In the last couple of weeks, we’ve been covering some special topics about the Pacific War
since there wasn’t much happening during this time. But today, we come
back for the main series with an episode looking forward towards the Indian Ocean.
After the fall of the Dutch East Indies, Malaya, Singapore, Manila and Rangoon,
the Japanese Empire had achieved all of its initial objectives for the start of the war.
Now, they seek to probe the strength of the Allies outside of the Pacific with a deadly raid aimed
towards the island of Ceylon and the coast of India. Brace yourselves as we plunge into the
Indian Ocean Raid and other Japanese offensives in the waters south of the Indian subcontinent.
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This episode first takes us back to the general situation in Burma, where the Japanese invaders
were clashing with Chinese and British defenders along the Burma Road. On March 19,
landing operations were commenced for the arrival of the 56th and 18th Divisions at Rangoon,
hoping to reinforce General Iida’s 15th Army in its conquest of Burma.
The operation would be conducted using 134 transports in four subsequent convoys,
supported by the main strength of Admiral Ozawa’s fleet in the waters south of Burma, with the
first convoy arriving at Rangoon on March 24 and the last one arriving at the port on April 28.
Along with the Japanese troops also were transported large quantities of ammunition
and materiel, which would prove to be of tremendous assistance for the Burma Operation.
Meanwhile, it was planned to further support this operation with a naval invasion of the
Andaman Islands, to be carried out by the Hayashi Unit and a detachment of navy units, under the
command of Captain Kawasaki Harumi. The invaders departed Penang Island on March 20, escorted by
the 3rd Squadron of Rear-Admiral Hashimoto Shintaro and heading towards Port Blair, the
main British base on the Andaman Islands. There, the defenders had placed a Gurkha detachment of
the 16th Indian Brigade,but it got recalled after the fall of Rangoon and when the British realized
Port Blair was impossible to defend, so there was only a small 300-men strong Sikh militia there.
On March 23, Kawasaki achieved a surprise landing on Port Blair, Ross Island and the western coast
of Snake Island. Immediately, the Port Blair garrison surrendered after destroying the base’s
facilities and these locations were then occupied. With their main objective completed,
orders were issued to mop up the remaining enemy presence in the island.
On March 24, the Hayashi Unit was sent to Havelock Island, but they found no trace of enemy presence,
so the Japanese left the island alone. Other units were also sent to Port Cornwallis, Stewart Sound
and the Elphinstone and Colebrooke Islands, completing the mopping-up of these locations
by March 27 and successfully placing the Andaman Islands under firm Japanese control.
The subsequent Japanese occupation would be accompanied by many war crimes and atrocities,
including the arrest and torture in the Cellular Jail of more than 900 people . In the meantime,
after the successful Bombing of Darwin and the effective role of the Kido Butai south of Java,
Admiral Yamamoto had been planning to conduct a surprise attack operation on the island of Ceylon
since February 14, aiming to cause long-term damage over the island’s facilities,
to harm the relationship between Britain and India, and to destroy the British fleet at Ceylon.
Furthermore, Ozawa was also planning to conduct a raid over the Bay of Bengal with the objective
of threatening the Allied supply route from the Indian Ocean to Calcutta while also dissuading
the British from counter-attacking against the Andaman Islands. Thus, Operation C was scheduled
to start on April 1, with the inclusion of the 5th Carrier Division back into the Kido Butai.
Yet, as we’ve previously covered, March would also see air raids over Minami Torishima and
Wake Island that would leave Tokyo concerned about the security of the Home Islands,
so the operation was postponed until April 5. In the meantime, Admiral Takahashi had also
planned to conduct an invasion of Christmas Island, aiming to secure its valuable rock
phosphate resources. A small fleet under Rear-Admiral Hara Kenzaburo was appointed
to carry out Operation X, mainly consisting of three light cruisers and two destroyers.
They were to transport a navy unit of around 850 men to land on Christmas Island and capture
its phosphate facilities. On the other side, the British had placed Vice-Admiral James Somerville
in charge of the Eastern Fleet , who counted with three aircraft carriers, five battleships, seven
cruisers, sixteen destroyers and seven submarines at the naval base of Trincomalee, a sizable force
considering the commitment of the Royal Navy to the Atlantic and Mediterranean theaters. This port
was inadequate, vulnerable and easy to spy for the Japanese, so Sommerset immediately decided to
move to Port T, an isolated and secret island base on the Addu Atoll . The admiral also divided his
fleet in two groups, with a faster Force A built around the carriers Formidable and Indomitable
as well as the modernized flagship battleship Warspite, and with a slower Force B formed by
the old carrier Hermes and four unmodernized Revenge-class battleships as its core.
