"The importance of CIMIC often gets chinned off by military enthusiasts, presumably because it doesn’t involve enough shooty-shooty things to keep them interested."
My word isn't that the truth 🤷🏼♂️👍.
'so let's talk about logistics and civilian cooperation '
'but no boom boom?'
'well you can't go boom boom if you don't have ammo or noone is helping you get the ammo'
The entire history of the Sino-Japanese War seems like a verbatim repetition of the Russo-Ukrainian War, right down to many of the decisions at the operational and tactical levels.
And frankly, it looks like we're repeating the same mistakes.
The Fall of France ensured the Royal Navy was unable to deploy a sufficient number of surface vessels to Singapore. The Royal Navy comfortably covered the loss of the French in the Med, but that threw out pre-war planning. It was always assumed the French would keep the Germans in check.
Put another Way, the Royal Navy could fight in two theatres, but not three.
Absolutely - once France had fallen the plan was completely doomed, but frankly the strategy from the start had a lot of holes in it and its implementation (including the defence of Malaya) was exceptionally poor in any case.
Also should be noted that the Japanese fleet was the third-largest in the world and much larger than that of Germany or Italy; it wasn’t just a case of two vs three theatres.
I agree that the strategy was doomed. General Percival was made the fall guy for systematic failures. The same kind of failure also doomed the defence of Burma.
UK historiography is approximately an order of magnitude better than nearly anything American. Not anywhere near as infected from the outset by the infantile need to feel like our team is the best and we always win.
History can never be perfect, but there's trying to get at how it was, and then there's most of what gets published.
A great discussion paper with some clear lessons identified... Irrespective of any of these being lessons learnt (v debatable!), quite clearly no lessons *implemented*.
Could you elaborate on the poorly sited airbases point? It's interesting considering Singapore's limited land area and that the RSAF and the RMAF continues to use most of those locations to this day.
So, re. airbases - much more to do with the Malayan peninsula than Singapore island itself. The RAF sited airbases where it was convenient for them (especially in Northern Malaya and near the Thai border) rather than where they could be best defended. This meant that 1) British land forces were badly stretched in poor dispositions and 2) once the airbases were quickly overrun, the Japanese could multiply their airpower advantage.
Ironically, due to the small force available to RAF Far East, a lot of those aerodromes were unoccupied anyway at the start of the campaign!
"The importance of CIMIC often gets chinned off by military enthusiasts, presumably because it doesn’t involve enough shooty-shooty things to keep them interested."
My word isn't that the truth 🤷🏼♂️👍.
'so let's talk about logistics and civilian cooperation '
'but no boom boom?'
'well you can't go boom boom if you don't have ammo or noone is helping you get the ammo'
'but...but...boom boom!'
The entire history of the Sino-Japanese War seems like a verbatim repetition of the Russo-Ukrainian War, right down to many of the decisions at the operational and tactical levels.
And frankly, it looks like we're repeating the same mistakes.
I'd like to see more analysis like this.
The Fall of France ensured the Royal Navy was unable to deploy a sufficient number of surface vessels to Singapore. The Royal Navy comfortably covered the loss of the French in the Med, but that threw out pre-war planning. It was always assumed the French would keep the Germans in check.
Put another Way, the Royal Navy could fight in two theatres, but not three.
Absolutely - once France had fallen the plan was completely doomed, but frankly the strategy from the start had a lot of holes in it and its implementation (including the defence of Malaya) was exceptionally poor in any case.
Also should be noted that the Japanese fleet was the third-largest in the world and much larger than that of Germany or Italy; it wasn’t just a case of two vs three theatres.
I agree that the strategy was doomed. General Percival was made the fall guy for systematic failures. The same kind of failure also doomed the defence of Burma.
Very nice summary and I appreciate the map. History is a great teacher, but only if one is willing to read and learn from it.
Yes please.
UK historiography is approximately an order of magnitude better than nearly anything American. Not anywhere near as infected from the outset by the infantile need to feel like our team is the best and we always win.
History can never be perfect, but there's trying to get at how it was, and then there's most of what gets published.
A great discussion paper with some clear lessons identified... Irrespective of any of these being lessons learnt (v debatable!), quite clearly no lessons *implemented*.
Implementation always somebody else's problem in the MOD....
Could you elaborate on the poorly sited airbases point? It's interesting considering Singapore's limited land area and that the RSAF and the RMAF continues to use most of those locations to this day.
So, re. airbases - much more to do with the Malayan peninsula than Singapore island itself. The RAF sited airbases where it was convenient for them (especially in Northern Malaya and near the Thai border) rather than where they could be best defended. This meant that 1) British land forces were badly stretched in poor dispositions and 2) once the airbases were quickly overrun, the Japanese could multiply their airpower advantage.
Ironically, due to the small force available to RAF Far East, a lot of those aerodromes were unoccupied anyway at the start of the campaign!