>>65235645(OP) The premise of your question is incorrect
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)06:04:00
Knee mortars
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)06:12:37
Malaya command was 2/3 Indian. Yamashita's force were hardened veterans from China and though the jungles of Malaya were quite different from anything in China, they adapted quickly. III corps had 2 Indian divisions who although grew up in the jungles of India and were quite well adjusted to tropical conditions, were simply no match and were more often than not, routed within minutes of combat. The Australians risk getting outflanked so they often retreated as well. Later in the war, Australian forces were able to handle Japanese advances and later with American help, completely demolished Japanese forces. Percival's problem was the quality of his troops. Had he had Australian men and Australian men only, he might have been able to eject the IJA from Malaya but luck would have it that the bulk of his force were Indian.
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)06:20:12
I'm interested to know just how outmatched The Indian divisions were and what caused such immediate collapses
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)06:25:35
>>65235729 >Takumi force, 5000 crack troops, amphibious landing at Khota Bahru >Completely overwhelms 9th Indian division Should have never recruited Indian troops
>>65235735 Absolutely ridiculous how a small detachment completely obliterated an entire division and marched south to Singapore virtually unopposed. How the fuck did an entire division get routed within 3 fucking days? With the 11th division you could argue that despite their advantageous position, were outnumbered.
>>65235735 >>65235746 it wasn't an entire division, there was only one battalion opposing the amphibious landing
>>65235729 try to figure out how you will defend 1,000 miles of coast with 3 under-equipped divisions, 2 of them mostly made up of Indian farmers, no navy, and enemy air superiority
for context, that's more than 3 times the coastline of English side of the English Channel and more coastline than the distance from Brest to Heligoland
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)06:58:55
>>65235759 You speak as if it is easy to make a beach head and then provide provisions through the sea, under artillery barrage. Theres a reason why amphibious landings are ultra deadly and requires massive force advantage. What the Japs did was assail the eastern coast with a numerically inferior force and were able to rout any opposition they face there. On the western coast, they crushed the 11th with 3 divisions invading via land.
>try to figure out how you will defend 1,000 miles of coast with 3 under-equipped divisions
To me,the biggest threat is that mountain range cutting my force in two so they are unable to support each other, probably why Japan chose to land where they did. Both Kuantan and Kuala Lumpur can support each other without too much of the mountains getting in the way so I'd pull everything back to there and just slug it out with concentrated forces. Let them land, I'd rather have a fight in a smaller area with more troops and better positions on my side.
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)07:29:03
Singapore's status as a million-person city highly vulnerable to siege must have been a major headache for anyone planning its defenses.
>>65235780 >numerically inferior force >landing at Khota Baru idiot >under artillery barrage FROM WHAT FUCKING GUNS HOW MANY GUNS DO YOU NEED TO DEFEND 1,000 MILES OF COAST FROM A NAVY THAT CAN STRIKE ANYWHERE ALONG THAT COAST DO YOU EVEN THINK BEFORE OPENING YOUR CAKEHOLE
>>65235789 > they are unable to support each other, probably why Japan chose to land where they did the Japs landed in the main ports facing the South China Sea because 1) that's where their Navy was, 2) you'd need dozens of MPAs and/or coastwatchers to monitor the coast, let alone do anything about the invasion force, and 3) these are the key towns which have road hubs - which, by the way, think of as dual carriageway compacted earth roads going through the jungle, with very minimal macadam.
the main threat however from this wide open coastline is that company or even battalion-sized forces can land anywhere, cut off communications lines, and then... what are the defenders going to do? bring in a panzer army to crush the beach-head?
because of D-day, people tend to think of amphibious landings as always always ALWAYS massive human waves swamping the beach under a hail of artillery and machine-gun fire with thousands of casualties, because they get all their military learning from Saving Private Ryan and Medal Of Honor. not true.
