This by Mike Coppock. Part 1&2 here in successive posts with pages 3-8 here: Disaster Off Colombo: JAPAN'S GREAT INDIAN OCEAN RAID Sea Classics - Find Articles A real good read. Part one! Using much the same tactics and carriers that had been so successful in the Pearl Harbor attack, early in 1942, the Japanese Navy went after the British Fleet's major anchorage in the Indian Ocean. But thanks to Japan's obsession to strike at American-held Midway Island in the central Pacific, a victory of equal magnitude to that enjoyed over America's Pacific Fleet was denied the Japanese planners Why did the Japanese Imperial Navy send its best aircraft carriers into the Indian Ocean for a raid on India? Within the first weeks of 1942, the Japanese Imperial Navy reigned supreme throughout Asian and Pacific waters with only one exception: The hastily assembled British Eastern Fleet in the Indian Ocean. Crippling the US Pacific Fleet with a brilliantly executed attack at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, Japanese admirals moved on with the sinking of the HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales on 10 December. This was followed with the destruction of the US Asiatic Fleet, the destruction of a surprisingly strong Dutch East Indies Fleet, and the sinking of important elements of the Royal Australian Navy at the Battle of Java Sea in late February 1942. With her military objectives obtained months ahead of the planned time schedule, the Japanese High Command was at a loss about which direction to take or whether to dig in. A form of victory disease was taking hold. Japan's generals and admirals had destroyed the fleets of their American. British, Dutch, and Australian enemies, captured Hong Kong and Singapore, and occupied the Philippines, Malaya, the East Indies, and Thailand with staggering little loss: Only five destroyers, eight submarines, and 10,000 soldiers from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the fall of Java by the end of February 1942. Admiral Sadatoski Tomoika strongly pushed for the conquest of Australia, but a quickly drawn up study showed that 18 divisions would be needed for the project and the plan was dropped. Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto wanted a redirection of forces back to Hawaii for the destruction of the US carrier fleet and the occupation of the Hawaiian Islands. A third argument was for a deep thrust into the Southwest Pacific cutting off Australia and New Zealand from the United States and Canada. A small group of senior officers in Tokyo though spoke about linking up with their German and Italian Allies. To achieve this, control of the Indian Ocean and the conquest of the Indian subcontinent would be necessary. It was during these same months Rommel was out fighting his British opposition in North Africa inching closer to the Suez while German armies continued their advance into the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, Japanese forces found themselves occupying Rangoon, Burma, on India's doorstep on 6 March 1942, after moving up the Indian Ocean coast from the Malay Peninsula with little serious opposition. In seeking her Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Prime Minister Tojo and the majority of the Japanese High Command saw their efforts and those of their Axis partners as parallel wars. There had never been any strategic coordinating offerees for a common goal, at least not on a large scale. There were small efforts on both sides to assist each other. It was German pressure for instance that forced Vichy France to agree to the Japanese occupation of French Indochina and its massive rice fields. Many in the British general staff also believed in the possibility of a link up between the Axis powers. They knew all too well that Hitler had missed a golden opportunity during the Iraqi Rebellion of May 1941. Though the Emir was pro-British, he was driven from power in March 1941 by his premier Rashid AIi, who was pro-German. After overthrowing the Emir, Iraqi forces attacked the British Air Force base 30-mi south of Baghdad at Habbaniyah. Other sites within Iraq soon joined in the uprising against the British. All this took both the British and the Germans by complete surprise. On 30 May, Hitler finally signed Directive Order No. 30 sending Gen. Hellmuth Felmy along with a Messerschmitt fighter group and a unit of Heinkel bombers to Baghdad. Vichy France allowed the Germans to refuel at Beirut and Damascus for the incursion into Iraq. But by then it was too late. Four days before Hitler signed the order, a motorized British division moved out of Palestine for Iraq as an Indian division landed near Basra at the same time. The British aircraft carrier Hermes stationed herself in the Persian Gulf providing air cover for the British forces. The rebellion was put down, but what might have happened was not loss on British, German, and Japanese strategists. And in spite of the British Navy, the Indian Ocean had proven very porous. As Italian East Africa fell to Allied forces, the Italian commander requested supplies to hold out against the British advance. When neither Italian nor German ships could get through in time, the Japanese freighter Yamayuri Mam sailed across the Indian Ocean undetected by British and Dutch Naval forces offloading 2500-tons of fuel, 6000 tyres, 1000-tons of rice, 500-tons of sugar, and 200-tons of olive oil in Italian Somaliland. After the fall of Italian East Africa, the Italian sloop Eritrea and an Italian auxiliary cruiser sailed the reverse course across the Indian Ocean though British Naval forces were looking for her, pass the British base of Singapore and spent the war at Kobe, Japan.
