Archive Material

Page 458: A more detailed account of the British government and military command’s appreciation of Far East defences, Churchill’s assessment of the Japanese threat, the Australian government’s increasing alarm at both the British grasp of the situation and the understanding of the situation at home, and Curtin’s pivot to the US

 

Churchill and his war cabinet and his generals ruminated regularly about the conduct of the war and what should be the priorities. There were frequent meetings in London, Sydney and Melbourne, and conferences in Singapore and New Delhi, and many cables were exchanged with the Australian War Cabinet.

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In October 1940, staff officers from India, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaya and Burma gathered in Singapore to discuss the defence of the region should Japan go to war. Their talks, which would become known as the Singapore Conference, lasted for ten days. They concluded that defences were woefully inadequate. Malaya and Burma both needed many more battalions of soldiers and more and improved weaponry; the absence of a main fleet was a major concern and it added to the weakness of the Malayan defences; the entire defensive line from India to New Zealand was gravely deficient; and above all else, deficiencies in aircraft and air defences revealed in the conference report were horrifying. There were few serviceable planes and many of those that were, were considered obsolete. Over one thousand new aircraft were needed across Malaya, Burma, Australia, New Zealand, the Indian Ocean, and the Netherlands East Indies. And many more operational airfields were needed. The British chiefs of staff in London considered the Conference report’s aircraft needs to be excessive, and in any case that number could not be produced before the end of 1941. They accepted the report’s findings on the number of additional troops needed, although it would take many months for such a number to be ready. While the chiefs of staff gave qualified acceptance to the report, Churchill dismissed it and overrode his chiefs. He did not consider the situation in the Far East required the maintenance of such large forces, and felt that the danger of Japan going to war was less than it had been at the time of the fall of France a few months earlier:

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The naval and military successes in the Mediterranean and our growing advantage there by land, sea, and air will not be lost upon Japan. It is quite impossible for our Fleet to leave the Mediterranean at the present juncture without throwing away irretrievably all that has been gained there and all the prospects of the future. On the other hand, with every weakening of the Italian naval power the mobility of our Mediterranean Fleet becomes potentially greater, and should the Italian Fleet be knocked out as a factor, and Italy herself broken as a combatant, as she may be, we could send strong naval forces to Singapore without suffering any serious disadvantage. We must try to bear our Eastern anxieties patiently and doggedly until this result is achieved, it always being understood that if Australia is seriously threatened by invasion we should not hesitate to compromise or sacrifice the Mediterranean position for the sake of our kith and kin … I am also persuaded that if Japan should enter the war the United States will come in on our side, which will put the naval boot very much on the other leg, and be a deliverance from many perils.

 

… With the ever-changing situation it is difficult to commit ourselves to the precise number of aircraft which we can make available for Singapore, and certainly could not spare the flying-boats to lie about idle there on the remote chance of a Japanese attack when they ought to be playing their part in the deadly struggle on the North-western Approaches. Broadly speaking, our policy is to build up as large as possible a Fleet, Army, and Air Force in the Middle East, and keep this in a fluid condition, either to prosecute war in Libya, Greece, and presently Thrace, or reinforce Singapore should the Japanese attitude change for the worse. In this way dispersion of forces will be avoided and victory will give its own far-reaching protections in many directions …

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[Churchill, Winston S., The Second World War, Vol. II: Their Finest Hour, Cassell & Co. Ltd., London, 1949, pp.628-9]

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A consequence of the Singapore Conference report was the appointment of the 62-year old Governor of Kenya, Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, as the Far East Commander in Chief in November 1940. He would command all land and air forces throughout the Far East. He had seen service in the Second Boer War and had the typical British military leadership background – public school and Royal Military College, Sandhurst. Tall, angular, and patrician in bearing. He saw the need for more aircraft, but considered that the British had other advantages over the Japanese – Japanese planes were not efficient, he said; his air force in Malaya, whatever the number and quality of the machines, would cause such loss to the Japanese air force that it would be unable to deal a significant blow to the British land forces; Japanese fighters were not as good as the Allies’ Brewster Buffaloes (these bulbous-looking machines were so inferior, unstable and overweight that they were largely obsolete by the time of the Pearl Harbour attack, and were known as ‘flying coffins’); he considered the training of British and American pilots to be more thorough and sounder than that of the Japanese;  and Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham did not think the Japanese were air-minded at all – against a determined enemy they would not stand up.

