Ong Chit Chung - Operation Matador: World War II—Britains Attempt to Foil the Japanese Invasion of Malaya and Singapore

OPERATION
MATADOR

WORLD WAR II

Britains Attempt to Foil the

Japanese Invasion of

Malaya and Singapore

Ong Chit Chung

1997 Times Academic Press
2003 Times Media Private Limited
2011 Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited

Published 2011 by Marshall Cavendish Editions
An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International
1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196

First published 1997 by Times Academic Press
Reprinted 1997 (twice), 1998, 2001, 2003

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National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data:

Ong, Chit Chung.

Operation Matador : World War II : Britains attempt to foil the Japanese invasion of Malaya and Singapore / Ong Chit Chung. Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2010.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978 981 4435 44 4

1. Fortification Singapore. 2. World War, 19391945 Campaigns Malaysia Malaya. 3. Great Britain Military policy History. I. Title.

D767.55
940.542595 -- dc22 OCN669881182

Printed in Singapore by Fabulous Printers

Photograph credits: Photographs reproduced courtesy of the Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, London.

Contents

List of Abbreviations

List of Maps

Foreword

IN NOVEMBER 1941 the Japanese army and navy came to an understanding on seizing the initiative with a sudden attack on the Philippines and Malaya, while opening operations at the same time elsewhere. The last mysterious reference to the intended attack on Pearl Harbor was the navys precondition for embarking on a southern strategy. The invasion of the Philippines meant that the existing Asian war would turn towards the Pacific island territories, while the invasion of Malaya amounted to a revival of the Asia-Pacific War in its continental dimension. Operation Matador, though it was never put into practice, was an important aspect of this last Malayan campaign and cannot be ignored if the true nature of wartime planning is to be understood.

The operation, code-named Matador, which is the focal point of this book, was envisaged by Britain as an operation to enter southern Thailand in order to forestall Japanese landings on her eastern coastline. As Ong Chit Chung shows, it was no fly by night plan but had been under consideration in Singapore and London since early in 1939 and was further developed after the Japanese reached the southern shores of French Indochina. Although Matador was approved as a contingency plan, the resources made available for its implementation, especially in aircraft, were always inadequate.

In the sensitive week before the Asia-Pacific War exploded with the Japanese landings at Patani, Singora and Kota Bahru, there seemed to be strong political grounds for abstaining from pursuing the Matador strategy. The Thai government had consistently declined to issue an invitation to Britain to send a protective force to the Kra peninsula. Moreover there were grounds for believing that the Japanese positively wanted Britain to send a military force into southern Thailand as it would justify them in pursuing their own military ambitions in the area. So Operation Matador was not pursued and became one of the might have beens of history.