The History of World War IIs Battle of Singapore

The History of World War II's Battle of Singapore The Battle of Singapore was fought January 31 to February 15, 1942, during World War II (1939-1945) between the British and Japanese armies. The British army of 85,000 men was led by Lieutenant  General Arthur Percival, while the Japanese regiment of 36,000 men was headed by Lieutenant General Tomoyuki Yamashita. Battle Background   On December 8, 1941, Lieutenant General Tomoyuki Yamashitas Japanese 25th Army began invading British Malaya from Indochina and later from Thailand. Though outnumbered by the British defenders, the Japanese concentrated their forces and utilized combined arms skills learned in earlier campaigns to repeatedly flank and drive back the enemy. Quickly gaining air superiority, they inflicted a demoralizing blow on December 10 when Japanese aircraft sank the British battleships HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales. Utilizing light tanks and bicycles, the Japanese swiftly moved through the peninsulas jungles. Defending Singapore Though reinforced, Lieutenant General Arthur Percivals command was unable to halt the Japanese and on January 31 withdrew from the peninsula to the island of Singapore. Destroying the causeway between the island and Johore, he prepared to repel the anticipated Japanese landings. Considered a bastion of British strength in the Far East, it was anticipated that Singapore could hold or at least offer protracted resistance to the Japanese. To defend Singapore, Percival deployed three brigades of Major General Gordon Bennetts 8th Australian division to hold the western part of the island. Lieutenant General Sir Lewis Heaths Indian III Corps was assigned to cover the northeastern part of the island while the southern areas were defended by a mixed force of local troops led by Major General Frank K. Simmons. Advancing to Johore, Yamashita established his headquarters at the Sultan of Johores palace. Though a prominent target, he correctly anticipated that the British would not attack it for fear of angering the sultan. Utilizing aerial reconnaissance and intelligence gathered from agents that infiltrated the island, he began to form a clear picture of Percivals defensive positions. The Battle of Singapore Begins On February 3, Japanese artillery began hammering targets on Singapore and air attacks against the garrison intensified. British guns, including the citys heavy coastal guns, responded but in the latter case, their armor-piercing rounds proved largely ineffective. On February 8, the first Japanese landings began on Singapores northwest coast. Elements of the Japanese 5th and 18th Divisions came ashore at Sarimbun Beach and met fierce resistance from Australian troops. By midnight, they had overwhelmed the Australians and forced them to retreat. Believing that future Japanese landings would come in the northeast, Percival elected not to reinforce the battered Australians. Widening the battle, Yamashita conducted landings in the southwest on February 9. Encountering the 44th Indian Brigade, the Japanese were able to drive them back. Retreating east, Bennett formed a defensive line just east of Tengah airfield at Belem. To the north, Brigadier Duncan Maxwells 27th Australian Brigade inflicted heavy losses on Japanese forces as they attempted to land west of the causeway. Maintaining control of the situation, they held the enemy to a small beachhead. The End Nears Unable to communicate with the Australian 22nd Brigade on his left and concerned about encirclement, Maxwell ordered his troops to fall back from their defensive positions on the coast. This withdrawal allowed the Japanese to begin landing armored units on the island. Pressing south, they outflanked Bennetts Jurong Line and pushed towards the city. Aware of the deteriorating situation, but knowing that the defenders outnumbered the attackers, Prime Minister Winston Churchill cabled General Archibald Wavell, Commander-in-Chief, India, that Singapore was to hold out at all costs and should not surrender. This message was forwarded to Percival with orders that the latter should fight to the end. On February 11, Japanese forces captured the area around Bukit Timah as well as much of Percivals ammunition and fuel reserves. The area also gave Yamashita control of the bulk of the islands water supply. Though his campaign had been successful to date, the Japanese commander was desperately short of supplies and sought to bluff Percival into ending this meaningless and desperate resistance. Refusing, Percival was able to stabilize his lines in the southeast part of the island and repelled Japanese attacks on February 12. The Surrender Slowly being pushed back on February 13, Percival was asked by his senior officers about surrendering. Rebuffing their request, he continued the fight. The next day, Japanese troops secured Alexandra Hospital and massacred around 200 patients and staff. Early on the morning of February 15, the Japanese succeeded in breaking through Percivals lines. This coupled with the exhaustion of the garrisons anti-aircraft ammunition led Percival to meet with his commanders at Fort Canning. During the meeting, Percival proposed two options: an immediate strike at Bukit Timah to regain the supplies and water or surrendering. Informed by his senior officers that no counterattack was possible, Percival saw little choice other than surrender. Dispatching a messenger to Yamashita, Percival met with the Japanese commander at the Ford Motor Factory later that day to discuss terms. The formal surrender was completed shortly after 5:15 that evening. The Aftermath of the Battle of Singapore The worst defeat in the history of British arms, the Battle of Singapore and the preceding Malayan Campaign saw Percivals command suffer around 7,500 killed, 10,000 wounded, and 120,000 captured. Japanese losses in the fighting for Singapore numbered around 1,713 killed and 2,772 wounded. While some of the British and Australian prisoners were kept at Singapore, thousands more were shipped to Southeast Asia for use as forced labor on projects such as the Siam–Burma (Death) Railway and Sandakan airfield in North Borneo. Many of the Indian troops were recruited into the pro-Japanese Indian National Army for use in the Burma Campaign. Singapore would remain under Japanese occupation for the remainder of the war. During this period, the Japanese massacred elements of the citys Chinese population as well as others who opposed their rule. Immediately after the surrender, Bennett turned over command of the 8th Division and escaped to Sumatra with several of his staff officers. Successfully reaching Australia, he was initially regarded as a hero but was later criticized for leaving his men. Though blamed for the disaster at Singapore, Percivals command was badly under-equipped for the duration of the campaign and lacked both tanks and sufficient aircraft to achieve victory on the Malay Peninsula. That being said, his dispositions prior to the battle, his unwillingness to fortify Johore or the north shore of Singapore, and command errors during the fighting accelerated the British defeat. Remaining a prisoner until the end of the war, Percival was present at the Japanese surrender in September 1945.