Part two: Now the Japanese were suddenly in Burma's capital; too close to India for comfort. There were several logical reasons for the Japanese incursion into Burma. The first was simply to add southern Burma to her list of defensive positions for holding her new conquests. The other was due to President Franklin Roosevelt declaring publicly he would pump as much aid into China as he could. The only way for the US to get that aid into China was over the Burma Road in the northern part of that country. If the road was cut by the Japanese, China would be on her own. For the British, this seemed the opening round of a growing nightmare. India's independence leader, Mahatma Gandhi, now began preaching cooperation with the Japanese if they did invade India. Soon anti-British riots broke out across the subcontinent. After more than a thousand died in these riots, Gandhi and hundreds of other political leaders were jailed. Some 60 battalions of Allied troops were forced to be kept in India to maintain order. A second major concern was not India herself, but the island of Ceylon off her southern coast. Now with Malaya captured, Ceylon was Britain's only source for rubber. Worse, based on an Admiralty report, it was believed if the Japanese did occupy Ceylon, now modem Sri Lanka, Britain's control of the seas around India would be impossible. Quickly a British division at Tobruk about to engage Rommel was pulled and sent to Ceylon. Naval forces being used to break the Axis siege of the island of Malta were diverted to the Indian Ocean to build up the British Eastern Fleet. Admiral Sir James Somerville was sent from Gilbraltar to India as the new Naval commander. He had been the Commander in Chief of British Naval forces in the East Indies in 1938, but became an invalid after contracting pulmonary tuberculosis. He was placed on the retirement list and ordered back to England. There he remained inactive until Dunkirk when he offered his services. Soon he was in command of Force H out of Gilbraltar trying to break the Axis siege of Malta. It was his command that dealt the crippling blow to the German battleship Bismark Assembling the British Eastern Fleet in the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal off the Burmese coast, Somerville had four old WWI battleships along with the legendary battleship Warspite. That battleship had made a name for itself in several enemy engagements from sinking a German destroyer force off Norway in a daring night raid to engagements with the Italian Navy for control of the Mediterranean. Somerville's battleships alone gave him 40 15-in guns. Other surface ships included the heavy cruisers Cornwall and Dorsetshire, four light cruisers, 15 destroyers, and five submarines. With the fall of Java, he also inherited a Dutch light cruiser, two Dutch submarines, and an Australian destroyer, the Vampire. His real strength was in his three aircraft carriers. The British had their own theories of carrier design and tactics. It was their tactical use against the Italian Navy that the Japanese had copied for their attack on Pearl Harbor. The British carriers were slower than their Japanese counterparts because the British had heavily reinforced the hulls and flight decks. This design difference proved invaluable. In trying to break the Malta siege, one British carrier absorbed seven direct hits from Stuka dive bombers without sinking. Both the Indomitable and Formidable were pulled from the Malta campaign for India. The two carriers had a total of 110 fighters. The much smaller Hermes had been in India since the Iraqi Revolt. Built in 1923, she was a mixture of surface ship, that being a light cruiser, and a carrier. Her launch capacity was less than 20 fighters. Prior to the Indian assignment, the Admiralty had her hunting for German raiders in the Atlantic.
The ABC in Australia has a Shipwreck Detectives episode on tonight covering the search for the Hermes and the Vampire. Apologies if this has already been mentioned on here...first time back in a long time and Spidge's posts are the first I've read! Cheers Andy
