Japan Sweeps Westwards
Pearl Harbor was important, but only to neutralise the US Pacific Fleet. It was not an objective in its own right and even the shore-based aircraft posed little threat as the Hawaiian Islands were out of range of Japan. The real objectives were the Netherlands East Indies, the Malayan Peninsula and Burma, which held the vital fuel and raw materials that Japan needed to survive and to wage war. Before these objectives lay the Philippines, possession of which would deny the United States the chance to block Japan’s lines of communication with its planned empire, and which in any case could also provide much-needed agricultural produce and timber.
Unprecedented in the history of warfare, Japanese forces were heading westwards even while battle raged over and around Hawaii. Landings had already been made at Kota Bharu in Malaya. No single country has ever managed to wage assaults over such a wide area within such a short time.
THE INVASION OF MALAYA AND SIAM
At 01.15 on the night of 7 December, the same day as the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese ‘Southern Expeditionary Fleet’ commanded by Vice-Admiral Ozawa landed the first of 35,000 troops of the Japanese Twenty-Fifth Army led by Lieutenant General Yamashita on the east coast of the Malayan Peninsula, with the first landings at Kota Bharu in Malaya to seize the airfields, with other troops forcing their way into Thailand the following day. Launching their attack from French Indo-China, the Japanese had far fewer ground troops than the British, but were well provided with air power with 560 aircraft against 158, most of which were either obsolete or noted for their disappointing performance, such as the Brewster Buffalo. The British had built many airfields in Malaya ready to repulse an invasion, and much of the army’s role was to defend these airfields. The British Empire had 88,000 troops in the area under the command of General Percival, comprising 19,000 from the United Kingdom, 15,000 Australians, 17,000 Malayans and 37,000 Indians. While the Japanese invasion force consisted of just 35,000 men, they also had 211 tanks while the British had none.
Anticipating action at some stage, the British had a plan, Operation Matador, which relied upon having sufficient advance intelligence of Japanese intentions to invade Siam (now Thailand) and occupy the town of Singora. The British government hesitated to sanction the plans for fear of losing US sympathy by invading neutral Siam before war broke out. Before approval could be given, it was the Japanese who had occupied Singora. The invasion transports had been spotted on 6 December, off Cape Cambodia, but short of attacking them and starting a war, nothing could be done since their destination was not clear, even though the RAF believed that they could sink 70 per cent of an invasion force before any troops could be landed. While Malaya was important in its own right as probably the most viable of all of the colonies with its forests, tin and rubber, it was also the route to Singapore, the key to control of the East Indies. A strong naval base and supposedly also an island fortress, Singapore guarded the Straits of Malacca, the shortest and most direct route between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.
Attacking Malaya was strategically sound. The colony was difficult to defend. The terrain consisted of dense jungle, with swamps and mountains, and inevitably, ground communications were poor. Worse still, the British had made a number of strategic errors. They had failed to invade neighbouring Siam, leaving the Japanese to establish a strong presence in the country. British strategy depended on defending the roads and railways running north-south throughout the Malay Peninsula, and so the troops were not trained to fight in the jungles and swamps. The British had also built many airfields for the defence of Malaya, for which there were no aircraft, but then found themselves committed to their defence. Worse, the airfields had been built by the RAF, with no less than three at Kota Bharu, with little thought as to how they could be defended from ground attack.
While the defenders outnumbered the invaders, they were poorly equipped and lacked tanks. Its training had been for the pre-emptive invasion of Siam in Operation Matador, which, had it been put into effect, might just have changed the situation, even though the air component of the defences amounted to just 158 aircraft, less than half the number that the British chiefs of staff had considered necessary, and even less than the number thought essential by the RAF itself.
Too late, the British belatedly tried to advance into Siam, but were pushed back by a combination of Japanese armour and air power. It took the Japanese only until 10 December to push across the Malay Peninsula to the west coast. That same day, an attempt to stop further Japanese troops landing led to the sinking of the new battleship, HMS Prince of Wales and the elderly battlecruiser Repulse, by bombers and torpedo-bombers flying from airfields near Saigon which gave the Japanese complete control of the seas. Had the British been operating these ships as a properly constructed task group with a couple of aircraft carriers, the outcome might have been different, especially if the carriers had high-performance fighters embarked. As it was, they had been intended to operate with just one carrier, the new Indomitable, but she had run aground and was not available and the sole additional protection for the two capital ships consisted of just four destroyers. The force commander, Rear Admiral Tom Phillips, thought that they could attack the invasion fleet off Kuantan, and discounted the threat of aerial attack. He even maintained radio silence which made it difficult for the RAF to offer air cover.
