![American prisoners carry comrades unable to walk; picture taken by a Japanese photographer during the march from Bataan, Philippines 1942 [Public domain , wiki]](https://secondbysecondworldwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Wbataan-e1397091191306.jpg)
American prisoners carry comrades unable to walk; picture taken by a Japanese photographer during the march from Bataan, Philippines 1942 [Public domain , wiki]
For three days, prisoners were give no food. Many hundreds of Americans and many thousands of Filipinos were to die through sickness, exhaustion, and the heat. Many, too weak to continue, were simply bayoneted.
King’s surrender was contrary to the orders of MacArthur, although it was later approved by Roosevelt.
![A Grumman Martlet fighter about to be catapulted from the flight deck of HMS Formidable, Indian Ocean, April 1942 [Public domain, wiki]](https://secondbysecondworldwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Wformidable.jpg)
A Grumman Martlet fighter about to be catapulted from the flight deck of HMS Formidable, Indian Ocean, April 1942 [Public domain, wiki]
On paper his fleet appeared impressive: five battleships, three carriers, plus cruisers and destroyers.
But the battleships included his flagship, Warspite, and four of the old Revenge-class battleships, Resolution, Ramillies, Royal Sovereign and Revenge—all dating from the First World War. They were slow and their fifteen-inch guns were no match against their Japanese opponents.
The carriers were Formidable, Indomitable and the older and smaller Hermes. Almost all of their aircraft were obsolete—no match for the Japanese carrier-borne planes.
Heading for Colombo was Japanese admiral Chuichi Nagumo, intent on repeating his triumph at Pearl Harbour. His fleet comprised the battleships Kongo, Haruna, Hiei and Kirishima, and aircraft carriers Akagi, Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku and Zuikaku, with attendant cruisers and destroyers. He attacked Colombo on 5 April but found that his prey had gone.
Nagumo had command of the sea while Somerville lay low. In the end, cruisers Cornwall and Dorsetshire and the aircraft carrier Hermes were sunk, but the rest of the fleet was saved. Nagumo eventually withdrew. His ships were needed elsewhere.
The Eastern Fleet survived and continued to fulfil its role of protecting the eastern coast of Africa and communications with the Middle East.
![HMS Campbeltown after ramming the dock gates at Saint-Nazaire, 28 March 1942 [Bundesarchiv Bild 101ll-MW-3722-03 /Kramer/ CC-BY-SA]](https://secondbysecondworldwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Wstnazaire.jpg)
HMS Campbeltown after ramming the dock gates at Saint-Nazaire, 28 March 1942 [Bundesarchiv Bild 101ll-MW-3722-03 /Kramer/ CC-BY-SA]
The British ships included the destroyer HMS Campbeltown, an old American destroyer that had been one of fifty transferred to the Royal Navy in 1940 as part of the ‘destroyers for bases deal.’ Several tons of explosives had been packed into her bows. The object of the mission, coded named Operation Chariot, was to destroy the dock gates at Saint-Nazaire.
As of January 1942, the Bismarck‘s sister ship, Tirpitz, was fully operational and the British admiralty feared a repeat of the Bismarck’s foray into the Atlantic. If the Tirpitz headed into the Atlantic and returned to port in Western Europe for repairs, the only dry dock large enough to take her was the one at Saint-Nazaire—hence the importance of its destruction.
In the early hours of the morning of 28 March 1942, HMS Campeltown—flying a German naval ensign as a ruse de guerre—smashed through the harbour boom defences and, while under heavy fire, rammed the dock gates at full speed. Commandos landed from the Campeltown and from launches and began blowing up harbour installations, including the pumping station and machinery for operating the gates.
Because of the (possibly faulty) timing mechanism on the fuse, the explosives aboard HMS Campeldown did not detonate till noon. When they did so, the dry dock was utterly destroyed and over three hundred men were killed. They included a party of senior German officers who were on board for an inspection tour.
Of the approximately 600 British commandos and naval personnel who took part in the Saint-Nazaire raid, slightly over on third returned to England, slightly over one third were captured, and somewhat under one third were killed.
The lock gates were never rebuilt and the German battleship Tirpitz never risked venturing into the Atlantic. She was sunk by the RAF in late 1944.
![General Harold Alexander [Public domain, wiki]](https://secondbysecondworldwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Walexander-e1395440098670-164x300.jpg)
General Harold Alexander [Public domain, wiki]
After flying from Southampton, across enemy-occupied France and the Mediterranean to Egypt, then on to India, Alexander arrived in Burma on 5 March—too late to prevent the fall of Rangoon a few days later.
It soon became clear to Alexander that, with the forces available, he could only slow the Japanese advance. He could not stop it. British forces began their slow withdrawal, defeated by an enemy that was not superior in numbers but was was well-trained and well-equipped in jungle warfare.
![Lieutenant-General William Slim, Commander of the British Fourteenth Army, Burma [Public domain, wiki]](https://secondbysecondworldwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Wslim-225x300.jpg)
Lieutenant-General William Slim, Commander of the British Fourteenth Army, Burma [Public domain, wiki]
Slim would command his corps during its withdrawal to India and would be appointed commander of a newly formed Fourteenth Army that was charged with reconquering Burma. The campaign would last until May 1945.
Slim’s tactics of using jungle trails (as the Japanese were trained to do) instead of roads and of supplying front line and surrounded troops by air would prove decisive.
![General Douglas MacArthur (left) with his Chief of Staff, in the headquarters tunnel in Corregidor, Philippines, 1 March 1942 [Public domain, wiki]](https://secondbysecondworldwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Wmacarthur1-e1393902013739.jpg)
General Douglas MacArthur (left) with his Chief of Staff, in the headquarters tunnel in Corregidor, Philippines, 1 March 1942 [Public domain, wiki]
MacArthur left Corregidor with his wife, son, and personal and military staff on board four motor torpedo boats that headed south for the island of Mindanao, also in the Philippines. There, MacArthur’s party boarded B-17s and flew to Australia.
He first uttered his famous “I shall return [to the Philippines]!” phrase as part of a speech he made about ten days later while changing trains in the small South Australian town of Terowie. He used the phrase again in later speeches.
On 20 October 1944, MacArthur returned to the Philippines at the head of a massive invading army.
![Victorious Japanese soldiers in front of Government House, Rangoon, March 1942 [Public domain, wiki]](https://secondbysecondworldwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Wrangoon.jpg)
Victorious Japanese soldiers in front of Government House, Rangoon, March 1942 [Public domain, wiki]
![Japanese invasion of Burma and India [Public domain; author: Mike Young]](https://secondbysecondworldwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Wburma1-300x300.jpg)
Japanese invasion of Burma and India [Public domain; author: Mike Young]
The Japanese campaign in Burma would last well into 1945 and take them into India. Weather (monsoons) affected operations and diseases such as malaria took a heavy toll.
![Allied naval squadron under air attack ; Left to right: Cruisers HMS Exeter and HMAS Hobart and a Dutch destroyer, February 1942 [Public domain, wiki/IWM]](https://secondbysecondworldwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Wjava.jpg)
Allied naval squadron under air attack ; Left to right: Cruisers HMS Exeter and HMAS Hobart and a Dutch destroyer, February 1942 [Public domain, wiki/IWM]
Rear-Admiral Doorman’s five cruisers and eleven destroyers attacked a Japanese invasion force heading for Java. In the ensuing battle, virtually all of Doorman’s ships were put out of action. Two Dutch cruisers (the Java and De Ruyter) were sunk; two British and one Dutch destroyer were sunk. One British cruiser (HMS Exeter) and one American cruiser were badly damaged. After their naval victory, the Japanese landed their troops without further opposition.
Doorman went down with his flagship (De Ruyter). HMS Exeter and the destroyer HMS Encounter survived but were sunk on 1 March 1942 in the Second Battle of the Java Sea.