when you have land, naval and air superiority - and the Japs did - you can land on any beach you like, provided the incline and tide is right and there's enough space to set up a defensive perimeter suitable for whatever size your landing force is. and you can do that all the way down a coastline and the enemy has no idea where you will strike, because again: naval and air superiority
you can use naval forces in this way to isolate any defence that is too difficult for your land force to crack, and that is exactly what the Japs did
>>65235803 are you saying I gave the japs too much credit for using the mountains to divide the brits? I thought it was just the most strategically sound path to singapore
>>65235808 rather, your credit is misplaced, because the Japs didn't count on the mountains to delay British reinforcements (there was none anyway), rather the Japs used coastal landings to flank, isolate, and defeat enemy blocking forces
besides, they had more artillery and more ammo, and aerial superiority, and used their superiority well to counterbattery the British artillery and air forces. once those were gone the superiority turned into supremacy.
but nobody bothers with all this analysis because it doesn't feed into the "lol yellow man beat white man" narrative
>>65235823 >yellow man beat white man" narrative They were brahmin troops huh? Who knew. Shame they got massacred and routed.
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)08:51:17
>had months to prepare defenses >still got completely destroyed because the brits thought it was a good idea to put indian troops right at the frontline with australian as reserve rather than the other way around deserved defeat. indians are only good as fodder.
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)08:53:47
>Order given to retreat in an orderly manner >Indian troops instantly rout and make a mad dash south >half the men desert Kek. Reading about this campaign is something else.
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)08:57:23
>>65235878 if I was, I wouldn't add that India memoryholed WW2 for decades because the Indian Nationalists sided with the Japs and didn't do any fighting of note, whereas all the pro-British Indians amassed dozens of VCs and basically performed all the feats the Indian Army can be proud of
>>65235890 >whereas all the pro-British Indians amassed dozens of VCs and basically performed all the feats the Indian Army can be proud of Very impressive saar.
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)08:59:48
>>65235891 >"you're jeet because you point out that jeets have only ever managed to do anything when led by bongs and the jeet-led jeets were useless" retard
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)09:03:26
>>65235892 >do anything They lost the entirety to Malaya.
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)09:06:16
>>65235896 they still inflicted more casualties on the Japs in the process than the jeet-led jeets did to the bongs
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)09:06:25
With wars raging in Europe and Africa, strengthening Asian defenses would have been difficult. On the other hand, Japan had been given copies of classified documents concerning the deployment of defenses in Malaya, which Germany had obtained the previous year, and had time to study them thoroughly.
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)09:35:38
>>65235905 They had 3 divisions worth of manpower to build trenches, pillboxes.
>>65235929 >3 divisions worth of manpower to build trenches, pillboxes across 1,000 miles of coast WOAH
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)09:47:54
>>65235645(OP) US squads carry a lot more firepower. Bongs and frogs still using bolt action rifles, small ammo loads and less than 1 MG per squad. US has semiauto garands, auto carbines and assault rifles and 2MG per squad plus additional MGs plus supporting vehicles with MG, additional vehicles, mortars, artillery and aircraft.
Europoors are stingy with ammo amd equipment. US realizes that shooting ten thousand 30cpr rounds isn't economically balanced against killing an enemy who makes less than $50/year, it is balanced against preventing the death of an American whose life is worth millions of dollars.
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)09:48:50
>>65235944 >NOOOOOOOO YOU HAVE TO DEFEND THE COAST RATHER THAN ALL THE GORILLIONS OF DEFENSIVE CHOKEPOINTS ACROSS MALAYA AND THE NORTHERN PARTS OF SINGAPORE!!!!!!!!!!! You indians are an insufferable bunch
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)09:49:52
>>65235946 Is a white European infantryman worth less than your run of the mill American?
>>65235949 >YOU HAVE TO DEFEND THE COAST yes, because that's where all the important shit is, retard inb4 just don't defend ze Atlantikwall lmao inb4 just let them land in Dover lmao >AND THE NORTHERN PARTS OF SINGAPORE and this is an (even more) obvious troll, but I'm just gonna post this view of Johor from Singapore, for the edification of anyone else reading the thread
this is less than a mile:
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)10:08:31
>>65235951 Europeans seem to think their lives are worth less. WW2 german artillery had so little ammo (<50rnd/gun) that they only did precision shots against valuable targets and would deny fire missions for not being juicy enough, german artillery took 15 minutes to plot an unplanned fire mission. German artillery was coordinated at the battery level and otherwise independent and piecemeal. German squad is 13 huns with 10 Kar98 and 1 MG42.