It is sometimes maintained that the Japanese were jungle-trained troops, able to bypass the defenders. In fact, few, if any, were jungle-trained. It was the presence of armour, artillery and air power that made the difference. The defenders lacked good artillery, mobile anti-aircraft units, and, perhaps most telling of all, good anti-tank weapons. The Japanese also improvised, gaining much-needed battlefield mobility by seizing bicycles in captured Siamese and Malay territory.
Pre-war proposals for a series of defensive lines had been rejected on the grounds that they would be bad for morale, indicating to the local population as well as to the troops that not all of Malaya could be defended. Manuals describing how tanks could be knocked out without anti-tank weapons were kept at HQ, and officers were even forbidden to disseminate this essential information to their troops.
After the invasion, successive attempts to establish a defensive line failed. A first stand on the road at Jitra on 11 December was swept aside by Japanese tanks, supported by artillery. The decision was taken to start a general withdrawal, which rapidly became disorganised with many troops being lost in the jungle. Again, an attempt to check the advance on the Perak River failed for the same reasons. When the defenders attempted to make a stand at Kampar and finally succeeded in establishing a strong position, the Japanese used captured small craft to land behind the lines, outflanking the British Empire forces. These moves down the west coast were accompanied by steady progress down the east coast.
When Lieutenant General Pownall arrived on 23 December to take over from Air Chief Marshal Brooke-Popham as Commander-in-Chief of British forces in the Far East, he decided on a new plan, yet another stand, but on this occasion on the River Slim, still some distance north of Kuala Lumpur. This was when the Japanese took to the jungle. They discovered an abandoned jungle track and used this to bypass the roads being covered by the defending forces, allowing the Japanese to mount a surprise attack on the bridge over the Slim River on 8 January.
Another change of command occurred on 10 January 1942, when General Wavell took over as Supreme Commander. There was also a change of strategy. The gradual fighting withdrawal wasn’t working, and heavy losses were being suffered. Central Malaya was evacuated, with Kuala Lumpur taken by the Japanese on 11 January, while a new defensive line was established with fresh troops from Singapore at the Muar River. Once again, the Japanese bypassed the defensive line, landing at Batu Pahat to cut off the defending Australian and Indian troops. A final attempt to hold the Japanese at Johore failed, and so by 31 January, the remaining British Empire troops fell back into Singapore.
THE FALL OF SINGAPORE
The rout of the defending forces in Malaya meant that Singapore’s garrison was inflated by those troops who had managed to withdraw to the island. This gave Singapore a force of 85,000 troops, of whom no less than 70,000 were combatants. While the original force in Malaya had been poorly equipped, what equipment there had been had often had to be abandoned. Eventual defeat seemed inevitable, no matter how many troops were on the ground, but the British sent additional troops, some of them veterans of Dunkirk. This decision was taken to appease the Australian government, which felt that to abandon Singapore would show that Britain had failed to keep her promises of the inter-war years.
There was no air power left to the defenders at this stage. The 15-inch guns were fired at the Japanese, but their armour-piercing shells had little serious impact on troops. Shells that fragmented would have been more successful, but there weren’t any. These guns were meant to fight off an invading fleet, hitting the battleships and cruisers, and no other situation had been considered.
The key to the island was supposed to be the causeway linking it with Malaya. The Japanese mounted a heavy air and artillery bombardment to damage the defences, before landing 13,000 assault troops along some 8 miles of waterfront. This forced the defenders of the causeway to withdraw, for risk of being cut off by the invaders. The main route into Singapore was now open. Further Japanese landings followed, allowing them to build up their forces to some 30,000 men. A defensive line, the Jurong Line, then had to be abandoned, along with most of the supplies.
