Jack Bowsher, many congrats on your new book. As the title suggests, the Far East campaign is not particularly well-known for tanks. Why is that?
Thank you! Yes, tanks are definitely not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the Burma Campaign! There are a few reasons I think – in an army numbering millions, only a few thousand served in tanks there, and most senior commanders had infantry backgrounds. Inevitably the official histories, memoirs etc are dominated by this perspective.
One assumes that tanks and jungle don’t mix – not only terrain but the humid climate. How were tanks able to operate in conditions that don’t appear conducive to armoured warfare?
This is another reason why the Burma Campaign is considered an infantryman’s war – Burma is one of the most inhospitable and diverse places on the planet geographically speaking. There is a mixture of the Royal Engineers and REME working absolute marvels, elephants building bridges, incredible feats of logistics in the air on the ground. They made armoured warfare possible
At the start of World War Two how did the Indian Army compare with its British counterpart vis a vis armour?
The Indian Army had a number of roles that made it easy to delay mechanisation, especially regarding tanks. The other arms all took on vehicles, but the assumption was that until the late 1930s, tank technology was not good enough to replace cavalry for jobs like internal policing, border defence on the Northwest Frontier with Afghanistan, and so on. If there was a big threat from another large power, like Japan, then it was considered the Royal Navy’s responsibility based out of Singapore. We all know how that went.
Which tanks were used in Burma, and how did they perform?
There were three tanks used extensively – the Stuarts that came over with 7th Armoured Brigade and took part in the retreat in 1942 were essential, buying time for retreating units to get away at a time of their own choosing. They could hold up a Japanese incursion, then breakout of encirclements with sheer firepower. In 1945 the Sherman tank played a decisive role in the breakout from the Irrawaddy bridgehead, the Battle for Meiktila, and in the race to Rangoon, operations that were primarily about manoeuvre warfare. The real star, however, was the Lee/Grant. These unwanted and unloved tanks from the North African theatre found their niche in the Burma Campaign, still fighting even as the Japanese surrendered in August 1945. The large crew and extra firepower from their 37mm turret gun and dual-purpose 75mm in a hull sponson, alongside two machine guns, meant they could engage multiple targets at once. The main role all these tanks ended up performing from late 1943 was bunker busting. They used a mixture of armour-piercing and high-explosive shells to suppress and/or destroy the bunker, allowing the infantry to close within ten yards before making the final bound to throw in grenades or fire submachine guns through the firing slits. They would drive or even drag tanks up mountains, build ramps and bridges to get them up because of how important they were to keeping infantry casualties at acceptable levels. They were so important that the commander of Southeast Asia Command, Lord Louis Mountbatten even had feasibility studies done to see if a Sherman tank could be disassembled and flown in C-47 Dakotas! This initiative did not get off the ground, mostly because they would need too many men reassembling the tanks at forward airfields, who needed to be fed and defended.
The 7th Armoured Brigade (the Desert Rats), after their successes in North Africa, fought in the Far East. How important was their armoured know-how in a theatre far removed from the deserts of Libya, Tunisia and Egypt?
The main thing the newly christened Jungle Rats (a green rat on their badge!) gave the retreating troops was firepower in a platform – Stuart tanks – that the Japanese struggled to effectively counter. 7th Armoured Brigade were experienced, battle-hardened, and professional, which meant they were very adaptable. They also brought a radio net that was more effective than what the infantry carried, allowing Slim to maintain contact with other units. Although some bad habits followed them from the desert, often charging Japanese defences, something which had got other tank units in trouble in the North African campaign, but the lack of effective Japanese anti-tank weapons meant they got away with it in Burma.
The Imperial Japanese Army also had armour, but how did it compare, and what standard was Japanese armoured doctrine at by 1943?
Doctrinally and technologically, the Japanese were inferior. Their tanks had matured facing the poorly equipped Chinese Army in the 1930s, and so they were small, thinly armoured, and under-gunned, and used more like mobile pillboxes. When they face US-designed British tanks they were completely outgunned and failed to use a tank’s manoeuvrability effectively. For example, in March 1944 on the Tamu road near Imphal six Japanese tanks lined up in a tree line to ambush some Lee tanks and were destroyed one-by-one without much difficulty because they stayed put and their guns were unable to penetrate a Lee tank’s armour.
The major victory at Imphal in 1944 was a crucial turning point. What part did tanks play in the battle?
Imphal was a tough battle for the tank men, specifically the 3rd Carabiniers who were the primary unit engaged there. They were split up to cover various different areas of the Imphal Plain, first to stop the Japanese encirclement from crushing the British and Indian forces, then to counterattack and push them back. This meant their role caried incredibly in a microcosm of the way tanks were used in the entire campaign. On the Tamu Road they helped bring 20th Indian Division to safety in the plain, on the Silchar Track they sniped at Japanese bunkers on the hills from the roads, and at Potsangbam (nicknamed Pots and Pans by the troops) they fought in large villages and on flat ground between them. They were most vital though on the 13th April when they were used to clear the Japanese of a hill called Nunshigum, only eight miles from Imhal itself. The Japanese could dominate the entire plain, and also the airfields that brought in all the supplies to the Allied garrison – they had to be cleared off. These tanks climbed the 1,000-foot high and very steep hill with infantry support, and on the knife edge ridge they cleared Japanese bunkers. The ridge was so narrow the tank commanders had to lean out of their Grant tank’s turrets to navigate and fight off Japanese attacks. They were all killed or wounded in the process, and the attack stalled. Squadron Sergeant Major William Craddock took over the operation and destroyed the last Japanese bunkers, securing the hill. It was physically the closest the Japanese came to Imphal, and therefore the closest they came to victory.
What’s next?
One of the final chapters of Forgotten Armour was about the most incredible all-arms battle of the Second World War. I told it from the perspective of the tank men obviously, but it was such an awe-inspiring battle that I just had to tell the full story. Titled Thunder Run: Meiktila 1945, it looks at how 17th Indian Division and 255th Indian Tank Brigade charged across the central dry belt of Burma to the Japanese supply hub of Meiktila, 80 miles behind enemy lines, and on the far side of the mighty Irrawaddy River. After a vicious battle to capture it, they held it for a month, surrounded, outnumbered, and supplied only by air. They sent out columns of tanks, mechanised infantry and self-propelled artillery to destroy Japanese formations before they had a chance to concentrate. It is the greatest battle you’ve never heard of, but you can read all about it next summer!
Jack Bowsher is the author of Forgotten Armour: Tank Warfare in Burma
