The Rats of Singapore

Redbeard

Banned
How long did it take Japan to actually get oil out of Inesonai?

I'm also not sure why the EU dies and why the Commonwealth is more successful; are you sure you're not the Tory?

AFAIK some months but they also were very short on fuel when it started to flow. I saw some data once on the Japanese fuel stocks in WWII, but I don't recall where. But I recall the author claiming that a major reason behind the main battle fleet being kept back was lack of fuel to keep it at sea.

Concerning EU/Commonwealth it is my impression that the British humiliation in Malaya and Singapore was a major factor in the Empire collapsing so soon after WWII. The British simply lost their magic and everybody looked elsewhere for partners after the war.

With a glorious victory the wish for freedom and independence of course wouldn't just die away, but I think there is a good chance of the Commonwealth (incl. Dominions) being actually important in politics and economy. That would provide a very interesting sphere of economical and political co-operation for post-war Europe - a very vital rival to EEC/EU. The French and Germans would still need some re-conciliation forum, but for rest of Europe some kind of being let into the Commonweath's trade would be far more interesting than contributing to rebuilding German and French pre-war strength.

Regards

Steffen Redbeard
 
AFAIK some months but they also were very short on fuel when it started to flow. I saw some data once on the Japanese fuel stocks in WWII, but I don't recall where. But I recall the author claiming that a major reason behind the main battle fleet being kept back was lack of fuel to keep it at sea.

Concerning EU/Commonwealth it is my impression that the British humiliation in Malaya and Singapore was a major factor in the Empire collapsing so soon after WWII. The British simply lost their magic and everybody looked elsewhere for partners after the war.

With a glorious victory the wish for freedom and independence of course wouldn't just die away, but I think there is a good chance of the Commonwealth (incl. Dominions) being actually important in politics and economy. That would provide a very interesting sphere of economical and political co-operation for post-war Europe - a very vital rival to EEC/EU. The French and Germans would still need some re-conciliation forum, but for rest of Europe some kind of being let into the Commonweath's trade would be far more interesting than contributing to rebuilding German and French pre-war strength.

Regards

Steffen Redbeard

The bit I've bolded is very important. In SE Asia before the war you had an Anglicised upper middle class which would probably have led the colonies towards dominion status of some sort. These were the same people who felt the most betrayed by Britain failing to defend them in WW2 and hence led the independence movements after the war.
 
Without Singapore falling so easily it is quite possible that events like the Quit India movement do not happen, or are far less popular/deadly. The Japanese supported Indian National Army would be far less likely to be formed and so Britain would have most likely had a far more reliable India during the War. That alone would might make a big difference to the war. It wouldn't stop early decolonisation of India though, but perhaps things might not get so bitter/murderous?

Then of course you have the ANZAC issue referred to by others. A POD like Singapore not falling or at least not falling in a humiliating, relatively painless way for Japan, may stop stuff like the EEC happening in its current form. If you can break/stop the UK's post war economic/political desire to join the EEC then Australia and NZ have a much stronger economic incentive to remain close to the UK.
 

perfectgeneral

Donor
Monthly Donor
Ways for Britain to win at Singapore

I have a scenario posted were Slim rejoins the rest of the 3rd corps with the 10th Indian Infantry in northern Malaya. That is enough. The 10th had experience fighting light tanks. Slim is a great general.

You can add to that sending hurricanes to the Malayan airbases sooner. Even lots of obsolete aircraft rather than just some would have helped. India had some good pilots. Give the Indian air force a chance to expand.

Just not surrendering. The Japanese forces were on their last legs.

wiki/Anglo-Siamese_Treaty_of_1909 insisting on a smaller border, further up the peninsular (north of Songkhla - Roral Roads SKL. 4014, Songkhla, Thailand).

I swear, my ancestors didn't deserve an empire. Then again who does? Bring on best practice for governments.

The Sultan of Johore was badly let down in the second world war. India should have been allowed to grow faster industrially from 1840 to 1940. The dominions should have had a greater representation in the overall direction of the empire (nothing learnt from losing America). India could have been ready for dominion status, but not as one nation. The splits since have shown that making the presidencies dominions was a more viable model (both for regional stability and British divide and rule strategy).

A Text On Singapore's Strategic Importance (to the USA!)
 
