gin Drinkers Line on the 9th of December when the Japanese attacked and overran the Shing Mu Redoubt, fatally compromising the western side of the line. The Japanese moved swiftly to exploit their success and by the 12th they had taken Kai Tak airport. That same day the Japanese engaged the last line of defence short of Hong Kong Island itself at Devil’s Peak. When they broke through here the Japanese regrouped for several days before crossing the narrow stretch of water that separated Kowloon from the island and they launched their assault around 2015 Hours on the 18th of December. The defenders did their best, forcing the Japanese to fight hard to clear one strongpoint after another but Hong Kong finally fell to the Japanese on the 26th of December 1941.

    For the British Empire troops in Hong Kong surrender did not mark the end of their suffering. The Japanese regarded them as beneath contempt for surrendering and the POWs were subjected to the brutality for which the Imperial Japanese became infamous as the war progressed. The civilian population also suffered badly at the hands of the occupiers, with white colonials and native being subjected to hunger, forced labour and summary execution with a fine lack of discrimination. Had the rest of the Japanese campaign in the region achieved the swift and decisive success of the invasion of Hong Kong the entire strategic position of the Allies in the Pacific might have collapsed, and the Japanese might have had a slim chance of forcing them to make peace, though given the American rage after Pearl Harbor it would have been a very faint one. As it was the victory in Hong Kong provided something for Japanese propaganda to latch on to and ignore the fact that much of the rest of their strategy was in tatters.
     
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    So basically another of those places skimmed over originally, mainly because I wasn't considering the fate of Malaya and the DEI when I worked out my original scenario. This is why there is also a new section on the Philippines.
     
    Addendum: December 1941 - April 1942 - The Dutch East Indies - Je Maintiendrai
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    Addendum: December 1941 - April 1942 - The Dutch East Indies - Je Maintiendrai​

    ‘I shall maintain.’​

    Motto of the Dutch Royal Family​

    Even as they were fighting to repel the Japanese offensive in Malaya, the British were forced to divert resources to the defence of the Dutch East Indies, Java and Sumatra in particular. Holding the DEI was critical to the British because if the Japanese took Sumatra, they would be able to blockade the port of Singapore. Rendering the port unusable would make it extremely difficult to resupply the forces in Malaya and prevent the Royal Navy from basing any warships there even if it could be secured against air attacks. The largest of the islands of the DEI was Borneo and it contained a British enclave, British Borneo. British Borneo occupied the northern coast of the island and included Brunei, Sarawak, Sabah and Labuan. This was another British colony that was considered indefensible, or rather any defences there could be easily bypassed by Japanese landings in the Dutch parts of Borneo, where the onus of the defence would fall on the remaining Dutch forces in the area, in particular their surviving naval units and whatever support they could muster from the Allies. The Royal Navy, Royal Australian Navy and the United States Navy all contributed ships to the naval defence of the islands, leading to this force being known as ABDA. The largest units in the force were the Heavy Cruisers HMS Dorsetshire and USS Houston and even with so many Japanese naval units distracted by the threat of Force Z and the USN forces around Wake Island ABDA still badly outnumbered and outgunned by the IJN. With the line being held in Malaya and the narrow escape of Force Z the British strongly suggested that the force should pull back towards Sumatra rather than trying to hold the line at Borneo, a high priority target for the Japanese owing to the desire to secure the oil fields and one they were determined to take despite the setbacks in Malaya.

    Admiral Karel Doorman, commanding the Dutch cruiser De Ruyter and ABDA naval force overall, requested that some elements of Force Z be dispatched to bolster ABDA and give it real striking power. The British were now aware from signals traffic that two or three fleet carriers of the Kido Butai had been dispatched to hunt for Force Z, which as it transpired was good news for the US Navy but meant that Force Z would continue its withdrawal. The British did not however prevent Doorman from carrying on with his plan to try and intercept invasion convoys heading for Borneo. ABDA would face considerable obstacles in doing so but the judgement was that given the problems the Japanese were facing elsewhere even a modest setback might force them to postpone their attempt to take Borneo and the rest of the DEI, greatly simplifying the strategic situation for the Allies. This hope was undermined almost immediately as while steaming to intercept a Japanese convoy headed towards Sarawak on the 2nd of January Doorman received a report that a Japanese scout plane had been spotted circling his ships and that a Japanese radio transmission had been detected. Believing that his position had been reported Doorman elected to change course to throw off any air attack and did not head back towards his target until almost dusk, resulting in ABDA failing to make contact and the Japanese making a successful landing. An examination of Japanese records after the war provides no evidence that ABDA was detected from the air, which appears to be confirmed by the fact that the convoy took no action to evade the approaching Allied warships.

