Chapter 3
THE MULTI-LAYERED DEFENCE OF MALAYA 1946-1971
Malaya is of strategic importance in the cold war period, as well as in a major global war. Retention of Malaya gives defence in depth to Australia ... Its loss would mean that Communist influence, and power, would come within striking range of Australia.
COSC Appreciation on Australian Strategy in the Pacific and Far East, 14 September 1950
To understand how the twelve-year armed struggle for Malaya unfolded and ended, and the legacy it left, some discussion on the defence arrangements, treaties and command and control set up between 1946 and 1971 is necessary. The British return to Malaya, the onset of the Emergency and, in time, plans for independence and a British withdrawal, forced governments in Britain, Australia and New Zealand to constantly consider the broad and future strategic implications. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, there was considerable debate in London, Canberra, and Wellington about how South-East Asia, and specifically Malaya, would be defended. Memories of how quickly the country fell to the Japanese onslaught were still very fresh and raw. While the British would have the lead, Australian and New Zealand interests had to be accepted and their forces assimilated into any Commonwealth response.
At the end of World War II in the Asia-Pacific, Australia had been relegated by US General MacArthur, the Supreme Commander in the South-West Pacific Area, to conducting mop-up operations in New Guinea and the Netherlands East Indies from late 1944. Consequently, Australians took little part in the retaking of Singapore and Malaya. To organise forces against Japan, the Allies had divided the Pacific and South-East Asia into geographic regions with the British forming South-East Asia Command or SEAC in May 1943. This area covered most of the Indian Ocean, India, Burma, Thailand, Malaya, Indochina and Sumatra. The Americans covered the South China Sea, the Philippines, and the rest of the Pacific. Australia was made responsible for the rest of the Netherlands East Indies and New Guinea.
Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten and General Douglas MacArthur, two of the victors in South-East Asia and the Pacific.
While the Americans were preparing to invade Japan, the British were preparing to recapture Malaya under their Operation Zipper, a deployment of forces from Ceylon to the Malayan north-west coast near Penang. The sudden surrender of Japan in August 1945 meant Zipper was never enacted, so the British under Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten quickly sought to re-establish control over their lost Malayan colony. It was decided Singapore would again be the headquarters of British colonial power in the Far East and from there, the Malayan peninsula would be administered.
SEAC was disestablished in November 1946 after which its subordinate components were reorganised. For the combined air forces, Air Command South-East Asia was retitled Air Command Far East. This arrangement lasted until June 1949 when, after another reorganisation, it became the Far East Air Force (FEAF). FEAF would last until the British withdrawal from ‘East of Suez’ and was replaced by the Five Power Defence Arrangements with its Integrated Air Defence System in November 1971 and February 1972, respectively.
FEAF had a wide area of responsibility and by the start of the Emergency, it was headquartered at Changi with three subordinate commands–Air Headquarters Ceylon; Air Headquarters Malaya; and Air Headquarters Hong Kong. The Sunderland flying boat base RAF Seletar was also administered directly in conjunction with the Royal Navy. Under FEAF, the ‘air forces’ would be the RAF, the RAAF and the RNZAF, with the latter two dedicated to Air Headquarters Malaya. The position of C-in-C FEAF was always held by an RAF officer of air marshal rank, so any RAAF officer serving in FEAF would be in a subordinate role.
From the end of World War II, communism presented the only real and pressing threat to South-East Asia so Australia developed a policy of forward defence and, in 1946, the Australia-New Zealand-Malaya (ANZAM) area arrangements were agreed to provide a ‘forum for consultation on defence issues’, with the ‘Malaya’ meaning the British colonial administration stationed there.22 Australia’s main role in ANZAM was to protect sea lines of communication, with the British solely responsible for the home defence of Malaya itself.23
With Communist Terrorist (CT) activity on the rise by 1950, Britain again turned to Australia for military support in Malaya using ANZAM as the lever, and, as in 1940-41, the Australian Government offered the Air Force first. Legal restrictions on the Australian Army serving overseas and the large draw-down after World War II made a land commitment impractical, and shortly thereafter, the Korean War consumed those few units available. Therefore, Australian Army personnel would not be involved in the Emergency until much later in the conflict. Likewise, the RAN would later provide ships to support RN operations.
Meanwhile, Malaya becoming a communist state was not the only concern of the western powers. On 7 April 1954, US President Eisenhower made what became known as his ‘Domino Theory’ speech at a US press conference. The Domino Theory posed that if one nation turned communist, this would lead to a collapse to communism of neighbouring states, much as a row of dominoes topple when one is pushed over. Although now largely discredited, at the time the theory seemed sound: China had become a communist state in 1949, North Korea remained so after the Korean War, French Indochina fell to Ho Chi Minh in 1954, and Indonesia, despite claiming neutrality, was arming with Soviet weapons and appeared ‘left leaning’. Then there was the challenging situation in Malaya.
