The strategy for the defeat of Japan could not have been simpler:
Allied air, land, and sea forces would advance on three broad axes to
roll back the new Japanese empire to the Home Islands, which Allied
forces would then invade and occupy, if necessary. British Commonwealth
forces would advance from India through Burma to Malaya and Hong Kong;
Australian- American forces would drive north and west from Australia
into the Netherlands East Indies and the Philippines; and the United
States, rich in naval air and surface units, would attack across the
Central Pacific toward the Philippines and Formosa. Destruction of the
Japanese armed forces (especially air and naval units) would proceed
simultaneously with the ruination of Japan’s economy, dependent upon
seaborne oil, minerals, coal, rubber, and foodstuffs. Any amateur who
could read a map could design such a grand strategy. Making it happen
proved quite a different matter.
The Allied military experience in the China-Burma-India (CBI) theater
demonstrated how difficult it would be to mount a cohesive offensive
effort from nations with conflicting interests and asymmetrical
capabilities. Not until 1943 did British commanders in India believe
that their principal field force, the Fourteenth Army, could conduct
even limited offensive operations. They tested their forces with a
one-division advance along the Arakan coast and found the Japanese and
terrain unconquerable. The Arakan offensive demonstrated what the
Fourteenth Army commander, General William Slim, feared. Only
wide-ranging amphibious operations could take his army past the rugged
Chin Hills guarding Burma from the west and blocking access to the river
valleys leading to Mandalay and Rangoon. A hardened field soldier who
had learned his trade on the Western Front and in the Indian Army, Slim
combined troop-leading and training skills with personal and moral
courage as well as charm, a sound grasp of soldiering, and a solid
appreciation of Asian warfare and the excellence of the Japanese Army.
He had experienced the catastrophe of the 1942 retreat from Burma and
the abortive attack in the Arakan. His honesty and character made him
the obvious choice to reshape the Fourteenth Army, a force built on the
Indian Army but including the ever-dependable Gurkha Rifles of Nepal,
unproven infantry battalions from East and West Africa, and infantry
battalions and supporting arms from the British Army.
In theory, the concept of amphibious envelopments reaching to
Singapore made sense to everyone except the other Allies and much of the
Royal Navy. With the demands of other theaters, the Allies could not
find adequate amphibious shipping for even a modest operation aimed at
Rangoon and scheduled for late 1943 or 1944. Slim now saw no alternative
but an overland advance by his army, gradually reinforced from the
Middle East and India proper, where the internal security mission
required fewer British battalions by 1944. The Japanese Fifteenth Army,
under Lieutenant General Mutaguchi Renya, also grew in the same months
from four to eight divisions, thus raising the prospective cost to Slim
of an overland battle through the mountains of western Burma. If Slim
could find no reasonable alternative to a conventional offensive, others
offered shining promises of easy victory. Churchill and Roosevelt,
politicians and opportunists to the core, grasped these false options
with enthusiasm.
Already tied to Nationalist China by sentiment and prior commitment,
Roosevelt never abandoned his hope that Chiang Kai-shek’s armies would
go on the offensive and that Chiang himself could actually play the role
of regional leader. From mid-1942 until mid-1943 Roosevelt struggled to
keep China in the war, aided in his quest by Marshall and Stilwell. In
October 1942 Roosevelt answered Chiang’s Three Demands with limited
promises of an air buildup in India and a serious effort to bring
Lend-Lease supplies to Kunming by air. The Allies could complete the
Ledo extension of the Burma Road only by driving at least one Japanese
division from northern Burma with some sort of Sino-American army.
Roosevelt did not promise to send ground combat forces, even though
Stilwell favored this option. Encouraged by Hap Arnold’s staff and
Chennault (now commanding the Tenth Air Force in China) to think more
about offensive air operations from China, Roosevelt in May 1943 chose
(much to Stilwell’s dismay and Chiang’s delight) Chennault’s concept of a
major bomber offensive against China’s coastal cities and Japanese sea
lanes. Chennault, the air defense expert, suddenly promised victory
through bombing, probably influenced by his nominal theater air
commander, Major General Clayton D. Bissell, and Bissell’s patron, Hap
Arnold. The air plan, however, offered Stilwell some solace, since such a
commitment required an open Ledo- Burma Road and a reformed Chinese
Army to protect the bomber bases in China. At the Quebec conference of
August 1943, Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Combined Chiefs of Staff
approved an offensive in north Burma.