 

The Australian War Cabinet also considered the report of the Singapore Conference. It highlighted the weaknesses of Singapore and, by extension in their thinking, the frailty of Australian home defences. But what could they do? There was nothing they could do about the lack of naval strength, nor could they do anything about the chronic shortage of modern aircraft. They would need to wait for American and British production of planes to build up and then wait again for their allocation. What little they could do and had committed to after the Conference – increasing their own land forces, deploying troops overseas and improving the limited home and island defences – was nevertheless, for the size of its economy and population, a heavy commitment to war production.

 

In February 1941, the Americans cracked a secret code that the Japanese leaders used for communications between Tokyo and their representatives in the United States. The deciphered transmissions alarmingly showed how belligerent the Japanese were becoming and how wrong Churchill was. The United States would need to cede domination of the western Pacific as the price for not going to war; the Japanese were considering taking military bases in Indochina and Thailand, and even attacking Singapore; they also planned to establish a Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Scheme, incorporating south-east Asia and the south-west Pacific. The Australian Advisory War Council, comprising senior representatives of the major political parties, including John Curtin, the leader of the opposition Labor Party and later that year to become prime minister, greeted this information with alarm.  The Australian public was complacent, they felt – they did not understand how urgent and threatening the situation was. There was significant labour unrest which was badly affecting defence preparations and production. Strikes were common, in the coal mines and shipyards in particular. In the year just gone, coal production had fallen significantly because of widespread strikes. Industrial unrest had stepped up even further in January, with unions rejecting overtime work unless the extra money from overtime was exempt from tax. Union leaders were stirring up grievances and causing disruption to advance their own political ends; no one sitting on the War Council of any persuasion saw any real or genuine concern of these ‘irresponsibles’, as Curtin called them, about their member workers paying tax on overtime. It was not peacetime. There were divisions in society that were becoming starker by the day, at a time when unity was needed; the means of production were being severely impaired when it was all too evident to the Council that their country would need to step up production of war goods and munitions because Great Britain was unable to help. No one was more concerned about this than John Curtin. The feeling of complacency was not helped by the newspapers and the way they gave so much attention to both the publicity seekers in the unions and the social activities of the wealthy, stoking division. It was also not helped by a handful of senior and influential politicians such as Curtin’s rival in the Labor Party, the highly ambitious Dr Herbert Vere Evatt, who claimed that the danger from Japan was exaggerated. The Advisory Council, urged on by Curtin in the absence of Robert Menzies, the Prime Minister, who was in London, felt it needed to stir the people of Australia to realise the danger the country faced.  They needed to be rallied to a greater war effort and the ‘irresponsibles’ needed to understand the damage they were doing. The Council issued a press statement warning its citizens of the gravity of the situation.

 

The Advisory War Council, at its meeting today, considered certain cable messages received by the Government dealing with recent developments in the international situation. The nature of these messages led the Council to decide to adjourn until tomorrow afternoon because in the meantime the position will be reviewed by the War Cabinet in consultation with the Chiefs of Staff of the services …

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We think we should tell the people of Australia that it is the considered opinion of the War Council that the war has moved on to a new stage involving the utmost gravity. At the meeting today a complete review was made of the existing situation and its implications. These can only be described as of the most serious import …

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What the future has in store is at present not precisely clear. What is clear is that Australian safety makes it essential that there should be neither delay nor doubt about the clamant need for the greatest effort of preparedness this country has ever made.

 

[Hasluck, Paul, Australia in the War of 1939-1945. Series 4 – Civil. Volume I: The Government and the People: 1939-1941, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1952, p.319]

 

The press responded to this in dramatic fashion. ‘We Stand in Danger’; ‘Danger of Hostile Action’; ‘Australia in Peril of Attack’; ‘War Threat to Australia’; ‘Warning of Crisis’. But it soon became evident to the media and the people that there was no immediate danger. The newspapers turned on the War Council, accusing it of melodrama and making alarmist statements. Despite the upheaval caused by the Council, they said, the truth was that the Far Eastern situation remained much as it was. The effort to rouse the people into a greater war effort had largely failed.

