The Second World War (49 page)

On 10 December, 5,400 Japanese marines landed on Guam, in the Mariana Islands, some 2,500 kilometres east of Manila. The small and lightly armed garrison of US Marines did not stand a chance.

The British in Hong Kong and Malaya had been expecting a Japanese invasion since the end of November. Malaya was a rich prize with its tin mines and vast rubber plantations. The governor, Sir Shenton Thomas, had described the country as the ‘
dollar arsenal of the Empire
’. Malaya thus represented almost as high a priority for the Japanese as the oilfields of the Dutch East Indies. A state of emergency was declared in Singapore on 1 December, but the British were still woefully ill prepared. The colonial authorities feared that an overreaction might unsettle the native population.

The appalling complacency of colonial society had produced a self-deception largely based on arrogance. A fatal underestimation of their attackers included the idea that all Japanese soldiers were very shortsighted and inherently inferior to western troops. In fact they were immeasurably tougher and had been brainwashed into believing that there was no greater glory than to give their lives for their Emperor. Their commanders, imbued with a sense of racial superiority and convinced of Japan’s right to rule over East Asia, remained impervious to the fundamental contradiction that their war was supposed to free the region from western tyranny.

The Royal Navy had a vast and modern naval base on the northeast corner of Singapore island. Powerful coastal batteries covered the approaches, ready to destroy an amphibious attack, but this magnificent complex which had cost a large part of the naval budget was almost empty. The original plan had been that a fleet could be sent out there from Britain in the event of war. But because of naval commitments in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean and the need to protect Arctic convoys to Murmansk taking supplies to the Russians, the British had no battle fleet in the Far
East. Churchill’s promise to aid the Soviet Union also meant that the Far East Command lacked modern aircraft and tanks, as well as a range of other equipment. The only fighter available–the Brewster Buffalo, known as the ‘flying beer barrel’ because of its tubby shape and sluggish handling–stood no chance against Japanese Zeros.

The British commander in Malaya was Lieutenant General Arthur Percival, a very tall, thin man with a military moustache which failed to divert attention from his buck teeth and weak chin. Although Percival had acquired a perhaps undeserved reputation for ruthlessness with IRA prisoners during the Troubles in Ireland, he had the obstinacy of a faint-hearted man when it came to dealing with subordinate commanders. Lieutenant General Sir Lewis Heath, the commander of III Indian Corps, had no respect for Percival and bitterly resented his promotion over him. And relations between the various army and RAF commanders, as well as between them and the tempestuous and paranoid Australian commander, Major General Henry Gordon Bennett, were far from amicable. In theory, Percival commanded nearly 90,000 men, but fewer than 60,000 were front-line troops. Hardly any had experience of the jungle, and the Indian battalions and local volunteers were virtually untrained. The sorry state of British defences was well known in Tokyo. The 3,000 Japanese civilians then resident in Malaya had been passing back detailed intelligence through their consulate-general in Singapore.

On 2 December, a Royal Navy squadron commanded by the diminutive Admiral Sir Thomas Phillips reached Singapore. It consisted of the modern battleship HMS
Prince of Wales
, the old battle-cruiser HMS
Repulse
and four destroyers. Crucially, it lacked fighter cover, because the aircraft carrier HMS
Indomitable
with forty-five Hurricanes had been halted for repairs. But this did not seem to worry the British in Singapore. They did not think that the Japanese would dare to launch an invasion of Malaya now, with such powerful ships based there. General Percival, meanwhile, was refusing to construct defence lines with the argument that it reduced the offensive spirit of his soldiers.

On Saturday, 6 December, a Royal Australian Air Force bomber, based at Kota Bahru in the far north-east of Malaya, sighted Japanese transports escorted by warships. They had sailed from the island of Hainan off the south China coast and were due to be joined by two convoys from Indochina. This force, which would split again, was headed for the southern Thai ports of Patani and Singora on the Kra Isthmus and the air base of Kota Bahru. From the Kra Isthmus, General Yamashita Tomoyuki’s 25th Army would attack both north-westwards towards southern Burma and south into Malaya.

