The Battle of Singapore

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Introduction
The Battle of Singapore took place during World War II from January 31 to February 15, 1942. The two opposing forces were the British and Japanese. Lieutenant General Author Percival led 85, 000 men to defend the war while Lieutenant General Tomoyuki Yamashita commanded the invasion with 36, 000 men. The onslaught to invade British Malaya commenced in December 8, 1941. During this period, General Yamashita started invading this British colony from Indochina and subsequently from Thailand. The Japanese forces that invaded Malaya were obviously outnumbered by the British forces, but they intelligently concentrated their forces and applied combined army skills learned and acquired in earlier campaigns to drive back and flank their enemies frequently. The Japanese forces rapidly acquired air superiority over the Britons, and they exacted a demoralizing blow on the British forces, when a Japanese aircraft sank two integral British battleships. The Japanese also used bicycles and light tanks to swiftly maneuver through the peninsula’s jungles, in order to attack the British armies. Although General Percival was reinforced, his forces were unable to halt the Japanese invasion and in the end, they withdrew from the peninsula and took refuge in the island of Singapore to prepare for the final fight with the anticipated Japanese forces. In the end, the British army lost the war because the Japanese forces expertly combined speed, savagery, and surprise without permitting the British forces to re-group and strategize. The Japanese were able to invade Singapore because of their dominance on the unprepared British forces. They efficiently applied the principles of mass, surprise, objective and unity of command by focusing on ...

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... them. Furthermore, although the allied British troops were superior in number, they were highly untrained with minimal and inferior training as compared to the seasoned Japanese soldiers. The allied forces lacked tanks and enough aircraft to match the Japanese, and the few they had, were destroyed prior to the battle, leaving the soldiers massively vulnerable and badly equipped for the battle.

Works Cited

Farrell, Brian P. The Defence and Fall of Singapore 1940-1942. Trafalgar Square, 2006.
Leasor, James. Singapore: The Battle That Changed the World. London: House of Stratus, 2001.
Marston, Daniel. The Pacific War Companion From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima. Oxford: Osprey, 2007. .
Neal, Mary. Battle of Singapore. The Globe and Mail [Toronto, Ont] 13 Nov 1990: A.16.

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