In our last episode
covering Burma, we left General Stilwell as he continued to plan his desired Burma
offensive in October. After negotiations with the Chinese successfully concluded,
Stilwell’s Pacific Front offensive was approved on the basis that the Allies were to provide at
least three battleships and six aircraft carriers, obtain control of the air and dominate the China
and Java Seas and recapture the Andaman Islands to cover an amphibious landing on Rangoon.
Yet upon meeting with General Wavell, the British informed him that there wasn’t sufficient
infrastructure in the Assam border to support such an offensive yet, and that he was working
on a more modest operation against Northern Arakan, the Chin Hills and the Upper Chindwin.
Pressured by Washington, however, Wavell had to give his "general agreement with it as a basis
for planning", as his limited operations could be a stepping stone for Stilwell’s general offensive.
After this, Stilwell would finally present to Chiang Kai-Shek a description of Wavell’s plans
and the preparations the Chinese would have to make if their share in the Burma campaign was to
be a success. The Generalissimo agreed with the plan but stressed his desire to see an Allied
naval and air control of the Bay of Bengal, something that Stilwell promised would happen,
he himself believing it possible. Thus, Stilwell’s Pacific Front offensive officially
became known as Operation Anakim, while Wavell’s amphibious attack towards Akyab
became Operation Cannibal and his advance across the Chindwin River became Operation Ravenous .
Since the fall of Burma, however, we must say we’ve been mainly covering how new
developments unfolded for General Stilwell and the Sino-American cooperation; but it’s also important
to see what the British were doing at the same time. When General Slim arrived with his Burma
Corps back in India, he was appallingly met with harsh and barbed criticism about the retreat from
Burma, specially from Lieutenant-General Noel Irwin of the 4th Corps . The Burma veterans
were also awfully received by Iriwin’s command, who told them to bivouac in the open mud without
supplies or treatment to their tropical diseases for three days until they finally reached Ranchi.
It didn’t help that India itself was in a complete crisis and that Japanese bombing
raids reached as far as Imphal. On May 20, Burma Corps was finally disbanded and Slim took over
command of the newly-formed 15th Corps in defense of the Bay of Bengal region . At the same time,
the command structure of the Indian Army had been reorganized into three new armies , with
Irwin assuming command of the Eastern Army in July. At this point, India was also amidst a
period of serious rioting by nationalists who wanted their independence from British rule,
led by the notorious Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. There could be no thought of offensive
action in Burma with such a grave situation in the home base, thus forcing General Wavell to
deploy no fewer than 57 infantry battalions in the worst hotspots . It is estimated that
the entire war against Japan in South-East Asia was put back a good two months by the troubles.
But there was also another large group of Indian nationalists aiding more directly the Japanese
Empire. With the fall of Singapore, tens of thousands of Indian troops had been captured by
the Japanese, with many nationalists among them. Major Fujiwara Iwaichi, an intelligence officer,
took advantage of this and helped individuals like Captain Mohan Singh and Rash Behari Bose
create the anti-British Indian National Army out of these discontented prisoners. The First INA
would then go on to operate espionage in India and to encourage the defection of many Indian soldiers
while around 40000 men were trained to fight at the Burma front by Colonel Iwakuro Hideo . In the
end, however, tensions between the Indian and Japanese commands would see the invaders crack
down on the INA leadership, such as the arrestment of Mohan Singh, so many Indian soldiers would
choose to revert to their Prisoner of War status . Between December 1942 and February 1943, Rash
Behari Bose would finally fail to keep the First INA united and it would cease to exist, for now.
Looking back at India, the civil unrest that it was experiencing had seriously affected the troops
morale and esprit de corps, with a particular unwillingness on the soldiers’ part to go on
parade. Furthermore, Wavell knew that the Indian Army had been trained to fight in the open country
of Iraq and the Western Desert and had performed miserably both in the jungles of Malaya and Burma,
thus he considered that the Indians were only partly trained. It’s worth mentioning that the
infantry soldiers were usually demoralized by the fact that the Japanese ruled the skies,
something that actually shows a clear lack of proper training.
