Hi, I'm new to this subreddit, and to give some background info I'm a student studying in Singapore and am really interested to find out more about this topic.
During World War II, Singapore was invaded by the Japanese and the British came up to defend Singapore. But the British was easily defeated, and Singapore swiftly became Syonan. So after some history classes and research, I found that the Japanese simply had better strategies of attack than we did to defend. So I want to know, what did the British do to defend us? What troops did they have, what weapons, and why did we lose so quickly? I understand the basic gist of it, but I want to learn a bit more on the subject, plus it would help for school work.
Thanks in advance for anyone who explains how we were defended, and how we were so easily conquered.
Probably the big factor in the fall of Singapore was the overall failure by Britain to consider that an attacking force would approach through the jungle of the Malayan peninsula. Singapore had a formidable set of coastal naval gun batteries intended to defend against naval attack. While most of the guns were sited to fire generally to the south and out to sea, 3 guns were mounted with 360 degree traverse, so they could fire to the north towards the inland, and were used to shell Johor Bahru during the later stages of the Battle of Singapore. The problem with this was that the shelling would have been somewhat ineffective given that the intended use of the guns was armour piercing anti-ship fire, and the majority of the shells supplied would have been armour piercing shells rather than high explosive shrapnel rounds better suited for anti-personnel fire.
The order of battle on the Commonwealth side consisted of the Indian III Corps (two divisions of infantry), 18th Division of the British Army, 8th Australian Infantry Division (which was understrength, with two of three brigades deployed in Malaya - the third was split between Timor, Ambon and Rabaul), and several smaller units consisting of local militias.
The two main reasons for the swift defeat of the Singapore garrison can be considered to be the fact that the Japanese forces landed in Malaya and marched overland contrary to the expectation that an attack on Singapore would come from the sea in the form of a naval assault, and that Japanese forces adapted and made better use of mobility - bicycles were used to allow Japanese troops to move quickly from point A to point B, and also had light tanks available, while the defenders had no armoured forces available. Other factors would be that Allied forces were poorly positioned in Malaya to counter the Japanese advance - allied forces were cut off by the advance and in some cases had to fight their way through to rejoin the retreat to Singapore (one example was the Australian and Indian forces fighting at the Muar River) - and a refusal on the part of Arthur Percival to construct fixed defences in Johore and on the north shore of Singapore itself on the grounds that building defensive posts was bad for morale.
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