WAR TOPICS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 251, 18 December 1940, Page 3

WAR TOPICS

Ybtjl 7,

! "Singapore is impregnable" FIFTEEN YEARS OF WORK ON A FORTRESS One of the chief defences of Singapore is the fact that it has 110 enemy within several thousand miles. That fact does not allow the scale of its defences to be reduced in that way, but it does mean that a completely unexpected attack—a bolt from the blue—is highly improbable, if not impossible. And it also means that the difficulties of an attacker are very great, says a naval correspondent ol the London Observer. Attacks on defended bases have in the past often been delivered from across an ocean; many examples in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the American Continent will occur to all. But military expeditions to-day are very much less self-supporting than they were in the days of Vernon or Wolfe. Whether naval or military they need a constant service of supply, and to maintain such a service over a distance of 3000 miles is a tremendous tax on resources of even a first-class maritime Power. Large Calibre Guns. There have been defences at Singapore for a century past; it was only when, in 1.923, the es« tablishment there of a modern naval base was undertaken that it became necessary to raise the scale of the defences to that of a first-class fortress, able to hold its own in the face of attacks of any magnitude. This entailed the installation, it is understood, of guns of the heav< iest. calibre, capable of making it impossible even for heavily armoured ships of war to approach close enough to support by their gunfire any attempt at the capture of the island. No details of these guns,, of course, have been made public, but they have often been described in articles, in both British and American periodicals, by writers Avho profess to have some inside inform mation about them. Most of them describe the biggest guns as being of large calibre. > Other guns of varying calibres are said to be mounted at various places, and there is no doubt that,, whatever their actual calibre, Singapore is as strongly! defended as any island fortress in the world.

The defences have been developed gradually over a period of fifteen years, during -which the naval dockyard has been under construction. They include not only guns covering the seaward approaches, but also an, adequate garrison of. both military and air units.

The R.A.F. ; Besides the highly developed civil air port close; to Singapore. .city, •there is the Royal Air Force base ;on the north side of the island, facing the Joliore Straitj, not far from the naval base itself. Four years ago it was stated that the Service population at Singapore, including the men of the naval base, Air Force and the garrison numbered, with their dependants, some 12,000. It is probably considerably larger now. : . The increase of the garrison has, of course, necessitated the provision of barracks to house, it. The chief of these arc the Gill man barracks, near the city overlooking Iveppel Harbour, and the Ghangi Barracks at the eastern end of ..the island. These are of modern design, and provide every coiniort such as is necessary to make life in a tropical island tolerable, even for a European garrison. For that purpose, too, elaborate sanitary ant! anti-malaria arrangements have been necessary to provide for the health of the men, and the transformation of a tropical swamp into a healthy garrison station has been a veiy remarkable achievement. Combined Exercises. Every year, for some Tears past, elaborate combined exercises have, taken place at Singapore in which all three services have taken part. In these, the garrison at its existing strength has representee! the

Army; the Ait Forces stationed at Singapore on some occasions have been reinforced from India, or from even further away; for the period of the exercises of the Navy, the ships of both the East Indies and China Fleets have taken part, some of them usually playing the part of an enemy attacking the colony.,

Tn August last year and during, the first two months of the. war, Singapore, like the rest of the world, .was hard at work bringing, its defences up to a state of complete readiness. Additional defence works were erected, various activities were undertaken along the 'water. front, and local volunteer services were embodied and exercised in their war-time duties of minesweeping, local patrols and the' like.

This activity slackened off at thfr end ol October, when it appeared that there was little probability at the moment of the Avar spreading tothat part of tlie world.' But they were resumed a few months ago* when tension appeared to-be increasing in the Par East., No Baithing - Here! A communique issued in Julyi informed the inhabitants at Singapore? that further defence works were being put in hand and that it woUild be necessary for several of the shark proof bathing centres on the soulh of the island— an amenityvery welcome, to European living in the ti'opics—to be replaced by barbed wire entanglements, wliieli would preclude their vise by the public for bathing. There must, of course, have been many more preparations than those of which public notice was thus given, and it may be taken now for granted that the defences of Singapore make it as nearly impregnable to attack as any fortress 'in the world.

TURKEY AND ENTRANCE TOL BLACK SEA The various references to the re- • quest for passage of naval vessels through the Dardanelles comes just * over three years after the Turks obtained the control-of the Straits again. That right was conceded by nine Powers who signed the Dardanelles Convention at Montreaux in July, 193G, and the convention wasan example that it was possible to s make peaceful revision of the post- 1 war settlement. The convention's 20" articles provide for complete liberty . of passage for merchant shipping, subject' to sanitary inspection, • though"nfct to merchant vessels of • : belligerent Powers when Turkey is at war. , At such a time the merchant ships of neutral Powers must enter the • Straits in day time and'take a route indicated by the authorities. The provisions governing warships are more directly concerned, and it was : v these which created the major difficulties 'at the Montreaux meeting. The most important of these proviso - ions are that in peace time war- ~ r?;., ships have free passage through theStraits, after notice has been given ' to Turkey through the usual diplo- ' matic channels, but that the maximum global (total) tonnage of all - foreign naval forcejs through • • the--ss Straits at any given moment must not exceed 15,000' tons, though the Littoral States of the Black Sea are - - entitled to send through ships. ,Oif greater tonnage provided they go- V thrcugK one at a time and are eacorted by two destroyers at -the- . " most . Hi is provision was the work r 1 of Russia, and M. Litvinoff insisted upon it. Article 19 deals with a war in .which Turkey is neutral and was also a. disputed point on which the * , British Government finally gave way. It provides that the Straits shall be closed to all warships, of belligerent ' - . Powers unless they arc merely re- „ ■ turning to their .bases, except in a- V \ Avar ilv. which Turkey is honouring her obligations under Article 18 of the Covenant of the League of Na- /lis tions, in which case the matter is- - r left to the discretion 6f th 6 Turkish Government, or in cases of assistance ' £|| given to a State, a victim of aggress sion, under a pact to which the- Jig TUrks are a part*. " ; > • ,