Chapter 7: The [British] Empire strikes back
The completely unexpected invasion of the Middle East and western Africa by the Japanese, although it caught the British off guard, ultimately cost them dearly. It was far easier for the British to supply their troops than it was for Japan and a ready supply of willing and eager soldiers sat in the United Kingdom and Egypt, much closer than Japanese reinforcements. To this day, military historians remain confused by Japan's overextension. What did they hope to gain? Were they trying to distract British high command to launch attacks elsewhere? In any case, the Royal Navy and Royal Marines responded rapidly to the situation.
The Red Sea campaign had two major objectives. First, to eliminate the Japanese marine divisions. Second, to cut off any possibility of retreat for the Japanese navy. The first step was to recapture Dubai, depriving Japan of their only port in the region; their next closest port was in East Africa.
Although not actively a part of the war, the United States responded to Japanese attacks by signing an agreement to provide the British Empire with the scrap metal they needed to keep British factories running at full capacity. Unfortunately, as a neutral, the United States could not provide escorts for the British convoy; the damnably efficient German and Italian submarine squadrons were wreaking havoc on British shipping.
With Dubai secured on 30 September, the Marine Corps split up, with two divisions moving west and two east. The thinking at the time, according to Sergeant Larry Quentin, was "to pin those miserable bastards against the neutral Saudis" while "protecting our friends in Oman."
Out in the Gulf of Oman, Lieutenant Commander 'Silent Bill' Harris was conducting regular combat air patrols when he received news of a Japanese attempt to improve their logistical situation by seizing Socotra. He and the Indian Carrier Fleet were ordered east to deal with it, as he recounted in his journals.
Journal of Bill Harris said:
10 October: With the battleships shelling Dubai, we've been ordered to engage a Japanese task force somewhere near Socotra. I'll be leading some recon flights to see what we're up against.
13 October: My squadron has reported three Japanese heavy cruisers, some screens, and a transport. If we could get that transport...
16 October: The rest of the fleet is now in position, and we are engaging the enemy.
17 October: Although we damaged most of the Japanese ships and forced them to back off their attack, all we sunk were a few destroyers. Not a bad day's work, but I wanted that damn transport. It looks like we'll get another chance: the Japanese are trying to land more troops in Oman and we're to make all possible haste.
Early morning, 17 October: We've arrived, and there are the Japanese.
4 PM, 17 October: Damn. We lost the Suffolk. We chased off the main fleet, but unfortunately, the transports were able to evade our gunfire and their marines will soon land at Muscat. A bitter pill.
18 October: We're going back to base for repairs. Oman surrendered. Damn again. Hopefully we can get back into the action soon; I don't like the thought of relying on battlewagons alone as support for our Marines.
Although the loss of
HMS Suffolk was a tragedy, her sacrifice did not go in vain. The overall plan worked like a charm, and the first real success came at the end of October, when two Japanese divisions were cornered by the First and Second Marines. Starving for supplies and with no ability to be extract by sea, they quickly surrendered.
With the Royal Navy able to easily pick up and redeploy British forces, the drive for Muscat began just a couple of weeks later.
The Royal Marines, remembering the lessons Japan had forced upon them in the matter of taking Oman in the first place, used the opportunity provided to them with complete command of the sea to completely isolate the slowly retreating Japanese.
WIth Muscat taken and the Japanese divisions annihilated, the Royal Navy had its own successes to report. Caught without any means of repairing themselves, heavy losses were inflicted on the Japanese navy, including the loss of the carrier
Kaga. [1]
On 19 November, after just under a month of Japanese rule, Oman was liberated.
Yet any thoughts of extended peace, or even time to build up the RAF and Royal Navy further before a strike either on Europe or Japan itself, came to an abrupt end with the news that, just after 1 December 1939, the Japanese had landed a corps of Marines at Pondicherry and were moving to secure as much of the Subcontinent as they could. [2]
By 8 December, Madras had fallen, giving Japan two ports to ship in supplies. The Royal Navy and Royal Marines were ordered to make for the port of Machilipatnam, while the elite Gurkha divisions were ordered to board trains from their forward position in Burma to support the Royal Marines as quickly as possible.
