The Siege of Singapore: 4 February–15 February 1942
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122 Chapter 4 Chapter 4 The Siege of Singapore: 4 February–15 February 1942 Introduction In Lord Fisher’s view, the five keys which locked up the world for Britain were as follows: Singapore, the Cape of Good Hope, Alexandria, Gibraltar and Dover. The centre of gravity of the British Empire, besides the mother country, i.e. Britain, writes James Neidpath, lay east of Suez, especially in the Indian Ocean. The Indian Ocean was a British lake till 1939 because the three ‘keys’ to that ocean—the Cape, Aden and Singapore were in British hands. Egypt and the Middle East were important because they guarded the route to the Indian Ocean. Further, a strong British naval presence in Singapore was considered necessary to keep Australia and New Zealand within the imperial orbit. These two dominions were threatened by the rise of Japan from the first decade of the twentieth century. Japan became Britain’s principal commercial rival in the Far East from World War I onwards. Lastly, Singapore was also the gateway to the Pacific, as it was on the shortest possible route from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.1 Singapore was bought from the Sultan of Johore in 1819 by Stamford Raffles on behalf of the East India Company. In the course of a century, this almost uninhabited island was transformed into one of the greatest transit ports.2 The Singapore naval base was first conceived in 1919 and was endorsed by the British Cabinet in 1921. The Admiralty intended to use the naval base con- structed at Singapore to provide the essential docking and repair facilities for a British fleet operating in eastern waters. However, due to the great distance separating Singapore from Japan, the former was considered an unsatisfactory base for waging offensive operations against Tokyo. At that time, the Admiralty’s best bet was to use Hong Kong as a base for conducting offensive operations against Japan. Christopher M. Bell asserts that till 1931, the Admiralty favoured Hong Kong over Singapore as a base for waging offensive naval operations against Japan. The change of view about Hong Kong’s usefulness as an advanced 1 James Neidpath, The Singapore Naval Base and the Defence of Britain’s Eastern Empire, 1919–41 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 2, 6, 9, 13, 38. 2 Ibid., p. 13. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004306783_007 The Siege of Singapore 123 base for naval operations occurred after 1931 and was due to rising Japanese power in China. Additionally, Britain could not maintain a garrison of 40,000 men, deemed essential to defend Hong Kong against a possible Japanese assault.3 However, Singapore was a naval base without a fleet. From the 1920s, the British politicians and the Admiralty decided that the size of the fleet that could be sent from Britain to the Far East was to be shaped by European strate- gic considerations. By 1925, Britain assessed that in the event of any Japanese threat to Singapore, the fleet should be sent to the Far East immediately.4 During the 1920s, Britain possessed a significant margin of naval superiority over its rivals. So, at that time it was possible to maintain a large fleet in the Far East while still dominating European waters. However, the triple threats posed by Germany and Italy in Europe and Japan in the Far East changed the strategic scenario in the 1930s. By the mid-1930s, the problem facing the British planners was not whether Britain could send a fleet to the Far East but whether London could dispatch an adequate number of ships for either an offensive or a defen- sive strategy. As long as Britain had an ally (i.e. France in the 1930s), London assumed that it could conduct offensive naval operations either in Europe or Asia.5 Lewis Heath, who commanded the 3rd Indian Corps under Lieutenant- General A.E. Percival during the Malaya-Singapore Campaign, emphasized in his private papers that by 1934 it was quite clear to the British planners that in the event of a World War with the Axis powers, London would be unable to send a fleet for securing the Far East.6 The time period for the British fleet to come to Singapore from the UK kept increasing, from 70 days in 1937 to 90 days in early 1939 and to 180 days by 3 September 1939.7 In 1940, after the fall of France and entry of Italy into World War II on the side of Nazi Germany, it became clear that only a token naval force from Britain could be dispatched to Singapore. And on 10 December 1941, this token naval force was sent to the bottom of the sea by Japanese aircraft.8 3 Christopher M. Bell, ‘The “Singapore Strategy” and the Deterrence of Japan: Winston Churchill, the Admiralty and the Dispatch of Force Z’, English Historical Review, vol. 116, no. 467 (2001), p. 610; Neidpath, The Singapore Naval Base and the Defence of Britain’s Eastern Empire, p. 36. 4 Ong Chit Chung, ‘Major-General William Dobbie and the Defence of Malaya, 1935–38’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, vol. 17, no. 2 (1986), pp. 282–83. 5 Bell, ‘The “Singapore Strategy” and the Deterrence of Japan: Winston Churchill, the Admiralty and the Dispatch of Force Z’, p. 607. 6 Note on the Malayan Campaign by LMH, p. 1, Heath Papers, LMH 5, P 441, Imperial War Museum (IWM), London. 7 Andrew Gilchrist, Malaya 1941: The Fall of a Fighting Empire (London: Robert Hale, 1992), p. 21. 8 Neidpath, The Singapore Naval Base and the Defence of Britain’s Eastern Empire, pp. 213–21..