Against all Odds: The British Empire in World War Two

The Walker was lost in 1935, at that stage there still was a United States Navy.

ViperhawkZ said:

If I'm not mistaken, we'd concluded that the 2nd US Civil War ended in '33. Then again, the Arizona was still around, too, so I guess there could have been other "ships-in-exile".

Click to expand...

Gah. Brainfart on my end, but the basic point stands.

That's what you get for posting with no coffee. This was supposed to be 1932.

Chapter 362​

Rain was a friend to the resistance fighters in the Philippines. The dreaded Japanese search aircraft were grounded, and the occupation forces left their barracks even less than was usually the case. In fact, the situation had massively improved generally. Like most of the other groups, the 111th Philippine Cavalry Regiment, by now unfortunately completely dismounted except for a few that were used to carry ammunition and the wounded, were in regular contact with the Allies. Supply runs were still rather far between, but there was a steady enough supply of weapons and ammunition.

Wide stretches of the countryside were only nominally under Japanese control, and especially in the south there were villages where no Japanese soldier had been seen for months and where the flag of the Republic flew openly and proudly. Anglos and Philippinos were joined in their hatred for the Japanese, and Captain McNair had recently replaced two dead Lieutenants with senior NCOs. The 'Regiment' was at best two companies in strength, but it was a cohesive unit of the Philippine Army and one of several that would hold out until the arrival of the Allies.

For Captain McNair this was in the future, at the moment he was happy enough with a British-supplied wireless set that let him listen to the transmissions of the high-energy radio station outside Jakarta that the Allies were using to send messages to the resistance in the Islands. McNair had heard that up north the reception was sometimes so atrocious that it took six or seven tries to get even a vague idea of the message, but down here it all worked fine.


Obviously, the Japanese had banned listening to anything but Radio Manila, which was now their mouthpiece, but like with the ban on teaching children to speak English, it was impossible to enforce. The next attempt to curtail it had been to shut off power to the cities and the few connected villages except at given times during which Radio Manila would send, but improvised handcranks to power the sets had quickly become very common.

It put the Japanese in a quandry, they could not out-right confiscate any sets they might find, in a country that had literacy rates below the Japanese standard, radio was the easiest way to reach antything like a majority of the people. Thus challenged, they fell back on brute force to suppress the rebellion, but McNair knew that all that accomplished was to swell the ranks of the resistance. When he and Carlile had discussed this, the Brit had managed to quote 'extensive' history on the subject, saying that these were the perks of a classical education.

McNair depended more on the handbook though, but the short two-page foreword did say that the roots of the tactics described therein were pioneered by the Spanish during the Peninsula War, a period that had featured in American schools only in so far it touched the war of 1812, which Carlile insisted the British had won since Canada was still an independent nation.

The rivalry between the two men was a friendly one and it never extended farther than the evening table or the soc—football field.

Both men were united in their hatred of the Japanese, and this was the reason why they were currently hunched over the map table in a tiny village somewhere far off the beaten track.

“Mac, I'm telling you, if what our scouts say is anywhere near accurate the Japanese will send a prodigiously great escort, maybe even some tanks. Never mind that it's a trap.”

“Grayson, I agree. But we have to do this for one simple reason. They. Have. Horses. And we were, and probably still are, a Cavalry Regiment. If we can get at least a few mounts for our scouts, then they can move far faster.”

Carlile knew that McNair was already convinced, and in a way so was he, but as the official SOE liaison to the largest organized group on Mindanao it was his duty to council caution. He had watched how the lovingly cared for horses had been killed a two months ago, in what had been the closest brush with death he had yet had since arriving here. He had learned to hate those old Japanese bi-planes.

It was worse for a born and bred Cavalry Officer, he supposed.

“Well, it is my job to advise you against something as foolhardy as this, but as a man and as someone I like to call a personal friend I will gladly help you.”

“Thank you.” McNair said.

He paused and watched how Carlile lit one of the precious and rare cigarettes before picking up his rifle.

“Besides, the frickly egos of you Cavalry Officers need to be soothed every so often.”

