The brief but violent British assault on French held Madagascar had taken place right on schedule, between the 5th and 7th of May. As such, it was eclipsed by the far larger battle off Fiji then underway, and the decisive collision in the Koro Sea. Yet for the British, seizing Madagascar was of great significance. It was one of two vital possessions Vichy France held that the Allies dearly coveted, the other being the New Hebrides.
“We already know what the French have suggested,” said Churchill to Brooke when the matter had come up. “They’ll go so far as to hand the entire island right over to the Japanese. Then what? From there they will have cut us off from Ceylon and India, and if they take that naval base, they can put bombers on Durban, and stop every last convoy we send around the Cape. It would be a disaster of the first order, so that place simply must be taken. I don’t care how we do it, or where the troops come from. You must find them, and carry it off like a thief in the night before the Japanese realize what they’ve lost.”
Brooke handed the matter to Tovey for the naval arm, and he teed up Illustrious and Indomitable with 82 planes to cover the operation. He then scraped up the 29th Independent Brigade, the 13th and 17th Brigades of 5th Division, the 7th South African and Rhodesian 27th Brigades. Number 5 Commando would be on the cutting edge of the attack. This was a force of some 15,000 troops against the French garrison of 8,000 troops and six tanks, with 32 antiquated planes.
The landings had occurred at the northernmost tip of the island where the vital protective Diego Suarez Bay provided one of the best anchorages in the Indian Ocean. The 29th Brigade was the hammer that struck that anvil, with the other British forces following later. The action in the north was a great success, and though low level fighting continued for the next 45 days, Churchill had Madagascar, and saw it as a great outer bulwark protecting the vital Cape Town region.
When ULTRA intercepts indicated that the enemy was now planning a sortie into the Indian Ocean, it was therefore cause for some alarm in Whitehall. It was clear what their objective might be—Ceylon. If japan were to take that, they could use it to base aircraft, naval units and submarines that could pose a threat as far away as the Persian Gulf and Red Sea. Beyond that, Ceylon was also a source of over 90% of Britain’s rubber, and it would produce 60% of the rubber all the Allied powers used, a resource that was much needed in wartime. All those tires on trucks and planes needed it, and it had many other wartime applications. Ceylon was also a major producer of tea, and that, too was a vital resource insofar as the British were concerned.
Yet for all that virtue, Ceylon’s liability was that it could not produce enough food to feed its local population. As Hara’s carriers headed west, there was no more than 14 days supply of rice on the Island, and the island needed to import over half a million tons of rice per year. Some of it came from India, more from the Middle East, and that meant the waters around the island were full of merchant shipping on those thin, highly vulnerable sea lanes. The Japanese knew this, and therefore one of Vice Admiral Ozawa’s chief objectives, in addition to screening Hara’s carriers, was to seek out and destroy merchant shipping off the coast of India.
And so just one brief look at a single piece of the great puzzle that had been the British Empire, was quite revealing. This piece was particularly important, for it connected directly to great segments of the puzzle on either side, the Australian and New Zealand Commonwealth to the east, and India to the north. Remove it from British control, and a deadly gap appeared in the puzzle that could only be filled again by fire, steel, and blood. In many ways, it was more strategic then Malta was in the Med, or even Gibraltar, and perhaps even the equal of the Suez Canal in terms of importance to that theater. Churchill himself commented that the approach of Japanese naval units to Ceylon filled him with dread.
“The most dangerous moment of the War, and the one which caused me the greatest alarm, was when the Japanese Fleet was heading for Ceylon and the naval base there. The capture of Ceylon, the consequent control of the Indian Ocean, and the possibility at the same time of a German conquest of Egypt would have closed the ring and the future would have been black.”
British power to protect and secure the vital resources and lines of communication flowing through Ceylon now rested on Somerville’s Indian Ocean Squadron, three carriers, three old battleships, three heavy cruisers and a few other light cruisers and destroyers. After watching the Japanese destroy Pearl Harbor, seize the Philippines, Malaya, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, New Guinea, push boldly into the Solomons and all the way to Fiji, Churchill had every reason to be fearful with the coming of this news.
In early July, he had very little to defend that island. He had pleaded with Prime Minister Curtin to allow him to keep two regiments of the Australian 6th Division there, but the loss of Port Moresby and the brief Japanese air raid on Port Darwin had ended any hope of achieving that. So it was then down to the British 34th Indian Division, reinforced earlier that year with the arrival of the 16th British Regiment, and the HQ and 21st Regiment of the 11th East African Division. A few security battalions had been raised among the locals, but that was it, with service troops in the two major ports, some AA guns and radar crews.
A squadron of Blenheim bombers arrived at Colombo from Greece, and was operating at the improved airfield at Ratmalana with a squadron of Fulmars. Two squadrons of Hurricanes came all the way from North Africa to China Bay at Trincomalee, where the racecourse had been converted to a makeshift airfield. At Trincomalee, or ‘Trinco’ as the British called it, the posh country club, became a headquarters; the tennis courts were used to grow vegetables, and the Cricket Fields and club became the domain of the R.A.F pilots. On the southern tip of the island, a small lake at Koggala was a perfect basing spot for Catalina search planes. Up on Adams Peak east of Colombo, one of the highest in the central island mountains, the British had deployed an air search radar set to sweep the seas in all directions around the island.
There, an imprint in a boulder was said to be the left footprint of the Buddha itself. The Hindus claimed it was the footprint of Lord Shiva, the Muslims that of Adam. Others said it was the tread of the god Saman, the deity of the rising sun, and so all these legends made the place a sacred site that drew many pilgrims in better times. Now it was the searching eye and ears of the Royal Navy, for this time, a different rising sun was coming to Ceylon with Admiral Hara’s 3rd Carrier Division.
As on Singapore, rumors of impending doom began to spread. The locals had all heard what happened in Hong Kong, of the Chinese massacred at Singapore and other tales of Japanese atrocities. Many were already heading for the highland, thinking it would be a sanctuary in the event the Japanese invaded. The exodus from the coastal areas was so pronounced, that the ship repair company at Colombo, which normally employed 3600 locals, suddenly found that only 76 showed up for work. Fear was a toxin that could spread faster than Malaria, but it may have been well justified.
The Japanese were coming, and with some of the very best troops in the army, the survivors of numerous campaigns in China, Malaya and the costly battle for Singapore. The 11th Regiment of the 5th Division was already boarding the transports at Singapore, and the clock was ticking.