While Eisenhower and his administration were focussed on the problems of North Asia and Indochina, others felt the situation in Malaya made it one of the key dominoes. Much as the North Atlantic Treaty had been signed in April 1949 founding NATO as a buffer against Soviet expansion in the west, it appeared the time was right for an equivalent treaty in the east. Consequently, a South East Asia Collective Defence Treaty (or Manila Pact) was signed in Manila in September 1954 creating the South East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO).
SEATO member states were Australia, France, New Zealand, the Philippines, Pakistan, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Notably, Malaya was not a signatory as it was still under British administration. Moreover, of the eight members of the organisation, only Thailand could realistically be regarded as part of South-East Asia. The alliance was intended to contain communist South-East Asian expansion, but the other SEATO countries did not get involved in the Emergency. After Malayan independence, the new government chose not to join SEATO, a problem that affected the RAAF deployment to Ubon in the 1960s, but that is another story. When many signatories lost interest in SEATO’s continuation, it was formally dissolved on 30 June 1977.
In the decade after World War II, Britain’s forces were hard pressed. Units were stationed across Europe, in the Middle East, the Far East, and in Korea. At the end of the Korean conflict in 1953, the British Chiefs of Staff in Whitehall considered the establishment of a standing Commonwealth Strategic Reserve (CSR) to relieve the pressure on their force spread. They assumed the CSR would include Australian and New Zealand forces as a matter of course. Ideally, these forces would come from those redeploying from Korea and from British forces already stationed in Malaya. This concept was soon termed the British Commonwealth Far East Strategic Reserve (BCFESR, later shortened to the FESR) and was intended to provide forces for the defence of Malaya and Singapore and their adjacent waters. These would be stationed in Malaya to be ready to respond at a moment’s notice. No doubt the Emergency situation in Malaya made the establishment of the FESR imperative.
Prime Minister Bob Menzies was predisposed to supporting the British authorities in Malaya and the development of the FESR.
The FESR was first officially proposed to the Australian Government by the British Minister of Defence, Field Marshal Harold Alexander, in a letter to Prime Minister Menzies on 29 June 1953. It stated that: ‘the need for this Strategic Reserve arose from the inability of the United Kingdom to form an adequate Reserve of its own to guard against any new aggression in the Far East, particularly South-East Asia’. Presumptuously, the nucleus of the proposed force ‘would be found in the forces of Malaya and in the Australian and New Zealand contingents in Korea as and when the latter can be released by the United Nations Command’.24
As with all such proposals, it took some time for the Australian Government to digest, consider and agree a position but on 1 April 1955, Menzies finally announced the decision to contribute forces to the FESR. This would include a fighter wing of two squadrons, a bomber squadron, and an airfield construction squadron. An infantry brigade would deploy and RAN ships would be assigned to a British carrier group as part of the package.25
The FESR’s primary role was ‘the defence of Malaya against external communist aggression’ with a secondary role ‘to assist in the maintenance of the security of the Federation of Malaya by participating in operations against the Communist Terrorists’.26 Under the Australian commitment to the FESR, the RAAF was required to provide three front-line squadrons (remembering that No 1 Squadron was already in Singapore), but a base from which to operate was also needed. The base proposed was the extant RAF Station at Butterworth on the mainland side of the state of Penang.
Shortly after the announcement, an executive planning team led by Group Captain Redmond Green visited Headquarters Far East Air Force in May 1955 and a two-year build-up period for the RAAF deployment was agreed.27 As well as cost sharing, among the main items on the agenda was the matter of basing. Regarding the latter, the first issue was the state of the main (and only) runway at Butterworth which required extension before any jet fighter aircraft, particularly the Sabre, could operate. To rectify the lack of suitable facilities, No 2 Airfield Construction Squadron (ACS) was deployed to Butterworth in August 1955 to extend the runway to 8000 feet and erect other buildings to enable permanent fast-jet operations. The works took three years to complete, allowing No 2 Squadron’s Canberras to deploy in July 1958 followed by No 3 Squadron’s Sabres a month later.
Australia and the RAAF kept their promise regarding the stationing of forces in Malaya as part of the FESR and it was under the FESR that Australia eventually committed ground forces to the Emergency in October 1955. The FESR lasted until 1 November 1971 when it was replaced by the briefly lived ANZUK force and the longer lasting Five Power Defence Arrangements (FPDA). How the myriad defence arrangements fitted in is illustrated at Figure 3.1.