 

Brooke-Popham flew to Australia that same week for a meeting with the War Cabinet. He passed on the British view that, while there was a need for more land and air forces, the Singapore Conference report was unduly pessimistic. Even if the Malayan peninsula were invaded, he said, and the Japanese reached all the way to Johor on the southern tip and disabled the naval base, Singapore would still hold out. And Churchill had said that if Australia or New Zealand were attacked, the Middle East Fleet would be diverted immediately. The Australian War Cabinet was concerned about the British government’s grasp of the situation, being so far removed, and of Brooke-Popham’s optimistic appreciations.

 

The Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, travelled to London in January for talks with Churchill and other leaders about war policy and direction, and in particular about the Singapore defences and to push Australia’s position on the defence deficiencies on the Malayan peninsula. Menzies was 46. Before political life a leading lawyer, he was urbane, witty, persuasive and eloquent. He was as much despised as loved, commanding strong emotions each way, considered by some to be aloof, overbearing and arrogant, by others to be statesmanlike. Although still young, he was tending to portliness and had a pronounced double chin. His hair was wiry, turning to grey. Menzies would be in London for several months and for the duration of his stay he was invited to join meetings of the British War Cabinet. He had flown via Singapore and Cairo in a Qantas Empire flying boat, and on his stopover in Singapore, even as a civilian he had been alarmed at the state of the defences. He was also unimpressed with the quality of the British commanders that he encountered there. After talking to senior officers and cabinet ministers in London, he concluded that Churchill’s pledge to divert the fleet in the event of a Japanese attack on Australia was unrealistic – it was just rhetoric. He told the Australian War Cabinet in a cable that, even if it could be done, it would take a long time. I was urged by the officers and the cabinet members here, he said, to convert such a general declaration into a plan of specific measures that would really be possible. There are large forces in the Middle East, including three Australian divisions, and they couldn’t just be left there without naval support. And withdrawing them would take time – organising shipping and arranging convoys, and sufficient naval protection would need to be provided. It would be an enormous undertaking, he said, and a lot could happen in the Far East in the meantime. It was a delusion to think that a fleet of capital ships could be sent to Singapore immediately, and so plans needed to be made assuming that this was not possible.

 

Churchill continued to maintain that the likelihood of Japan entering the war was remote, and even if it did it would prompt the United States to enter at Britain’s side. There was no need, he said, to take any further measures for the defence of Malaya and Singapore beyond those modest arrangements already in progress. His Chief of General Staff in London disagreed. Brooke-Popham declared that the reinforcement of land and air forces in Malaya since October had been so effective that he was confident Singapore could be defended.

 

Menzies returned to Australia at the end of May. He had imposed himself on Churchill, gained his respect and had his ear; he had met with Roosevelt; he had spent the weekend at the Prime Minister’s retreat at Chequers and talked until 3 in the morning with Churchill and de Gaulle; he had sat in the historic Cabinet Room in Downing Street almost every night; he had heard Churchill open the War Cabinet meetings with ‘Gentlemen, we have the signal honour of being responsible for the government of our country at a time of deadly danger. We will proceed with the business’, and felt his heart beat faster; he had seen the King at close quarters, admired his humility, and understood the importance to the British people of his leadership; he had mixed with British cabinet ministers, chiefs of staff, generals, admirals and industry leaders; he had given many public speeches and broadcasts, all warmly received; he had been, for four months, a VIP. It was not lost on him that he had created quite an impression amongst the leaders of Britain. A man with his gifts, it was said, belonged on a higher plane, a statesman who could serve the entire British Commonwealth of Nations. His opinion had been regularly sought. He was at the centre of the war effort. And he had enjoyed his life there. He had flown close to the Sun. He was disgruntled having to return home, and publicly spoke of coming back to the diabolical game of politics. In a few months he would resign, having lost support.