    The outcome of the next attempt to intercept the Japanese by ABDA on the 12th of January suggests that it was just as well they had failed to make contact on the 2nd. The engagement saw HMS Dorsetshire, the Light Cruiser HNLMS Java, and the destroyer USS Paul Jones sunk with heavy loss of life and several more ships, including Doorman’s flagship, damaged. In exchange they only managed to damage the Japanese Light Cruiser Naka and while it was forced to withdraw this did nothing to slow the progress of the convoy, though the Naka was sunk in attack by RAF bombers on the 14th of January. The interception had been a tactical failure, strategically it did cause the Japanese to delay several further convoys owing to the limited availability of escorts and the potential losses if ABDA did intercept an inadequately protected convoy. The Japanese were also now being forced to accept the reality of having to divert reinforcements to allow them to break the British defences in Malaya, with seizing Singapore being seen as vital to taking control of the DEI. This lack of targets in the aftermath of the engagement on the 12th as well as the losses incurred finally forced Doorman to listen to his allies and agree to withdraw the survivors of ABDA towards Sumatra and this first attempt at a combined naval task force was dissolved at the beginning of March 1942.

    ABDA may only have marginally slowed the invasion of Borneo, but this did not mean that the Japanese had an easy time taking the Island. Taking the oilfields in Sarawak was one of the main reasons for mounting the invasion and yet it had failed before any Japanese troops made it ashore. As soon as news was received of the attack on Pearl Harbor was received orders went out to demolish the infrastructure in the oilfields and the refinery at Lutong, with much of the equipment and trained personnel being dispatched to Singapore for safety.

    The defence of Sarawak and the other areas of British Borneo fell to Sarawak Force (SARFOR), a total of about 3000 men made up of the Sarawak Rangers, mainly Iban and Dayak tribesmen, and 1000 men of the 2nd Battalion, 15th Punjab Regiment. Faced with some 8,000 better armed and trained Japanese troops landing at Tanjung Lobang Beach and the impossibility of SARFOR concentrating its forces at a single point the outcome was inevitable and British Borneo was formally surrendered on the 21st of January, though the remnants of SARFOR withdrew southward into the jungle of central Borneo, where they linked up with elements of Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) who had been also been engaged in a series of one-sided battles against further Japanese landings, while also doing their best destroy any infrastructure that would have been useful to the invaders. Retreating ever deeper into the jungle the remaining troops, with support from the native population held out until the 4th of April.

    The Japanese had finally taken Borneo, but it was a pyrrhic victory. The islands oil reserves were inaccessible without completely rebuilding the production infrastructure, which proved all but impossible as the existing equipment was safely stored in Singapore and the manufacturing of replacements was beyond the capacity of Japanese industry. The Japanese troops occupying Borneo would find it a miserable experience as Allied interdiction of Japanese shipping became increasingly effective across 1942, and they would spread their misery to the native population, creating a fertile breeding ground for resistance activities sponsored by the Special Operations Executive team based out of Malaya.

    ‘First were going to Hong Kong, then it was Malaya, and finally we found ourselves Java. I thought we would be there for a few weeks again before we were moved again; turned out to be a bit longer.’​

    From a postwar interview with a soldier of the Winnipeg Grenadiers ​

    Even while the fighting continued on Borneo the ambitious Japanese schedule called for landings on Java, and these were originally scheduled for late February 1942. At the end of January even the Japanese High Command had to recognize that this was overreach, better to focus on finishing the British in Malaya. The counter argument to this option was that with the British so heavily committed in Malaya Java needed to be taken before they could aid the Dutch and reinforce the defences there and in terms of the larger strategy Java needed to be taken to pave the road to Sumatra and undercut the British grip on Malaya and Burma by interdicting the shipping lanes and threatening a direct assault in southern Malaya or Burma. The initial landings on Java were finally scheduled for the 2nd of March 1942, by which point it was already too late to prevent the British, with assistance from the Americans, from putting substantial reinforcements on to Java. The Winnipeg Grenadiers and the Royal Rifles of Canada had spent their time after arriving in Malaya training and waiting for the bulk of their equipment to arrive. In addition to mortars and heavy machine guns the Canadian contingent would be reinforced by the first deployment of the Canadian built infantry support vehicle the Wolverine, a derivative of the Valentine tank outfitted with a short-barreled howitzer weapon. There were only 17 Wolverines delivered and some of them would have to be crewed by infantrymen drawn from the Royal Rifles, but they were a definite morale booster and proved themselves invaluable in the defence, where they were used largely as mobile pillboxes to break up Japanese attacks and while not intended for the role the howitzer could knock out light tanks.