It appears that not until the Japanese forces started the siege of Singapore did the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, realise how poor the defences were. He described it as a ‘naked island’, which was an exaggeration as well. He issued contradictory instructions to his commander in the field, General Percival, calling both for a ‘scorched-earth policy’ and for the city to be defended to the very end, but retracted when Percival sensibly pointed out that he could have a defence to the bitter end or a scorched-earth policy, but not both.
As the realisation dawned that Singapore could not be defended, Churchill changed his mind again and proposed that the island be abandoned and the garrison evacuated so that they could fight elsewhere. Churchill himself described this as an ‘ugly decision’. The Australian special envoy in London heard of what was proposed and informed Canberra. Churchill’s relations with the Australian Federal Prime Minister were difficult enough, but this time he received a telegram in which John Curtin described any withdrawal from Singapore as ‘an inexcusable betrayal’. There was no alternative but to continue to fight.
More practical minds in the dockyard allowed the commanding officers of warships to take whatever supplies they could, although the wiser and more experienced resisted the temptation to overload their ships with ammunition. The most desirable objects were those that would have transformed dockyards in Australia quickly, but these, the presses and forges, were too heavy to move quickly.
An attempt was then made to defend the city itself, but this could not be sustained due to a shortage of water. On 15 February, General Percival surrendered 130,000 men to the Japanese commander, General Yamashita. By this time defeat was inevitable, for no matter how strong a force remained in Singapore, the island depended on not just water but other essentials, including food, from Malaya. The real question arises over the decision to reinforce the garrison so late in the battle when it should have been clear that defeat was inevitable. Resupply entirely by sea was hardly an option given Japanese control not just of the sea but of the airspace over it.
The loss of Malaya followed by the fall of Singapore, which is believed to have been at the cost of less than 10,000 Japanese troops, established the Japanese in a strong position throughout South-East Asia. It paved the way for the attacks on New Guinea and Burma, which were to mark the limits of the Japanese advance. The Japanese did not seem to want Australia, but India was also to be part of their new empire, even though it would have stretched their forces.
Well before the fall of Singapore, the other British territory in the east, Hong Kong, was taken on 25 December. The fortunate ones were those who managed to escape the short distance to the Portuguese colony of Macao as the fall of Hong Kong was marked by a level of savagery, rape and murder that was exceptional even by the brutal and merciless standards set by the Japanese.
THE PHILIPPINES
By the time Singapore fell, both the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies had fallen to the Japanese advance. Only at Wake Island, some considerable distance to the north-west, were the Japanese rebuffed when they encountered US Marine Corps coastal artillery and aircraft on 11 December, losing two destroyers, but not for long, with a further attempt on 22 December proving successful so that the island fell the following day. This time, in anticipation of American air power, the landings were covered by the two aircraft carriers, Hiryu and Soryu.
News of the attack on Pearl Harbor was sent to the Philippines even as the raid was under way, reaching Manila at 02.30 on 8 December, or, on the other side of the International Date Line, at 08.30 on 7 December, Hawaiian time. Immediately both General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Thomas Hart alerted their forces. They had in fact accelerated their defensive measures on receiving Stark’s warning on 27 November. Nevertheless, both men had to suffer severe limitations on what could be achieved.
For some time, successive US administrations had regarded a Japanese attack on the Philippines as the most likely start to a war between the two countries. Despite this, and the weakness of the islands’ defences being raised time and again, Congress had shown little inclination to bolster the defences. Part of the problem was, of course, the world economic situation throughout the 1920s and 1930s, when priority for defence expenditure lay in protecting the United States itself, where the money spent would also generate further employment. The large and sprawling island chain, while much smaller than the Dutch East Indies, was also difficult to defend, with many bays suitable for invasion forces to land, while inland communications were often difficult. It is also probable that members of Congress did not fully appreciate the situation, or the implications of the Philippines being lost. Given the forces available to both MacArthur and Hart, the nine-hour warning of attack might just as well have been minutes.
