What were the causes of the speedy collapse of the British defence of Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore? Karl Hack discourses a range of theories and hypotheses, including the failure to launch pre-emptive strike into Thailand, lack of equipment, troop morale, allegation of massive Australian desertion and Japanese spy operations.

Malaysiakini: It has been established by many academic and military historians as well as veteran war correspondents that there was not single but multiple causes that could be held accountable for the fall of Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore. Can you briefly list out the causes that have so far been established? What, in your own opinion, was the most critical cause?

Karl Hack: The book Did Singapore have to fall? avoids forcing an answer down readers' throats. Instead, it tries to let the reader engage with a range of possible answers, so they can make up their own minds.

The critical issues, however, include resources. Could Britain have provided the 600 or so aircraft and 100 or so modern tanks required to match the invading force? If it could, should it have done this, given any likely costs and risks this would have entailed in other theatres?

Had the machines been provided, would it have done the trick, or could the Japanese have upped the bidding by providing yet more resources for the attack from elsewhere? Given the resources available, there is a separate set of questions, such as: with the limited equipment at hand, should Operation Matador have been launched?

Official inquiries

Despite the many unofficial studies of the tragic and ignominious fall of Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore, it seems that there has never been any official inquiries and judgments made by any governments in London. Why?

The campaign was a disaster and humiliation, with no redeeming last stand or blood sacrifice, as (Winston) Churchill initially demanded. During the war itself, Churchill also argued an inquiry would lead to recriminations between all parties, civilian and military, with British, Australian and Indian accusing each other's troops of failures, to no-one's credit.

In 1946 a postwar British Labour Government reconsidered the case for an inquiry. They were told these problems remained, and that any adequate inquiry would have to tackle huge issues. For instance, it was not enough to ask if Churchill could have spared more aircraft and pilots for Malaya, it would have had to ask: should war production have emphasised fighters, rather than bombers and other equipment, so that Churchill would have had more aircraft available?

An official inquiry was thus a Herculean task that involved examining great swathes of war strategy and production, promised much mud-slinging, and yet offered no certainty of useful results. Besides, it was just plain embarrassing.

Only a masochistic minister would have truly wanted an inquiry. On the other hand, S W Kirby did write a still-useful official military history, and I believe a forthcoming book by Brian Farrell will look at this issue in more detail.

Who's to blame?

Who, in your opinion, should bear the greatest overall responsibility for the military debacles, probably one of the greatest in the history of warfare - Prime Minister Churchill, Governor General of the Straits Settlements and High Commissioner for Malaya, Sir Shenton Thomas, Commander-in-Chief, Far East and Air Chief Marshall Sir Robert Brooke-Popham or General Officer Commanding, Lieutenant-General AE Percival?

On Jan 27, 1942, before Singapore even fell, Churchill told parliament that he alone bore responsibility if Malaya did not have the modern tanks and aircraft it needed, that he had sent them to the Middle East and Russia, and that he would do so again.

In other words, he embraced responsibility but denied blame. From his perspective Malaya in Nov 1941 was at peace, while the entire war could be lost in Russia, and could not be lost in Malaya. With the United States still not committed, he believed he was playing for keeps: for the survival of democracy in Europe.

He may also have believed Singapore itself was hardly likely to be lost, since any attack there was likely to trigger American reaction, which would in turn blunt any Japanese advance. Could he have predicted that the United States would be temporarily rendered ineffectual? Churchill was a strategic maverick, sometimes brilliant, sometimes awfully wrong, but could even his imagination have foreseen Pearl Harbor and the Japanese crippling of American aircraft in the Philippines?

Against this, he sent the men without the machines they needed, indeed he sent so little, despite advice to the contrary, that it beggars belief. This included sending no modern tanks to Malaya before December 1941, and not more than 170 aircraft. As for Brooke-Popham and Percival, they did ask for more, and were well aware of the dangers. But they did not amend Operation Matador or strategy very much even once the resource limits became obvious. And British civil and military commanders together made errors - such as no adequate anti-tank preparations - which helped turn defeat into disaster.

So we need to be clear what we are talking about. Is it 'responsibility' or 'blame'? And blame for what? For the fact of defeat, or for the scale and nature of the final humiliation?

Thrilling works

In the 1990s, Peter Elphick has published three very thrilling but serious works with many facts and figures from all sources, namely Odd Man Out - The Story of The Singapore Traitor (with Michael Smith), Singapore - The Pregnable Fortress: A Study In Deception, Discord and Desertion, and Far Eastern File - The Intelligence War In The Far East, 1930-1945. However, not many readers know who is he (except that he is not known to be an academic historian), what is his career backgrounds, why was he interested in the subject so much and why was he able to gain accesses to so many important people and their private papers in Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Can you answer these public queries and satisfy the curiosity?

I know little more than what can be found on some of his naval history books, that Peter Elphick is presented as a retired master mariner who spent considerable time in eastern ports and seas. He is not a professional historian, but does rely mainly on publicly available books and archives. He writes very well, is an excellent story-teller, and as far as I know is generally accurate in his use of facts. However, he has been sharply criticised in Australia for taking the sensationalist aspects of documents, while underplaying their context. For instance there is a 1942 report in which Wavell (the British Commander-in-Chief in the area by Singapore's Fall) says many in Singapore blamed Australians for Singapore's fall - when there were desertions and worse. This is used by Elphick to imply Wavell himself thought this to be the case. In fact Wavell was reporting other people's views, and the overall British assessment seems to have been that troop morale in general was collapsing by Feb 13-15, and that in so far as Australians were prominent in this, it was because they had been left horribly exposed and outnumbered in the initial Japanese onslaught on northwest Singapore. See Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Four-Corner Programme and as well as Did Singapore Have to Fall, Pages 153-62. I suggest one might read Elphick with pleasure, appreciate the facts and the story-telling, but exercise caution on his presentation of facts and his judgements.

While it seems that there is no more dispute now as to Peter Elphick's contention that a British air intelligence officer Captain Patrick Heenan of 3/16 Punjabis stationed in northern Malaya was a deadly Japanese spy who sold out air defence plans of the strategic areas to his controller in southern Thailand, there is still question, put forward by, for example, Monash University's Alan Warren in Singapore 1942 - Britain's Greatest Defeat (Singapore, Talisman, 2002, p.65) as to the extent of damages Patrick Heenan had done to the Malayan Campaign. What is your own assessment of this issue?

We may never know. But more important is the overall point that Japanese intelligence, though spies, through Japanese citizens, and even strokes of fortune, was fairly good. This meant that they had a chance to react to changes in British force levels.

Part 4 to follow on Oct 18

JAMES WONG WING ON is chief analyst of Strategic Analysis Malaysia. He is a former DAP member of Parliament for Kampar (1990-1995) and a former columnist for the Sin Chew Jit Poh Chinese daily (now Sin Chew Daily). He read political science and economics at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.