With his schemes for amphibious operations frustrated by shipping
shortages, Churchill supported American plans for the China-Burma-India
theater, even though he had little faith in Nationalist China. Moreover,
Churchill fell under the spell of one of the war’s most eccentric and
charismatic commanders, Brigadier Orde Wingate. A Middle Eastern expert
with guerrilla successes in the Sudan, Ethiopia, and Palestine, Wingate
argued for unconventional warfare in Burma. Slim doubted Wingate would
find the Japanese as impressionable as his Middle Eastern foes, and he
resented Wingate’s influence with Churchill, who allowed Wingate to
strip Fourteenth Army of some of its best British, Gurkha, and African
troops.
Bursting with energy, Wingate formed the 3,300-man 77th Brigade in
1943, the Long Range Penetration Group (LRPG) or “Chindits,” a nickname
drawn from the ferocious winged lions of stone guarding Burma’s temples.
Wings had much to do with the Chindits, since Wingate expected his
force to land by glider or parachute behind Japanese lines and then be
resupplied by air. Fighter-bombers would provide fire support instead of
artillery. The first experiment in February–June 1943 was no great
success, proving only that Chindits got tired and sick like everyone
else and could not live by airdrops alone. The Chindits killed three
times as many Japanese as they themselves lost (68 to 28), but almost
the entire force ended the operation unfit for future duty. Slim
certainly did not see the Chindit operations as a substitute for his
campaign.
Wingate’s quixotic schemes then grew into a larger and more optimistic
plan for a return to Burma in 1944 on the same model. Churchill liked
the concept, while Stilwell saw Wingate’s force as a useful instrument
in his own plan to lead a Sino-American ground force against Myitkyina, a
crucial road junction on the way to Lashio, terminus of the Burma Road.
With the approval of Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, appointed the
theater commander in September 1943, Wingate wrested control of troops
in India that were outside Slim’s command and formed a six-brigade LRPG
of 20,000 officers and men. Stilwell had no comparable ground force. He
had two small Chinese divisions under his direct control, and Marshall
had provided only a makeshift infantry regimental combat team drawn from
“volunteers” from the U.S. Army. Designated the 5307th Composite Unit
Provisional, the unit preferred the name Merrill’s Marauders, thus
identifying themselves with Brigadier General Frank D. Merrill, one of
Stilwell’s favorite staff officers but an inexperienced commander with a
serious heart condition.
Stilwell, however, had some other assets to entice Wingate into the
north Burma campaign. First, he had the full cooperation of the American
air forces (if not Chennault), since an open Ledo-Burma Road would
dramatically reduce the airlift requirements over “the Hump,” the
dangerous southeastern extension of the Himalayas. Moreover, the
prospect of Chinese bases attracted American bomber generals, who were
not having great success yet over Germany and who had made huge
investments in a new long-range bomber, the B-29 Superfortress. Arnold
and Bissell organized their own special operations wing, the 5138th Air
Force Unit or the 1st Air Commando Group, commanded by Colonel Philip
“Flip” Cochran, who proved one of the most able officers in the
China-Burma-India theater. Stilwell promised Wingate that Cochran’s
200-aircraft group, which included fighter-bombers and transports as
well as gliders and reconnaissance aircraft, would provide the Chindits
the aerial support the RAF could not, if Wingate coordinated his
operations with the Myitkyina expedition.
Both Stilwell and Wingate assumed they would enjoy the services of the
pro-Allied Burma hill tribes. The major mountain tribal groups—Nagas,
Kachins, Karens, Shans, and Chins—numbered a minority of about 7 million
of Burma’s 17 million people. The Nagas, Kachins, and Karens had served
happily in the colonial security forces, had fought the Japanese in
1942, and now wanted weapons to fight Burmese collaborators and the
Japanese. Many Karens had become Christians, and the Kachins rivaled the
Gurkhas in their warriorlike qualities. In 1943 the hill tribes
welcomed new guerrilla leaders from the United States and the
Commonwealth, Detachment 101 of the OSS and Force 136 of the British
Special Operations Directorate. Generously supplied with arms, money,
supplies, and radios, these partisan teams rallied thousands of Kachin
and Karen tribesmen. They, too, depended on the 1st Air Commando Group
for support.
While Slim’s Indian divisions conducted cautious offensive operations
in central and south Burma in 1943–44, the Chindits, Marauders, and
Chinese marched or flew into north-central and northern Burma in
February and March 1944.Wingate did not intend to support Stilwell, but
he died in an air crash in March, and his successor then coordinated the
movement of the six LRPG brigades with Stilwell’s force. Unfortunately,
Stilwell underestimated the fighting skill and tenacity of the Japanese
18th Division, under Lieutenant General Tanaka Shinchi, and he used his
forces (including air support) with such profligacy that the Chindits
and 1st Air Commando were combat-ineffective before Myitkyina fell. The
Marauders and three Chinese divisions fought their way to the headwaters
of the Irrawaddy by April 1944 but exhausted themselves in the process.