First casualty and the first indication that the Philippines were indeed next on the Japanese list was the loss of a seaplane at 05.30 off the coast of Mindanao. This was an isolated incident, similar to the loss of the Japanese submarine off Hawaii before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
At 11.30, Japanese bombers flying from bases in Formosa struck at airfields on Luzon, destroying bombers and fighters on the ground at Clark, Iba, Nichols and other airfields close to Manila, the capital. Dozens of aircraft were lost, even though at least forty-five minutes before the attack, the headquarters of the US Far Eastern Air Force had received warning that it was on its way, but nothing was done to move the aircraft or get the fighters into the air. Some of the bombers, it was true, had already operated a reconnaissance flight and were on the ground refuelling, but this does not explain the lack of fighter patrols or any attempt to move to airfields away from Manila which would have been safer, at least for a few hours. The Japanese found the aircraft on the ground, parked, and without any anti-aircraft protection. The only reason why the Japanese had taken so long to attack rather than coordinating the attack on the Philippines with that at Pearl Harbor was that the aircraft had been kept on the ground in Formosa by fog. As it was, two squadrons of B-17s were caught on the ground and were among more than 100 US aircraft destroyed for the loss of just seven Japanese aircraft. With such a reduced force and the news of the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor as well as the earlier landings in Malaya and Siam, MacArthur doubted whether he could hold on to the Philippines, and also thought that defence of the Dutch East Indies was doubtful.
While the USAAF in the Philippines was the main target, the Asiatic Fleet did not go unscathed, with ships sunk or badly damaged, and dockyard facilities in Manila destroyed.
So, for the second time within a few hours, US forces were crippled by an overwhelming Japanese attack, but this time, it was no surprise!
The initial landing on northern Luzon in the Philippines, covered by Vice-Admiral Takahashi’s cruisers and destroyers, was on 10 December. General Douglas MacArthur in command of US forces in the Philippines had already mobilised his forces, with 19,000 American troops joined by 160,000 Filipino troops. The Asiatic Fleet had been crippled so MacArthur’s coastal forces consisted entirely of motor torpedo boats, and he had just seventeen heavy bombers and forty fighters, but not all of them ready. In the event, the B-17s were not used against the landing grounds and were withdrawn to Australia on 27 December.
The landings on northern Luzon on 10 December were accompanied by an attack by the Japanese Eleventh Air Fleet on Manila, which destroyed the USN’s store of torpedoes, limiting the role the submarine force could play for the time being. Southern Luzon was invaded on 12 December. Faced with a fight on two fronts, MacArthur deployed his Filipino forces on the coast and concentrated his more experienced and better trained US troops around Manila itself, but the landings were made without encountering any resistance.
On 22 December, the main Japanese force disembarked in Lingayen Gulf, 120 miles north of Manila, with the Fourteenth Army landed from seventy-six transports under Vice-Admiral Takahashi, escorted by Admiral Kondo with the battleships Kongo and Haruna, while air cover was provided by shore-based aircraft. MacArthur decided that he could not defend the city, which he declared to be an open city on 26 December in order to avoid civilian casualties in Japanese attacks. He believed that the Japanese had 100,000 troops, which was an overestimate as Homma had just 57,000 at his disposal, so MacArthur withdrew his forces to the Bataan Peninsula, to constant attack by the Japanese, with 13,000 Filipino troops deserting, leaving him with a force of around 80,000 men. The Japanese commander, General Homma, had failed to cut off MacArthur’s fighting retreat, but the Americans had problems, with 25,000 civilians accompanying them and only sufficient supplies for a month. They lacked mosquito nets and quinine, and malaria made three-quarters of the men unfit to fight within a month. This was also a problem for the Japanese, as many of their troops fell victim to malaria as well, while Homma lost his best troops when a division was taken away for the assault on Java.
Once he had reinforcements, Homma launched his offensive against MacArthur’s forces on 9 January, believing that he was facing just 25,000 men. The early attacks were beaten back with the Japanese suffering heavy casualties, and it took until 23 January to push the Americans back to their reserve positions. Despite American counter-attacks, by 23 February Japanese troops were advancing. On 11 March, MacArthur left by boat for Mindanao, leaving Lieutenant General Wainwright in command.
Homma had to wait for reinforcements, but by the end of March his 3,000 available troops were joined by another 22,000 troops as well as aircraft and artillery. On 3 April he was able to resume the attack, pushing the Americans to the tip of the peninsula. On 8 April, Wainwright withdrew to Corregidor and the remaining troops surrendered. Their fate was the Bataan Death March, which began on 14 April when 70,000 US and Filipino troops were marched 60 miles under the tropical sun. Just 54,000 survived.
