Admiral Beez
Banned
I forgot about the Bristol Beauforts based at RAF Kallang. Added to the RAF forces, the Beaufort was one of the best torpedo strike aircraft of the time.
If the IJA gets to within effective range of Singapore's batteries then the campaign is lost.
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We've got to kill 'em on the beaches or before.
And appreciate that the Japanese are not inferior little buck toothed yellow men who cannot see straight and cannot fly due to weak inner ears.
Appreciate that they are intelligence, well trained, and fierce fighters.
Also, believe the intelligence reports out of China that say Japanese fighter planes are very maneuverable and you should not engage them in low speed turning dog fights.
Since Singapore is useless if the Japanese have controll of Indonesia use schorched earth tactics and blow up everything usefull in Malaya and Singapore once the Japanese invade and then evacuate every soldier, ship, airplane and if possible heavy weapons to Java.
Understand that the Japanese are in need of the oil and that there is no oil in Malaya, but plenty in Indonesia
Percival was a very capable staff officer, but not the guy for top command in a dynamic fight. That position did not play to his strength. Perhaps Alexander, or Auchinlek in place of Percival.
Percival was a very capable staff officer, but not the guy for top command in a dynamic fight. That position did not play to his strength. Perhaps Alexander, or Auchinlek in place of Percival.
Gen.Ironsides IIRC was not employed at this time - not sure how well he played with others but he is not the sort to have a break down!
And we have Lord Gort - say what you like about the man but he was not averse to making tough decisions etc.
I could see any of those guys telling both Heath, Bennett, & Brooke-Popham; along with the civilian authorities how things would be done - or else.
And I can see them all getting sacked when it turns out that the "colonial stooges" are the reason they are there in the first place.
Any British commander who starts waving a gun about at the good old boy who is complaining about the military causing agro is the one in for a world of shit not the other way around.
If you are in Malaya in 1941-42 its because you arent judged good enough for the real war actually being fought, causing agro with the civillian authorities in a posting at peace means their friends in London will be yelling at your boss who likely thinks you have lost the plot and shit rolls down hill.
This is viewed in 20-20 hindsight... Your outline is the way it really was and that old boy view cost the Malayans, Indians, British, and Australians dearly.
20-20 hindsight still should in my view just means you know what went wrong and can take measures that OTL were not taken but were not, it does not absolve you of the consequences of those measures because what would be the point of that?
It just makes everyone born before you look stupid without the ability to judge everything and ignore reality.
A British commander is not there to protect Indians and Malyasians. The wishes of the white colonials trump those to an extent its impossible to imagine today so including them in the cost fails as its not something the commander would be thinking about. If things were different it would be Indians and Malaysians he's killing on behalf of the colonial authorities.
The Colony such as it is exists to serve Britain through the provision of a naval base and wealth extraction mostly to the benefit of the local administration and their backers in London. Fucking over the administrators and settlers literally defeats the purpose of being sent there to protect them which is your one job besides protecting Singapore for its use in protecting other colonies and its failed at that because there is no fleet free to base from it.
In my opinion, the point of this excercise is to look at alternatives to what was done - which was a disaster for all. Everybody played "by the book" and it didn't work - at all...
Are you rejecting the OP's basic premise, or just my version of what the commander(s) should have done?