BRITAIN’S PART IN FAR EAST WAR

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 89, Issue 214, 10 September 1945, Page 5

BRITAIN’S PART IN FAR EAST WAR

LAND, SEA AND AIR

ATTACK ON MALAYA PLANNED

TWO FLEETS IN OPERATION

■Recd. 8 p.m. London, Sept. 8. Three hundred thousand British troops were employed in lhe war against Japan and when the enemy surrendered were about to launch a large-scale operatic.i against Malaya, said the Lord Presidon! ol lhe Council, Mr. Herbert Morrison, in a speech at a VP celebration at Lewisham. “Our men in Burma would have advanced into Siam," he continued. “Wc were also ready lo do our share, with the United States, in the invasion of Japan itself. Five divisions, namely one British, one British-Indian, one Australia, one Canadian, and one New Zealand were to be employed as a’British Commonwealth force, under the command of General MacArthur. This would have meant the re-deployment to the Far East of a further quarter of a million men from the European theatre. Our force was not limited by * the number of men available, but by the fact t hat our large passenger Heet was transporting the Unit.ed States troops across the North Atlantic. “The R.A.F., from the Battle of Imphal tt> the fall of Rangoon, flew nearly a quarter of a million sorties, carried Bu,ooo troops and delivered 70,000 tons ot supplies. “Over 60 per cent of the total strength of the Royal Navy was our contribution to the war in the Far East, a force three times the size of

the whole of the Navy in 1939, and it started to move as soon as the threat from the enemy lessened in European waters. The fleet, by last March, was operating in Japanese waters, supporting the American consul on Okinawa, 4000 miles from its base in Sydney. One hundred and twenty ocean-going ships and tankers supplied the fleet during these operations, which in this case involved remaining at sea continually for more than two months. “In the Southeast Asia Command, another fleet, almost half the size of that in the Pacific, co-operated with the Army during the spectacular southward march through Burma. "Our submarines throughout the Japanese war operated olten under very difficult conditions, in the Malacca Strait and Java Sea. They took heavy toll ol Japanese merchant shipping. These intensive operations were in progress up to the moment of surrender, when the Royal Navy in force was in at the Japanese 'kill'."