The remnants of the Asiatic Fleet had withdrawn to Corregidor at the same time as the land forces had fallen back on the Bataan Peninsula. It was then decided to move the remaining warships to Java.
The loss of the Philippines was an even greater blow than the attack on Pearl Harbor, and while neither Hart nor MacArthur, who was the overall commander-in-chief, would have done much to arrest the Japanese invasion, the situation was made so much worse by the failure to provide fighter cover once it was known that a Japanese bomber force was on its way. That at least could have saved some aircraft and the Asiatic Fleet. Once the landings started, the Asiatic Fleet no longer had the capability of harassing the landing fleet and the USAAF did not have the capability of mounting attacks on the invading troops while they were still on the beaches. In many ways it is tempting to draw a comparison between Malaya and Singapore on the one hand and the Philippines on the other, as both had been neglected in pre-war defence planning and neither had the resources that might have made a difference.
THE DUTCH EAST INDIES
A powerful pacifist movement in the Netherlands between the wars had inhibited Dutch defence spending, while the country had placed great hope that in any future European war it could remain neutral as it had done during the First World War. In fact, the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army was better equipped in many respects than the forces at home, and it provided the air element for the Dutch forces in the Dutch East Indies.
The colonial government of the East Indies was operating without any direction from The Hague after the fall of the Netherlands. This was an advantage insofar as there was none of the uncertainty and weakness that affected the colonial government in French Indo-China who were still under the control of the Vichy regime in France. Realising that the Japanese advance would not bypass the territory, the Dutch put their full weight behind the Allied cause. In January 1942, an Allied combat group consisting of British, Dutch, American and Australian ships was hastily assembled and put under the command of Rear Admiral Karel van Doorman. This was known, ironically as it happened, as the ‘Combined Striking Force’, unwittingly echoing the title of the main attack force of the Imperial Japanese Navy. The command of all forces in the area became known as ABDA, for American, British, Dutch and Australian Command. It was staffed according to the numbers provided by each of the participating countries.
Nevertheless, this was a collection of oddments left over from the battles in and around the Philippines, Malaya, Singapore and the East Indies. There was little time to exercise or train together, or establish any form of cohesion and communication. The Australians and British had close integration between themselves, but not with the Americans, although at least the Royal Navy and United States Navy had worked together in the final stages of the First World War. As for the Dutch, they had not worked with another navy since 1816 when a combined British, Dutch and American squadron had been in the Mediterranean attacking the Barbary pirates. Van Doorman was in command by virtue of being the most senior officer present, not the most experienced and not necessarily with the strongest force.
The first landings in the area were on 11 January 1942 at Menado on Celebes. The landings on the Bismarck Archipelago, which included the islands of Rabaul and Kavieng, followed on 23 January, and were covered by Nagumo with the aircraft carriers of the First Air Fleet, Akagi, Kaga, Shokaku and Zuikaku. Soryu and Hiryu were originally supposed to be involved, but were being replenished and their crews rested after the landings on Wake Island. The carriers were needed because of the Royal Australian Air Force base on Rabaul.
Softening up the defences began the day before when Mitsuo Fuchida was once again the lead pilot, but this time with a force of just ninety fighters and bombers, for the attack on the RAAF base. Even so, he was later to recall that he felt ‘like a hunter sent to stalk a mouse with an elephant gun’ as the advanced Australian bases had just token garrisons. The JNAF aircraft faced little opposition and also found few worthwhile targets, forcing the bomber pilots to jettison their bombs over the jungle rather than risk landing aboard aircraft carriers with live bombs. Afterwards, Fuchida was able to persuade Nagumo that sending such massed forces against minimal enemy resistance was folly, but Yamamoto ordered the carrier force west to Palau, a small atoll at the south-western end of the Marianas.
This left the Second Carrier Division under Rear Admiral Yamaguchi with Soryu and Hiryu to send air strikes against Ambon for the invasion of the Dutch East Indies.
The Allies attempted to stem the Japanese tide by fighting back, although hampered by the limited forces in the area and the lack of air cover, especially carrier-borne air cover, for the forces in the East Indies.
