japanese bombing of imphal

But in early April, the troops at Kohima and Imphal were surrounded. Scoones gave his forward divisions orders to withdraw to Imphal only on 13 March. On April 5. During the early part of the offensive, the Bahadur Group of the INA apparently achieved some success in inducing British Indian soldiers to desert.[14]. Burma Victory portrays the "forgotten war" and the Allied fight to push the Japanese out of Burma. After the bombing, almost every house in Imphal had been abandoned with Manipuris fled for safety to outlying villages and almost the only local civilians to be seen were a few unwelcome looters. A Japanese attack up the road on 4 April was disjointed; the infantry were not ready to take part and twelve Japanese tanks were caught exposed on the road by British anti-tank guns. He resides in Keishamthong Elangbam Leikai, with his wife and parents. Mountbatten had immediately despatched the 2nd Division from India by road and rail to Dimapur. Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten (second left) with senior army officers in Burma, February 1944, Air supply to 81st West African Division in Arakan, 1944. 16/05/1944 The British had long thought a Japanese land invasion of Burma unlikely, so its defences had been neglected. The Japanese defeat at Kohima and Imphal was the largest up until that time. The Japanese advance continued, driving victoriously for the domination of Asia. They tried to induce some Indian defenders to surrender, but the defenders rallied after initial hesitation. A month earlier the Japanese had launched Operation Ha-Go, which was intended as a feint to draw British attention away from the Imphal area where the brunt of the U-Go attacks would take place. [23], The Japanese had realised that the operation ought to be broken off as early as May. Mutaguchi had underestimated his enemy’s defensive skills. The plan to attack Imphal originated with Lieutenant-General Renya Mutaguchi (1888-1966), a veteran of campaigns in China, Malaya and Singapore. Fought between 8 March and 18 July 1944, these were the turning point of one of the most gruelling campaigns of the Second World War (1939-45). This was the key turning point in the Burma Campaign. Yet this Allied victory was a turning point against Japanese forces in the Far East. Also, IV Corps was suffering some shortages. The attack on Imphal and Kohima started in the spring of 1944. The 23rd Indian Division took over the defence of the Shenam Saddle, while from the end of May, 5th Division concentrated on driving north from Sengmai up the main road through Kanglatongi, while the 20th Indian Division advanced along the tracks and the Iril River toward Litan and Ukhrul, threatening the Japanese 15th Division's lines of communication. Japanese armies attempted to destroy the Allied forces at Imphal and invade India, but were driven back into Burma with heavy losses. A new forceful commander, Lieutenant General Nobuo Tanaka, took command of the 33rd Division on 22 May, and ordered repeated attacks which reduced many of his division's battalions to mere handfuls of men. He led three Japanese divisions and one Indian National Army division. 15 Japanese Division (Yamauchi). 4th Corps was only 30 miles (48km) from the city when it fell to a combined air and seaborne operation in early May. Operation U-Go - Wikipedia "Operation U-Go" was an audacious plan by the Japanese military command to capture this road by using three divisions to attack simultaneously south and north of Imphal and to directly take Kohima. Even as the Japanese prepared to launch their attack, the Allies launched the airborne phase (Operation Thursday) of the second Chindit expedition on 5 March 1944. Colonel Hugh Richards (d.1983), formerly of the Chindits, commanded the 2,500-strong Kohima garrison. Together with the simultaneous Battle of Kohima on the road by which the encircled Allied forces at Imphal were relieved, the battle was the turning point of the Burma campaign, part of the South-East Asian Theatre of the Second World War. The inscription on the latter has become famous as the ‘Kohima Epitaph’. The Battle of Imphal 1944 - History Learning Site The commander of the Japanese Fifteenth Army, Lieutenant General Renya Mutaguchi, enlarged the plan to invade India itself and perhaps even overthrow the British Raj. It was held by Scoones’ 4th Corps. They decided to attack Imphal instead. Mutaguchi dismissed the mortally ill Yamauchi (replacing him with Lieutenant General Uichi Shibata) but this did not change matters. As it drew nearer . Faced by 15,000 Japanese, the British-Indian troops held a tight defensive perimeter centred on Garrison Hill. And Imphal fell on the easiest route into India from there. Thought the presentation & interpretation made the subject accessible...". Shortly afterwards, the 15th Division would attack from the north-east, severing the road to Kohima, some 80 miles (120km) away in Nagaland. Historical War Manipur - E-Pao Among the supplies carried during the siege were over a million gallons of fuel, over a thousand bags of mail and 40 million cigarettes. The Japanese troops began to cross the Chindwin River on 8 March. However, although initially Japanese advances met a certain amount of success in the early stages, in the end it didn't work out so hot as the following quote . Mutaguchi dismissed these concerns, claiming that in a few weeks he would occupy the air bases from which the Chindits were supplied. In March 1944, the Japanese 15th Army began an advance against India’s north-east frontier to forestall a planned British invasion of Burma. The Indian division began to withdraw on 14 March. Slim was created KCB, the others were made KBEs. Imphal-Kohima was one of the biggest defeats the Japanese Army ever suffered. ‎Professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction, this unique book describes air supply operations in the India-Burma Theater during the Second World War. In November 1943, a new phase of the war in the Far East began with the formation of South East Asia Command (SEAC) under Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten. [1] Most of these losses were the result of starvation, disease and exhaustion. The battle for Kohima and Imphal was a decisive turning point in WWII. From the moment he took command, Mutaguchi forcefully advocated an invasion of India. Despite the arrival of the reinforcements, the battle continued to rage around Kohima until mid-May, when Sato’s division began to withdraw. The Japanese defeat at Kohima and Imphal was the largest up until that time,[2] with many of the Japanese deaths resulting from starvation, disease and exhaustion suffered during their retreat.