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The Burma Campaign was a campaign in the South-East Asian Theatre of World War II.
See the South-East Asian Theatre and the Pacific War for a details on the initial Japanese successes including the fall of Hong Kong and Singapore.
In Burma, the Japanese attacked shortly after the outbreak of war. However, they did not begin to make real progress until Malaya and Singapore had fallen. After that, they could transfer large numbers of aircraft to the Burma front to overwhelm the Allied forces.
The first Japanese attacks were aimed at taking Rangoon. Rangoon was the major port in Burma, and with it, the Allies had many advantages of supply. It had at first been defended relatively successfully, with the weak RAF forces reinforced by a squadron of the famous American Volunteer Group, better known as the Flying Tigers. However, as the Japanese attack developed, the amount of warning the Rangoon airfields could get of attack decreased, and thus they became more and more untenable.
By the start of March, Japanese forces had cut the British forces in two. Rangoon was evacuated and the port demolished. Its garrison then broke through the Japanese lines thanks to an error on the part of the Japanese commander. The British commander in Burma, Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Hutton was removed from command shortly before Rangoon fell. He was replaced by Sir Harold Alexander
With the fall of Rangoon, a British evacuation of Burma became inevitable. Supplies could not be moved to maintain fighting forces in Burma on a large scale, since the ground communications were dreadful, sea communications risky in the extreme (along with the fact that there was only one other port of any size in Burma besides Rangoon) and air communications out of the question due to lack of transport aircraft.
Besides the Japanese superiority in training and experience, command problems beset the Burma campaign. The 1st Burma Division and Indian 17th Infantry Division at first had to be controlled directly by the Burma Army headquarters under Hutton. Burma was also swapped from command to command during the early months of the war. It had been the responsibility of GHQ India since 1937. In 1941 the Commander-in-Chief of India was General Sir Archibald Wavell. In the early weeks of the war, Burma was transferred from India to the ill-fated "fighting areas in the South-West Pacific ABDA after the countries which are involved, not the countries which are in the area... American, British, Dutch, Australian . ABDA was based in Java, and it was simply impossible for General Wavell, now also the Supreme Commander of ABDA, to keep in touch with the situation in Burma. Trying to keep close control of Burma would have meant unconscionable neglect of his other responsibilities. Shortly before ABDA was dissolved, responsibility for Burma was transferred back to Wavell's India command. Interactions with the Chinese remaind difficult because Chiang Kai-Shek, the leader of Nationalist China, was a poor strategist, and the Chinese Army also suffered from severe command problems, with orders having to come directly from Chiang himself if they were truly to be obeyed. The ability of many of the Chinese commanders was also called into question. Finally, the Chinese Army was completely lacking in the ancillary services which allow a force to fight anything like a modern war.
The problems with the Chinese were never satisfactorily resolved. However, after the dissolution of ABDA, India retained control of operations in Burma until the formation of South East Asia Command in late 1943. The immediate problems of a lack of corps headquarters were solved. A skeleton force of the two scratch divisions, the 1st Burma and the Indian 17th Infantry, were formed into Burma corps known as Burcorps was formed under Lieutenant General Sir William Slim, later to gain fame as the commander of the Fourteenth Army.
Burcorps retreated almost constantly, and suffered several disastrous losses, but it eventually managed to reach India in May 1942, just before the monsoon broke. Had it still been in Burma after the monsoon broke, it would have been cut off, and likely destroyed by the Japanese. The divisions making up Burcorps were withdrawn from the line for long refit periods.
Operations in Burma over the remainder of 1942 and in 1943 were a study of military frustration. The UK could only just maintain three active campaigns, and immediate offensives in both the Middle East and Far East proved impossible due to lack of resources. The Middle East won out, being closer to home and a campaign against the far more dangerous Germans.
During the 1942-1943 dry season, two operations were mounted. The first was a small scale offensive into the Arakan region of Burma. The Arakan is a coastal strip along the Bay of Bengal, crossed by numerous rivers. The First Arakan offensive largely failed due to difficulties of logistics, communications and command. The Japanese troops were also still assigned almost superhuman powers by their opponents. The second attack was much more controversial; that of the 77th Indian Infantry Brigade, better known as the Chindits.
Under the command of Major General Orde Wingate, the Chindits penetrated deep behind enemy lines in an attempt to gain intelligence, break communications and cause confusion. The operation had originally been conceived as part of a much larger offensive, which had to be aborted due to lack of supplies and shipping. Almost all of the original reasons for mounting the Chindit operation were then invalid. Nevertheless, it was mounted anyway.
Some 3,000 men entered Burma in many columns. They did cause damage to Japanese communications, and they did gather intelligence. However, they suffered dreadful casualties, with only two thirds of the men who set out on the expedition returning. Those that did return were wracked with disease and quite often in dreadful physical condition. The most important contributions of the Chindits to the war were unexpected. They had had to be supplied by air. At first it had been thought impossible to drop supplies over the jungle. Emergency situations that arose during the operation necessitated supply drops in the jungle, proving it was possible. It is also alleged by some that the Japanese in Burma decided to take the offensive, rather than adopt a purely defensive stance, as a direct result of the Chindit operation. Whatever the reason for this later change to the offensive, it was to prove fatal for the Japanese in Burma.