Some distance to the north-east there was a morale-raising early success when two American task forces were assembled around the aircraft carriers Enterprise and Yorktown, escorted by five cruisers and ten destroyers, and attacked Japanese bases in the Marshall Islands on 1 February 1942. While damage was slight, this no doubt reminded the Japanese in no uncertain terms that the US Pacific Fleet carriers had not been caught and remained a force to be reckoned with.
In the East Indies on 4 February there followed an attempt to attack a Japanese landing force in the Straits of Macassar, when Rear Admiral van Doorman took four cruisers and eight destroyers. This force had to withdraw after it was attacked by Japanese bombers, severely damaging the cruiser USS Marblehead and also damaging another cruiser, the Houston.
Nevertheless, these frantic efforts could do little to stem the Japanese advance. Even while they were taking Singapore, on 13 February the Japanese were able to take one of the greatest prizes that awaited them, Palembang on Sumatra in what is now Indonesia, with its oilfields and refineries. This operation was covered by just the aircraft carrier Ryujo and five cruisers. On 18 February, they landed on Bali.
AUSTRALIA’S PEARL HARBOR
While advancing steadily westward, the Japanese nevertheless also turned south at one point to attack Darwin, the port and city in Australia’s Northern Territory. This was something of a diversion, indeed as far as the war was concerned, it was a sideshow. Some have even described the operation as ‘Australia’s Pearl Harbor’, but this is to exaggerate the significance of the attack. The only factor that linked the attack on Darwin with the earlier operation was that the Australians were as unprepared for it as the Americans had been. As with Rabaul, this was an entirely unnecessary operation.
On 19 February 1942, once again Vice-Admiral Nagumo took his carriers, although just four on this occasion, supported by two battleships. The carriers were the Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu and Soryu, while the battleships were the Hiei and Kirishima, supported by three cruisers and nine destroyers. Waiting for them in the harbour were mainly merchant ships, and in the heavy attack by 180 aircraft, led once again by Mitsuo Fuchida, eleven cargo ships, one of which was carrying ammunition and an American destroyer were sunk. The attackers then raced over the town shooting at the buildings, forcing the civilian population to evacuate for a short period. Airfields nearby were also attacked, destroying fifteen US and Australian aircraft. This was scant reward for the resources expended, but when Fuchida once again returned to the flagship to report to Nagumo, he found the vice-admiral anxious to send a second strike!
To Fuchida and Genda, the operation showed the poor understanding of air power among senior Japanese naval officers. To them, the best way to deal with Australia was to cut the country off from the United States, taking Fiji, Samoa and then Hawaii, and seeking a confrontation with the US Pacific Fleet’s carriers. Rabaul and Darwin were cases of using excessive force to no worthwhile end. Once Australia was isolated, a worthwhile target would be Sydney, but not Darwin. Cut off from the United States, Australia would be vulnerable with her long coastline difficult to defend, and even without an invasion, isolating the continent would force the United States to divert considerable resources to maintaining links and keeping the shipping lanes open.
BATTLE OF THE JAVA SEA
Meanwhile, Rear Admiral van Doorman’s mixed ABDA force had been named as the ‘Combined Striking Force’. This was over-optimistic for a force that comprised two heavy and three light cruisers, with nine destroyers but no aircraft carriers at all or even battleships. The heavy cruisers were the USS Houston and HMS Exeter, while the light cruisers were van Doorman’s flagship, De Ruyter, the Java and HMAS Perth. Van Doorman did not even have reconnaissance aircraft and communication between his ships was far from satisfactory. No less serious was the fact the force had neither exercised nor fought together. Ships were in need of refitting and their crews were tired. They had spent some time trying to attack Japanese convoys off the coasts of Java and Sumatra.
At 14.27 on 27 February 1942, while his ships were refuelling, van Doorman heard that a Japanese invasion force had been detected in the Macassar Straits, escorted by two heavy cruisers, Nachi and Haguro, and two light cruisers, Jintsu and Naka, with fourteen destroyers, all under the command of Vice-Admiral Takagi.