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Hmmm, you guys have listed most of the factors in question to have poss made Singapore into a potential Tobruk-like siege as opposed to the capitualtion which occurred 15 Feb 1942. How about the following, too:
-Percival actually listens to his military engineers & allows proper defences to be built on the northern end of Singapore island, instead of neglecting such defences on spurious grounds of damaging civilian morale :(
-better jungle training for the British (outside of the 2nd Bn Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders) & Indian garrison troops
-the British & Commonwealth forces not being outflanked all the time despite such successes as the Australian AT gunners at Muar River
-a stronger defence of the Singapore reservoirs
-poss the presence of adequate British tanks to counter the Jap armour
 
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The bit I've bolded is very important. In SE Asia before the war you had an Anglicised upper middle class which would probably have led the colonies towards dominion status of some sort. These were the same people who felt the most betrayed by Britain failing to defend them in WW2 and hence led the independence movements after the war.

IMO this might be true for Malaysia, but I think India's gone. The 1937 elections had already given Congress a majority, and the only question, I think, is what independent India looks like.
 
Part of the problem was that the British government did not want to spend the money rearming until after the Munich Crisis. This action severly handicapped the ability of both the Royal Army and the Indian Army to pand fast enough when the war broke out. Lots of Units ended up being equipped with Lewis LMG instead of Bren guns do to the inability to supply enough weapons.

If more forces had been dispatched sooner to Malaya rather than latter then there might have been a big difference. Also if there were Hurricanes instead of Brewster Buffaloes there might have bee a change. With Proper air cover the Royal Navy would not have lost its 2 capital ships and an invasion might have resulted in serious Japanese loses.
 

Markus

Banned
Also if there were Hurricanes instead of Brewster Buffaloes there might have bee a change. With Proper air cover the Royal Navy would not have lost its 2 capital ships and an invasion might have resulted in serious Japanese loses.

Trust me on that, if pilots with no air combat and no air gunnery training become flight leaders in a fighter squadron and if your airfields lack dispersal areas and blast pens and triple-A, it does not matter what kind of fighters you have.
 
It was a case of the resources not being sent to the threaten areas until it was too late. There was no reason that the Malaysian campaign had to go as badly ad it did. Blame must be laid at the feet of the commanders in the region but also at the door of the Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
 
My head hurts just trying to think about all that went wrong at Singapore. The problems were systemic and would require a change of attitude in a timely fashion. Churchill considered Singapore a fortress. It was, like Eban emael. The Japanese were inferior. They flew biplane fighters. Just looking at two big British battleships would scare them away. Churchill believed the ships could be "proofed" against air attack with armored decks. Communications during the attack on the ships was absent until one, while sinking, sent off a message and a Buffalo flew overhead as it slipped under. The british Buffaloes were not intrinsically inferior to Hurricanes although Brewster pulled a fast one and built the ex- Belgian Buffaloes with rebuilt airliner engines with inferior parts, ie. fuel pumps that required hand-pumping at 14,000 ft. Airfields were poorly developed and early warning was poor. Local personnel working for the defense left when the Japanese came. Australians don't like working for pompous British. That's 2% of what was wrong. How to fix? Perhaps tell everyone what happens when you surrender to the Japanese. There were two Tobruks, they just picked the wrong one to copy. When the Japanese raided Ceylon later, nothing had improved.
 
IMO this might be true for Malaysia, but I think India's gone. The 1937 elections had already given Congress a majority, and the only question, I think, is what independent India looks like.

Yeah- I specifically said SE Asia. Indian independence had been inevitable since the early 20th C.
 
Well... Maybe the fall of Singapore was caused by Murphy's Law screwing up the Brits more than the Japs, of that statement summarised everything on this thread.

I still feel that a Stalingrad style battle is feasible on a smaller scale. Possibly a showdown between the Imperial Guards and the newly arrived 18th Division or the 8th AIF would do. The comparison of the Battle of Singapore to Tobruk sounds interesting though...

Concerning the repercussions... An independent India is definitely inevitable. But then again, what of the other Commonwealth territories? The British Empire can't last forever. At most, a Commonwealth would be formed as per OTL when or if the Empire falls. So my question is what would happen to the colonies if the Empire falls because of say, failure of the Empire to resolve the Falklands issue effectively in this proposed ATL
 
Concerning the repercussions... An independent India is definitely inevitable. But then again, what of the other Commonwealth territories? The British Empire can't last forever. At most, a Commonwealth would be formed as per OTL when or if the Empire falls. So my question is what would happen to the colonies if the Empire falls because of say, failure of the Empire to resolve the Falklands issue effectively in this proposed ATL

First of all the Falklands is probably butterflied away.

