"Singapore: Too Little, Too Late"(Brigadier Ivan Simson). Was the fall of the British "fortress" really inevitable? Discuss.
15th February 1942 marked the fall of Singapore to the hands of the Japanese. All along, Singapore had been the base of British power in South East Asia and had been viewed as a British fortress. Thus the collapse of a fortress in merely 70 days was a humiliating defeat for the British. However, judging from the circumstances prior to the war, the fall was inevitable. British attitude towards Singapore defence ever since the 1820s directly caused the rapid defeat. Various defence schemes for Singapore had been proposed, from Captain Edward Lake's plan in 1827 to Collyer's scheme in 1850 , but none had been fully implemented. In short, a lot had been said about defending Singapore, but very little had been done. Thus resulting in the lack of proper defence in Singapore. In addition, Britain over reliance on America to protect her interest in times of conflict is naivety on her part as America had a policy of non-intervention and disarmament then. The indecisiveness and hesitation of the British, especially on the issue of using Thailand as a defence base, let the Japanese had a chance to beat them to it first. In comparison the Japanese army were well trained, experienced, efficient and had well-planned strategies. I shall thus show that the defeat is inevitable by further assessing Singapore's defence and the attack put up by the Japanese in later paragraphs. To property evaluate the defence Singapore had prior to the war we must start from the 1820s.
The British had never viewed the defence of Singapore as an urgent and important matter even though many defence plans had been proposed. The first major study of Singapore's defence plans was conducted in 1827 by Captain Edward Lake of the Bengal Engineers. After his research he came up with a defence scheme for Singapore.
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