US squad is 12 dudes with 8 Garands, 2 BAR, 2 tommy guns and a FM radio. US artillery did interdiction and harassment fire where if they didn't have a better target where they would fire blindly at suspected enemy positions including road intersections. US artillery fire missions were networked to centralized fire coordination centers meaning that hundreds of tubes could support anyone in range and had 3 minute response times to receive, plot, adjust guns and send rounds downrange.
Your nazi supermen had "skill" as their only advantage and the reality is they had no such individual skill advantage, especially not after 1942. They had a defender advantage only.
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)10:17:14
>>65235892 >>65235883 Poorly equipped, poorly trained, poorly supported and poorly led. They were a budget garrison led by the lowest quality british officer who had been selected and expected to only manage local uprisings. Meanwhile the Japanese are a modern military and near parity with European militiaries.
>>65235645(OP) The Japanese used infiltration tactics as their main strategy, bypassing strongholds and roads and then getting in as close as they could before suddenly attacking from behind and against the HQ and supply tail of enemy formations. Great for a jungle when the enemy isn't expecting it and has huge holes in their lines because jungle. Really bad on islands with no opportunity for flanking and against fortified positions. Once the brits got the idea of how the Japanese fought they simply dug in to fortified "boxes" when they sniffed Japanese in the area, and the Japanese attacked these boxes and died. See Battles of Imphal, Kohima and Admin Box. Once the Japanese strategy was countered, the Japanese command wasn't able to figure out how to change their strategy and tactics to deal with it.
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)10:28:32
>>65235982 I presume that the british leadership was also just more preoccupied with the germans on their doorstep than the colonies on the opposite side of the world
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)10:32:11
>>65235997 >has huge holes in their lines because jungle and coast
anytime anyone says the word "Fortress Singapore", they out themselves as a History Channel retard so-called "Fortress Singapore" actually referred to hypothetical plans drawn up in the 1930s and never actually built
it would be like wondering how the Allies managed to defeat Festung Europa given its panzerarmees of Maus tanks, fleets of Walter submarines and luftflottes of Me262s and wondering how NYC stood up to the Amerikabomber
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)10:33:39
Plantations were often developed along roadsides, which apparently made them advantageous for the Japanese army's flanking maneuvers and infiltration tactics.
>>65236006 yes in Malaya, the Japanese advanced through plantations more than they did through actual primary jungle (which they did in the Burma, New Guinea, and Solomon Islands campaigns) their tankettes could navigate those plantations much easier too
but more importantly, the lack of inland roads due to the mountainous terrain meant that once amphibious landings had taken key towns on the coast, the inland forces would be cut off for example, you can see from this map that landing at Telok Anson and Kuantan basically cuts off half the peninsula right away and you can see how successive landings can easily chop up the defenders and defeat them in detail
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)11:16:07
Bismarck had sunk, and Gneisenau and Scharnhorst were suffering daily air raids in Brest, forcing them to retreat to mainland Germany. Couldn't the Royal Navy have allocated more resources to the Eastern Fleet?
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)11:31:23
>>65235645(OP) >hurr durr every japanese attack was a banzai charge Retard.
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)11:42:17
>>65235982 >the lowest quality british officer This deserves extra emphasis; read between the lines of say, the Heenan affair: there was a bona-fide Armchair Copelord among the designated-shitting jeet wranglers. What does that say about the size of the far-east talent pool, the quality of other mid-level officers in it, or their senior officers' judgement in selecting from it or mentorship thereof?
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)11:43:39
>>65235890 It's significant that they memory holed the poor performance of nationalists fighting for Japan but ONLY because the Japanese lost. Not for being pro-Japanese.
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)11:45:25
>>65235962 A minimal fighting retreat would be so deadly to an amphibious landing that securing a beachhead from an enemy who's bent on attrition is sometimes more significant than an enemy who'll stand and break there.
even after the Kido Butai was sunk, they still needed carrier and battleship support to cover the Arctic convoys, and any sortie attempt by Tirpitz and, of all things, GRAF ZEPPELIN
>>65236077 >size of the far-east talent pool officially about ten whites per jeet battalion, BTW
>>65236085 in theory yes, except the defenders were also understrength in artillery and machine-guns and ammunition
it would take a monumental idiot to fuck up an amphib landing of one brigade with full kit and full naval and air support against an isolated infantry battalion with only half its heavy weapons, no reinforcements nearby
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)13:26:22
>>65236099 >Takumi force >5000 men >routed a division on its own Impressive shit.
