Why did Britain peform so poorly against Japan in WW2?

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Apparently British commanders believed that the Japanese would make poor pilots because being carried on their mother's back as babies would have impaired their sense of balance. :eek: :mad: :eek:

As others have said Britain was stretched to breaking point, the pre-war assumption was that France would take the lead in the Med and if war with Japan happened, the Mediterranean Fleet would be sent East, France's implosion caused that plan to go out the window. Even with the forces available a lot could have been done better, apparently they had a 3:1 advantage in men over the Japanese (can anyone confirm that?), a half decent general should have been able to knock that army into shape and unless he was up against an Alexander or Napoleon, Yamashita was good but not that good, he should have been able to make the campaign a meat grinder which even if Singapore still falls much later than IOTL has big implications for the rest of the war. Percival is portrayed as the villain but while he has a large share of the blame he's not the only one. From what I know of him I see parallels with Paulus in Stalingrad, a decent staff officer by all accounts who was put in a position he was totally unsuited for. The responsibility for that lies further up the food chain.

I don't think its fair to Von Paulus to a comparison with that man Percival. The good field marshall wasn't allowed to make decisions about his own army. He knew that to break out was the right thing to do and on several occassions begged Hitler to be allowed to break out. It is true that a stronger man like his predecessor Von Richenau for example would have disobeyed Hitler and broken out but can you really blame a soldier for following orders? Percival OTOH did not have his hands tied and was free to take whatever action he saw fit. Paulus also enjoyed considerable success on the road to Stalingrad including a very difficult opposed landing.
 
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Percival did have more men and supplies- Yamashita was at the end of his tether. He just didn't push back.

From what I've gathered from books, articles and documentaries, Yamashita was running low on supplies and bluffed his way through the surrender negotiations. It's quite possible he would have run out of supplies if Percival hadn't surrendered. This would perhaps be the one time it would be good to have Hitler to answer to. Hitler would never allow Singapore to be surrendered. He would have it declared a festung just like how he employed the festung strategy against the soviets.
 
From what I've gathered from books, articles and documentaries, Yamashita was running low on supplies and bluffed his way through the surrender negotiations. It's quite possible he would have run out of supplies if Percival hadn't surrendered.

Yup, that's pretty much what happened. Yamashita was terrified that Percival would actually try to push back.
 
As near as I can tell, British forces in the East comprised a handful of "modern" forces, with the majority of the rest made up from older/obsolete assets.

The simple reality is the East was expendable. Loosing Suez, The Mediterranean/Africa or reducing the air-defences of the UK itself, or the vessels based around the UK to keep the German Navy bottled up & escort the Atlantic Convoys -were not expendable.

Hence, Britain focused on prioritising.

Though, its worth noting - Even without US entry into the war against Japan (I.e. if Japan had gone after everyone bar US Assets & the USA had decided to stay out - unlikely as it was), Japan was well and truly screwed in the long run against the UK once she was free to focus against Japan.

Britain outproduced the axis powers combined in naval warships - and was all set to drown Japan under something like 20-25 Fleet Carriers which were under construction/would have been completed in 1946/1947 - plus other vessels more suited for the Pacific (Even the Pacific fleet Britain historically put into the Pacific in 1945 was pretty powerful - 4 or 5 fleet carriers - and that was with the bulk of her forces still elsewhere across the world).

The USA, obviously, then surpassed the UK by 3 or 4 times itself - which should indicate just how royally buggered the Axis really were in the naval theatre (When the UK's outproducing them all combined, then is in turn getting outproduced by the USA several times over).

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So in answer to your question: The UK faired so badly because Japan was basically facing outdated & under equipped forces which came a distant second after other more pressing UK-priorities.

It also didn't help that the Royal Navy was more geared towards battles in the Mediterranean/Closer to supply's bases - so had vessels with less emphasis on logistics & then smaller armoured carriers (more suited for being bombed by German Aircraft while they are operating close to land - at the expense of having larger air-wings) - all of which meant the RN wasn't exactly properly equipped for fighting a major naval-war in the Pacific - 1000's of miles away from supplies & battles fought on the high-sea's (where the size of the airwings, rather than the carriers ability to take damage - would come in more important).

Plus... the RN was really screwed over by the RAF in the inter-war years, so it took a while for the Fleet Air Arm to get a decent fighter/aircraft.

All that said: The UK & RN were finally just reaching the point of correcting their qualitative short-comings.... when Japan got nuked & surrendered before they could really get to grips with Japan.

Without Japan's surrender, I would imagine the UK & RN would have performed far more effectively as time progressed and fresh more-suited & modern designs began to arrive in the conflict zone. Its just... the war ended before the UK's later-war vessels could really start to make a difference.
1) The UK out producing them in ships is no surprise since that wasn't what the Germans were focusing on.

2) I'm not so sure Britain would win against Japan without the US. OTL, wasn't their only campaign victory Burma near the end of the war when Japan was logistically stretched?

Sorry. I didn't see how old this was.
 
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Because Hitler was the more logical and immediate threat. So most resources most likely went into combatting Sea Lion.

Also, the UK didn't have many colonies of importance in the Far East, and yes Hong Kong was important as was Singapore, but then the major factors here were the amount of prisoners/loss of life, more so than the actual defeats.

Remember that in 1941/42, the North Africa Campaign, the Battle of the Atlantic and planning for Operation Overlord were key priorities.
 
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