- 73 - Pacific War - Return of the Chindits, April 11-18, 1943

Last time we spoke about Admiral Yamamoto’s Operation I-Go. The empire of the rising sun had to do something about the allied advance up the solomons and New Guinea. Yamamoto devised a grand counter air offensive to hinder the allies airfield building in the regions. However, this was not 1941, it was 1943 and the Japanese aviation crews and pilots were not the same men they once were. The war was taking its toll on the effectiveness of Japan’s airpower and it was showcased during Operation I-Go.  Despite the wild claims of the pilots who would have Japan’s leadership believe they shutdown every allied aircraft in existence, the reality was they had only inflicted enough damage to set back the allied timetables for 10 days. Unbeknownst to the Japanese also was that allied cryptanalysts were continuing to break their codes and found out fateful information about the mastermind behind Operation I-Go. But today you need to grab your onions cause were are talking about Chindits.

This episode is the return of the Chindits 

Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

For a few weeks we have been covering what basically can be described as the major strategic shift during the Pacific War. I know I repeat it so often, but the battle of guadalcanal was the real turning point of the Pacific War. It led the allies to grab the initiative for the rest of the war and as a result the Japanese were forced to take a defensive stance. The taking of guadalcanal and the Buna-Gona-Sanananda areas led to a lot of shuffling for both sides. And with all that shuffling came heavy losses and resources being forcefully allocated to certain areas at the cost of others.

Now up in the frigid northern waters of the north pacific, the 6 hour battle of the komandorski islands had nearly ended in an American debacle. If admiral Hosogaya had pressed his advantage, he would have most likely destroyed the Salt Lake City alongside several other warships. But as we saw, the high explosive shell fired by a single man had prompted Hosogay to falsely believe American airforces were attacking him and he pulled out. Hosogaya’s conservative decision was condemned by his superiors and he was forced into retirement as a result. Admiral McMorris’s force suffered damage to 3 ships and lost 7 men, but he walked away and the Japanese convoy failed its mission. It was to be Japan’s last attempt to resupply the Attu and Kiska garrisons with surface ships, all future runs would be done via submarine.

Thus the success of Admiral Kinkaids daring blockade had sealed the fate of the Japanese garrisons on the two islands. Yet before the Americans could begin invading these two islands they needed to perform basically the same strategy their colleagues were doing in the south pacific. They needed to secure advance bases and island hop their way west. One of the first major moves came when Admiral Kinkaid and General Buckner made the joint decision to move the Army, Navy and Air Force headquarters out to Adak. Adak was a thousand miles nearer to the enemy, but concentrating so much on the island created its own problems. A year prior, there had been only 5000 people in the Aleutians, now there were nearly 40,000. The bottleneck became so severe, Buckner’s soldiers were being supplies with just 10 rounds of ammunition per weapon and food rations were very limited. The men were living off canned vegetables and the occasional shiploads of foul-smelling mutton from New Zealand. Mutton in general was notably not very loved amongst American forces. Australians took a notice of this as Americans began to complain in Australia that they were tired of eating it all the time there. Actually a hilarious rumor emerged amongst the Americans in Australia that General MacArthur owned a sheep ranch and was being enriched at their expense. Yes I managed to toss another punch at Dougey. Medical problems began to emerge in the Aleutians as many American bodies began to reject the environment, that is polite talk for Americans who can't handle a bit of cold. Lingering head colds became so bad, the men began to refer to it as “Aleutian malaria”. I mean I do get it, snow can suck, the cold sucks, waking up at 6am to record this podcast only to look out my window at what is becoming a hours shoveling of my driveway sucks, Canadian problems 101. 