HMS Exeter was a veteran of the Battle of the River Plate, 13 December 1939, in which she had played a decisive role in the defeat (and eventual scuttling) of the German pocket battleship Graf Spee.
![Oil storage tanks ablaze after the 19 February 1942 air raid on Darwin; HMAS Deloraine is in the foreground [Public domain, Australian War Memorial]](https://secondbysecondworldwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Wdarwin1.jpg)
Oil storage tanks ablaze after the 19 February 1942 air raid on Darwin; HMAS Deloraine is in the foreground [Public domain, Australian War Memorial]
The bombing of Darwin was the first attack on mainland Australia and is described in Fact sheet 195 of the National Archives of Australia. Nagumo launched two raids that day, sinking eight ships in the harbour and killing over two hundred people. About half of Darwin’s population headed south, thinking that the Japanese were about to land.
The attack has been dramatized in the 2008 movie Australia, which starred Australian actress Nicole Kidman as Lady Sarah Ashley, a radio operator in Darwin at the time of the raids.
HMAS Deloraine, the corvette/minesweeper shown in the picture above, survived the attack on Darwin harbour and went on to survive the war. She participated in numerous actions, including the sinking of an enemy submarine in the January before the attack on Darwin.
![Singapore 1942: Britain's Greatest Defeat-----by Alan Warren (Talisman, 2002) [Photograph by Edith-Mary I. Smith]](https://secondbysecondworldwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Warpic1-e1392257441240-198x300.jpg)
Singapore 1942: Britain’s Greatest Defeat—–by Alan Warren (Talisman, 2002) [Photograph by Edith-Mary I. Smith]
Over 120,000 British, Indian and Australian troops became prisoners-of-war. Percival was eventually liberated and he returned to Britain. Others were less fortunate.
The story of the fall of Singapore is ably told in the book Singapore 1940: Britain’s Greatest Defeat—by Alan Warren (Talisman, 2002). The front cover of the book shows Lieutenant-General Percival carrying the Union Jack en route to surrendering to the Japanese commander, Lieutenant-General Tomoyuki Yamashita.
If poor decisions on the part of British commanders were partly to blame for the defeat, so too were the lack of air cover, the lack of naval support [HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse having been recently sunk], and Britain’s inadequate resourcing of her far-eastern empire [with the more crucial Middle-Eastern and Russian theatres understandably having precedence for supplies].
![Bunker at Cap Gris Nez in France, part of the 'Atlantic Wall' built by the Todt Organisation [Bundesarchiv, wiki]](https://secondbysecondworldwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Wtodt2-215x300.jpg)
Bunker at Cap Gris Nez in France, part of the ‘Atlantic Wall’ built by the Todt Organisation [Bundesarchiv, wiki]
Fritz Todt was Reichsminister of Armaments & Ammunition and had headed the so-called Todt Organisation (a name coined by Hitler in 1933), a giant construction consortium that had built the autobahns before the war. During World War II, the Todt Organisation built bunkers, U-boat pens, launch pads for Hitler’s V-weapons and undertook major projects, such as the building of the Atlantic Wall.
![Reichsminister Dr. Fritz Todt [Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1969-146-01 /Rohn/ CC-BY-SA, wiki]](https://secondbysecondworldwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Wtodt3-226x300.jpg)
Reichsminister Dr. Fritz Todt [Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1969-146-01 /Rohn/ CC-BY-SA, wiki]
In the end, following a long and exhausting meeting with the Fuehrer, Speer changed his mind and decided to take a later plane.
Fortune smiled on Speer twice that week: He escaped a narrow brush with death and then Hitler appointed Speer as Todt’s successor. At the age of thirty-six, Albert Speer controlled all war production and construction throughout the Greater German Reich and in all of the occupied territories of Europe. (Goering had had ambitions on Todt’s portfolio. The Reichsmarschall was not pleased).