In the battles of Walawbum and Shadzup, only the timely arrival of the
Chinese saved the Marauders from disaster. Merrill himself collapsed
with another heart attack.
Stilwell then ordered the remnants of his expeditionary force on a 65-
mile trek to Myitkyina, which it besieged in June and finally captured
in August with the help of more Chinese and the Burmese partisans. The
campaign destroyed the Marauders and crippled the Chinese X Force. The
campaign did not end, however, since Chiang had finally ordered Y Force
into Burma from the east, while Marshall sent two more U.S. infantry
regiments (Mars Force) to the CBI to replace the Marauders, who mustered
barely 200 effectives from an original 3,000-man force. Chiang’s price
of cooperation was Stilwell’s relief, since he viewed “Vinegar Joe” as
pro- Communist. Stilwell did know which Chinese regime would seize the
Mandate of Heaven. The Kuomintang, he noted, was characterized by
“corruption, neglect, chaos, economy [bad], taxes . . . hoarding, black
market, trading with the enemy.” The Communists “reduce taxes, rents,
interest . . . raise production, and standard of living, participate in
government. Practice what they preach.” Vinegar Joe, sick and bitter,
left the CBI before the north Burma force finally met Y Force at the
Chinese border south of Lashio and allowed U.S. Army engineers to link
the Ledo Road with the highway to Kunming.
By the time the land route to China had been reopened, the Chennault
air plan had already come a cropper. Even Roosevelt finally accepted the
conclusion his military chiefs had reached long before: the Chinese
Nationalists would do little to defeat Japan. Within China, signs of
shirking were only too clear. Inflation and corruption, fueled by
American supplies and money, became rampant. Chinese military casualties
fell below 300,000 for the first time since 1937. The American military
mission in Chungking, now directed by Major General Albert C.
Wedemeyer, believed that only the Communist Eighth Route Army and the
OSS-supported Chinese-Mongolian partisans were real fighters.
The decline of the Nationalist Army did not reflect any lack of effort
by Tenth Air Force’s air transports in flying “the Hump.” By August
1943, C-46s were delivering 5,000 tons of supplies a month to China, an
unthinkable figure when Chiang had demanded that support a year earlier.
By January 1944, Tenth Air Force effort reached 15,000 tons a month.
The commitment took a heavy toll. The transport force lost at least one
aircraft for every one of the 500 air miles between India and China;
more than 1,000 aircrewmen perished along the route. At its peak
strength, Tenth Air Force had 650 aircraft in the air every day, around
the clock. This effort made it possible for Chennault to mount Operation
Matterhorn, the strategic bombardment of Chinese and Formosan targets
with B-24s and B-29s based in China.
The opportunity cost to the Chinese Nationalists was high, too, since
90 percent of the cargo tonnage in 1943–44 was aviation gasoline and
ordnance, not Lend-Lease arms for the Chinese Army. This imbalance
exacted its toll all too soon. As the airlift over “the Hump” provided
more logistical support, Arnold sent more operational wings to China and
created a new command for Chennault, the Fourteenth Air Force, which
included one B-29 bombardment wing. When Churchill and Roosevelt met
Chiang Kaishek on their way to Teheran in November 1943, they promised
Chiang, awash in self-importance, a great air war from China against
Japan. Their meeting coincided with the first American bombardment of
Formosa. They also promised to push operations in Burma to open the
Ledo-Burma Road and increase Lend-Lease aid. In return for recognition
of his role as Allied Generalissimo in Asia, Chiang promised to use his
army to the best of its limited ability to support the American and
British offensive.
The Japanese did not look kindly on the growing U.S. Army Air Forces
presence in China, however, and ordered the China expeditionary army to
begin ICHI-GO (Operation One) in January 1944. For the next ten months
the Japanese Army pushed the Nationalists back and overran base after
base, forcing the forward-based Fourteenth Air Force fighters and
bombers deeper into China, more than half of which remained unconquered.
The Chinese Army’s resistance was erratic and ultimately futile, but
Japanese casualties and the lengthening logistical tail of the Japanese
divisions brought operations to a halt in January 1945. The Japanese
generals in China cautioned Tokyo that they could not advance far enough
to capture the bases of the new B-29s, which had a range of 4,000
miles.
The strategic bombing champions, however, had already concluded that
an enlarged Matterhorn was too tall a challenge. With the decline of
Fourteenth Air Force and military support of Chiang Kai-shek, operations
in the China-Burma-India theater, divided into the Southeast Asia and
Chinese theaters in 1944, reverted to a British Commonwealth effort to
restore the British Empire, a goal the United States failed to support
with any enthusiasm. The war with Japan would be won elsewhere.
