Burma - The Longest War 1941 - 1939

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#41

On the very day that Tanahashi Force slipped through 7 Indian Division and on to Taung Bazaar, Mountbatten’s Chief of Staff in South-East Asia Command (SEAC) headquarters in Kandy, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), was summing up the prospects for Burma. A deputation headed by the US Major-General Albert Wedemeyer had that day left for London and Washington to put Mountbatten’s views on the future of operation sin the Far East. The ideas reached at QUADRANT (the Quebec conference) in 1943 about recapturing Burma and opening the Ledo Road to China were to be squashed: “We cannot recapture Burma by advances only from the north and west”. Pownall entered into his diary, thus defining as impossible exactly what the XIV Army was to achieve in the next eighteen months. Instead, SEAC’s appreciation was that Burma should be bypassed in favour of Sumatra, bursting through Malaya or the Sunda Straights afterwards and opening a port in South China long before the Ledo Road could be finished by Stilwell. Not that Pownall thought much of the need to keep up China’s fighting capacity, but a southward thrust would support Macarthur in the South-West pacific and Nimitz in the Central Pacific. And Churchill was a strong supporter of the notion of bypassing Burma in favour of Sumatra. On the other hand, Pownall realized, such a coup depended on landing craft, of which there was a shortage, and even when the war in Europe was over he was sure they would all go to the Pacific and not to South-East Asia. So, he lugubriously concluded, “If …we are relegated to mucking about in Burma they my as well wind up this unlucky South-East Asia command, leave here, if you like, a few figureheads, a good deception staff and plenty of press men towrite it up. Our practical value will disappear and the Burma operations turned back to India to run indifferently well.

It was just as well, too that the men who were doing the fighting did not know the vacillations of their high command. In effect, they were about to create a new situation which that command and its planners would have to take into account, in spite of themselves; and so the soldiers, the lads in the Admin Box closely followed by those of Imphal and Kohima, would have Burma in the end, whether Churchill and Mountbatten wanted it or not.

Mountbatten told the lads of the Box: “Hold on for fourteen days and you will make history!”….Little did he know!

Source: L. Allen

#42

The deciding factor in the defence of the Admin Box was not the infantry, although, as we shall see, the West Yorkshires made a massive contribution as did other smaller subunits. No, it was the artillery and the Lee tanks of the Dragoons which made the difference. The tanks were scattered during the day and hidden among the hills at night, acting as mobile bunkers against Japanese infiltrators. The Japanese were in a hurry to defeat the British before their supplies ran out, and to continue on and support the U-Go operations.

The Sugiyama Battalion put in a night attack against the southern end of Hill 315, and after a long battle they were finally defeated by the firepower from the tanks. Sugiyama decided that the only way to succeed was by sending in suicide squads. Squads of three or four NCOs, accompanied by the same amount of men, through themselves at the tanks of the Dragoons, but to no avail. Again, and again, they tried but each attempt was wiped out before they were able to reach their objective.

In the meantime, the Tommie’s and their Indian comrades were emboldened by their experience. They found that by standing and not retreating, thus forcing a fight, they constantly bested their enemy in CQB. So much so, that they began to patrol aggressively beyond the perimeter of the Box and into the surrounding hills and bush. They soon grew accustomed to the way the Japanese came at them at the run, screaming and wailing, but the Tommie’s new that it was no protection from bullets or bayonets. They simply stood their ground and as they came on, gunned them down. Those that succeeded in reaching the Tommie’s were finished with the bayonet.

On the nights of the 14 and 16 February, the Japanese carried out a night raid with three battalions. They burst into the Box at 10.20pm, yelling and hollering in the usual fashion, which had long since lost its ability to intimidate. The night throbbed with screams, rifle fire and shell fire, but the Japanese could not wrest any decisive victory in the face of the strong and determined British resistance. They were held up on the barbed wire and the night glowed with the light from star shells as the tanks poured machine-gun fire into them. The sustained fire inflicted massive casualties and forced them back. The British had known the attack was coming, as the wireless order for a general all out attack had been intercepted earlier in the day.