As for the US Navy, the north pacific submarine force had spent the first few months of Kinkaids command simply gathering strength, building up enough to make a final push, but nothing too exciting. A new PT boat squadron had been assembled employing the Higgens model. Now I don’t know about all of you, but the idea of being on a tiny PT boat in the Aleutians sounds horrifying. If you might recall in January, 4 torpedo boats led by Lt CLinton McKeller had departed King cove to sail for Dutch Harbor. They sailed through a squall, coated with 4 inches of ice. The 4 boats made it to the nearest harbor, Dora Harbor on Unimak and were stuck there for nearly a week. There anchored they were bashed around by howling 80 knot winds, and Pt-27 smashed into some jagged rocks, Pt-28 went aground and sank, pt-22 crashed on a reef and sank, but McKellar was able to keep his crews intact. The two surviving boats had to be rescued some days later by the tender Virginia E. 

The devastating experiences of the McKeller’s men led to this new squadron of PT boats being outfitted with hot-air heaters. To compare to the PT boat crews miseries, the experience of the pilots in the Aleutians was not any better. Butler lost 11 planes due to bad weather in January alone. The weather improved in February allowing for some missions, but they were hampered terribly by a technological issue. The B-24 liberators constantly had their bomb-bay rack mechanisms freeze on them. Thus the bombing missions half the time went bust.

Now Admiral Kinkaid suggested an attack on Kiska in January of 1943. The plan found its way to the Casablanca conference in north africa where president FDR, Sir Winston CHurhcill and the allied combined chiefs of staff hammered out the fine details. Kinkaid’s plan to attack Kiska actually managed to become an item debated at the conference. The allied leaders approved it and sent it over to the US joint chiefs of staff to develop it into a real operation, which became code named Operation Landcrab. The task was handed over to General John DeWitt, who recommended using the 35th infantry division, but the war department decided instead to use the southwestern 7th motorized division. However this division was trained in desert warfare. The rationale for this was due to Rommel’s recent defeat and the lack of need for desert trained troops in Europe.Well obviously the desert tactics nor the tanks, truck and other armored vehicles were of any use to the Aleutians, the entire division required training in arctic amphibious operations which would take over 3 months.

Luckily amphibious assault specialists like Major General Holland “Howlin Mad” Smith, Colonels Castner, Eareckson, Alexander and Carl Jones were accustomed to the Aleutian theater and helped retrain the 7th division at Los Angeles. By February Washington had assigned an insufficient number of ships for the invasion of Kiska. This prompted Kinkaid to suggest instead of attacking Kiska to bypass her and hit Attu. Attu was believed to only have a garrison of 500 men and Kinkaid believed seizing Attu, just west of Kiska would prompt the Japanese to abandon Kiska.

Thus operation Landcrab was greenlit and ready to go, and all the major commanders of the theater would meet at a conference in San Diego to hash out the final details. The San diego conference quickly deteriorated into a series of arguments between two new commanders, rear-admiral William Ward Smith and Vice admiral Francis Warren Rockwell and the experienced Alaskan leaders Buckner and DeWitt. They squabbled over reconnaissance issues, in truth the Americans did not have a good picture of the western Aleutians. Bucker pointed out that the Navy, Army and Airforce had 4 different sets of map coordinates and asked the issue be rectified. This led the Alaska Scout leader Colonel Castner to urge Major General Albert Eger Brown who would be commanding the 7th infantry division to perform a reconnaissance personally. Brown however did not do this. Furthermore Buckner requested they employ a battalion of his ground forces for the operation to improve their low morale. Rockwell argued his shipping capacity was overstretched, leading DeWitt to assign the commercial ship Perida to take Buckner’s troops into the battle. Rockwell then complained the commercial ship would not be able to land his troops quickly enough to protect them it the enemy resisted the landings and Brown threw back at him the addition of these troops just disrupted the entire mission. So as you can see a lot of dick waving.

