The reconquest of Burma in 1945 was a stonking victory for the multi-ethnic, multi-national 14th Army commanded by Lieutenant General Bill Slim – especially because it was so unexpected. Slim had been determined to follow up on the remnants of the Japanese army that had invaded India in 1944 but which had been smashed at the twin battles of Kohima and Imphal. But no one really believed that he could defeat the Japanese in Burma; that was probably why he was allowed to undertake his plan – Operation Extended Capital – in the first place.
London was still pessimistic about beating the Japanese on land and were reluctant to commit troops to Burma. Slim’s army would prove the doubters wrong.
His plan was simple. He would pretend to attack the Japanese at Mandalay with his whole army, while actually only doing so with half of it – Lieutenant General Sir Montagu Stopford’s 33rd Corps.
The other half – Lieutenant General Frank Messervy’s 4th Indian Corps – would make its way in secret through 330 miles of hard jungle, as the Japanese had done during many of their victories earlier in the war, to strike the enemy underbelly 90 miles behind their main lines at the central Burmese town of Meiktila. This was a key nodal point on the Japanese road and rail line of communication supporting the Japanese in the city of Mandalay and further north.
It had supply and ammunition dumps, airfields and hospitals. If captured, the Japanese defence of Mandalay would be fatally weakened. But the administrative challenge was immense. Slim had to supply two corps well forward of their supply bases in inhospitable terrain. The 33rd Corps had to push rapidly forward in the north while 4th Corps, with its armour, moved in secret down 330 miles of jungle before conducting an opposed crossing of one of the world’s mightiest rivers.
But Slim had both air transport and air superiority: the Japanese did not.
The Japanese defence of Burma was formidable. Slim’s two corps were vastly outnumbered. But the 14th Army’s advantage in the air, in armour, in greater mobility in the open, and the spirit of his troops gave Slim – known affectionately as “Uncle Bill” by his troops due to his concern for their welfare – the confidence to press ahead despite what otherwise would have been unacceptable odds.
The whole story of the 1945 campaign is one of superlatives.
The 11th East African Division started it off in August 1944 by methodically pushing its way from Imphal to the Chindwin River, through the horror of a monsoon which dumped an annual 300 inches of rain in five months, while the 5th Indian Division advanced south through the mountains to Tiddim in the remote Chin Hills.
Men, mules and elephants struggled down jungle tracks after the retreating Japanese, crossing swollen rivers and rebuilding collapsed tracks and roads. Up above the overstretched air forces pushed through minimal visibility to deliver their precious loads to the troops below.
By September 10, the Chindwin had been crossed and a bridgehead secured.
In the north, Stopford’s 33rd Indian Corps captured Shewbo on January 9, 1945, and troops then crossed the mighty Irrawaddy.
The road to Mandalay was open. Determined efforts were then made from the north to capture Mandalay, reinforcing the impression that this was Slim’s point of
main effort.
Meanwhile, unobserved and unhindered, Messervy’s forward units reached the Irrawaddy in early February. The Japanese never guessed at Slim’s bold plan.
Simultaneous operations were undertaken by Lieutenant General Sir Philip Christison’s 15th Corps to secure the Arakan coastline. At the end of February 1945, key airfields, crucial to the maintenance of operations in central Burma, were captured.
At Nyaungu the first crossings of the Irrawaddy by Major General Geoffrey Evans’ 7th Indian Division began on the night of February 13. Four days later a bridgehead was established. Then, Major General “Punch” Cowan’s 17th Indian Division, together with the Sherman tanks of the 255th Tank Brigade, began their advance on Meiktila on February 21.
It was spectacularly successful. Indian troops brushed aside light opposition to move up closer to the town’s western defences, while a Gurkha brigade began moving north east as Sherman tanks, infantry and artillery moved to a position east of Meiktila. Cowan’s armour, deployed in wide flanking aggressive actions, caught the Japanese defenders in the open and inflicted heavy casualties. With the jungle now behind them, the 17th Indian Division’s tanks, mechanised artillery and mechanised infantry found the flat lands beyond the Irrawaddy well suited to the tactics of encircling and cutting off Japanese positions.
The Japanese had no answer to either the 14th Army’s use of armour or to the effectiveness of the all-arms tactics in which it was employed. When Meiktila was reached, an immediate attack was put in, with all available artillery and air support.
The attack penetrated well, but resistance was fierce. Yet again, the Japanese soldier showed his penchant for fighting to the death. During March 2 and 3 Cowan’s infantry and tanks closed in from differing points of the compass, squeezing and destroying the Japanese between them. By 6pm on March 3, Meiktila fell.
During the two following days even the most fanatical of resistance was brushed aside as surrounding villages were cleared and the main airfield secured. Then, for three weeks from mid-March the Japanese mounted a series of ferocious counter attacks against the 17th Indian Division. Once in Meiktila Cowan’s policy was one of aggressive defence.
Groups of infantry, mechanised artillery and armour all working together, supported from the air by attack aircraft, were sent out every day to hunt, ambush and destroy approaching Japanese columns in a radius of 20 miles of the town. By March 29, the Japanese were beaten back, losing their guns and significant casualties in the process.
Meanwhile, in the north the 19th Indian Division broke out of its bridgehead north of Mandalay and struck against the city on March 8. In fierce fighting it fell on March 20.
Other parts of 33rd Corps broke out of their bridgeheads to the west of Mandalay in early March. The Japanese were everywhere pushed back, losing men and artillery heavily. The Japanese now retreated in disarray, breaking into little groups of fugitives seeking refuge in the Shan Hills to the east. The loss of both Mandalay and Meiktila were humiliations for the Japanese, and opened the door for Slim to do the unthinkable: to strike south 400 miles to capture Rangoon.
All the men and women of the 14th Army saw the prize in front of them. They pushed themselves on through April in a desperate race to reach the coast before the monsoon rains made the roads impassable.
In a brilliantly paced campaign against the rapidly disintegrating – but still fanatical and as yet unbeaten – Japanese army, Rangoon was captured only a week after the first rains fell. Messervy’s 4th Corps had the lead.
Punching forward as fast as their fuel would allow, isolating and bypassing significant opposition, his armour raced from airstrip to airstrip, where engineers prepared for the fly-in of aircraft under the noses of the enemy.
About 14,000 British-trained levies or irregular units from the Karen Hills ambushed the Japanese, killing large numbers. Fearing that the Japanese might have garrisoned Rangoon to defend it to the last Slim had earlier persuaded Supreme Allied Commander of the Southeast Asia Theatre Earl Mountbatten to launch an amphibious attack on the city to coincide with the armoured onrush from the north.
Such a dramatic victory had not been anticipated even six months before, but in a series of operations Slim and his fabulous army of Africans, Indians and Britons stayed one step ahead of the Japanese, and unpicked every attempt they made to resist the advance.
By late May 1945 the humiliation of May 1942 had been reversed and the Japanese conquest of Burma was over. It was one of the most dramatic and successful operations of the entire war.
- Dr Robert Lyman is author of Slim, Master of War: Burma, 1942-45 (Little, Brown, £12.99)