On paper, the Eastern Fleet was very sizable, but as we can see, the vessels in Force B were vastly
outdated, with ship and air crews were deficient in training, so the British were concerned
about their real strength in the Indian Ocean. After the collapse of the ABDACOM, the Allies
had also agreed on a new division of strategic responsibility, with the US assuming the command
of the whole Pacific theater and the UK assuming the control of operations in the Indian Ocean and
the Middle East, so the British were not expecting to receive any reinforcements from the Americans.
Furthermore, British code-breakers had successfully gathered intelligence on the
planned Japanese air raid, causing Somerville to be alert for an incoming attack. But the
British intelligence was in fact old and still had April 1 as the day for the launch of Operation C,
also including an inaccurate assessment of the strength of the Japanese force , so Somerville
was expecting to fight a smaller force on the incorrect date. For the defense of Ceylon, the RAF
further reinforced the island with 136 aircraft to counter the expected carrier-borne air attack.
And in Christmas Island, there was a small garrison of 32 Indian troops under
Captain Williams, whose main defense was a 6 inches gun that was mounted on the beach.
Back on March 11, a group of Punjabi soldiers had actually mutinied against British rule,
killing Williams and imprisoning most of the European inhabitants.
Allegedly, they were incensed to do so thanks to Japanese propaganda concerning the liberation of
India, but were not aware of the incoming invasion that was going to take place.
On March 26, the same day that Somerville arrived at Ceylon, Operation C was put in motion and the
strong Carrier Task Force of Admiral Nagumo departed Staring Bay towards the Indian Ocean.
Three days later, the Christmas Island invasion force sailed from Bantam Bay without encountering
any enemy and reached a point north of the Flying Fish Cove anchorage by early morning on March 31.
The invaders immediately detected the presence of an American submarine, so
they launched their aircraft to attack the enemy battery and support the assault on the Seawolf.
Unfortunately for them, the submarine managed to escape, but at least the invaders were received
with white flags from the Indian mutineers. Japanese forces were then allowed to land,
quickly seizing the island, its battery and its phosphate facilities. Funny enough, it seems the
mutineers were planning to execute the Chinese and Malay inhabitants, and the Japanese got there just
in time to save them, although this was to put them to work for them instead . Around 09:50,
however, the Seawolf returned and fired four torpedoes against the cruiser Naka.
All of these shots missed, and the submarine got to escape again, although the Japanese thought
they had sunk her with depth charges. But on the following morning, the Seawolf returned and this
time shot three torpedoes against the cruiser Natori, failing to hit her as well. In the
evening, the submarine emerged for a final time and shot her last two torpedoes against the Nara,
this time hitting her and causing enough damage to force her to return to Japan for repairs.
As before, the Seawolf managed to escape for good, although the Japanese fleet would depth charge the
US submarine for over nine hours. Meanwhile, Somerville sailed on March 30 and deployed his
fleet to patrol in an area 160km south of Ceylon, where the Japanese were expected to approach. Due
to his bad intelligence, he had his forces on full alert, but his patrols had so far sighted nothing.
During the next two days, Somerville swept east by night and west by day, still awaiting reports
from the reconnaissance aircraft, yet there was no clue of the Japanese fleet. In the meantime,
Ozawa’s strike force also departed Mergui on April 1, heading towards the Bay of Bengal. On
the evening of April 2, Somerville finally decided to return to Port T with his fleet to refuel,
with no sign of a Japanese carrier-borne attack on the horizon. The cruisers Cornwall and
Dorsetshire were sent to Colombo, however, and the carrier Hermes was sent with the destroyer
Vampire to Trincomalee to prepare for an attack on Madagascar. Somerville’s fleet finally arrived at
the Addu Atoll on April 4, the same day that the Carrier Task Force was discovered by a British PBY
580 km southeast of Ceylon. In response, Nagumo rapidly launched 18 fighters that shot down the
PBY, but not before the British were alerted of the incoming attack by a pilot who reported
the sighting, but not the size of the fleet. The report came at an unlucky moment for Somerville,
who had to leave behind Force B and advance as fast as possible with Force A,
still thinking that he was going to face a manageable force. Commander-in-Chief, Ceylon,
Geoffrey Layton also brought back the island’s defenses to full alert and prepared to face the
brunt of the carrier-borne assault. He also sent Dorsetshire and Cornwall south to meet
with Somerville and the Hermes northeast to escape with the other ships on the Trincomalee harbor.
At dawn on April 5, Easter Sunday, Nagumo launched his reconnaissance planes to scout
to the west of his position, only finding an enemy PBY, which was immediately taken down.