The supreme commander of the Far Eastern theatre was initially General Sir Archibald Wavell. In October 1943 Winston Churchilll replaced Wavell with Lord Mountbatten as head of the South East Asia Command (SEAC).
By 1944 the RAF had gained Air superiority and that allowed the Allies to employ new tactics.
As the 1943-44 dry period dawned, both sides were preparing to take the offensive. The British Fourteenth Army struck first, but only marginally before the Japanese.
In Arakan, a British advance began on the XV Corps front. However, a Japanese 55th Division counterattack halted the advance at Sinzewa and threatened to destroy the 7th Indian Division. Unlike during previous operations, the British forces stood firm, and were supplied from the air in the Battle of the Admin Box from February 5 to the February 23 1944. The siege was lifted when the Japanese were taken from the rear by the 5th Indian Division advancing over the Ngakyedauk Pass. The resulting Battle of Ngakyedauk Pass saw a heavy defeat handed to the Japanese. With the possibility of aerial supply, their infiltration tactics, relying on units carrying their own supplies and hoping to capture enemy victuals were fatally compromised.
On the central front, IV Corps advanced into Burma, before indications that a major Japanese offensive was building caused it to retreat on Kohima and Imphal. Forward elements of the corps were nearly cut off by Japanese forces, but eventually made it back to India. As they waited for the storm to break, the British forces were not to know that the successful defence of the two cities would be the turning point of the entire campaign in south east Asia. HQ XXXIII Corps was rushed forward to help control matters at the front and the two corps settled down for a long siege.
The Japanese threw themselves repeatedly against the defences of the two strong points, in the battles of Imphal and Kohima, but could not break through. At times the supply situation was perilous, but never totally critical. It came down to a battle of attrition, and the British forces could simply afford to fight that kind of battle for longer. The turning point of the battle at Kohima was the Battle of the Tennis Court. It was the Japanese high water mark on thir advance into India and in the end, the Japanese ran out of supplies, and suffered large casualties. They broke and fled back into Burma, pursued by elements of Fourteenth Army.
The recapture of Burma took place during late 1944 and the first half of 1945. Command of the British formations on the front was rearranged in November 1944. 11th Army Group was replaced with Allied Land Forces South East Asia and XV Corps was placed directly under ALFSEA.
Some of the first operations to recapture Burma took place in Arakan. To gain bases for the aircraft necessary to supply Fourteenth Army in its attack through the heart of the country, two offshore islands, Akyab and Ramree, had to be captured. Akyab was virtually undefended when British forces came ashore, so it effectively provided a rehearsal of amphibious assault doctrine for the forces in theatre. However, Ramree was defended by several thousand Japanese. The clearing of the island took several days, and associated forces on the mainland longer to clear out. Following these actions, XV Corps was greatly reduced in numbers to free up transport aircraft to support Fourteenth Army.
Fourteenth Army made the main thrust to destroy Japanese forces in Burma. The Army had IV and XXXIII Corps under its command. The conception of the plan was that XXXIII Corps would reduce Mandalay, and act as a diversion for the main striking force of IV Corps which would take Meiktila and thus cut the Japanese communications. The plan succeeded extremely well, and Japanese forces in Upper Burma were effectively reduced to scattered and unorganised pockets. Slim's men then advanced south towards the Burmese capital.
The original conception of the plan to retake Burma had seen XV Corps making an amphibious assault on Rangoon well before Fourteenth Army forces reached the capital in order to ease supply problems. However, lack of resources meant that this operation did not take place in its original form. The assault did go in, but by the time it happened, British forces were only a few miles north of the city boundary, rendering it somewhat pointless.
Following the taking of Rangoon in May 1945, there were still Japanese forces to take care of in Burma, but it was effectively a large mopping up operation. A new army headquarters, that of Twelfth Army was created from XXXIII Corps to take control of the formations to remain in Burma. It was assigned IV Corps. XV Corps and Fourteenth Army returned to India to plan the next stage of the campaign to retake south east Asia. A new corps, XXXIV Corps was raised and assigned to Fourteenth Army for further operations.
This was to be an amphibious assault on the western side of Malaya codenamed Operation Zipper. However, the dropping of the atomic bombs forestalled Zipper, and it was undertaken postwar as the quickest way of getting occupation troops into Malaya.
The RAF were aided by a number of USAAF units notably the No. 490 Bomb Squadron USAAF the "Burma Bridge Busters" part of the 341 Bomb Group USAAF which also included the 11th, 22nd, and 491st Bomb Squadrons.
Allied and specifically the American General William Slim influenced the conduct of the Burma campaign with the stratigic need to keep open the supplie lines to China. To help defend the Ledo Road from Japanese attack he deployed Merrill's Marauders, the Chindits and Chinese troops in heavy jungle fighting in Northern Burma. For more details see the article on China Burma India Theater
Battle Honour: BURMA 1944-1945
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