Battle commenced at 16.20 with a long-range gunnery duel between the opposing heavy cruisers, with van Doorman aboard De Ruyter trying to close the range so that he could also use his light cruisers. The light cruisers joined the battle at 16.30 as Japanese destroyers raced towards them, led by the light cruiser Jintsu, launching their torpedoes. At 17.08, the heavy cruiser HMS Exeter was torpedoed and badly damaged, losing speed and dropping out of line, but not realising what had happened, the Java, USS Houston and HMAS Perth all followed her. As the Allied line became chaotic, van Doorman attempted to restore order and counter-attack, but soon lost the destroyer Kortenaer, while another destroyer quickly followed. Van Doorman sent Exeter back to Surabaya with the destroyer Witte de With as an escort. Japanese aircraft marked the position of the Combined Striking Force with flares as van Doorman tried to get around the Japanese warships to strike at the invasion fleet. Nevertheless, after sending the four US destroyers back to Surabaya to refuel as they had used all of their torpedoes, the remaining Allied cruisers came under heavy fire from the two Japanese heavy cruisers at 23.00, and this was followed by an attack using twelve torpedoes, sinking the Java at 23.32, followed within minutes by the De Ruyter, with van Doorman aboard going down with his ship. HMAS Perth and USS Houston escaped to Java.
The Japanese troopships reached Java without loss and the landings began on 28 February, with the fifty-six troopships escorted by Admiral Kondo with the aircraft carriers Akagi, Shokaku, Zuikaku, Hiryu and Soryu, plus four battleships, Hiei, Kagashima, Kongo and Haruna, as well as three cruisers and eight destroyers. The cruisers Houston and Perth attempted to break through the Sunda Strait, but that evening they encountered the Japanese invasion force and sank four transports before themselves being sunk by the cruisers Mikuma and Mogami, supported by several destroyers.
The following day, 1 March, Exeter, escorted by two destroyers, attempted to escape westwards, but was caught by four Japanese cruisers and by aircraft from the carrier Ryujo, and all three ships were sunk, a further disaster that ended all Allied naval power in the East Indies until later in the war.
Allied forces on Java eventually surrendered on 9 March. This also marked the end of the brief life of ABDA, a hastily cobbled-together alliance that lacked a command and communications structure or indeed any of the resources required to make it work. As in the Low Countries and France, the Allies had once again found themselves overtaken by events, largely because everyone seemed to deny the prospect of war, first with Germany and then with Japan.
The following day, Japanese landings at Lae and Salamaua on New Guinea were attacked by aircraft from the carriers USS Lexington and Yorktown, sinking one of the transports and damaging a number of others. New Guinea was to be one of the two places where the Japanese advance was finally halted on the ground, along with Burma.
CEYLON
Apart from the disagreements over strategy among the Japanese naval planners and the wasted effort that had been exhibited at Rabaul and then Darwin, the problems of high-intensity operations were also becoming apparent for the Imperial Japanese Navy. In a raid on Java, Kaga scraped a reef and had to return to Japan for repairs. By this time, Japan was also faced with increasingly long distances between its major bases and what might be described as the front line, always a fluid term in naval warfare. Singapore to Japan was a comparable distance to Southampton to New York, and so ships had to be rotated out of operations for far longer than was desirable.
Having gained the oilfields of the Dutch East Indies, next on Japan’s wish list was Burma, seen as a route into India. Burma was too close to the Royal Navy’s Eastern Fleet for comfort, and so the destruction of this fleet was seen as an important prerequisite for any invasion of Burma. The Japanese headed into the Indian Ocean and on 26 March 1942, Yamamoto sent five aircraft carriers, Akagi, Shokaku, Zuikaku, Hiryu and Soryu, to attack British bases on Ceylon, off the southern tip of India.
The British Eastern Fleet was by this time under the command of Vice-Admiral Sir James Somerville and included three aircraft carriers, the modern Indomitable and Formidable and the elderly and small Hermes, by this time more of a liability than an asset as she was unable to keep up with the rest of the fleet, unlike the two fast armoured carriers. Her aircraft complement was just a dozen Fairey Swordfish, meaning that she was of little use other than as an escort carrier, and as such she would have been far better on the Atlantic convoys. Somerville had in fact assembled a reasonably strong fleet with a balance of ships as he also had the battleships Warspite, Resolution, Revenge, Ramillies and Royal Sovereign, all veterans of the First World War.