    The Canadians arrived on Java on the 2nd of February, along with the troops of the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Scots Regiment, who had also been diverted from Hong Kong and had trained alongside the Canadians, so they were the natural choice to send with them to Java. The last major Allied addition to the defence of Java was the arrival of the US 10th Marine Regiment, detached from the 2nd Marine Division. These fresh forces joined around five thousand British troops that had previously been dispatched as well as some twenty-five thousand KNIL troops. Although they had pressed ahead with their plans to invade the Japanese had scaled back their invasion force in the face of their other commitments, but they still assigned thirty-thousand troops to the operation. Although it was never formally adopted as a name in the same way as ABDA the Allied forces on Java were commonly referred to as the ABCD command.

    The first wave of landings went well for the Japanese, with only a single transport being intercepted and sunk by a Dutch submarine as they made their approach to the landing zone. This did delay the landings by about an hour, and as they were offloading in full daylight the landing areas were subjected to bombing raids by the RAF and RAAF. Having gained considerably more experience from the fighting in Malaya the attacks were considerably more successful than those carried out the previous December and the bombers left several transports burning and sinking in their wake, considerably slowing the Japanese attempts to consolidate their foothold on the island. A series of skirmishes with KNIL troops over the next few days further delayed the Japanese advance, but it wasn’t until the 14th of March that the Japanese forces encountered the Canadians and a small contingent of Wolverines. The presence of armour took the Japanese attackers by surprise and persuaded them to withdraw and regroup. When they launched a fresh assault, the Japanese forced the Canadians to withdraw, but the delay had allowed for the Dutch to prepare further fallback positions and the Canadians were able to reach these in good order.

    This proved to be the template for the next month of the fighting. The Allied forces lacked the firepower to completely halt the Japanese offensive, being forced into a steady retreat westward. They did exact a heavy toll on attacks and by the middle of April the Japanese had run out of momentum. Their supply lines were overstretched and the buildup of Allied airpower on Sumatra had allowed them to established air superiority over Java, with the IJAAF forces on Borneo also having to deal with further RAF and RAAF attacks from Malaya. Pleas for further reinforcements to allow the Japanese forces to resume their offensive went unanswered as the High Command in Tokyo was forced to focus its attention elsewhere. The fate of the Japanese forces on Java would now largely rest on the outcome of events in Malaya and both sides assumed that this stalemate on Java would only be a temporary affair, but with the Allies and the Japanese both turning the focus of their campaign elsewhere the fighting on Java instead became a stalemate that wouldn’t be broken until 1943.
     
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    Donor
    Later in the TL I did spend a bit of time on the DEI, but again when I was writing about Far East originally it didn't really feature in my planning, consider that oversight rectified.
     

    Stark

    Good update. ABDA and initial fighting in DEI is most interesting to me in general Pacific war. Disparate, disjointed and inadequate forces trying the stop determined enemy.
     

    Garrison

    Donor
    Stark said:
    Good update. ABDA and initial fighting in DEI is most interesting to me in general Pacific war. Disparate, disjointed and inadequate forces trying the stop determined enemy.
    Click to expand...
    That's a little unfair the Japanese aren't completely disjointed...😀
     

    Garrison

    Donor
    So in the absence of any response of any sort from Sealion Press after several months it looks like I am pressing ahead with self-publishing on Kindle. To that end I thought I would share my shot at some cover art and see what people think of it, and no I have never been chairman of the JCS:
    Cover Test 7.jpg
     

    KingSweden24

    Garrison said:
    So in the absence of any response of any sort from Sealion Press after several months it looks like I am pressing ahead with self-publishing on Kindle. To that end I thought I would share my shot at some cover art and see what people think of it, and no I have never been chairman of the JCS:
    View attachment 902868
    Click to expand...
    Aww man you’d have been our most famous posted since Newt Gingrich’s alleged burner!

    Joking aside, I think that cover looks great, and I’d buy a copy once it launches.
     
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