As the Royal Navy moved into position to support the amphibious invasion on the ports of Pondicherry and Madras, a Japanese task force caught the battleships out of the position and the results were bloody.
Nonetheless, the Japanese retreated, and landing efforts began in earnest on 11 December.
Curiously, the Japanese did not contest the landings, which bothered the wounded Sergeant Larry Quentin, recuperating in Madras after the battle of Madanapalle.
Quentin, who had been transferred to the Fourth Division when one of their sergeants was taken ill, wrote one of the definitive accounts of the retaking of India while he recovered from a leg injury.
Sergeant Quentin's account of fighting in India said:
The campaign to drive the bloody Japanese out of India is, in my mind, a strange one. It is not strange because we won; it is strange because the Japanese had no real plan. Our old tactics -- take the ports and isolate the divisions -- worked, but only because the initial Japanese forces were never reinforced.
Shortly after my injury -- Happy bloody Christmas, 1939 -- I returned to Madras. I knew what Third and Fourth Marines would have to do; try to drive the Japanese forces south. The trouble was, Fourth Marines had taken some very heavy fighting and were in no real position to do anything other than dig in.
It was around this time that, as they dug the damned bloody shrapnel out of my right leg, I heard, for the first time, Japanese aircraft engines. Fourth Marines hadn't retreated because they were tired or low on supplies; they were bombed out of position by Japanese bombers. As my leg healed (or so the doctors said; I'm not so sure), I grabbed a radio from the medical tent and tried to get in touch with anybody who would listen. Nobody would. I was ready to hobble out to the damned battlefield and smack some sense into people when, luckily, General McCulloch, commander of the Royal Marine Corps, visited me in my bed. He tried to calm me down, sharing stories of US cooperation in our war and the formation of a Second Armored Corps, commanded by General Slim. What do I bloody care about the Yanks or the Army?
Of course, I didn't tell him that. He's a General and I'm a Sergeant, right? What I did do, as politely as possible, was chew his fool ears off letting the boys get bombed from Ceylon without support. I thought he was going to shoot me on the spot, I did. Instead, he smiled. He picked up the radio, and used the kind of language I hadn't heard since I was going over the top at Third Ypres. We got our wing of fighters and one of bombers.
He gave me a radio with his direct command frequency on it, and promoted me on the spot to Lieutenant. Cor, to think of Larry Quentin as an officer! As soon as I was healthy enough, I was to report to him as his new aide. I had just enough time to hear Mr. Chamberlain's marvelous speech before I was well enough to return to duty.
Let me tell you, boys. It's a mighty different world from HQ. While the Japanese fought tooth and nail to stop us in the south, my old mates in the First Marines wiped out a Japanese division to the north.
We even lost Pondicherry again -- stupid Fourth Marines -- but the Gurkhas, finally, got their asses in gear. By 8 February, we were ready to start our final offensive.
We retook Pondicherry on 19 February, and slowly started herding the Japanese. By 27 February, they were completely surrounded (with the Fourth Marines safely to the south, where they couldn't hurt themselves.)
I did so well, I guess, cooped up behind that desk in Machilipatnam that McCulloch had me plan the invasion of Ceylon.
Indeed, it was Quentin's plan to take Ceylon that earned him the recognition of the top brass back in London. It was a simple one. With Fourth Marines still under strength, the Gurkhas were employed to provide extra manpower. The first step was to strike at the port of Trincomalee, on the eastern side of Ceylon.
This invasion pulled the Japanese defenders to try to contest that landing, leaving them out of their defenses when the second wave hit, a landing at Colombo. The Gurkhas landed at Kurunegala, to the north, and supported the Marine assault on the beaches of Colombo.