As he believed that Japanese soldiers were superior to the British and Indian troops in
tactical skill and fighting spirit, Wavell decided to launch a program of jungle training , trying
to teach his troops how to exploit the lack of visibility on the ground and from the air to their
advantage, just like the Japanese had done before. Even while Slim’s Burma Corps was retreating into
India, Wavell was also being pressured to go on the offensive once the monsoon season ended
steadily, with the objective of both restoring the Indian Army’s shaken morale and prestige,
and denying the Japanese the chance to launch an invasion of Eastern India. Because of its short
distance and theoretically adequate lines of communication from the front, the airfields in
Akyab and northern Arakan were selected as the objectives for this first counterattack, with
Wavell planning to launch an amphibious invasion of this area supported by an overland diversion
that intended to draw away its defenders. Yet as the IJN fully controlled the Bay of Bengal;
the amphibious 29th British Brigade was still fighting in Madagascar; and the necessary landing
craft wasn’t available, Wavell had to change his original plans for Operation Cannibal in October.
Instead of the planned amphibious invasion, the 14th Indian Division of Major-General Wilfrid
Lewis Lloyd was to advance along the Arakan coast to Foul Point, where they would be reinforced by
the 6th British Brigade to launch an assault on Akyab across the Mayu River. Lloyd was also
ordered to capture the Rathedaung village to prevent the Japanese from using this river.
As the planning for the Arakan offensive advanced, Irwin promptly decided to redeploy Slim’s 15th
Corps at Ranchi to raise fresh divisions and train these units in jungle combat, while Irwin
himself assumed personal command of the 14th and 26th Indian Divisions for the coming offensive.
This was such a clumsy and convoluted command arrangement that it can only be
explained by Irwin’s desire to keep Slim away from an important operational role.
A compulsive micromanager, Irwin would thus personally deal at the same time with the domestic
insurgencies in Northern India, the administrative duties of his army from Calcutta to Fort Hertz and
the battalion-level control of the First Arakan Campaign. Truly, a recipe for disaster. Meanwhile,
General Iida’s 15th Army was studying plans for an advance into India, but the necessary troops
were not available and overland communications did not seem able to support an offensive.
Instead, Iida was ordered to stabilize the region and make it self-supporting while
at the same time maintaining pressure against the Chinese from Burma, French Indochina and Thailand.
It’s important to note that the Chinese intervention in the Invasion of Burma
had effectively avoided an unmitigated catastrophe for the British: if the 100000
soldiers of Stilwell’s CEF hadn’t appeared, it’s likely that the Burma Corps would have been
annihilated, and as a consequence, the Japanese could have penetrated India as far as Calcutta
without facing any meaningful opposition. This, coupled with the civil insurrection
that India was developing, could have brought a complete collapse to British rule in India.
In any case, after the evacuation of Burma, the mere presence of the Chinese in Yunnan was enough
to dissuade the Japanese from invading India, as their eastern flank would have been exposed.
By the end of August, however, Iida was finally ordered to prepare to occupy northeast Assam
and the Chittagong area and to cut off the air supply line to China through the Hump.
In compliance, Iida developed a plan in September which called for the 33rd and 55th Divisions to
advance to the line Silchar-Dimapur in Assam while the 18th Division captured Golaghat and advanced
up the Hukawng Valley to occupy Ledo and Tinsukia, thus effectively destroying the airline to China.
Yet Lieutenant-General Mutaguchi Renya of the 18th Division, along with General Sakurai of the 33rd,
strongly complained about the geographic and logistical obstacles of the Chin Hills, eventually
forcing Iida to drop his plan by December 23 and to adopt a defensive stance in Burma.
In the meantime, the Japanese would embark on the construction of a rail line connecting
the Burmese and Thai rail systems, for which they would forcefully employ more than 60000
Allied prisoners of war and 260000 Burmese natives. Treating them with their usual
ruthlessness, tens of thousands of victims would horrifyingly die while constructing this Death
Railway. It is said that for every mile completed, 325 men died . Looking back at Arakan, the 33rd
Division counted with around 3000 men of the 213th Regiment in the area of North Arakan by September.
Around that time, the 14th Indian Division was first ordered to move south of Chittagong to
gain contact with the Japanese, sending forward the 47th Indian Brigade and leaving its 55th
Indian Brigade to guard the Chittagong area. Its mission was for the brigades of the 14th
Division to reach their designated jumping-off positions around Foul Point by December 1.
To scout the movements of Japanese troops in the area, the British employed the V Force,
a guerrilla “stay-behind” force that was formed to harass the Japanese lines of communication
with ambushes and sabotage had they invaded India by late 1942 . In October, as V Force reported
the area clear of Japanese presence, General Lloyd sent a small detachment into Maungdaw,
then sending some patrols into Buthidaung by October 15. This sparked a quick Japanese
response, as the 2nd Battalion of the 213th Regiment was immediately sent to Buthidaung,
successfully landing on October 24 and forcing the British to retreat back to Cox Bazar.
