Wavell Gives Reasons For Failure In Malaya

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 February 1948, Page 8

Wavell Gives Reasons For Failure In Malaya

(Recd. 9.20 a.m.) LONDON, February 24. “The main reason for the British failure in Malaya was that bur enemies moved too quickly on a simple, effective plan and never gave us time to collect the forces necessary to remedy our initial weakness,’’ said Field Marshal Earl Wavell in a dispatch published by His Majesty’s Stationery Office today as a booklet in which he tells of the 41 days six years ago when he was supreme commander of the A.B.D.A. (American, British, Dutch, Australian) area in the South Pacific.

Written in August 1942—six months after Earl Wavell’s command ended —the dispatch is now published two days before the date set for the publication of the dispatch by Lieutenant-General A. E. Percival on the Malayan campaign.

Earl Wavell said that the air was the vital factor, though the effect of the enemy superiority on land operations, apart from the moral effect, was greatly exaggerated. As a result of a number of factors, the Allied Air Force, instead of increasing in strength, “wasted with gradually increasing intensity and was finally completely destroyed.” Land reinforcements arrived too late to save the situation. Final Arbiter Earl Wavell was final arbiter of the strategy for the Malayan campaign from the date his headquarters began to operate on January 15 until Singapore’s fall exactly a month later. It is clear that he gave his instructions to General Percival to fight on as long as it was physically possible, so as to gain time for his own plans, which included a counterstroke in Malaya as soon as he could muster sufficient resources. The dispatches say that the Australian Corps, comprising the Sixth and Seventh Divisions, was intended when brought back from the Middle East early in 1942 to go immediately into action in a counter-offensive against the Japanese in Malaya.

Later roles proposed for it were as reinforcements for Java and Burma.

Earl Wavell hoped to delay the Japanese on the Malayan mainland so that the Australian Corps could be landed at Singapore and prepared for a counter-offensive from Johore. However, the rapid Japanese advance prevented this from being done.

Earl Wavell hoped that MajorGeneral Gordon Bennett and the Eighth Australian Division might be able to prevent the further advance of the enemy till the arrival of the Eighteenth (British) Division towards the end of January and that

with this reinforcement they might be able to hold the enemy till the arrival of the Australian Corps in February enabled him to deliver a counter-stroke. Diverted to Australia

The, despatch continues: “Before more than the Australian advance parties could arrive, Southern Sumatra had been captured by the enemy, and Java was so closely threatened that it would have been impossible to land any large number of troops. The Australian Corps was diverted to Australia and Ceylon, after the Australian Government had refused to consent to its being used to reinforce Burma.”

The dispatch makes it clear ' that Earl Wavell bad a tug-of- , war with the Australian Government on the destination of the Australian Corps. It was evidently not his only one. He records, for instance, that while he was anxiously awaiting the promised air reinforcements the Australian Government “succeeded in getting '3 number of United States aircraft intended for A.B.D.A. diverted to the defence of Australia.” On February 21 the Chiefs of Staff instructed Earl Wavell that Java should be defended to the last by all the combatant troops then in the island, but that he should withdraw A.B.D.A. headquarters from Java. Earl Wavell, as an alternative, recommended that the headquarters should be dissolved and the Dutch commanders should take over. His views were accepted and A.B.D.A. ceased to exist on February 25. Eleven thousand five hundred British (including 6000 R.A.F. men, mainly unarmed and without aircraft), 3000 Australians and 500 Americans were left to assist the Dutch. Original Object Earl Wavell’s original object, he says, was the maintenance of a line of bases —Darwin, Timor, Java, Southern Sumatra, Singapore—on which he could build up, above all, an air force capable of securing local air superiority and thereby checking the Japanese advance southward. The dispatch admits that these hones proved over-optimistic, but, added Earl Wavell, if all the aircraft promised to the A.B.D.A. command (including 1000 from the United States) had arrived safely and up to time, and had we succeeded in establishing sufficiently well-protected aerodromes and a ground organisation, all would have been well. We I had no time to assemble sufficient forces or to create favourable con- ■ ditions for them to operate.