In the end they reached a compromise, to hold Buckner’s 4th regiment in reserve at Adak, ready to ship out in less than a day to hit Attu if needed. On April 18th, reconnaissance revealed there were at least 1600 Japanese on Attu, prompting Rockwell to commit the entire 7th division, 10,000 men in all and the extra 4th regiment for operation landcrab. Now before the men his the island Rockwell sent a small team of combat specialists to come up behind the Japanese to prevent them from falling back into the mountains where they could hold out for weeks or even months. Captain Willoughby’s Scout battalion, 410 officers and men, trained vigorously in a short amount of time for the operation. They replaced all of their rifles and submarine guns with automatic rifles, machine guns and mortars and soft lead bullets for armor piercing bullets as those could penetrate ice without ricocheting. The mens packs were filled to the brim with grenades. 

Meanwhile General Butler began a bombing campaign to soften up the island. A terrible storm prevented air raids during the first half of april seeing winds his 115 miles per hour and gusts over 127. Nonetheless over 1175 combat sorties would be made in april, with over 4000 pounds of bombs falling on Attu. Though it should be mentioned most of the bombers dropped their loads blind as Attu was covered in a thick fog. Finally on April 24th, the 7th division departed San Francisco at 1pm aboard 5 transports. The Aleutian campaign was soon coming to an end. But now we need to grab our onions and travel back to Burma to talk about good ol Wingate and the boys. 

Back in Burma, Wingates forces were beginning the last phase of operation Longcloth, fleeing for their lives back to India. Now Fort Hertz and the new Ledo Road had been protectedAt his headquarters in Wuntho Wingate had to make a choice: retire back to India or press on and cross the Irrawaddy. Being Wingate he chose to press on with the Japanese hot on the Chindits trail. Now I do apologize I believe this will be the second time I am rehashing most of the Chindit story, I sort of am forced to do so as a result of how the week by week format laid out this story on the youtube channel. Think of it as a refresher to finish off the operation. 

Major calvert’s Column 3 and Fergussons column 5 headed towards the Gokteik Gorge to blow up its viaduct; Colonel Alexander’s southern group was to rendezvous with the Kachin guerillas at Mongmit; and Wingate would personally lead columns 7 and 8 to hit Inywa one of the main based of the Burmese independence forces. Wingates northern force made its way to the Irrawaddy’s principal northern tributary, the Shweli by March 17th. Here the river was so wide, their ropes and dinghies would not suffice, the crossing had to be made by boat. The approach to the stream was over open paddy fields, where they could easily be spotted and gundowned. Another major issue of course was the Burmese liberation Army. Wingate began by sending an envoy across the river to treat with the BLA and they promptly decamped. While this was going on Wingate discovered the local boats and their skilled native paddlers could help move his forces. They helped tow the Chindats RAF circular dinghies using 1500 lb net weights. Upon seeing how the locals managed Wingate wrote notes that in the future he should employ at least 40 men to each column who were skilled in handling boats and that 80 percent of his men needed to know how to swim. Yes many of these Chindits did not know how to swim. The mules as usual proved to be difficult to get across, leading 40 to be abandoned while the rest were tethered to boats and paddled across. 

Fergusson’s Column 5 crossed the Irrawaddy at Tigyaing with assistance of local villagers, missing the Japanese pursuers by a hair’s breadth. Fergusson turned south, but then received orders from Wingate to abandon his mission to help Calvert and instead rejoin the rest of the brigade. Calvert completely unaware of these orders, faced a game of hide and seek with the Japanese, leaving them boody traps as they marched. At Tigyaing, Calverts group’s rearguard were being hit by the Japanese as they crossed the river. Further south of him, the Southern group had crossed the river at Taguang on March 10th, continuing east. Wingate’s men were making their own way eastwards, but the supply drops were becoming less and less frequent and the amount of wounded men was increasing. Wingate was forced to leave many men behind as the Japanese continued to pressure them.