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)13:29:22
The Brits and Australians were using a lot of native troops and expected Imperial Japan to not be sadistic savages to POWs. The Americans saw what happened to their initial guys and decided that its better to die fighting than surrender if overrun. This lead to the Japanese taking horrible casualties.
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)13:34:12
>>65236298 More like the Japanese expected to fight troops of equal quality to Indians and Chinese who do nothing but flee in terror or get rapidly flanked and destroyed. Instead they found Americans in entrenched positions with endless machine gun nests. Every other soldier had a BAR and every one else had a semiauto Garand against bolt actions. Industry won the war.
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)13:44:33
>>65236291 >Takumi force >its own landing craft, warships, fighters, bombers
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)14:14:52
>>65235722 You are unfair. The Bongs treated the Indian troops as cannon fodder and often blew up bridges with them on the other side, Simmerson (Sharpe) style. This did nothing for morale. They also treated the Aussies only slightly better. The Bongs had no air cover and their naval relief Force Z was quickly sunk due to not having any air cover. Also, this is often overlooked but the Japs attacked Malaya a few hours BEFORE Pearl Harbor, catching the Bongs by surprise. Another overlooked fact was that THAILAND allowed the Japs to march through its territory to Malaya, easing Jap logistics. A third meme fact is that the Japs used /n/ bicycles instead of trucks. Bikes move 2-3 x faster than on foot on rough terrain and the Japs outflanked hastily set up British road blocks this way. Yet another meme fact is the Japs shitty light tanks actually worked well in Malaya since they didn't sink into the soft clay soil and the Bongs didn't have any tanks at all.
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)14:17:20
>>65236305 They also for some reason couldn't understand that being barbaric to POWs just makes every offensive battle with the enemy dug in into the exact same kind of death struggles they were planning to do in defense of the Home Islands.
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)14:19:12
>>65236383 >The Bongs treated the Indian troops as cannon fodder and often blew up bridges with them on the other side, Simmerson (Sharpe) style didn't happen
>Japs used /n/ bicycles instead of trucks a significant advantage but not a war-winner by itself
>the Japs outflanked hastily set up British road blocks this way no, they used amphibious landings, or their superiority of artillery, and to lesser extent air support
also true that >have tanks when >enemy doesn't have tanks is massive
1 in 4 US Marines was carrying an automatic weapon (M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle) by 1945
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)22:02:23
>>65235970 >US squad is 12 dudes with 8 Garands, 2 BAR, 2 tommy guns and a FM radio A curious lack of LMG/MMG/HMG
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)22:09:58
>>65237626 IIRC the BARs were considered to be the squad machine guns. Attaching machine guns (especially anything heavier than .30 cal) at the squad level was rare during WWII in general tho, only the Germans really did it religiously.
>>65235970 >>US squad is 12 dudes with 8 Garands, 2 BAR, 2 tommy guns and a FM radio.
Actually, submachine guns were considered company-level assets to be distributed at a captain's discretion so they weren't being universally issued to squad leaders. Airborne infantry companies (which got priority for equipment like submachine guns) in 1942 had 13 Thompsons and Grease guns issued per company, just barely enough to equip every squad leader (and only if officers didn't take any). By 1945, this had been cut in half to six per company (not even enough for all the officers).
>>65237671 they had less carbines than sub machine guns? I thought they made millions more
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Anonymous06/14/26(Sun)23:35:35
>>65237639 I am forever confused by the US army's inability to produce a world-class LMG/MMG all the way up until the M240 (which is just a locally-produced Belgian gun). The guns were functional, just all mediocre for the role.
>BAR quantifiably not a real LMG >M1919A6 mediocre stopgap compared to contemporaries >M60 a loathed, flawed "pig" >M420 finally, adopted and improved to provide a great weapon
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Anonymous06/15/26(Mon)00:03:23
Would the US have rolled the japs and krauts harder if they had access to a proper squad level beltfed LMG that wasn't the BAR?