In any case the Empire certainly wouldn't last until the late 70s/early 80s. Once India is given independence there's zero chance of holding on to most of the colonies. What'll happen is that decolonisation becomes a somewhat slower process, possibly with more colonies choosing to become Commonwealth Realms- for example you could well have Malaysia gain independence as per OTL (probably, since the first stirrings of nationalism were present pre-war) but it might do so with the Queen as Queen of Malaysia with the state sultans as, effectively, her vassals, as they were through the colonial period. Singapore, Penang and Malacca may remain more closely affiliated as the Straits Settlements, separate from Malaysia.

In Africa things probably aren't going to change- with the example of India, the African leaders are still going to want independence. It might be a more orderly process ITTL since Britain doesn't have all that loss of face from her performance in Asia in WW2.
 
I suppose Percival could have held on for a bit longer, the Japanese would probably have to withdraw for a while due to logistic problems. But this would still be failure compared to what could have been achieved by just making better use of the available resources, a few more ambushes etc.
 

perfectgeneral

Donor
Monthly Donor
If Bengal, Madras, etc were separate Dominions and sought to federate, could they be diverted into a commonwealth confederation? Malaya, Hong, Kong, Canada, Australia and temperate southern Africa might go along with that if there was enough autonomy. Any nation going it alone would miss out on the trade and support of the confederation.
 
it's not that hard to say

that the Japanese, in many respects (and with all due respect to some of the more original and resourceful planners in their military and navy), were amazingly LUCKY in 1941 and early 1942.
I've seen, in several sources, how just "odds and ends" in crucial moments in battles, could have made a lot of difference.
1. Doorman doesn't take his float plane on DeRuyter before Java Sea. That could have changed the outcome, at least to some extent, at Java (though that was later, I realize), by giving the ABDA command some countering air and recon. cover.
2. Percival, though he did, in fact, equivocate on this point, surrendered while there was still "fight" left in the British artillery--while, simultaneously, the Japnanese artillery was just about to run out of ammo. Had he merely equivocated a little longer, the result might have been amazing to him! The general idea, was that water was running low. Just a matter of a few more hours--not even days, hours--in his making that decision, could have made some difference in the outcome. I have wondered if anyone ever did a study as to how long Percival's answer might need to have waited before the IJA would have run out of shells?
3. Churchill sent in several tens of thousands of British troops to Singapore only a matter of hours before it fell. "What if" he'd sent them directly to Australia, instead? After all, he had sent them, in response to PM Curtin's demands for some show of concern for Australia's well-being. An odd word or two, in the conversation between Curtin and Churchill that led to that deployment, could have done the trick there. That, in itself, would have greatly lowered the number of Allied troops captured in Singapore.

Just those things could have affected how difficult it became for Japan to capture the rich resources of Malaya and the East Indies.

Toland also recounted the incident of a group of US P-40s flying over Java Sea and radioing in the positions of some Japanese ships to home base. But the message never got forwarded to Doorman. If it had been, that would have given him more air intel. to work with in positioning and maneuvering his ships-- just the forwarding of an existing message.

I've had an interest in "amleliorating" the horrific events of those early months of 1942 due to the sadness over the pows' fates. One wishes one had one thing to "wish" or pray for, to change it all...
 
How about the British putting out a large minefield on the North end of the island?

Good idea... It would either deter the Japs from invading or make them turn the whole of Northen Singapore into a giant carpark to purge the land from mines. Just one problem... Any evidence to suggest that the Brits had enough mines to pull that job off?:D
 
Good idea... It would either deter the Japs from invading or make them turn the whole of Northen Singapore into a giant carpark to purge the land from mines. Just one problem... Any evidence to suggest that the Brits had enough mines to pull that job off?:D

It's unrealistic but even if it could be tried, much of the Northern coast of Singapore in the 40's is mangrove swamp. It's not going to be easy to lay mines there even in the unlikely scenario where there's enough time, resources and manpower to mine the entire Northern coastline.
 
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