On march the 15th, the Southern group met up with Calvert’s column 3 near Pegon where they exchanged information. Despite orders to head for Mongmit, Major dunlop and Colonel Alexander decided to advance to Namhkan, crossing the Shweliriver and making an escape for China. As the southern group continued they ran into Fergusson’s column 5 on March 20th at Inbale Chaung. There they received orders to continue with the original plans, so they redirected themselves to Mongmit again. There they were supposed to meet with the Kachin guerrillas, but they were so late the Kachin had departed. Meanwhile Calvert and Fergusson were having a rough time as an entire Japanese battalion had arrived at Myitson and they were fanning out patrols to hunt them down. On March 23rd, Calvert found one of these patrols near the Nam Mit River and laid a trap killing 100 of them. In his words  ‘We let fly with everything we had and a lot of Japs could never have known what hit them. It was one of the most one-sided actions I have ever fought in.’ He paid for the ambush with a dozen Gurkhas. Calvert’s column made its way towards Gokteik, their glittering prize when disappointment was dealt to them. They received orders from Wingate to withdraw back to India. Wingate also took the care to tell his commanders not to call it a “retreat”, but instead to tell their men they were marching north to cooperate with parachute troops in an attack on Bhamo and Indaw. This was to deceive the enemy if men were captured and to simply boost morale. Calvert complied with the order, but in a bit of defiance decided he wanted to hit a railway on the retreat. Reading Calvert’s mind Wingate sent an additional message to Calvert saying he needed to get out as fast as possible and not perform any additional strikes, he finished with this “we can get new equipment and wireless sets. But it will take 25 years to get another man. These men have done their job, their experience is at a premium”.

Wingate at this point decided they needed a good supply drop and ordered one for March 24th in a paddy field near the village of Baw, which happened to be held by a Japanese company. This was the same location for the rendezvous with Fergussons column who were in bad need for supplies having been forced to butcher their own mules for meat and eat stews of monkeys, rats, locusts and cockroaches. Disaster struck. Wingate sent his forces to attack the Japanese company at Baw leading the RAF pilots seeing the confused battle to only drop one third of the supplies. Fergusson met up with Wingate on the 25th finding his superior to be a bit manic. Wingate was now claiming because of their actions, the Japanese commander would be hard pressed to annihilate them all to save face.

Wingate faced a daunting issue, the Japanese would contest the passage of the Irrawaddy, how would they get through now? He decided to try a bluff, they would march back to Inywa and cross at the identical point they had taken to go east, thinking the Japanese would never expect it. To do this they would have to kill all their remaining mules and lighten their loads, perhaps we can take a moment of silence for these poor mules. Wingate told the men once they got across the river they were to break up into smaller groups, try to sabotage more railway installations and make their way back to Assam. The forces made a dreadful march back to Inywa, slaughtering their mules as they went, much to the grief of the muleteers. It became clear early the Japanese were following them. Colonel Tomotoki Koba had set up three defensive lines between the Chindits and the Indian border: 1 at the Irrawaddy, 1 along the Mu valley and 1 following the line of the Chindits. Koba’s orders were pretty simply, to drive the Chindits into a trap as if they were wild beasts to hunt. 

Wingate attempted feints and decoys, such as sending Fergusson’s Column 5 towards the village of Hintha. This decoy worked great for everyone else of course, as Fergussons men suffered heavy casualties for their efforts. The feints and decoys worked as the bamboozled Japanese never fully caught up to the main body, failing to capture the Chindits in the Shweli loop as it was known. By 4pm on 28th, the main body reached Inywa where they lucked out greatly. It turned out the Japanese had neglected to commandeer the boats along the Shweli. Wingate was able to commander a number of local boats and his men began to cross the river. Column 7 went first followed by 2 and 8. But Column 8 as they made their way were fired upon by Japanese patrols. It was fortunate for the Chindits the Japanese patrols were small and lacked heavy machine guns. Even so, the mortar and rifle fire was enough for Wingate to call off the rest of the columns leaving column 7 on the other side of the river to make their own way home to India.