The British had evolved a plan, Operation Matador, to advance into
southern Thailand and delay the Japanese there. But the Thai government, bowing to the inevitable and hoping to regain territory in north-west Cambodia, had virtually accepted Japanese overlordship in advance. Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, the elderly commander-in-chief Far East, could not make up his mind whether to launch Operation Matador or not. Brooke-Popham was known as ‘Pop-off’ because of his tendency to fall asleep during meetings. General Heath was furious about the indecision, since his Indian troops were still on standby to move into Thailand when they should have been moving to Jitra in the far north-west to prepare defensive positions there. They were becoming increasingly demoralized, soaked to the skin in the monsoon rains.

Finally, in the early hours of 8 December, news reached Singapore that the Japanese were landing to attack Kota Bahru. At 04.30 hours, while the senior commanders and the governor were in conference, Japanese bombers made their first raid on Singapore. The city was still a blaze of lights. Admiral Phillips, although well aware of the lack of fighter cover, decided to take his squadron up the east coast of Malaya to attack the Japanese invasion fleet.

At Kota Bahru, the only explosions which had taken place so far had been caused by mines on the beach being set off by stray dogs or by coconuts dropping on them. A little way inland, the 8th Brigade had concentrated one battalion round the airfield, but the beaches were guarded by only two battalions stretched over fifty kilometres.

The Japanese assault had started around midnight on 7 December, in fact about an hour before the attack on Pearl Harbor even though the two were supposed to have been simultaneous. The seas in this monsoon period were heavy, but that did not stop the Japanese from getting ashore. The Indian infantry platoons managed to kill quite a number of their attackers, but they were too thinly spread and the visibility in the heavy rain was poor.

The Australian pilots at the landing strip scrambled their ten serviceable Hudson bombers and attacked the transports offshore, destroying one, damaging another and sinking a number of landing barges. But after dawn the Kota Bahru airfield and others down the coast began to suffer repeated attacks from Japanese Zeros flying in from French Indochina. By the end of the day, the British and Australian squadrons in Malaya were reduced to just fifty aircraft. Percival’s deployment of his troops to guard airfields as a first priority proved a grave mistake. And Brooke-Popham’s indecision over Operation Matador meant that the Japanese air force was soon operating from bases in southern Thailand. General Heath, to Percival’s anger, began a retreat the next day from the north-east.

President Roosevelt, following his celebrated statement that 7 December was ‘a date which will live in infamy’, cabled Churchill in London to report on the declaration of war passed by the Senate and the House of Representatives. ‘
Today all of us
are in the same boat with you and the people of the Empire, and it is a ship which will not and cannot be sunk.’ It was an unfortunate metaphor just as HMS
Prince of Wales
and HMS
Repulse
were steaming out of the naval base escorted by their destroyers. While Admiral Phillips was leaving he was warned that he could expect no fighter protection and that Japanese bombers were now based in southern Thailand. Phillips felt that, in the best traditions of the service, he could not back out.

Phillips’s Force Z was not sighted by Japanese seaplanes until the late afternoon of 9 December. Not finding any transports or warships, Phillips decided to turn back that night and return to Singapore. But in the early hours of 10 December his flagship received a report of another landing at Kuantan, which was on his way.

The Royal Navy warships of Force Z were called to action stations after a hurried breakfast of ham and marmalade sandwiches. Guncrews wearing anti-flash protection, steel helmets, goggles and asbestos gloves manned the pom-poms. ‘
Prince of Wales
looked magnificent
,’ wrote an observer on board the
Repulse
. ‘White-tipped waves rippled over her plunging bows. The waves shrouded them with watery lace, then they rose high again and once again dipped. She rose and fell so methodically that the effect of staring at her was hypnotic. The fresh breeze blew her White Ensign out stiff as a board. I felt a surge of excited anticipation rise within me at the prospect of her and the rest of the force sailing into enemy landing parties and their escorting warships.’