The Types of Parallel Universes

The Types of Parallel Universes Physicists talk about parallel universes, but its not always clear what they mean. Do they mean alternate histories of our own universe, like those often shown in science fiction, or whole other universes with no real connection to ours? Physicists use the phrase parallel universes to discuss diverse concepts, and it can sometimes get a little confusing. For example, some physicists believe strongly in the idea of a multiverse for cosmological purposes, but dont actually believe in the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum physics. It is important to realize that parallel universes are not actually a theory within physics, but rather a conclusion that comes out of various theories within physics. There are a variety of reasons for believing in multiple universes as a physical reality, mostly having to do with the fact that we have absolutely no reason to suppose that our observable universe is all that there is.   There are two basic breakdowns of parallel universes that might be helpful to consider. The first was presented in 2003 by Max Tegmark and the second was presented by Brian Greene in his book The Hidden Reality. Tegmarks Classifications In 2003, MIT physicist Max Tegmark explored the idea of parallel universes in a paper published in a collection titled  Science and Ultimate Reality. In the paper,  Tegmark breaks the different types of parallel universes allowed by physics into four different levels: Level 1: Regions Beyond Cosmic Horizon: The universe is essentially infinitely big and contains matter at roughly the same distribution as we see it throughout the universe. Matter can combine in only so many different configurations. Given an infinite amount of space, it stands to reason there exists another portion of the universe in which an exact duplicate of our world exists.Level 2: Other Post-Inflation Bubbles: Separate universes spring up like bubbles of spacetime undergoing its own form of expansion, under the rules dictated by inflation theory. The laws of physics in these universes could be very different from our own.Level 3: The Many Worlds of Quantum Physics: According to this approach to quantum physics, events unfold in every single possible way, just in different universes. Science fiction alternate history stories utilize this sort of a parallel universe model, so its the most well-known outside of physics.Level 4: Other Mathematical Structures: This type of paralle l universes is sort of a catch-all for other mathematical structures which we can conceive of, but which we dont observe as physical realities in our universe. The Level 4 parallel universes are ones which are governed by different equations from those that govern our universe. Unlike Level 2 universes, its not just different manifestations of the same fundamental rules, but entirely different sets of rules. Greenes Classifications Brian Greenes system of classifications from his 2011 book, The Hidden Reality, is a more granular approach than Tegmarks. Below are Greenes classes of parallel universes, but weve also added the Tegmark Level that they fall under:   Quilted Multiverse (Level 1): Space is infinite, therefore somewhere there are regions of space that will exactly mimic our own region of space. There is another world out there somewhere in which everything is unfolding exactly as it unfolds on Earth.Inflationary Multiverse (Level 1 2): Inflationary theory in cosmology predicts an expansive universe filled with bubble universes, of which our universe is just one.Brane Multiverse (Level 2): String theory leaves open the possibility that our universe is on just one 3-dimensional brane, while other branes ​of any number of dimensions could have whole other universes on them.Cyclic Multiverse (Level 1): One possible result from string theory is that branes could collide with each other, resulting in universe-spawning big bangs that not only created our universe but possibly other ones.Landscape Multiverse (Level 1 4): String theory leaves open a lot of different fundamental properties of the universe which, combined with the in flationary multiverse, means there could be many bubble universes out there which have fundamentally different physical laws than the universe we inhabit. Quantum Multiverse (Level 3): This is essentially the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics; anything that can happen does... in some universe.Holographic Multiverse (Level 4): According to the holographic principle, there is a physically-equivalent parallel universe that would exist on a distant bounding surface (the edge of the universe), in which everything about our universe is precisely mirrored.Simulated Multiverse (Level 4): Technology will possibly advance to the point where computers could simulate each and every detail of the universe, thus creating a simulated multiverse whose reality is nearly as complex as our own.Ultimate Multiverse (Level 4): In the most extreme version of looking at parallel universes, every single theory which could possibly exist would have to exist in some form somewhere.