The Japanese did succeed in capturing a height known as C Company Hill which guarded the western gate to the Box. They swept a company of West York’s of the hill. Some stores had been hit also. Seventy five Zero fighters had twice set ablaze ammunition dumps. The dumps were stored on a hill within the perimeter known as Ammunition Hill, likewise, the hill on which much of the artillery was located was known as Artillery Hill. As the ammunition cooked-off, heavy shells were sent bursting through the already confused battle area.

‘A’ Company of the WY’s and ten of the Dragoons’ tanks were sent in to clear C Company Hill. The Dragoons poured direct fire onto the position as the WY’s ascended the slope. The tanks fire continued to shred the jungle until the WY’s, a shot distance from the top, fired a very light into the air. The tank gunners then switched from HE to solid shot, which enabled the infantry to advance behind the curtain of fire without fear of shell bursts wounding them instead of the Japanese. Fifteen yards behind the shells the WY’s sent up another very light as a signal for the tanks to stop. They then went in with the bayonet, and the hill was back in British hands.

#43

I think you should check the figures.

From memory, in the closing stage of the war about 100,000 Japanese troops died on Okinawa. Japanese divisions ranged from 10,000 to 20,000 troops, so they lost between a very, very large corps and a couple of armies. In Western terms, they lost an army at least. To put it in perspective, America lost under 300,000 soldiers in the whole of WWII against the 100,000 Japanese dead soldiers on Okinawa alone.

From memory, about 40,000 Japanese troops were committed to Guadalcanal in the opening stage of the war. That’s at least a corps or maybe a small army. In Western terms they lost [EDIT: should be committed] a corps at least.

These are not small formations. They are not small battles.

Check the numbers for all the other significant island campaigns. They involved large numbers of troops in large formations.

#44

The Finale

By now ‘A’ and ‘B’ Companies of the west York’s which had been acting as a mobile reserve, were down to half their strength, around 100 men each. However, the Japanese had also suffered heavy losses. The Tanahashi Force which had started out with 2190 men on the 11th February was, by the 21st, down to approximately 400, and most of those casualties were as a result of the night attack of the 14th February.
One Japanese commander (Tokuta) wrote in his diary “The British are cutting through the jungle; they seem to be no more than fifty yards away. I hope and pray Tanahashi’s attack tonight succeeds”. However, Tanahashi did not attack. He had pushed his men as far as they would go.

The Japanese had exhausted their options in trying to deal with the tanks. At one point they even fired phosphorous shells around them in the hope of setting the grass on fire and, thus, burning the tanks. Nothing seemed to work. While the Lee tank was obsolete in other theatres of war it was, in many ways, ideal for jungle warfare. Its sponson mounted 75mm gun could fire high-explosive ahead while the 37mm in the traversing top turret flayed and shredded the jungle on all sides with man-killing canister rounds. If the Japanese had anti- tank guns they could have changed the course of the battle, but as it was, they had no workable solution to the problem the tanks posed.

During the early hours of 16th February, the 2nd Bn. King’s Own Scottish Borderers (Kosby’s) entered the Box with HQ 89 Infantry Brigade. The Kosby’s became responsible for all major infantry operations, taking some of the strain off the exhausted West Yorkshire’s. The next few days were spent patrolling and clearing out enemy pockets around the perimeter.

Meanwhile, 5th Indian Division fought its way through the Ngakyedauk Pass, supported by Lee tanks of a squadron made up of the Dragoons’ spare tanks and crews, which had been left west of the Mayu Range. As 5th Division fought through the pass, 25 Dragoons’ ‘C’ Squadron and two companies of Kosby’s left the Box to make contact with them. They were forced to deal with two road blocks, but on 22nd February they met a company of 4/7th Rajputs, the leading battalion of 123 Indian Infantry Brigade. The siege had been broken although the road was not open to motor traffic for another two days.