 

On 10th June he addressed the War Cabinet. The deficiencies in Malaya are even more alarming than the Singapore Conference led us to believe, he said. The United Kingdom chiefs of staff say that not much more can be done for defence in the Pacific, both because of the ‘Hitler first’ policy and the demands on British forces and materiel in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. We now know where Australia stands. Churchill doesn’t look on the Dominions as independent nations with their own governments, he thinks we’re colonies, and the more distant a problem is from the heart of the Empire the less he thinks about it. Don’t get me wrong – he is the one man in the country who has the capacity to rally the people and inspire the country. If he were no longer the leader it would be a disaster. He will not admit defeat. A great leader needs a great people, of course, but he has such power to evoke and stimulate courage. It is hard to believe that there has ever been a war leader like him. We’ve been told by their chiefs of staff that it is unlikely a fleet could be sent under any circumstance; if anything, we might just get a battle cruiser and an aircraft carrier, but no more. The Middle East is an essential part of the strategy to defeat Germany, so they told us the fleet will remain there, to protect and transfer troops until all armies there have been withdrawn. It is now evident that, for too long, we have readily accepted the general assurances about the defence of this area. I also have to tell you that the British Foreign Office is terribly negative about the outlook here. They’re certain that war with Japan will come, so they’re making no effort to do anything diplomatically to try and avoid it. And the chiefs of staff are complacent.

 

The London chiefs of ctaff review of the land and air forces in Malaya, and their responses to Menzies’ questions, displayed hubris and ignorance, if not a degree of incompetence as well. While they could give an assurance on when the land forces would reach full strength, they could not give any assurances on the arrival of equipment, such as artillery, anti-tank guns, small arms ammunition and artillery ammunition, all of which were currently well below the levels required for effective defence according to the Singapore Conference report. It was unlikely that the new aircraft required to give ‘a very fair degree of security’ would be available before the end of the year. The chiefs of staff did not regard many of these deficiencies as serious. The aircraft which the Japanese had to launch an attack were obsolete types, they said; there was no reason to believe that Japanese standards were even comparable with those of the Italians; while air strength was below what was necessary particularly in the absence of a fleet, it was no worse than elsewhere; Brewster Buffaloes - the flying coffins - were eminently satisfactory and would probably prove more than a match for any Japanese aircraft. Plenty of intelligence had been gathered in Singapore and Melbourne to disprove this foolish opinion of the Buffalo, but it was not circulated, not surprising given the general underestimation of enemy technical achievements and military ability.

 

As for an attack on Malaya, as late as November 1941 General Wavell wrote to another general that the Japanese had a very poor chance of attacking the peninsula and there was not much prospect of an attempt. To Brooke-Popham he reassured him that he should easily be able to deal with any Japanese attack and he was sure they would ‘get it in the neck’ if they tried.

 

The swift taking of Hong Kong, the almost as swift thrust into the Malayan peninsula and the inevitable collapse of the Philippines in December alarmed the Australian political leaders. The Japanese were clearly not the inferior pushovers that they and their British counterparts had been led to believe. Added to that, the British leadership, once more, did not seem to grasp the gravity of the situation. They did not seem to appreciate that they only had a few weeks, at most, to save their position, such was the speed of movement and sheer superiority of Japanese land, sea and air forces. To the Australians, the British were more concerned with the Libyan campaign, to which they seemed to give greater importance, than with what was going on in the Far East. Churchill had given his approval to the Australian forces being sent to the Middle East rather than Malaya or Singapore because he felt they were not needed there. The fleet would protect Singapore and it was an impregnable fortress. Well, by early December Britain’s newest battleship and a battle cruiser, pride of the Royal Navy, were lying on the bed of the South China sea to the east of Malaya (an aircraft carrier had also been promised for the Far East, but it had run aground in Jamaica during a training cruise and no other carrier could be spared). A fleet was not going to save Singapore – not only was there no fleet to speak of, but the enemy was storming down from the north, inland.

 

Stung by various reports he had seen from the Australian commander in Malaya, General Gordon Bennett, the Chief of Staff General Vernon Sturdee and Vivian Bowden, the Australian Representative in Singapore, John Curtin, now the Prime Minister, sent a cable on 25th December to Churchill and Roosevelt, who were meeting in Washington:

 

Fall of Singapore would mean isolation of Philippines, fall of Netherlands East Indies and attempt to smother all other bases. This would also sever our communications between Indian and Pacific Oceans in this region. The setback would be as serious to United States interests as to our own.