Wingate took the rest of the forces to a secure bivouac 10 miles south east of Inywa where he ordered the men to disperse into 5 smaller groups. It was now every man for himself as they say. The first group to really suffer was Fergussons column 5. After the bitter fight at Hintha, he sent word to Wingate advised him where they should be rendezvousing for a supply drop. But when Fergusson got to the location, there was no drop and no Wingate. Fergusson’s radio radio was destroyed at Hintha so he had to rely on runners and now knew he basically was on his own. Fergusson decided to take his column and head for the Kachin hills. When his men tried to cross the Shweli it turned into a disaster. Many men were swept away by a flood and most of their animals alone with them. 46 men had to be abandoned on a sandbank in the middle of the river and in Fergusson’s words “‘the decision which fell on me there was as cruel as any which could fall on the shoulders of a junior commander’. His men staggered on half crazed with hunger and thirst. After 15 days they reached the Chindwin on April 24th and would limp over to Imphal 2 days later. Their column suffered horribly, 95 survivors out of an original 318.

Major Ken Gilkes column 7 managed to get to China with 150 survivors and would fly back to India. Wingates dispersed groups would have a particularly horrible time on their way home. They had tales to tell of Japanese atrocities, the treachery of Burman villagers, the constant battle to stay awake, the agony of hunger and thirst and the feeling of being hunted down like beasts. Their menu more often the naught was python meat and nettles. There also began a rumor amongst the dispersed groups that Wingate had intentionally taken the easy way out for himself while using the rest of them as decoys. 

As for Wingates group, his original thinking was that the trek would take 2 weeks but it took roughly 22 days. They spent 2 full days around the Irrawaddy trying to find a safe way across as the Japanese patrols attacked them. On April 13th, with the help of friendly locals who provided paddlers and bamboo rafts they got across. They planned to go across in three groups, and unfortunately for the last group who was acting rearguard they would be left behind. The starving survivors made their way to the Wuntho-Indaw railway then through the Mangin range. At this point all of the food ran out, making even the Python stews seem appetizing. They would make the mistake of trying to buy rice from a pro-Japanese village who began hitting gongs to summon the Japanese causing them to run. At another more neutral village they were able to buy some buffalo meat. As they continued through the Mangin range they nearly died of starvation if it was not for a stroke of luck when one of their Burmese interpreters contacted a local monastery who sold them chicken, tomatoes, rice bananas and 5 pigs. Refreshed they continued and by the 23ed of april could see the Chindwin river. Wingate recounted stating ‘Behold the Chindwin. It is a poor heart that never rejoices.’ The 30 mile trek to the Chindwin was the hardest part of the journey. When finally facing the great river Wingate was forced to divide his men into those deemed strong enough to swim across and those who needed a boat. It took 5 men 7 hours to hack some elephant grass to make rafts. Wingate and others swam the Chindwin at a narrow point 500 yards or so wide. Even the strong swimmers were in danger of drowning, many forced to float on their backs. Wingate himself was pretty close to being swept away but managed to keep afloat using a pack for buoyancy. Everyone who got to the other side of the river were utterly exhausted. To their misery they soon heard the incoming Japanese on the other side of the river. As they hit the first village they came across they devoured the meals they could find. But they had left countless non swimming comrades on the other side and Wingate was desperate to send rescue parties. They found a post manned by some Gurkha rifles and obtained their help grabbing local boats and taking a flotilla back over the Chindwin to save the men they could find. In the end Wingates small group of 43 would see 34 survivors reach Assam.

Meanwhile far to the south, Dunlop and Alexander’s southern group were the furthest away from India. They decided to try and head back to Fort Hertz, but would be ambushed many times along the way. They crossed at the head of the Irrawaddy using stealth to avoid clashes with the Japanese. With the help of locals who gave them food and boats they made it across by April 20th, but after crossing were hit again by the Japanese suffering heavy casualties. Now down to 350 men, they continued towards the Mu River where they were ambushed yet again on the 28th. Colonel Alxander would be killed among others, as Dunlop recounted  "Clarke told me that the last mortar bomb had blown away most of the Colonel Alexander and officer De La Rue's legs. Edmonds and some orderlies had carried them away into the jungle, but that no one could now be found who knew of their whereabouts." Dunlop led the force of exhausted men to the Chindwin river fighting off multiple Japanese patrols. They would wander into early may and were saved by Karen guerilla forces a very lucky break.