On 4 April, the advancing Japanese fleet was spotted by an RAF Consolidated Catalina flying boat which managed to transmit a warning just before it was shot down by Zero fighters. The next day, at 08.00, Mitsuo Fuchida led a massed attack against Colombo, Ceylon’s major port, fully expecting a repeat of his success at Pearl Harbor. The Eastern Fleet was absent, but the harbour was very busy with merchant shipping. The RAF put its small force of fighters into the air to protect the port, but the Hawker Hurricane was no match for the agile Zero and almost all were shot down. Japanese bombers were able to inflict serious damage on the port installations, and among the ships hit were an armed merchant cruiser and a destroyer. Nevertheless, effective AA fire also meant that the Japanese suffered their first serious losses in the war.
Alerted to the Japanese advance, but not knowing where and when they would strike, the British had decided that their ships would be safer at sea, and had moved most of their warships out of Colombo and Trincomalee. The two large carriers had gone to Addu Atoll, now known as Gan, where a secret refuelling anchorage had been hastily constructed.
Returning from the raid, Fuchida suggested to Nagumo that they send reconnaissance aircraft to locate the British warships, and on this occasion Nagumo agreed. Fuchida remained aboard his ship while a strong force of aircraft was readied in case a further raid on Colombo proved necessary. At noon, a strong force of more than fifty aircraft from the Soryu discovered the two heavy cruisers, Cornwall and Dorsetshire, without air cover, and in twenty minutes sank both ships.
Hermes had left Trincomalee and headed north, but returned to the port on 6 April. On 8 April, following intelligence reports that Trincomalee was likely to be the next target for the Japanese, Hermes went to sea again, but on this occasion headed south. Early the following day, she was spotted by Japanese aircraft and ordered to return to Trincomalee where it was felt that the heavy AA defences would be able to protect her. Shortly before 07.30, Fuchida led a force of 100 aircraft against Trincomalee, but once again found the British Eastern Fleet missing. Again, the RAF sent its Hawker Hurricanes into battle, but nine of the eleven aircraft were shot down. While Fuchida’s aircraft wreaked havoc on the shore installations and airfields, shooting parked aircraft, only one ship, a merchant vessel, was sunk by the first wave, although further ships were lost to the second wave.
As he returned to the Akagi, Fuchida learned that a British carrier had been spotted. On landing, his aircraft were hastily re-armed and refuelled, while the Akagi was attacked by nine Bristol Blenheim bombers, which failed to hit her. The Japanese planned to attack Hermes with dive-bombers, escorted by Zero fighters in case the carrier put up fighters, while a force of horizontal bombers was fitted with torpedoes in case the initial attack failed. They needn’t have worried. By this time the carrier was unable to operate fighters and in any case Hermes was completely without aircraft that day, and her sole defence, apart from her own AA armament was the Australian destroyer, HMAS Vampire. Fuchida was not in time to lead the attack, which was led by another officer called Egusa, but he arrived in time to find the carrier sinking and the destroyer dead in the water, crippled by explosions from her magazines:
‘The planes seemed to have no fear,’ recalls Donald Farquharson-Roberts, a young Royal Marines officer serving in Hermes. ‘They came in at masthead height and at least one was reported as being below the fighting top … Marine Youle … told me he was firing downwards … I saw a plane coming straight for my gun. I saw the bomb swing clear and come straight for ME. I was standing about 6 feet behind the gun and it hit the deck a foot in front of me … and went straight through the deck!’
Farquharson-Roberts’ gun had jammed before this event, and no doubt with eighty bombers attacking, the guns had overheated. Farquharson-Roberts again:
I never heard the command to abandon ship, although I am told it was given. I took leave of the old girl by stepping into the water on the port side … There was then only a drop of about 10 feet. I swam clear but the stern was swinging away from me as she had full helm on and the engines were still going full ahead …
The first bomb had hit the carrier at 10.55 and she sank in less than twenty minutes. Fortunately, the Japanese had failed to detect an Australian hospital ship, the Vita, which arrived shortly afterwards and rescued most of the survivors, while a few had managed to swim the short distance to the shores of Ceylon.
This was a loss for the British, but once again Fuchida felt that excessive resources were being devoted to minor operations, while the losses that were being incurred could not be replaced easily for the major battles that had to lie ahead if the Imperial Japanese Navy was to defeat the Americans at sea. Like many of his fellow officers, Fuchida was impatient for a confrontation with the United States Navy – and he was to have his wish fulfilled even sooner than he expected.