Bryan Perrett - Tank Tracks to Rangoon: The Story of British Armour in Burma

TANK TRACKS
TO RANGOON

THE STORY OF BRITISH ARMOUR IN BURMA

BRYAN PERRETT

First published in Great Britain in 1978. First paperback edition 1992.
Both printed by St Edmundsbury Press Limited, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.

Reprinted in this format in 2014 by
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Copyright Bryan Perrett 1978, 1992, 2014

ISBN 978-1-78383-115-9

The right of Bryan Perrett to be identified as Author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Contents

Major General Ralph Younger, CB, CBE, DSO, MC, DL

Bryan Perrett, in the Preface to his book about Infantry Tanks in World War II,* wrote that mechanized war in Burma deserved a study of its own. He has followed this up by producing a most interesting and readable story of the activities of those armoured regiments, British and Indian, who fought in Burma and North East India between 1942 and 1945. He has taken a great deal of trouble to make contact with many of those who served there, and the story of their exploits makes exciting reading.

The fighting in Burma, and on its borders, lasted for three years, but not continuously. Armour was involved in the spring of 1942, briefly in the spring of 1943, and on an increasing scale in the whole of 1944 and the spring of 1945. It is fair to say that in all the three major campaigns in which tanks took part, they had an effect out of all proportion to their numbers.

7th Armoured Brigade arrived in Burma at the end of February 1942, just after the disaster at the Sittang Bridge. This was the decisive battle of the first campaign, and when it was lost there was no hope of saving Rangoon. When it did fall, on 9th March, the whole army in Burma was cut off from the outside world, and what followed, inevitably, was a withdrawal of some 600 miles to India before the monsoon came in May. The task of the 7th Armoured Brigade was to act as covering troops, and to deal with the Japanese tactics of encirclement and infiltration. These tactics nearly always obtained surprise, as there was at no time information from any source about enemy movements.

During the withdrawal, which lasted for two months, there were four major crises, and a number of minor ones. In every case 7th Armoured Brigade was called in to avert disaster, and invariably did so. When, at last, it reached the Chindwin there was no way of getting the tanks over the river, and they were destroyed; they were still in the same place two years later. There can be little doubt that without 7th Armoured Brigade, described by the Corps Commander, General Slim, as a magnificent formation, the Army would not have got out of Burma.

Tanks were next used in the Arakan early in 1943 when a small detachment of Valentines was sent at short notice from Ranchi to take part in an attack on Donbaik which had already failed twice. The attack failed again, the tanks were knocked out, and their crews killed. This unfortunate affair had the effect of encouraging those pundits in India who were already saying that tanks would be no use in any attempt to recapture Burma.

In the autumn of 1943, 14th Army was formed under General Slim, and greatly improved communications between India and Assam enabled two regiments, one of Lee/Grants, the other of Stuarts, to be sent to Imphal, while another regiment of the former went to the Arakan. In the past the Japanese bunker, with its very strong head cover, was impervious to mortars and field artillery, and therefore very difficult to deal with, but trials showed that it could be broken up by solid shot from the 75 mm of the Lee/Grant. As tanks were to be used at Kohima as well as at Imphal and in the Arakan in the next month or two, this was a valuable discovery, particularly if their role was to be close support of infantry. It was seldom possible to deploy more than a few tanks in any one place, as the Japanese almost invariably occupied positions either in villages or on the top of high hills. However, when even one tank got close enough to the Japanese position, and was covered by fire from infantry, it was generally decisive, as the Japanese did not use mines to any great extent, and they did not possess a good anti-tank gun.

The Japanese attacked in the Arakan in February, and in March at Imphal and Kohima, where the major fighting took place. In all three areas, the three regiments of tanks greatly distinguished themselves, and were generally fighting as squadrons and sometimes as troops, in close support of infantry. By the end of the battle at Imphal, General Giffard, the Army Group Commander, wrote a letter to General Slim the Army Commander, which contained these words: