The Fall of Singapore, 1942

A subject of interest to me. I will post my thoughts on this in due course but am interested in the international view of this subject?

When 30,000 troops forced more than 100,000 troops to surrender, it's not a quality factor of individual troops but leadership.

Edited by snowybeagle - 20-Aug-2006 at 23:16

Singapore was undefendable and should have been given up. 100,000 plus Empire troops lost for no reason at all, troops who could have kept Burma safe.

Correction: The british didn't have tanks. NONE. ZILT . ABSOLUTELY NONE AT ALL. not even a light tank. All they got were 750 british soldiers, few hundred malay or indian regiment troops, and 300 planes. at least 200 or so chinese volunteers who carried blades and rushed to battle with the japanese. Japanese had 6000 troops, 300 tanks and 600 planes. I'm not sure if this is accurate but I think it should be around there. By the way, The british were not only unprepared for battle, but they thought japanese were less superior. I saw a old documentary depicting the fall of singapore. The british were showing a movie about the japanese. It showed that the japaneses IJN troops were not even traine to load a gun let alone shoot. But of course, They did not expect Yamash ita to be so well eqquiped for battle.

General in command of Singapore's defence was A.E. percival. He thought that the japanese would come by sea as the malayan forests up north were too thick for troops, let alone tanks to pass through. so he and his colleagues decided to bring up the big guns south of the island in sentosa, and west, facing the USA. They assumed the japanese were coming from the sea. But they didn't. They came from the north by bicycles...<----LOL. Evil tactic, smart eh?

Singapore was defendable. It was defendable. The battle could carry on. Both sides still could manage on and carry on. Especially the British. They had enough ammo but Yamash ita created some kind of scene. He made the japanese side seem as if they had more resources. street fighting and hand to hand fighting coud have continued after the Japanese or the British lost their ammo.

I asked one of my american friends online and he said his granpapa died in singapore. I'm not sure if there were even any americans at all, but here are some well known resistors that even the little kids here know all about.

Lt. Adnan Bin Saidi. Lim Bo Seng. Find out about them if you wanna know more about the fall of singaporeand the occupation of singapore. These two people have made great contributions. AND ARE YOU ABSOLUTELY SURE THAT 100,000 troops were wasted because of singapore? How can that be?? How can 100,000 troops get to singapore or even be involved in defending it. It would take too long. Singapore is only an island! and it's population then was very little compared to now.

SINGAPORE COULD HAVE BEEN SAVED. If only more reinforcements came to assist the volunteers and British/indian/malay/australian soldiers. But even so, It could have been done without reinforcements. By the way, the australians were counted into the 750 british soldiers.

MINORITY OVER MAJORITY, plus the defenders had more artillery power. The british had huge guns capable of shooting things 20 km away. Japanese, however had no heavy tanks. They had mainly light tanks or one man tanks armed with machine guns or mini cannons. Only these light tanks could trek past vast forests. DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE JAPANESE, let alone the British. They had created and invented the mitsubishi zero and the AIchiVAL.

As for warships, the british had only two due to the crisis in europe. They only sent two. The Prince of wales and the repulse. They were the only two in the entire waters surrounding southeast asia. due to some misguided information, they were bombed at some area by Japanese bombers, while trying to make the Japanese believe that the British had brought their all powerful navy to save singapore.




Edited by XueKaiYuan - 21-Aug-2006 at 09:22

I recalled reading from Geoffrey Regan's book on Military Blunders, that Percival refused to implement additional precautions such as stocking up on essential supplies like water, building defence lines etc.

When pressed for the reason, Percival could only say he thought it'd be bad for morale.

Originally posted by Sparten I have actually read 130,000 in some places. That however might have been everyone, from the troops, to local milita, to civilian administration.

lol, 130,000 is too much.....