If Carlile wasn't such a good friend and if McNair hadn't known that the Englishman was indeed only joking, then he would have been annoyed. Instead he checked if it had stopped raining (it had) and then picked up the genuine, US-produced M1928 Thompson Submachine gun he had brought from America when coming here.






Seven hours later the fires were out, but the convoy was still a heap of ashes. A full company of Japanese soldiers was crawling all over hit, but the Colonel from the Kempeitai saw that one thing was also not there, the horses. Usually the horses where left behind or shot, whichever the local resistance leader fancied, but here they were outright cone, and he suspected that the enemy had loaded them as high as possible with the goods from the wagons and the few lorries. His uncle the General would have to listen now.

Still, he had the sneaking suspicion that the only way to stop the locals from fighting Japanese authority was to literally burn down every village, chop down every tree and level every single hill on every single island, and as long as the British somehow managed to put in those supplies. There were far too many Lee-Enfields about for anything else.

“Why did they take the horses, sir?”

Once again the Colonel asked himself just how this idiot had managed to get this far in the Kempeitai.

“There's any number of reasons, Lieutenant. Transportation for the loot, transportation for their scouts, maybe even for the meat. It doesn't really matter why they did it. What matters is that we have a group on our hands that's large enough to carry away two dozen horses while under time pressure.”


“Well, there are rumours that remnants of several Philippine Cavalry units took to the hills when we destroyed their Army in the field.”

That was why the man had risen, his knack for weeding out the rumours that might have a grain of truth to them and his instinctual ability to confirm if there was, or wasn't any truth to them. In peacetime and in a western country he would have made an excellent investigative journalist.

“Any proof?” the Colonel asked, almost a bit ashamed that he had thought so badly of this very useful man.

“Nothing much, sir.” the Lieutenant said, shaking his head, “or rather, nothing that isn't entirely circumstantial, aside from the group that was destroyed when they tried to raid Clark Field.”

Most of that misguided band of rebels had been comprised of former enlisted personnel of the Philippine Navy and a few army units, probably why they had tried something that foolhardy, but there were enough trained soldiers of one type or another to make it clear that there had to be others, and yet there was no proof. The Colonel knew that the Philippine Government had, when it became clear that they would loose, opened the military warehouses and storage sites to everyone who wished to continue the fight from the hills, so anyone wearing the uniform or carrying military issue weapons wasn't automatically a soldier.

“However,” the Lieutenant continued, “I will find out what I can, Colonel.”

He saluted and walked off to inspect one of the few dead the rebels had left behind, while the Colonel chose to inspect the wreck of a Type 94 Light Tank. The rebels had to have used the British rocket launcher, because the vehicle had been reduced to a mangled pile of wreckage, only identifiable as a tank by the one roadwheel that was still reasonably intact. There was not a single Japanese land vehicle in the islands that could withstand those damnable weapons, and the Colonel shuddered when he thought what sort of tanks they were designed to beat.

Why someone in Tokyo had decided that dumping all the light vehicles here was a good idea was beyond the Colonel, when even the heavy machine guns the rebels sometimes used could penetrate them, they were useless, so one might as well leave them at home.

One thing bugged him though. The rebels had devilishly good intelligence, especially down here. The convoy had been carrying mortar rounds and general supplies for an outpost on the southern coast of Mindanao, and had set off with less than half a day of preparation and under what he had thought to be the strictest secrecy. There were only two real possibilities, either the rebels had bought off a Japanese soldier or officer in the supply depot, or the local populace had some means of communicating with them.

He considered the latter to be more likely, as it was impossible to stop them from going out. The Colonel too saw the Philippinos as lesser beings than even the lowliest Japanese, but letting them die away without purpose was a waste and pointless, as someone was needed to keep the basic functions of the country running, and because they were, after all, still human beings.

It was then that he realized that he was caught in an endless circle of reprisals and counter-reprisals. He knew that there would be some burning village or other by tomorrow, so the day after that, some hapless Japanese officer would be gruesomely murdered, and so on and so on. There was no way out, and he remembered what he had read about British involvement in Afghanistan, of the Japanese experiences in China...

