On the 15th of February 1942, about 100,000 British and Australian troops surrendered to Japanese forces on the island fortress of Singapore. The Japanese, despite being massively outnumbered, took good advantage of some appallingly bad command decisions on the part of British generals, and the fact that their planes were superior to those of the RAF, to invade and conquer the island in little more than a week. British commanders seemed incapable, in the weeks before the invasion, to come to terms with the fact that a Japanese invasion of Singapore might ever occur. On the 1st of February the last of the British troops in Malaya retreated into the island fortress, soon after that the RAF withdrew from the airfields and many British commanders were evacuated. Many 'directives' to the troops from commanders and the Prime Minister himself made bold and wholly unrealistic proclamations about 'not giving any ground' in Singapore
2007-02-06
06:21:13
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7 answers
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nazilover1488
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