With six full divisions on the island, all Japan could do was fight a retreating action and hope for extraction: the Royal Navy, of course, was right there, and sank a cruiser that tried to sail off and warn Japanese HQ of what had happened.
By 6 April 1940, the Japanese were completely defeated and all of India was British once again.
Quentin's plan earned him a second promotion, to Captain, and a transfer back to London, where he supervised the mobilization of the Second Royal Marine Corps. He also had time to work on some plans, at General McCulloch's request. Japan still held far too much British soil, and while the Second Marine Corps was destined to retake East Africa, the First Marine Corps had its choice of targets: should they roll up Japanese forces in Indonesia? Retake the 'Gibraltar of the East'? Or even land forces in French Indochina? There were plenty of options, and he had plenty of time to consider them.
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[1] This particular tactic, although I didn't recognize what was happening until after I played, actually strikes me as gamey. For HOI3 rookies, what happened was that, without a port in range, the Japanese ships just vacillated back and forth between sea provinces until they were destroyed. What I could have done, to be more sporting, was to let their ships go. You can decide for yourselves whether taking advantage of broken pathfinding AI is gamey or not; I feel a little bad for doing it, but not
too bad. Serves them right for going that far west!
[2] This could be the AI's sneaky vengeance on me. I get popup notifications whenever the Japanese are storming any of my beaches or invading my territory. There's just one problem: Pondicherry is French. Therefore, I had no opportunity to intercept that fleet and by the time I got there, as you can see later in the update, they'd spread out pretty far. My only warning was when they left Pondicherry and took one of my provinces (which triggered the alert).
I realize I haven't talked much about the European theater; the truth is, not much happened. Still no Germans in Norway (thanks in part to a new carrier fleet for the North Sea) and they haven't even declared war on Poland yet, despite it being 1940. The Soviets have been quiet too. Before I can commit any forces to Europe, they have to be fighting the Soviets, or I'll lose them to no purpose.
Building wise, I've got some destroyers and cruisers in the pipeline. I'm still taking heavy casualties in the convoy battle, which is denying me access to metal. The resource techs should be upgrading soon, which will help, but I'm also pouring IC into escorts and convoys. The Second Armored Corps and Second Marines should be ready by the end of 1940, and as I said in the update, Second Marines will go after East Africa. I don't really need the land, but I do want to knock out the Marine divisions there. I could also retake Madagascar with them. I've also started shifting tech focus more to the RAF (although the Germans/Italians have done little more than port bombing, which I drove off quickly with fighter patrols), and as those are finished, I'll build some fighter and naval bomber squadrons. I think, perhaps, two of each. Maybe some tactical bombers.
I'm on the road to Superior Firepower (for the fifth brigade per division), and that should mean some extra SPARTy or mobile AA for my Armored Corps, some AT brigades for my infantry divisions still in the UK, and perhaps an engineer brigade for the Marines (or I could go with five full brigades per division, which would certainly be something to see). Techs have mostly been focused on the RAF and sorting out my IC and supply situation. I'm pushing naval doctrines pretty heavily, too, especially carriers and CAGs. There's also radar training too. Once I get some more techs, I'll start on some paratrooper divisions too.
Ultimately, I'm pretty pleased with progress so far. I'm thinking Singapore will make a nice target, so I'll give my fleet some time to repair and then move there next. To be honest, I don't think Indonesia is worth my time. Hong Kong is the one area the Japanese can reinforce without sea power, so they'll have to wait too. Some landings in Indochina could help me out by tying off some Japanese divisions and giving a port closer to the Home Islands. If Japan goes to war with China, that latter timetable will be greatly accelerated. I'm thinking two full Marine Corps for original landings, followed by a corps or two of infantry for support. I don't think I can knock Japan out before 1941, and part of me doesn't want to (so we get Pearl Harbor and the US in the war).
I'll need to play some more before I can update, which I will do this weekend, I think. We'll have to see what opportunities i can make!
