Beating the enemy at their own game on the Road to Mandalay

India had been saved, but no one in the British high command really thought the Japanese could be defeated in Burma. Step forward Lieutenant General 'Uncle' Bill Slim who would prove them wrong...

- Robert Lyman

THE reconquest of Burma in 1945 was a stonking victory for the multi-ethnic, multinational 14th Army commanded by Lieutenant General Bill Slim - especially because it was so unexpected.

Slim had been determined to follow up on the remnants of the Japanese army that had invaded India in 1944 but which had been smashed at the twin battles of Kohima and Imphal. But no one really believed that he could defeat the Japanese in Burma; that was probably why he was allowed to undertake his plan - Operation Extended Capital - in the first place.

London was still pessimistic about beating the Japanese on land and were reluctant to commit troops to Burma. Slim's army would prove the doubters wrong.

His plan was simple. He would pretend to attack the Japanese at Mandalay with his whole army, while actually only doing so with half of it - Lieutenant General Sir Montagu Stopford's 33rd Corps.

The other half - Lieutenant General Frank Messervy's 4th Indian Corps - would make its way in secret through 330 miles of hard jungle, as the Japanese had done during many of their victories earlier in the war, to strike the enemy underbelly 90 miles behind their main lines at the central Burmese town of Meiktila. This was a key nodal point on the Japanese road and rail line of communication supporting the Japanese in the city of Mandalay and further north.

It had supply and ammunition dumps, airfields and hospitals. If captured, the Japanese defence of Mandalay would be fatally weakened. But the administrative challenge was immense. Slim had to supply two corps well forward of their supply bases in inhospitable terrain. The 33rd Corps had to push rapidly forward in the north while 4th Corps, with its armour, moved in secret down 330 miles of jungle before conducting an opposed crossing of one of the world's mightiest rivers.

But Slim had both air transport and air superiority: the Japanese did not.