On 25th February, Hanaya announced that the HA-GO operation was over. He had little choice as five thousand of his men lay dead around the Admin Box. The traditional lightning attack and encirclement, which had never, until then, failed them, had been defeated by a force which had stood its ground and, as it was supplied by air, had not needed to cling to its supply routes.

As a later Japanese historian remarked: the most important factor was the altered geometry of the battlefield. The flat encirclement by the Japanese, unaccompanied by adequate fire-power, was countered by the cubic tactics (rittai senpo) adopted by the British. The multi-directional defence made possible by air supply congealed the initial fluidity of the Japanese offensive into a hardness which could only have been countered by stronger fire-power. The Japanese had four mountain guns and four howitzers, no more.

Evans, Slim and Mountbatten regarded the Admin Box as the turning point of their war against Japan. In Slim’s words:

“For the first time a British force had met, held and decisively defeated a major Japanese attack, and followed this up by driving the enemy out of the strongest possible natural positions that they had been preparing for months and were determined to hold at all costs. British and Indian soldiers had proved themselves, man for man the masters of the best the Japanese could bring against them…It was a victory, a victory about which there could be no argument and its effect, not only on the troops engaged, but on the whole XIV Army, was immense.”

And it was won as much by: a butcher, a baker and a candlestick maker.
Sometimes, the frontline soldiers speak disparagingly of what one might refer to as ‘spoon-counters’ or as the modern parlance as it ‘REMFs’ but at the Box they showed their mettle.

The Japanese survivors in rags and riddled with disease, stumbled and crawled their way through the jungle towards an imagined safety. XV Corps sustained 3500 casualties during the same period, but they continued operations against Buthidaung and Razabil, inflicting another two thousand fatalities on the Japanese defenders.

#45

What most troops found disconcerting in the beginning, was the berserk, fury, contempt for death and total dedication displayed by Japanese soldiers, either as individuals or in small groups. When confronting tanks the Japanese made no exception. They formed what they called Human Combat Tank Destruction Squads and, in these, other ranks were equally as capable of displaying suicidle courage as their officers. They attacked with pole charges, satchel charges and magnetic shaped charges, never with any chance of survival, hoping only that they would blow a tank to kingdon come. The same applied to the way the Japanese sent suicide squads against the Lees, at the Box, and against allied tanks in other battles, in order to destroy the tanks by various means, at close quarters.

In one incident in Burma, ‘A’ Squadron 3rd Carabiniers was working in close country in which the Japanese were putting up the most fanatical defence against the tanks:…all of a sudden a Japanese artillery lieutenant and a private soldier burst out of the scrub and clambered aboard the rear of a Lee. The private was shot off by a burst of machine gun fire from a neighbouring tank, but not before the officer had run the Lee’s commander through with his sword. He then kicked the body down into the turret, dropped after it and killed the unsuspecting 37mm gunner in the same way. Only the 37mm breach seperated him from the loader, who had just sufficient time to draw his revolver before the officer was slashing and stabbing at him. The trooper sent all six bullets thudding into his opponents body, but the man was quite beserk and refused to die.The trooper then closed with his adversary and they fell on top of the bodies of the commander and the gunner. At this point the trooper noticed the latter was lying with his pistol holster upermost. He managed to free the weapon and fired three more shots at point-blank range, finally settling the matter. Within the belly of the tank neither the 75mm crew, who continued to load and fire their weapon, nor the driver, had any idea of the carnage that was taking place behind them.

The most dangerous weapon was the magnetic shaped charge which, once fixed to the exterior of a tank, could blast its way through the thickest armour. In burma this was countered by fitting stout wire grilles above the engine deck and glacis, so that the force of the explosion was dispersed before it reached the main armour, a form of defence also adopted by the Matilda-equipped Australian armoured units in New Guinea, Bougainville and Borneo. By 1944 the experience of some USMC tank units in the Pacific resulted in the hull sides of their Shermans being covered in oak planks to reduce the arear in which the magnetic attachments could take hold.

