Operation Dracula

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Operation Dracula
Part of Burma Campaign
Date January - March 1945
Location Rangoon, Burma
Result Unopposed Allied Victory
Combatants
Indian XV Corps Japan
Commanders
Sir Philip Christison
Strength
1 infantry division
1 airborne battalion		 c. 30
Casualties
24 (from friendly fire) c. 30
Burma Campaign
Chindits – Ngakyedauk – Imphal – Kohima – Central Burma – Dracula
South-East Asian campaign
Malaya – Prince of Wales & Repulse – Thailand – Singapore – Indian Ocean – Andaman Islands – Burma – Malacca Strait

During World War II, Operation Dracula was the name given to an airborne and amphibious attack on Rangoon by British and Indian forces, part of the Burma Campaign. When it was launched, the Japanese had already abandoned the city.

Contents

[edit] Background

Rangoon was the capital and major port of Burma (present day Myanmar). In December 1941, Japan entered World War II by attacking United States territory and the Far Eastern colonial possessions of Britain and the Netherlands.

After occupying Thailand, the Japanese attacked southern Burma in March 1942. The British, Indian and Burmese forces were outmatched and forced to evacuate Rangoon. This made the long-term British defence of Burma impossible, as there were then no proper alternate supply routes overland from India. The British and Chinese forces were compelled to evacuate Burma and withdraw into India.

There was stalemate for a year. By 1944, the Allied forces in India had been reinforced and had expanded their logistic infrastructure, which made it possible to for them to contemplate an attack into Burma. The Japanese attempted to forestall them by an invasion of India, which led to a heavy Japanese defeat at the Battle of Imphal, and other setbacks in Northern Burma. Their losses were to handicap their defence of Burma in the following year.

[edit] Allied plans

In July, 1944, the Allied South East Asia Command began making definite plans for the reconquest of Burma. At this time, the Battle of Imphal was still being fought but it was clear that the Japanese would to be forced to retreat with heavy casualties.

One of the strategic options examined by South East Asia Command was an amphibious assault on Rangoon. This originally had the working name, Plan Z. (Plan X referred to the recapture of northern Burma only by the American-led Northern Combat Area Command with the limited objective of the completing the Ledo Road linking China and India; Plan Y referred to an Allied offensive into Central Burma by the British Fourteenth Army.)

Plan Z, which was to be developed into Operation Dracula, had several advantages. The loss of Rangoon would be even more disastrous for the Japanese in 1945 than it had for the British in 1942. Not only was it the principal seaport by which they received supplies and reinforcements, but it lay very close to their other lines of communication with Thailand and Malaya. An advance north or east from Rangoon of only 40 miles to Pegu or across the Sittang River would cut the Burma Railway, their only viable overland link with their forces in these countries. If Rangoon fell, the Japanese would therefore be compelled to withdraw from almost all of Burma, abandoning much of their equipment.

Unfortunately, to mount an amphibious assault on the scale required would require resources (landing craft, escorting warships, engineering equipment) which would not be available until the campaign in Europe was concluded. (At the time, the Battle of Normandy was being fought, with its outcome still in doubt in some quarters). Operation Dracula was therefore postponed, and Plan Y (now codenamed Operation Capital) was adopted instead.

When landing craft and other amphibious resources became available in 1945, they were first used in comparatively small-scale operations in the Burmese coastal province of Arakan. It was then intended that they would be used in attacks on the Thai Kra Isthmus and Malaya.

[edit] Dracula Reinstated

During February and March, 1945, Fourteenth Army under Lieutenant General William Slim fought the major Battle of Central Burma. The Japanese were heavily defeated. Most of their forces were reduced to fractions of their normal strength, and forced to retreat into the Shan States. Slim now ordered his forces to exploit southward, along the Sittang River valley. During April, Indian IV Corps under Lieutenant General Frank Messervy, spearheaded by an armoured brigade, advanced almost 200 miles southward. They were fighting at Pegu, forty miles north of Rangoon, by the end of the month.

Despite these spectacular successes, Slim was uneasy. Although Messervy and several of his commanders considered there was a sporting chance of capturing Rangoon at the beginning of May, Fourteenth Army's supply lines were strained to the limit by the rapid advances. The monsoon season was imminent, and the heavy rains would hamper movement. In particular, it would be make resupply by air very difficult. It was feared that the Japanese would defend Rangoon to the last man, as they had done elsewhere in the Pacific Theatre. (For example, at Manila, which by this stage of the war was of less strategic importance than Rangoon, Japanese forces had defended the city for a month before being eliminated. 100,000 civilians died during the fighting, and the city was left in ruins.)

