Singapore was important to the British:
The Singapore strategy was the cornerstone of British Imperial defence policy in the Far East during the 1920s and 1930s.
But when the Imperial Japanese Army attacked it in February 1942 (with a force less than half as numerous as the defenders), the British seemed to mess up in almost every conceivable way.
They erroneously thought the Japanese wouldn't be able to get through the jungle. (What is this, the Ardennes in 1940)?
They only put serious defenses on the northeast side of the island, while the Japanese actually attacked from the northwest. British command persisted in this false expectation of an NE attack throughout the Japanese bombardment of the northwest and even after the landings began.
They quickly yielded air superiority, being equipped with obsolete Buffalo fighters.
Their huge coastal guns had mostly armor-piercing rounds--good against ships, bad against personnel.
There were other failures of tactics, command, and communication as well. Having taken the city, the IJA took 80,000 troops as prisoners, massacred ethnic Chinese, and "were highly successful in recruiting captured Indian soldiers" to foment revolution in colonial India.
Some choices are understandable given resource constraints, but that just raises the question of why resources were so scarce in such a strategically important position. In fact, the sorry state of Singapore's defenses was already known to the British at least a year prior to the attack:
The Japanese had broken the British Army's codes and in January 1941, the Second Department (the intelligence-gathering arm) of the Imperial Army had interpreted and read a message from Singapore to London complaining in much detail about the weak state of "Fortress Singapore", a message that was so frank in its admission of weakness that the Japanese at first suspected it was a British plant, believing that no officer would be so open in admitting weaknesses to his superiors, and only believed it was genuine after cross-checking the message with the Automedon papers.
In short, the British defense of Singapore was poorly equipped, poorly motivated, poorly prepared, and all-around unready to defend the "cornerstone" of the British Far East. No wonder Churchill was so ashamed of the loss!
So what happened? How did the British leadership let Singapore's defenses lapse so badly?
P.S. I searched this sub and found adjacent questions (here and here with answers by /u/danwincen and /u/slumberjackbear), but they seem to be describing British failures after the battle began--I'm hoping to learn how things got so bad that Singapore was even a realistic target in the first place.
Hi, I answered a similar question to this quite a while back here and here. I can go into greater detail if you have specific follow up questions.
The crux of the matter was that Britain had neither the economic strength nor political will to defend their possessions in the event of a simultaneous attack in multiple theatres. Yet they were also unwilling to give them up. This led to the Singapore Strategy being effectively smoke and mirrors, especially so once the war in Europe had broken out.
Hi! Thanks for posting this question on here. Might I suggest that you read the following article written by yours truly: https://www.warroompartners.com/post/how-the-gibraltar-of-the-east-fell-a-historical-analysis-of-the-singapore-strategy-up-to-wwii
As a brief summary, The “Singapore Strategy” for British imperial defence in the Far East can be explained in a long-term context of waning British naval dominance after WWI. The Committee of Imperial Defense (CID) had previously noted in a strategic meeting that the “basis of British Imperial defence against attacks from overseas, whether upon the United Kingdom, Australasia or elsewhere, must be, as it always has been, the maintenance of our sea power”. The genesis of Singapore acquiring her pivotal position in the imperial defence strategy named after her can be seen in the Admiralty’s official definition of their One-Power Standard as not just the parity of her fleet “equal to any other nation, wherever situated” but also that “arrangements are made from time to time in different parts of the world, to enable local forces to maintain the situation against vital and irreparable damage pending arrival of the Main Fleet, and to give the Main Feet on arrival sufficient mobility.”
As early as 1919, Singapore had been earmarked out as a potential naval bastion for the Royal Navy when Viscount Jellicoe was invited by the Australian government to draw up a report on imperial defence in the Pacific. Immediately recognising Imperial Japan as a clear and present challenge to British and dominion interests in the Pacific, Viscount Jellicoe, a former Sea Lord in the Admiralty declared in his report of a need for a fleet of “eight battleships and eight battlecruisers with a full complement of smaller vessels” to be located in the Pacific, under the command of an Admiral ashore at Singapore, which in his words was described as “the naval key to the Far East”. Without Singapore developed as a vital naval base to be a pivotal role in imperial defense the British Fleet was effectively prevented from operating over half the seas of the world; there was not a single dry dock East of Malta large enough to accommodate Royal Navy battleships.
Singapore was seen as an ideal site for a naval base to be built on the northern shore of the island due to its commanding position over the British military route to the Far East through the Straits of Malacca, whilst being safe from any potential seaborne invasion from the south or east by keeping as far from the open sea as possible; before 1941 a landward invasion of Malaya and Singapore from the north had been inconceivable, particularly so in the 1920s when the decision was made to build the naval base. With Japan seen as the main potential aggressor to defend against in the Pacific, yet with their nearest base in Formosa (now Taiwan) 1500 miles away, no aviation technology able to cover the equivalent distance from landward, and Great Britain having no serious naval rivals in Europe, the idea of mustering a fleet to relieve any potential naval siege of Singapore “within 70 days” was a viable, if not slightly calculated risky strategy for the Admiralty.
Singapore’s viability as an imperial bastion in the Pacific rested on several assumptions: the supremacy of the Royal Navy and British command of the sea, the willingness of British colonies and Dominions in the Pacific to contribute in financial and materiel terms to the garrison force and fleet based in Singapore, as well as final cooperation of Imperial forces in the event of a war to fight for a common cause. Almost all these conditions and assumptions were not met: the Royal Navy was forced to keep the majority of the fleet in home waters to counter Nazi Germany, only being able to dispatch two naval units as Force Z in October 1941 instead of the promised battle fleet the Pacific Dominions expected to turn up in times of crisis; there were no suitable Dominion naval units available for deployment due to interservice bickering, particularly in Australia; and most damning of all, by 1940 there were only 164 obsolete aircraft based in Malaya and Singapore out of a required 542 planes needed for adequate coverage of both Burma and the Malayan Peninsula, only 31 poorly trained and equipped infantry battalions instead of the required 48, and no tanks at all. Even during 1941 when the threat of war in the Pacific loomed inexorably Britain had sent 676 aircraft and 446 tanks to the Soviet Union instead of using them to boost Singapore’s defence position in the Far East. Without the bare minimum of defence manpower and materiel Singapore was reduced to being a “bulky, expensive, fixed military tool”.
In a global political sense Singapore acquired her pivotal position in British imperial defence due to uncomfortable political, financial and military realities that Great Britain had to confront after four years of war in 1918. Great Britain was cash-strapped after WWI and the population had no stomach for further triggers to conflict. Surrendering a Two-Power Standard that had maintained British naval supremacy on the global seas to avert a potentially ruinous naval race between her, the United States and Japan was seen as a small price to pay for peace.
Great Britain then allowed herself to be held hostage to her imperial pride and future fortune by refusing to acknowledge the realities of her imperial overstretch by virtue of her Treaty-shrunk navy; the Dominions in the Pacific could not be allowed to see Great Britain admit any lack of conviction or uncertainty “about its ability, under all circumstances, to come to the aid of its own colonies and Dominions, particularly when these were the very same territories that had unstintingly provided men and materiel at considerable cost during the Great War.” Such a perceived weakness was feared by the British as potential playing into the hands of the Americans who were themselves building up a Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbour. It is thus under the false bravado of Great Britain to be seen to “have a plan” and be accountable by her Australian and New Zealand dominions that Singapore became the equivalent of an imperial prestige project and less of a pivotal defence bastion in the Far East for the 20 years leading to the outbreak of the Pacific War.