 

Reinforcements earmarked by United Kingdom Government for Singapore seem to us to be utterly inadequate in relation to aircraft particularly fighters …

 

It is in your power to meet situation. Should United States desire we would gladly accept United States command in Pacific Ocean area. President has said Australia will be base of utmost importance but in order that it shall remain a base Singapore must be reinforced. In spite of our great difficulties we are sending further reinforcements to Malaya. Please consider this of greatest urgency.

 

[Wigmore, Lionel, Australia in the War of 1939-1945. Series 1 – Army. Volume IV: The Japanese Thrust, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1957, p.182]

 

Churchill’s response to this was to describe Singapore as a fortress which would be defended ‘with the utmost tenacity’. Furthermore, the Americans would send troops and aircraft there if the Philippines fell, and they would also send troops to Australia.

 

Exasperated, Curtin published an article in The Herald, a Melbourne newspaper, to warn the Australian public of how critical the situation was:

 

… the war with Japan is not a phase of the struggle with the Axis Powers, but is a new war… we take the view that, while the determination of military policy is the Soviet’s business, we should be able to look forward with reason to aid from Russia against Japan. We look for a solid and impregnable barrier of democracies against the three Axis powers and we refuse to accept the dictum that the Pacific struggle must be treated as a subordinate segment of the general conflict … The Australian Government, therefore, regards the Pacific struggle as primarily one in which the United States and Australia must have the fullest say in the direction of the democracies’ fighting plan. Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom. We know the problems that the United Kingdom faces … But we know, too, that Australia can go and Britain can still hold on. We are, therefore, determined that Australia shall not go, and shall exert all our energies towards the shaping of a plan, with the United States as its keystone, which will give to our country some confidence of being able to hold out until the tide of battle swings against the enemy.

 

[The Herald, 27th December 1941, p.10]

 

This angered Churchill immensely. But whether it was due to this public appeal or Curtin’s cables or if it was for some other reason, swift action and a plan of the sort that Curtin was urging all of a sudden started to take shape. The next day Roosevelt proposed a new command structure for the Pacific, with British, American and Dutch forces to be under a single commander. After discussion with his chiefs of staff, he proposed General Wavell for the job. The British resisted, because it was likely that this theatre of the war was going to end in disaster, and they did not want a British general to take the responsibility. However, the Americans were insistent. Curtin then fought for Australia’s representation on a controlling body that was to be set up and from which Wavell would receive his orders, to be called the Combined Chiefs of Staff. After all, it was only logical and sensible that the country should be represented, given its proximity to the conflict and its recognised importance going forward as a base to take the fight to Japan. Also, it already had troops that were fighting in Malaya, Ambon and Timor and there were talks about sending their forces in the Middle East over to the Pacific theatre. Perhaps it was the price he had to pay for his letter to the Australian people, but Curtin was rebuffed, and Australia was refused any representation on the Pacific war controlling body that would be responsible to Roosevelt and Churchill. It would be run by chiefs of staff in Washington and London, thousands of miles from the conflict, with no capacity for on-the-spot appreciation of events or rapid, informed decision making.

 

Over the new year period frantic discussions took place in London on the need to substantially reinforce Singapore and Malaya. All too late of course. The primary aim would continue to be the defeat of Germany, but the defence of Singapore and maintenance of Indian Ocean communications was agreed to be second in importance only to the security of the United Kingdom. It was decided that the course of the Libyan campaign should not interfere with raising and sending whatever reinforcements were required to see off the Japanese. This was thought to require, at least, two divisions in each of Malaya, Burma, and the Netherlands East Indies, and in addition bomber and fighter squadrons. Where were they to come from? They needed to be found and sent to the Pacific urgently. How contrasting these decisions and this sudden urgency were with Churchill’s earlier opinion of the Far East’s relative importance.

 

The Australian government’s consent was sought to contribute to these reinforcements, and on 5th January its Advisory War Council and War Cabinet agreed to send two of the three I Australian Corps Divisions, the 6th and 7th, and the Corps HQ from the Middle East to the Far East. However, such was the size of the force – 60,000 troops plus their equipment – and the demand on shipping, that it could not feasibly be sent before early February.

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