Lloyd then used the month of November to bring forward the
123rd Indian Brigade so that he could attack the Maungdaw-Buthidaung line on December 2,
where the 2nd Battalion had been digging strong defensive positions for the last fifty days.
At the same time, the Allied air forces allocated a substantial amount of aircraft to support the
Arakan offensive, while the small 2000th Flotilla was assigned to support the amphibious assault.
In the end, however, the movement of the British troops would be slower than expected due to
the difficult physical geography and the bad British logistics. During this time, Colonel
Miyawaki Kosuke would order his 2nd Battalion to evacuate the Maungdaw-Buthidaung line to join the
main body of the force near the tip of the Mayu peninsula in a well-executed tactical withdrawal.
On December 16, Lloyd’s forces finally started their attack, unoposeddly reoccupying Maungdaw
and Buthidaung one day later. From there, the 47th and 123rd Brigades
would advance east of the Mayu River towards Rathedaung and down the coast to Foul Point.
At this point, as Miyawaki decided to send his 2nd Battalion to prepare defensive positions at
Rathedaung and his 1st Battalion to do the same at Donbaik, General Iida had ordered
the 55th Division of Lieutenant-General Koga Takeshi to reinforce the defense of Arakan.
By December 28, the 2nd Battalion successfully forestalled the 123rd Brigade and reoccupied
Rathedaung, while the 47th Brigade had advanced up to Indin. In the next couple of days,
the British would unsuccessfully attempt to push back the defenders at Rathedaung and Donbaik,
suffering many casualties at the hands of the enemy automatic fire and snipers even
despite the fact that they enjoyed increasing air support for the first time in the Burma campaign.
On January 10, 1943, Generals Wavell and Irwin visited the front, where Lloyd asked them to
give him some tanks of Slim’s 50th Indian Tank Brigade to break through the Japanese bunkers.
Trying to keep Slim as far away as possible from the campaign,
Irwin only assigned eight Valentine tanks to the Donbaik front, itself a natural anti-tank
position due it being situated alongside a chaung tidal creek . Lloyd would continue to throw all
he had against the entrenched enemy throughout January, but each time the outcome was the same:
a disappointing defeat and a humiliating massive amount of casualties. By the end of January,
the 55th Brigade, reinforced with the eight Valentine tanks, was sent to relieve the battered
47th Brigade as a result. On February 1, it too would launch a frontal assault against Donbaik’s
chaung dugouts, yet some tanks would become stuck in ditches while others would be knocked out by
Japanese anti-tank guns and shellfire, with the brigade’s attack subsequently faltering.
Two days later, the 123rd Brigade launched a renewed attack against Rathedaung, and despite
enjoying an initial success and capturing some outlying positions, the Indians would at last be
defeated, suffering such heavy casualties that the brigade would be forced to withdraw back to
Buthidaung. Meanwhile, by the start of March, Miyawaki’s 3rd Battalion was brought forward
from the valley of the Kaladan River, where it had defeated V Force as the British guerrillas
attempted to threaten the Japanese lines of communication; and Lloyd had deployed the 55th and
47th Brigades east of the Mayu River to continue with the pressure on Rathedaung, as Irwin had sent
the well-trained 6th British Brigade to take over the Donbaik front. In the first week of March,
however, the 3rd Battalion of the 213th Regiment crossed the Mayu River and attacked the worn 55th
Brigade, forcing the Indians to retreat and leaving the 47th Brigade isolated to the north
of Rathedaung. Looking at New Guinea, we can find many similarities between the Japanese defense of
Buna-Gona and Arakan. Both the Australians and Americans were suffering enormous losses
against the entrenched enemy, but they were now beginning to learn how to defeat them, and thus
were dispelling the myth of Japanese superiority. The British, however, were again showing such an
abysmal performance that could only strengthen the myth and had the consequence that the Indian
troops believed that the Japanese soldiers were some sort of supermen. We will continue to cover
the First Arakan Campaign and other developments in the CBI theater in the future; but next week,
we’ll return to the Buna area to cover the renewed Allied offensive against the tenacious Japanese
defenders, so make sure you are subscribed and have pressed the bell button to see them. Please,
consider liking, commenting, and sharing - it helps immensely. Our videos would be impossible
without our kind patrons and youtube channel members, whose ranks you can join via the links
in the description to know our schedule, get early access to our videos, access our discord,
and much more. This is the Kings and Generals channel, and we will catch you on the next one.