#46

Interesting.
Do you have a full source for that ?

#47

I think this is it. I’ll confirm when I’ve had chance to check.

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?&isbn=0304351288&nsa=1

#48

Yes, can confirm, Iron Fist by Bryan Perrett was my source for the entry regarding Japanese suicide squads.

#49

“In Maymyo, I had talks with many staff Officers, often old friends with whom I had served in years gone by, and attended several conferences, including one with a Chinese general who had played a great part in the only real victory the Chinese had won against the Japanese up to that time – Changsha. I drew him on one side and listened very carefully, through an interpreter, to his account of the tactics of that battle. His experience was that the Japanese, confident in their own prowess, frequently attacked on a very small administrative margin of safety. He estimated that a Japanese force would usually not have more than nine days’ supplies available. If you could hold the Japanese for that time, prevent them capturing your supplies, and then counter-attack them, you would destroy them. I listened to him with interest – after all he was the only Allied commander I heard of who had defeated the Japanese in even one battle. There were, of course certain snags in the application of this theory, but I thought its main principles sound. I remembered it and, later, acted on it.”

Bill Slim: Defeat into Victory.

Slim’s ‘snags’ were those of supply to his own forces:

British defeat in Malaya and Burma had been at the hands of numerically inferior forces because the British had been road-bound. If the British line of communications (L.C.) was cut (standard operating procedure for the Japanese) then they seemed incapable of fighting back. Therefore, the British always fought with one eye looking over their shoulder, fearful of road blocks, of being cut off from hospitals and supplies. Add to the threat of the Japanese, the fact that thousands of refugee civilians were fleeing the Japanese along the same supply route the British supplies would have to travel along, and we have chaos.

It was Wingate who first championed the use of air power in Burma, but he wasn’t the only one that had thought of it. He argued that most of what Lorries could bring up, aircraft could carry in or, if they could not land, could drop by parachute. At one stroke, the use of air supply destroyed the soldier’s dependence on a land L.C. He could have everything from food, water, post, mules, jeeps and guns ferried through the skies to wherever he happened to be.

The only requisite was an efficient wireless system to signal dropping-points with accuracy. When surrounded, instead of being compelled to fight his way back to base through Japanese road-blocks, or jettison his equipment and flee through the jungle, he could stay and fight it out on the spot. And the air could also provide the long range heavy artillery that could not always be carried through the jungle. Air strikes from fighter bombers would become the canon of the jungle war.

#50

Slim: Deafeat into Victory.

Meanwhile we had really got down to training ourselves - the Corps Headquarters. As a battle fighting headquarters it was neither mobile nor efficient ,and we had to make it both. I think we got most fun from making it mobile. First we had to make the individuals who composed it, staff officers, signallers, cooks, clerks, mess waiters and menials, themselves mobile. Physical training started the day, with route marches increasing in length and toughness as time went on, varied by a little brisk drill under selected instructors from the 70th Indian Division. At first, protests, mainly from the Indian clerical establishment, were indignant and vigorous. Our worthy babus averred that:

(1) In many years of honourable service they had never been subjected to such an indignity as parades.

(2) The drill instructors were harsh men who used rude words. :smiley:

(3) The exhaustion consequent on these warlike goings-on rendered them incapable of performing their clerical duties.

(4) If compelled to continue this violent exercise, all the internal organs of their bodies - enumerated with unblushing detail - would cease to function and they would indubitably die. :smiley:

(5) Their boots would wear out. :smiley:

"…My Ghurka orderly, Bajbir, when I ordered him to parade at the rifle range protested:

What me?

Yes, you!

Me! on a range shoot at paper target?

But I’ve killed five Japs!

#51

hi

a little info on burma campaign re canoes. various types of canoes inc aluminium were used . and not only to cross the irrawaddy!

#52

Care to elaborate?