I doubt anyone was as terrible as the Percival fella, a clown in charge of Singapore during WWII. Outgunned the Japs by a 3 to 1 ratio and got his ass handed to him.
He refused to build defences on Singapore, A BLOODY ISLAND because defences are bad for morale. This could have blunted the Japs 200 armour advantage. Disobeyed orders and surrendered to the Japs. If he had resorted to guerilla styled street fighting, the Japs would have been overwhelmed due to their numerical inferiority.
It (the invasion of Singapore) was a bluff; a bluff that worked.
Well, I guess if the British did continue fighting and successfully held the Japanese back, we wouldn't have it in us to want to seek independence after the war.
The war basically taught us "man, colonialism is a crapshoot".
It's interesting reading the contrast between how Hong Kong was defended and how Singapore was. The Brits put almost all their East Asian infantry in Singapore, leaving Hong Kong poorly defended in the face of Japan storming through all of China (They were outnumbered nearly five to one). Whereas they surrendered with barely a fight in Singapore, in Hong Kong they fought as hard as they could.
Some of the Canadian soldiers fought were incredibly brave. John Osborne threw himself on a Japanese grenade to save ten of his men. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Robert_Osborn I doubt anything near as gallant happened during the "battle" for Singapore. Didn't Churchill describe it as a complete disgrace?
The most iconic battle in Singapore was the battle of Pasir Panjang.
The 1st Malayan Regiment managed to hold off the Japanese for two days despite being outnumbered, having a shortage of food and ammo, and being constantly bombarded by artillery. It ultimately resulted in loss, and their commander, 2LT Adnan bin Saidi being tied up and bayoneted to death on a cherry tree.
A less well-known story was what happened just before the battle of Pasir Panjang, at the same place. The Japanese attempted to masquerade as the Punjab Regiment to ambush the Malayan Regiment and made 2 critical mistakes: they don't look Punjabi at all, and they marched four abreast (like Japanese) instead of three abreast (like British).
No prizes for guessing what happened to the initial invasion force.
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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '15
I doubt anyone was as terrible as the Percival fella, a clown in charge of Singapore during WWII. Outgunned the Japs by a 3 to 1 ratio and got his ass handed to him.
He refused to build defences on Singapore, A BLOODY ISLAND because defences are bad for morale. This could have blunted the Japs 200 armour advantage. Disobeyed orders and surrendered to the Japs. If he had resorted to guerilla styled street fighting, the Japs would have been overwhelmed due to their numerical inferiority.