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Japan took the large well-supplied British garison at Singapore with shocking ease. The British garrison outnumbered the attacking Japanese force. British General Percival has been sharply criticized. The defense of Singapore was badly planned. The Japanese offensive drive down the Malay Peninsula was briliantly executed. The key factors were that the Japanese were able to achieve aerial and naval mastery that was never anticipated in British defense planning combined with the surprising mobility of Japanese ground forces, in part achived by bicycles. The British 8th Division, badly needed in the Middle East, had been rushed to Singapore after it was already too late. The fall of Singapore was a military catastrophy of emense proportions. This was part of the 6-moths following Pearl Harbor of unrelenting Japanese victories (December 1941-May 1942). Japanese forces moved through Burma to the border of India in the West (April 1942). Their seizure of north eastern New Guina in the south (March 1942). The Pilippins fell (May 1942). Then the Japanese victories stopped ourside of China. What had occured was the British had defeated poorly armed and trained colonial forces. Begininging in New Guinea and the Solomons, the Japanese would face well-armed and trained combat units supported by air and naval forces. Australian troops had garisoned Singapore, after previously sending forces to North Africa, this left the country virtually undefended. Only the intervention of American carriers in the Coral Sea blocked Japanese expansion further south (May 1942). The Japanese conquest of Malaya also presented the Allies with a critical problem. The world's rubber production was centered on the Malay Peninsula. And rubber was a vital war material. Allied victoriea first occurred at sea -- Midway (June 1942). This meant that America men a material could flow to the Pacific. Singapore's fall would have consequences after the War. The prestige of the British Empire has been irreperably damaged.
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