In fact the report of landings at Kuantan proved false. This diversion and delay to their return proved fatal. Later in the morning, a Japanese reconnaissance aircraft was sighted. At 11.15 hours, the
Prince of Wales
opened fire at a small group of enemy aircraft. Another group of torpedo planes appeared a few minutes later. The two ships’ multiple pom-pom guns began firing. Their crews called them ‘Chicago pianos’. The glowing tracers arced outwards in a mass of shallow curves towards their targets. But while the gunners were concentrating on the torpedo planes, nobody had noticed bombers at a much higher altitude. The
Repulse
was struck by a bomb which went right through the catapult deck. Smoke emerged through the hole, yet attention remained fixed on the attacking aircraft. As the pom-pom gunners knocked one of their low-level attackers out of the sky, everyone cheered: ‘Duck down!’ But then, reminding them of the more immediate danger, a marine bugler sounded the dreaded warning
‘ship on fire’. Fire-hoses played on the hole billowing black smoke but proved of little use.

The next wave of attacking aircraft concentrated on the
Prince of Wales
. A torpedo struck her stern, sending up a ‘tree-like column’ of water and smoke. The great ship began to list to port. ‘It doesn’t seem possible that those slight-looking planes could do that to her,’ the same observer on
Repulse
noted, still barely able to believe that the age of the battleship was truly over. Even if the carrier HMS
Indomitable
had been with them, it is far from certain that her aircraft would have been sufficient to ward off the determined Japanese attacks.

With her steering gear and engines out of action, HMS
Prince of Wales
was doomed as another wave of torpedo aircraft appeared.
Repulse
’s gun-crews did what they could to break up the attack, but three more torpedoes struck home. The battleship’s list increased dramatically. It was obvious that she was about to go down. Then the
Repulse
herself was hit by two torpedoes, one after the other. The order came to abandon ship. There was little panic. Some sailors even had time to light a last cigarette as they formed lines. When it was their turn, they took a deep breath and leaped into the black oil-covered sea below.

Churchill, who had exulted in the great ships of the Royal Navy from his times as First Lord of the Admiralty, was stunned by the disaster. The tragedy felt even more personal to him after his voyage in the
Prince of Wales
to Newfoundland in August. The Imperial Japanese Navy was now unchallenged in the Pacific. Hitler rejoiced at the news. It augured well for his declaration of war on the United States, announced on 11 December.

Hitler had always assumed that he would have to fight America at some point and he now calculated that, with its small army and a crisis in the Pacific, it would not be able to play a decisive part in Europe for nearly two years. He was above all encouraged in this decision by Admiral Dönitz, who wanted to send his U-boat wolfpacks against American shipping. All-out submarine warfare might still bring Britain to its knees.

Hitler’s announcement to the Reichstag prompted its Nazi representatives to rise cheering to their feet. They saw the United States as the great Jewish power in the west. But German officers, still fighting in the desperate retreat on the eastern front, did not know what to think when they heard the news. The more far-sighted sensed that this world war, with the United States, the British Empire and the Soviet Union aligned against them, would be unwinnable. The repulse before Moscow combined with the American entry into the war made December 1941 the geo-political turning point. From that moment, Germany became incapable of winning the Second World War outright, even though it still retained the power to inflict appalling damage and death.

On 16 December, Generalfeldmarschall von Bock, suffering from some sort of psychosomatic illness, informed Hitler that he must decide whether Army Group Centre should stand and fight, or withdraw. Both courses risked its destruction. He clearly wanted to be relieved of his failed command, and he was replaced a few days later by Kluge, who initially agreed with Hitler’s refusal to retreat. Brauchitsch, the army commander-in-chief, was also dismissed for pessimism. Hitler promptly appointed himself commander-in-chief in his stead. Several other senior commanders were also removed, but it was the sacking of Guderian, the symbol of offensive dash, which depressed German officers the most. Guderian had characteristically defied orders to hold positions whatever the cost. The wisdom or folly of Hitler’s decision to stand fast has long been debated. Did it prevent an 1812-style debacle, or did it cause huge and unnecessary losses?

On 24 December, German soldiers, so far from home, felt an urge to celebrate Christmas, even in the most abject circumstances. A Christmas tree was easy to come by, which they decorated with stars made from the silver paper from cigarette packets. In some cases, they were even given candles by Russian peasants. Huddled together for warmth in villages which had not yet been burned, they exchanged pathetic little presents and sang ‘Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht’. Although they felt lucky to be alive after so many of their comrades had died, they felt an overwhelming loneliness as they thought of their families at home.