Since his forces would be in a disastrous supply situation if forced to fight house to house in Rangoon, in mid-April Slim asked for Operation Dracula to be reinstated, to take place before the monsoon broke in early May. As a necessary preliminary step, IV Corps was ordered to capture the airfields at Toungoo, so that air cover could be provided for the invasion. The airfields were captured by Indian 5th Infantry Division on April 22.

[edit] Japanese situation

The principal Japanese headquarters in Burma, Burma Area Army under Lieutenant General Hyotaro Kimura, was situated in Rangoon. There were no fighting formations, but there were large numbers of line of communication troops and naval personnel.

As the leading British and Indian troops (Indian 17th Infantry Division, with the bulk of Indian 255th Armoured Brigade) approached Pegu, many of these rear-area troops and some hastily mobilised Japanese civilians were formed into the Japanese 105th Independent Mixed Brigade, under Major General Hideji Matsui. The units of this brigade (also codenamed Kani Force) included anti-aircraft batteries, airfield construction battalions, naval Anchorage Units, the personnel of NCO schools and other odds and ends. This scratch force battled for several days to hold Pegu and block further British advance south.

Kimura however, had already decided not to defend Rangoon, but to evacuate the city and withdraw to Moulmein in southern Burma. Many troops left by sea, and nine ships out of a convoy of eleven fell victim to British destroyers. Most of Kimura's HQ and the establishments of Subhash Chandra Bose (commander of the Indian National Army) and Ba Maw (Prime Minister of the nominally independent Burmese government) left by land, covered by the action of Matsui's troops. Kimura himself left by airplane.

Matsui had originally been under the impression that his force was buying time for the defence of Rangoon to be organised. He was furious on learning of the evacuation, but his troops had now been driven into the hills west of Pegu and could neither return to Rangoon before Allied troops reached it nor follow Kimura. (Other Japanese officers also considered the episode a disgrace when they heard of it.)

[edit] Dracula launched

Before the order was given to reinstate Dracula, South East Asia command had been preparing to attack Phuket Island (the operation was codenamed Operation Roger). The naval and air elements for Dracula were therefore already in place. Indian XV Corps, under Lieutenant General Sir Philip Christison was to control the ground forces. Indian 26th Infantry Division under Major General Henry Chambers and other forces sailed in six convoys from Akyab and Ramree islands between April 27 and April 30.

The Naval covering force consisted of two battleships (one French), three cruisers (one Dutch) and six destroyers. Another flotilla of five destroyers was responsible for the destruction of the main Japanese evacuation convoy. 224 Group of the Royal Air Force, under Air Vice Marshal the Earl of Bandon, covered the landings from the airfields around Toungoo and Ramree.

On May 1, 1945, twelve squadrons of B-24 Liberators heavily bombed known Japanese defences south of Rangoon. An Air Force observation post, a small detachment from Force 136 and a Gurkha composite parachute battalion landed at Elephant Point at the mouth of the Rangoon River in the middle of the morning. They eliminated some small Japanese parties, either left as rearguards or perhaps forgotten in the confusion of the evacuation. They themselves suffered thirty casualties from inaccurate Allied bombing.

Once Elephant Point was secured, minesweepers cleared a passage up the river, and landing craft began coming ashore in the early hours of the morning of May 2. Meanwhile, an Allied reconnaissance aircraft flying over the city of Rangoon saw no sign of the Japanese, and also noticed a message painted on the roof of the jail by released British prisoners of war. It is reported to have read, Japs gone. Extract digit, Royal Air Force slang for "Get your finger out" or "Hurry up". Boldly, the crew of the plane landed on Mingaladon Airfield, but crashed. They walked to the jail, where they found 1,000 former prisoners of war who informed them of the Japanese evacuation, then went to the docks, commandeered a sampan and sailed down the river to meet the landing craft.

[edit] Aftermath

The troops of Indian 26th Division began occupying the city without opposition the next day. When the Japanese and Ba Maw's officials left, widespread looting and lawlessness had broken out and continued for several days. The British were joyfully welcomed, perhaps not universally as liberators, but certainly as they could restore order and bring in food and other assistance.

Units of the 26th Division moved out along the main roads to link up with Fourteenth Army. On May 6, at Hlegu twenty-eight miles (forty-five km) north-east of Rangoon, they met the leading troops of 17th Division, pushing their way through floods southwards from Pegu.

Matsui's Kani Force joined the remnants of the Japanese Twenty-eighth Army in the Pegu Yomas. During July, they tried to break out eastwards to join the other Japanese armies east of the Sittang. They suffered the heaviest casualties of any formation in this costly operation. The naval personnel in the force broke out separately from the main body and were effectively wiped out, only a handful surviving.

[edit] Sources

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