Shortly after 06:00, the Japanese admiral finally sent 36 A6M Type-0 fighters, 53 B5N
torpedo bombers and 38 D3A Type-99 bombers, which rapidly got to the air over Colombo.
At 10:45, Commander Fuchida sent the order to commence the attack and a fierce battle
immediately broke out between the Japanese fighters and the 36 Hurricanes and 6 Fulmars that
came to meet them. After 30 minutes of engagement, 16 Hurricanes and 4 Fulmars had been brought down
to the loss of only 7 Japanese planes , with a further 6 Swordfishs getting shot down
after arriving from Trincomalee. Meanwhile, the Japanese bombers dropped their deadly load into
the Ratmalana airbase, tankers, merchantmen and other targets, but could only sink three vessels
and cause some minor damage thanks to Layton’s precautions. By 13:25,
the Japanese planes had returned to their carriers, but Nagumo’s reconnaissance planes
had also discovered Dorsetshire and Cornwall fleeing towards the southwest, so the admiral
suspended a second assault over Colombo to instead attack the two British cruisers. On the afternoon,
18 fighters and 54 bombers skillfully fell upon the Dorsetshire and the Cornwall
and carried out a surprise bombing over them. Both cruisers quickly received many hits, and then sank
in a few minutes, with the British losing some 424 sailors but later rescuing a total of 1122 lives.
Once again, Nagumo’s carrier aircraft had shown how deadly they were, with Churchill later writing
that “nothing like this had been seen in the Mediterranean in all their conflicts with the
German and Italian Air Forces” . Cautious, the Japanese admiral now judged that in view of the
movement of the British cruisers, enemy aircraft must be deployed in the area, so he decided to
pull back in a southeastern direction to then sail north and assault the port of Trincomalee,
while his reconnaissance planes searched for the bulk of the Eastern Fleet.
In the meantime, Somerville feared that the invaders would attack Port T next,
so he returned back to the Addu Atoll on April 6 after unsuccessfully looking for the enemy force.
And with the Easter Sunday Raid concluded, Ozawa then decided to commence his operations on the
Bay of Bengal, with planes from the Ryujo conducting reconnaissance over the area.
The subsequent airborne-attacks only got to sink two merchant vessels , so Ozawa
recognized the necessity of getting closer to the shore. By April 6, he finally divided his
forces into three units , launching several air attacks against shipping in the Bay of Bengal.
Ozawa’s raid was tremendously successful, sinking 21 vessels with an approximate tonnage of 137000
tons and causing severe damage on other ships and facilities without a single loss. On April 7,
the three units rendezvoused and then started their way back to the Andaman Islands,
reaching the Ten Degree Channel the following day and getting to Singapore by April 11.
On April 8, after finding no trace of the Eastern Fleet, Nagumo prepared to attack Trincomalee. Just
as his previous attack on Colombo, his force was discovered by a PBY and the British were alerted.
At dawn on the next day, the attack commenced with the lift off of 91 bombers and 38 Zeroes,
and the order of Commander Fuchida to start the assault at 10:20. The bombers immediately rained
fire upon the port, while the Zeroes engaged with 17 Hurricanes and 6 Fulmars. In result,
ships in the harbor suffered serious damage along with other facilities in the port, and the British
also suffered the loss of 10 aircraft , while they could only shoot down three Zeroes. Furthermore,
while the carrier Hermes was 105 km away, nine Blenheims were launched from Colombo to
counterattack against the Japanese. Catching the invaders with surprise, the bombers unloaded their
bombs over the Akagi, but they missed their target and were then engaged by the patrolling Zeroes.
In the ensuing struggle, the Japanese fighters shot down five of the bombers while also losing
one themselves . But Nagumo had now discovered the position of the Hermes, and so he sent 85
D3A bombers and 9 Zeroes to destroy the British carrier. Before noon, the Japanese had carried out
their dive bombings and the Hermes was sunk along with its escort, the Vampire . Without a break,
the bombers then attacked nearby ships and four more vessels were sunk to the loss of
only four bombers and a Zero. With his attack on Trincomalee over, Nagumo then turned to the east,
getting to the Makassar Strait by April 13. Thus, the Indian Ocean Raid was over. It left
the British feeling insecure, with Somerville sending Force B to East Africa since he thought
these older vessels didn’t stand a chance against the superior Japanese firepower.
But the Japanese didn’t achieve their objective of destroying the Eastern Fleet either, and with
their focus back on the Pacific, they would not exploit their victory in the Indian Ocean. Next
week, however, we turn back to the Philippines, where the assault on Bataan resumes and Homma
finally proves his worth, so make sure you are subscribed and have pressed the bell button to
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