Friday, February 15, 2008
This Day in the Long History of British Disasters
On this day in 1942, when the British forces and their allies in Singapore surrendered, the Japanese completed a major offensive against the British Empire forces arrayed in Malaya, which offensive had begun on December 8, 1941. Nearly 130,000 soldiers and sailors of the British Empire were taken prisoners in Malaya and Singapore and suffered terribly as prisoners of war until the end of the war three and a half years later. Complete disaster doesn't begin to cover the magnitude of this defeat. The British had lost to a numerically inferior force which moved and fought better than the Brits, et al. apparently could.
Labels: WWII history; Pacific theater; Southeast Asia
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 1:22 PM 