[1]. Aerial view of airfield with Hurricane taking off. He may also have been goaded by the first Chindit expedition, a raid behind Japanese lines launched by the British under Orde Wingate early in 1943. During the Imphal and Kohima battles, they were able to make barely half a dozen significant raids. Had it succeeded it would have given them the critical springboard they needed to launch an all-out attack on British India. Mutaguchi proposed to use "Genghis Khan" rations, driving herds of buffalo and cattle rounded up throughout northern Burma across the Chindwin as meat rations on the hoof. After driving rearguards from the Miyazaki Group (an independent detachment from the 31st Division) and the Japanese 60th Regiment from their delaying positions on the Dimapur-Imphal road, the leading troops of IV Corps and XXXIII Corps met at Milestone 109, 10 miles (16 km) north of Imphal, on 22 June, and the siege of Imphal was raised. The corps was in turn part of the Fourteenth Army under Lieutenant General William Slim. This bloody struggle eventually ended in the final defeat of Nazi Germany. 1900s The Battle of Imphal and Kohima, was fought in various phases in 1944. A third division commanded by Lt Gen Sato headed for Kohima. At a meeting between Mutaguchi and Kawabe on 6 June, both used haragei, an unspoken form of communication using gesture, expression and tone of voice, to convey their conviction that success was impossible,[25] but neither of them wished to bear the responsibility of ordering a retreat. On 22 June, they linked up with 4th Corps, which had been under siege since 5 April. 13/05/1944: Jail Hill and other key Kohima features are recaptured by the British. When they received intelligence that a major Japanese offensive was impending, Slim and Scoones planned to withdraw their forward divisions into the Imphal plain and force the Japanese to fight at the end of impossibly long and difficult lines of communication. There were other weaknesses in the plan, which were revealed as the campaign progressed. Exhausted and riddled with disease, they were harried all the way by the Allies. The Japanese had expected that the slopes were too steep for tanks to climb, and indeed Lee tanks had never been tried before on such gradients in action. The battles of Imphal and Kohima, fought in 1944, are among the lesser-known battles of the Second World War. When he realised that none of his formations were obeying his orders to attack, Mutaguchi finally ordered the offensive to be broken off on 3 July. When, on 18 April, the relief forces of the British 2nd Division arrived, Richards’s defensive perimeter was reduced to a shell-shattered area only 350 metres square. From Tamu, Major General Tsunoru Yamamoto, commanding units from both the 15th and 33rd Divisions and two brigades of Indian troops attacked Shenam Saddle near Imphal . Japanese bombing of Imphal :: Part 1 Lt Col(Retd) M Ranjit Singh 2-part series on the Japanese bombing of Imphal on 10th May, 1942 and again on 16th May, 1942 A brief note on the Anglo - Manipuri War- 1891 This was the only metalled road the Japanese could use, and it was vital for them to break through to allow Yamamoto's tanks and heavy artillery to attack the main defences around Imphal itself. Strategic bombing (1944-45) The Battle of Imphal took place in the region around the city of Imphal, the capital of the state of Manipur in North-East India from March until July 1944. He was finally relieved of command at the end of the month. In the days and weeks that followed, the Japanese invaded European colonies across East Asia, including the British territories of Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore and Burma. The route south to Rangoon now lay open. During 1944-45, the Allies endured months of fighting against a determined enemy. Mutaguchi advances against Imphal with the 33rd ID from the south and the 15th ID from the east. The Japanese plan would rely on mobility, infiltration and captured supplies to maintain the momentum of the attack. Background []. We take an in-depth l. As soon as the Indian 17th Division reached Imphal, the attack began. Mutaguchi was relieved of command, recalled to Tokyo, and finally forced into retirement in December 1944. They were being driven back in the central and southwest Pacific, and their merchant ships were under attack by Allied submarines and aircraft. [19] The Japanese regiment had very few effective anti-tank weapons, and their troops were driven from the ridge with heavy casualties. The planning of U-Go, however, was too far advanced to take account of these developments. The idea was to fight the latter in conditions favourable to the British. The Japanese 60th Regiment cut the main road a few miles north of Imphal on 28 March, while the 51st Regiment advanced on Imphal from the north-east, down the valley of the Iril River and a track from Litan, 23 miles (37 km) north-east of Imphal. It was crossed by the Chindits in early 1943 as they headed east to the Japanese rear areas. The Chindwin River separated the Japanese and Allies for most of 1943. Japan's Abe eyes visit to India's Imphal, fierce WWII battlefield, in Dec. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is arranging to make a mid-December visit to the northeastern Indian city of Imphal, once a fierce battlefield between Japan and the Allied forces during World War II, and pray for peace, according to sources familiar with bilateral . He nevertheless ordered repeated attacks, stating later that Bose was the key to Japan's and India's future. Mutaguchi was stubborn and quarrelled with his divisional commanders during the campaign. Both moves were launched almost simultaneously. It was at this battle that the Japanese invasion of British India and marched through Asia was stopped, with the British led Allies subsequently driving them out of Burma in 1945. By taking Imphal, the Japanese could cut off British supply lines and thwart a retaliatory attack on Burma. Continually supplied by air, the garrisons threw back the Japanese attacks in bitter close-quarter fighting until the relief forces reached them. Gambles such as Mutaguchi was making had worked in the past, but could no longer be relied upon, given nearly total Allied air superiority in the area and the improvement in morale and training of British and Indian troops. Imphal, along with the unsuccessful attack on the nearby garrison town of Kohima ended the Japanese drive to Delhi.
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