This assessment can be regarded as entirely inaccurate. The statement is referring to the findings in the book ‘The Battle for Singapore’ by Peter Thompson. On the 13 and 14th of February 1941 the Japanese capture the hill and water reservoirs around Bukit Timah, in central Singapore. Lieutenant-General Arthur Ernest Percival, the defending force commander, is now faced with two options: another counterattack against the Japanese line or surrender. In his book, Thompson states in reference to this action that: “Had Percival mounted a counterattack…he might have turned the whole campaign around”.

 

This statement neglects to consider the campaign in the broader strategic context. Any local reversal on the outskirts of Singapore would not have changed the fate of the defenders to any great degree, it may have even made their situation worse. Prior to the fall of Singapore, Japan forces are expanding into Sumatra and Burma as well as Thailand and the Philippines, Pearl Harbour has been raided and the US Pacific Fleet temporarily neutralised. The British Naval Force Z is at the bottom of the South China Sea. The air war is over. The water supply to the island was compromised when the causeway was blown and within a day or two, the entire remaining force and the million or so civilians will begin to realise they are about to die of thirst. Within a few days of the surrender, Japan is bombing the city of Darwin and the island of Java is about to fall. The Japanese have complete regional superiority at this point. Any suggestion that the Japanese were at a strategic breaking point and a localised counterattack or defence would reverse the fortunes of the Japanese campaign, is patently absurd in the extreme. One only has to look at the subsequent and concurrent operations in the area, inclusive of the Battle of the Sunda Strait and the Battle of the Java Sea, to see the flexibility afforded to the Japanese at this time. 3 Japanese infantry divisions were allocated to the Malaya campaign, a further 9 divisions to the region with no shortage of manpower or material being available.

 

Any counterfactual argument regarding how Singapore could have been saved can only rest with how the Battle of Malaya could have been fought rather The Battle of Singapore itself. In that case it can only rest with the strategic outlook developed by the British prior to, and in the early stages of the war, and the successful prosecution of the planned counterattack against any invasion: Operation Matador. Prior to the Battle of Malaya, Percival recognised the weakness of Singapore to a land invasion from northern Malaya in the event of a Japanese attack. Singapore was never built as a ‘fortress’, or ‘citadel’ as Churchill called it, but as a naval base on an island surrounded by a ‘fortress system’ of large calibre guns with overlapping fields of fire. This system was naval countermeasure and was recognised for its deterrent value more than anything else. With the Japanese invasion of the island of Hainan and their lodgement in northern Indochina developing, it was clear to Percival that Singapore was vulnerable from a land assault by the Japanese. Only the successful execution of Matador would prevent the fall of the Island.

 

In the book ‘Did Singapore have to fall? Churchill and the Impregnable fortress’ by Karl Hack and Kevin Blackburn, the authors state regarding this very question that: “Any marginal improvement in British resistance could be countered. When Japanese sources claim a few days more resistance could have exhausted them, we must bear in mind their desire to emphasise their heroism taking on a numerically superior force, and the ever-present danger of death and failure”.

Sources:

‘Did Singapore have to fall? Churchill and the Impregnable fortress’ by Karl Hack and Kevin Blackburn’.

‘The Battle for Singapore’ by Peter Thompson.

‘Operational Art: Lessons from Japan's Malaya Campaign and Capture of Singapore’ by Susan M Chiaraville Commander USN

‘Bicycle Blitzkrieg: The Malayan Campaign and the Fall of Singapore’ by LCDR Alan C Headrick USNR.