Butterworth flight line in 1964. An RAAF Bristol Freighter in the foreground and RAAF Sabres at rear. (Rogers)
Figure 3.1 – The Defence Arrangements in Malaya-Malaysia – 1945-1990
Motto: Pro Cura Pacis Armor - I am Armed for the Defence of Peace
The airfield at Butterworth in Malaya’s Penang state had been opened by the RAF in October 1941–just in time to meet the Japanese invasion. The base was used by both RAF and RAAF aircraft during that brief and fateful campaign, but it was virtually destroyed by the Japanese by the end of that year. During their occupation, the Japanese partially revamped the airfield, constructing an east-west runway on the site but little else. With this base, they could protect from a counter-invasion from British Burma. At the end of the war, the British returned and built up the Butterworth base for their Far East operations. From 1950 it was used for Tempest, de Havilland Hornet and Venom fighters as well as Dakota transports and rotary-wing deployments for field operations in northern Malaya.
The town (and base) of Butterworth are named after Major General William John Butterworth CB who was the fifth Governor of the Straits Settlements from August 1843 to March 1855. Butterworth was ideal as its location on the north-west coast allowed easy access across the peninsula to Singapore, the Malacca Strait and the Indian Ocean as well as Thailand. With the establishment of the FESR, the RAF extended the north-south runway and deployed a flight of Canberras from February 1955 for the Emergency–this was the first time RAF jet bombers had flown on war operations. Further bomber detachments followed.
With the FESR agreement in place, and after No 2 ACS had completed their works, RAF Station Butterworth was handed over to the RAAF on 1 July 1958 after which it was renamed RAAF Station Butterworth and later, RAAF Base Butterworth. By August 1960, 800 RAAF personnel were posted on strength, but this number would grow to over 1350 RAAF members and 4800 dependants at a peak in the mid-1970s.
As well as a permanent RAAF presence, the RAF and RNZAF had units stationed there until 1963 and the base hosted detachments thereafter. The RAAF continued to operate the base until the RAF withdrew from Malaysia which prompted an official handover to the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) on 31 March 1970 with the RAAF maintaining access rights and the base renamed RMAF Air Base Butterworth.
As well as an active air base, Butterworth is the location of the Headquarters of the Integrated Air Defence System or IADS. Commanded by a RAAF Air Vice-Marshal, the IADS was set up under the auspices of the Five Power Defence Arrangements signed in 1971. The five powers are Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Britain.
The RAAF Base Butterworth badge features a Malay Kris (dagger) crossed with a boomerang symbolising the connection between the two cultures. The motto ‘Pro Cura Pacis Armor’ translates as ‘I am Armed for the Defence of Peace’. As far as the RAAF was concerned, a permanent armed presence for the defence of peace remained until 1988 when the Australian Mirage squadrons left. However, smaller RAAF deployments continue and in 2018, the Australian Government announced a $22m investment to upgrade the base facilities to ensure the base could continue to host maritime patrol and air defence exercises well into the future.
After gaining independence in 1957, the British and Malayan Governments signed an Anglo-Malayan Defence Agreement (AMDA) under which British forces would remain in the country after independence as a security umbrella for the newly formed nation. The Emergency had not yet ended. Australia and New Zealand were invited to contribute in a reserve capacity to AMDA from 1959, but this did not commit either nation to defend Malaya in the event of an external attack. AMDA would last until 31 October 1971 when most British air and maritime forces had withdrawn from South-East Asia. From that time, the AMDA would immediately transition to the Five Power Defence Arrangements (FPDA) between the ‘five powers’ of the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Singapore. The FPDA remains a series of planning arrangements such that member countries consult each other in the event of an attack against one or more.
When the FPDA first came into operation on 1 November 1971, the three major powers also formed the Australia-New Zealand-United Kingdom force called ANZUK which replaced ANZAM. A major component of the FPDA would be an Integrated Air Defence System to which the RAAF would contribute most of the supporting air power. Significantly, the RAAF also held the position of Commander Integrated Air Defence System, a two-star appointment, and this continues to this day. This suited the other four partners as it avoided any differences of opinion between Malaysia and Singapore, kept the UK engaged if not in situ, and New Zealand was happy as they only had a small air force with one two-star officer, the Chief of Air Staff.
The portent of things to come. An unusual shot of Mirages, one from each squadron 75, 77, 3 and 76 flying in formation over Butterworth squadron.
As FPDA was a consultative arrangement without forces deployed, it was under ANZUK that the RAAF was committed to maintaining the following units in Malaysia and Singapore:28
• a headquarters at Butterworth and its associated supporting units;
• two Mirage squadrons (Nos 3 and 75) including eight aircraft on continuous detachment to Tengah;
• No 478 (Maintenance) Squadron;
• Base Squadron Butterworth;
• No 4 RAAF Hospital; and
• up to six Dakota aircraft.
ANZUK was short-lived and disbanded on 1 January 1975 when Australian and British ground forces were finally withdrawn, but the RAAF commitment to permanently stationing forces in Butterworth remained until 1988.