Concepts
1942: Campaign For Malaya is
an historical wargame simulating the Japanese conquest of the
Malacca peninsula, concluded by the capture of the British
fortress, Singapore. It is played on a map covering the
territory where the campaign was fought, and it uses playing
pieces which represent the actual military units that were
involved in that area (Japanese & Commonwealth armies for
instance). The game rules duplicate and regulate the
situation as it occurred.
In 1942: Campaign For Malaya
there is no AI, so the game won't play against you. You can
either play solitaire (as with most classical board
wargames), or against a human opponent using PBEM, or you can
play on-line against human opponents (through internet or any
local network); one player controls the Japanese army, the
other will take command of the Commonwealth army.
A bit of history
Singapore background
The British had begun
building a naval base at Singapore in 1923, partly in
response to Japan's increasing naval power. A costly and
unpopular project, construction of the base proceeded slowly
until the early 1930s when Japan began moving into Manchuria
and northern China. A major component of the base was
completed in March 1938, when the King George VI Graving Dock
was opened; more than 300 meters in length, it was the
largest dry dock in the world at the time. The base,
completed in 1941 and defended by artillery, searchlights,
and the newly built nearby Tengah Airfield, caused Singapore
to be ballyhooed in the press as the "Gibralter of the
East." The floating dock, 275 meters long, was the third
largest in the world and could hold 60,000 workers. The base
also contained dry docks, giant cranes, machine shops; and
underground storage for water, fuel, and ammunition. A
self-contained town on the base was built to house 12,000
Asian workers, with cinemas, hospitals, churches, and
seventeen soccer fields. Above-ground tanks held enough fuel
for the entire British navy for six months. The only thing
the giant naval fortress lacked was ships.
The Singapore naval base was built and supplied to sustain
a siege long enough to enable Britain's European-based fleet
to reach the area. By 1940, however, it was clear that the
British fleet and armed forces were fully committed in Europe
and the Middle East and could not be spared to deal with a
potential threat in Asia. In the first half of 1941, most
Singaporeans were unaffected by the war on the other side of
the world, as they had been in World War I. The main pressure
on the Straits Settlements was the need to produce more
rubber and tin for the Allied war effort. Both the colonial
government and British military command were for the most
part convinced of Singapore's impregnability.
Even by late autumn 1941, most Singaporeans and their
leaders remained confident that their island fortress could
withstand an attack, which they assumed would come from the
south and from the sea. Heavy fifteen-inch guns defended the
port and the city, and machine-gun bunkers lined the southern
coast. The only local defense forces were the four battalions
of Straits Settlements Volunteer Corps and a small civil
defense organization with units trained as air raid wardens,
fire fighters, medical personnel, and debris removers.
Singapore's Asians were not, by and large, recruited into
these organizations, mainly because the colonial government
doubted their loyalty and capability. The government also
went to great lengths to maintain public calm by making
highly optimistic pronouncements and heavily censoring the
Singapore newspapers for negative or alarming news.
Journalists' reports to the outside world were also carefully
censored, and, in late 1941, reports to the British cabinet
from colonial officials were still unrealistically
optimistic. If Singaporeans were uneasy, they were reassured
by the arrival at the naval base of the battleship Prince
of Wales, the battle and four destroyers cruiser Repulse,
on December 2. The fast and modern Prince of Wales
was the pride of the British navy, and the Repulse
was a veteran cruiser. Their accompanying aircraft carrier
had run aground en route, however, leaving the warships
without benefit of air cover
The War in Eastern Asia
When Japan went to war
with the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands in
December 1941, she was already well established on the Asian
mainland from Manchuria in the north to Indochina in the
south. Since she possessed sovereignty over Taiwan (Formosa)
and the Penghu Islands (Pescadores), she was poised to strike
quickly toward the so-called Southern Regions, which included
the Philippines, Borneo, Celebes, Java, Sumatra, Malaya,
Thailand (Siam), and Burma, an area rich in such raw
materials as oil, rubber, tin, and many other products of
which she was desperately short. Of the 51 infantry divisions
which composed the Japanese Army in 1941, 43 were committed
to the Asian mainland: 13 to Manchuria, 2 to Korea, 25 to
China, 2 to Indochina, and 1 to the island of Hainan. In
addition, 2 of her 5 air divisions were also committed to
Asia. She had therefore only a comparatively small force
available to undertake the capture of the Southern Regions. A
division from China was given the task of seizing Hong Kong;
the Twenty-Fifth Army, consisting of 4 divisions (of which
only 3 were used) and an air division, was allotted to
neutralize Thailand, Malaya, and capture the British naval
base at Singapore; and the Fifteenth Army, consisting of 2
divisions and an air division, was assigned the job of
occupying southern Burma.
The Malayan Conquest
In
the early hours of December 8 (local time), the Twenty-Fifth
Army occupied Bangkok, thereby gaining control of Thailand,
and landed a division at Songkhla (Singora) on the Kra
Peninsula and part of another at Kota Bharu in northeastern
Malaya. The Japanese quickly gained air supremacy, since
their aircraft were far superior to and outnumbered the
obsolescent Royal Air Force (RAF) planes. Two days later,
Japanese torpedo bombers sank off the east coast of Malaya
the Repulse and the Prince of Wales, the only
two British capital ships in Eastern waters. This success
ensured the Japanese complete control of the South China Sea.
The British garrison of Malaya consisted of the Indian 3d
Corps (two newly raised and semitrained divisions), which
held northern Malaya, and an understrength Australian
division, which held northern Johore. Constantly outflanked
by infiltration through jungle-covered country and by
landings on the coast behind it, the 3d Corps proved to be no
match for the highly trained and experienced Japanese
divisions and was forced to withdraw southward. The Japanese
occupied Penang on December 19, and Kuala Lumpur on Jan. 11,
1942. Despite a stand in northern Johore by the Australians,
they had driven the mauled and dispirited defenders back into
Singapore Island by January 31. Although the garrison had
been reinforced by two hastily dispatched and almost
untrained Indian brigades and, at the last moment, by a
British division diverted while at sea on its way to Egypt,
the defense of the island, by then isolated by sea and air,
was a hopeless task. The Japanese landed three divisions on
February 8-9, and by February 13 had forced the remnants of
the garrison back into a tight perimeter ringed around
Singapore itself. With the city and its large Chinese and
Malayan population under heavy artillery fire, water supplies
cut off, and the troops short of ammunition, the garrison
surrendered on February 15. In conquering Malaya, the
Japanese had gained an entrance into the Bay of Bengal and
the use of the Singapore naval base.
