WHY SINGAPORE FELL

Southland Times, Issue 24682, 2 March 1942, Page 4

WHY SINGAPORE FELL

FAULTY LEADERSHIP INTELLIGENCE SERVICES INEFFICIENT SYDNEY, February _ 26. Four reasons why Britain failed | 4o hold Singapore are emphasized by the war correspondent of The Sydney Morning Herald formerly in Malaya, who has now reached Colombo, after being evacuated from Singapore. They are:— (1) The inefficiency of our intelligence services, both before and during the campaign. . . (2) The refusal of the Senior Command to face facts during the campaign. . _ (3) The inefficiency of the Air Command as well as the sparseness of our air strength. (4) The lack of training of the British troops for the type of campaign they had to fight. The capitulation of Singapore, says the correspondent, is a difficult subject to write about without lapsing into an unhelpful tirade against the Services and authorities, individual and collective, whose inefficiency and shortsightedness during the preparatory period and the actual Malayan campaign contributed largely to our defeat there. JAPAN CALLED BLUFF It is necessary to write critically, because, unless we face the facts, we will repeat our mistakes, and it is obvious to the whole world that we cannot afford to do that any longer. Nothing is to be gained by refusing to face up to the fact that, in Malaya, Britain sat in a game of poker on a “busted flush” and Japan called her bluff. I do not know the reasons why we failed to place an adequate garrison in Malaya’, so letting down ourselves and our Allies. Experts will argue about the loss of Malaya for generations. But, from my own observations, I can list certain contributory factors. From the moment Japan moved it became obvious that our Far Eastern intelligence systems had been hopelessly inefficient, because we had so greatly under-estimated the strength she could bring against us, the quality of her fighting men, and the material and extent of her local preparations for the invasion of Malaya. MANY STRANGE LAPSES In the months before the Far Eastern war our leaders in Malaya gave no indication, either privately or in public statements, that they expected anything like the force the enemy proved able to bring against us. They did not pretend for a minute that the forces there were adequate to deal with a major attack, but emphasized that our policy was designed to prevent Japan from playing Hitler’s game by tying up large Allied forces that could be better used in the Middle East or elsewhere. They clearly stated, however, that they expected our forces to be capable of holding until reinforcements arrived any strength Japan was able to launch against us. Even after the attack began and the strength and competence of Japan’s forces should have been gauged accurately, our leaders continued to express confidence that Malaya would be reinforced in time. It was not. I do not know why, but I cannot believe that more planes and men would not have been sent if the Government and High Command in Britain had been properly advised. This brings to me the second point. The apparent refusal of the civil and military leaders in Malaya, while the Japanese were forcing our troops down the Malayan Peninsula, capturing or making unusable one aerodrome after another, to face up to the fact, without enormously strong reinforcements within a few weeks, Singapore must fall. | TEN TO ONE CHANCE After the Japanese had by-passed the A.I.F. at Gemas and got through our troops at Muar, any correspondent in Malaya, if he could have written the truth, would have said there was not a 10 to one chance of holding Singapore without reinforcements on a scale apparently impossible to obtain. Were the Governments told that in as many words? I doubt it. The Australian Government must bear its share of the blame, because I know that it was frankly advised, from the earliest stages of the campaign. / Two principal immediate factors of our defeat in Malaya were undoubtedly our air inferiority and the inadequacy of the number of troops, compared with those which Japan was able to bring against us, but in the Army, as in the Air Force, lack of imagination on the part of headquarters’ staff contributed largely to our difficulties. TROOPS UNPREPARED It was inevitable that newly-arrived reinforcements should have been unused to local conditions, but I consider that 75 per cent, of our troops in Malaya at the beginning of the Far Eastern war, including many who had been there for several years on garrison duty, were hopelessly untrained for the type of warfare which might have been expected there, and which, in fact, they had to meet at the hands of the Japanese invaders. The two A.I.F. brigades were the only large formations of men who had consistently trained for the job on lines which proved sound under actual fighting conditions. They trained steadily, month after month, taking full advantage of available local knowledge. With few exceptions, other troops, whether up near the Thai border or in barracks on Singapore Island, lived and worked as though they were in barracks in England. AIR FORCE BADLY HANDLED One unit stationed in northern Malaya for more than nine months, carried out jungle training for only two days, but there was a grand strafe if more than nine rubber leaves were found in the company area at inspection time any morning. Even their defensive works were never properly completed, officers were, in some cases, telling the men that of course they would never have to fight in them. The inadequate air forces we had in Malaya were handled so badly by the headquarters ground control authorities that our losses in machines on the ground were infinitely greater than they should have been. BAD COMMUNICATIONS Tlie air staffs, before the war, were badly afflicted by the prevailing “It Can’t Happen Here” disease. A proper control system, such as operated in Britain, was not completed in Malaya until too late for use Both for the Army and the Air Force inefficient communications greatly hampered Malayan operations. There was evidence that the unco-operative attitude of the Colonial Government contributed to this difficulty. Whoever is to blame, the fact is that, under war conditions, communications were so bad that correspondents returning to Singapore from the front after a 24-hour trip by train and car found that they had information which, in many cases, was days ahead of that received by the Intelligence Staff at Malayan Command Headquarters.