Lastly, Calverts column 3 made their way to the Shewli river by March 27th with Japanese patrols hot on their trail. Calvert decided the best course of action was to break up into 9 smaller groups. Out of the 360 men in Column 3, 205 eventually recrossed the Chindwin by mid April. Calvert personally would lead a group to detonate more explosives across the Burmese railway. 

So ends operation longcloth. Two major things to note were Wingates character and behavior during the expedition. For the first, it is not surprising to see that extreme stress brought up the brittle personality of mr Wingate. It seems in his own mind, Wingate could never be at fault. Wingate clearly had not factored the importance of river crossings, which is unforgivable given Burma’s riverine system. The crossings over the Irrawaddy showcased Wingates glory hunting nature. Wingate also was draconian in his punishment of the men. He told his men if any of them plundered villages or lost their own equipment he would have them shot. This went beyond normal army code. If sentries fell asleep and were caught, Wingate gave them 3 choices; be shot, make their own way back home or be flogged, not surprisingly everyone chose to be flogged. Wingate’s behavior likewise kept switching from mania to depression given the circumstances. 

The casualty figures of the operation were appalling. Out of 3000 men of the 77th brigade that Wingate took into Burma, 2182 returned; 450 were killed in action and the rest went missing. Out of the southern group 260 men out of the 1000 survived. What had been achieved to justify such losses? There are arguments made on both sides. General Slim said of the operation 

“They had blown up bridges and cuttings on the Mandalay–Myitkyina railways that supplied the Japanese northern front, and attempted to reach across the Irrawaddy to cut the Mandalay–Lashio line. Exhaustion, difficulties of air supply, and the reaction of the Japanese, prevented this, and the columns breaking up into small parties made for the shelter of 4 Corps. About a thousand men, a third of the total force, failed to return. As a military operation the raid had been an expensive failure. It gave little tangible return for the losses it had suffered and the resources it had absorbed. The damage it did to Japanese communications was repaired in a few days, the casualties it inflicted were negligible, and it had no immediate effect on Japanese dispositions or plans.’”

Even Wingates supporters admit the operation was a failure, some describing it “an engine without a train”. Fergusson would add it ‘What did we accomplish? Not much that was tangible. What there was became distorted in the glare of publicity soon after our return. We blew up bits of railway, which did not take long to repair; we gathered some useful intelligence; we distracted the Japanese from some minor operations, and possibly from some bigger ones; we killed a few hundreds of an enemy which numbers eighty millions; we proved that it was feasible to maintain a force by supply dropping alone.’

Really in the end, Wingates exploits were used for propaganda purposes lifting the terrible morale amongst the British. The sacrifice of over 800 men for a rather pointless operation had to be glorified for if not it would have crushed morale further. Sit Winston Churchill would say of Longcloth on July 24th of 1943 ‘There is no doubt that in the welter of inefficiency and lassitude which has characterised our own operations on the Indian front, this man, his force and his achievements stand out; and no question of seniority must obstruct the advance of real personalities in their proper station in war.’

Wingate performed a press conference on May 20th to spin the allied propaganda machine. Reuters called them “the british ghost army”, the daily mail hailed Wingate as “clive of Burma”. Wingate had performed the typical British habit of turning obvious defeats into glorious victories, it was very much his Dunkirk.

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

The mad onion man Wingate successfully, or unsuccessfully performed Operation Longcloth. His exploits became legendary, but perhaps one should look closer at the reality behind what occurred in the depths of Burma.