The only way to stop this was to cut off British support by forcing them into a general peace, but he had the sneaking suspicion that not even that would end the violence.

And with that the Colonel had learned the age-old lesson that had plagued all occupying Armies since the Roman legions. He did not like it.

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Comments, questions, rotten Tomatoes?

Admittedly, the last quarter of this is a bit of a filler, as the stuff I had originally planned for this just wouldn't work properly.

Yeah, the Japanese are about to get their own Vietnam, except that here the situation will go pearshaped on the battlefield instead of in the political arena.

Before the Commonwealth Light and Coastal Forces evolved into patrolling forces of today, they had a vastly different mission, and in 1943 the Allied, especially the British, efforts in those areas were considerably weaker than what the Japanese were doing. This was partly due to the nature of the war and the theatre, the only place where Japanese MGB and MTB could operate with reasonable chances of success and survival was in the Gulf of Thailand and the southern edges of the South China Sea, even then areas where the Allies could easily concentrate larger escort forces, not to mention use aircraft of all sorts.

Still, the RAN especially was trying to get the most out of limited resources and was the only force to increase it's strength in that area, an act that would greatly aid RN and RAN alike thirty years later during the Indonesian Emergency.

For most of 1943 the Asian forces were used far more offensively than in Europe, as there was no E-Boat threat to contend with,


From the preface of 'Light forces of the Fleet, Volume 2 – Asia 1943 to 1950', Jane's Information Group , 1987



Her Majesty's Australian Motor Torpedo Boats MTB 121, 127 and 130 crept along the coast of southern Cambodia, slowly using the dark to camouflage their approach on the two Japanese freighters that had hidden in this small inlet for most of the last two days, trying to avoid the Allied fleet which was currently out on the prowl. Lieutenant Commander Barnsby, RAN, didn't know that they were carrying vital supplies to the two Divisions desperately clinging to the stretch of territory between Bangkok, now more or less safe behind Allied lines, and the border of what had been French-Indochina.

What he cared about was that the two freighters were escorted by a Destroyer and several Japanese torpedo boats. He wasn't particularly worried about the latter, aside from the tubes, they were armed mostly with one example of the slow-firing triple-barrel AA gun the Nips loved so much. The Destroyer on the other hand was a different matter. Therefore the rest of No.11 MTB Squadron of the Royal Australian Navy was circling around to the east, with orders to make a show of it, to be as loud as possible. It was hoped that they would draw the Destroyer, either sinking/disabling it, or at least allowing Barnsby and his men to attack and hopefully sink the freighters.


It was, all things considered, a plan that depended far too much on luck for his liking, but as an Officer he did what he was told.

In the darkness that was only broken by the moon shimmering through the thing layer of clouds it was difficult to judge distances, but best guess was that the freighters were about two or three sea-miles away.

Barnsby ordered his boats to slow down and ducked under the cover that shielded the compass and map light from observing eyes. According to his wristwatch, it was now a bit more than twenty minutes after two in the morning, local time, so any minute now the diversion should start.

Sure enough, out to the east several explosions and gunfire could be heard, with several flashes momentarily lighting up the night sky.

Via wireless a three-letter codeword was sent out and the three boats and the engines were gunned to full power. Vosper 73ft MTBs weren't the fastest nor the most comfortable of vessels, but thanks to the four 18'' torpedo tubes, they did pack quite a punch for their size, and unlike the Fairmile boats used in Europe had actually a hull that was more than paper thin.

“Contact forward!” one of the machine gunners yelled and promptly opened fire. As they turned slightly, Barnsby could see that a single Japanese MTB had stayed as a guard and was already turning to unmask it's heaviest guns.

The Australian boats did the same, but the Japanese fired first, and the seventh shell from the centre barrel of the gun found and detonated the fuel tank of 130.

“Hells teeth! TAKE HIM DOWN!” Barnsby yelled, and behind him the 20mm cannon spoke with authority, and the one on 127 soon joined it. Between them and the two machine guns that could bear, the Japanese vessel was quickly pounded into matchwood, but at the cost of two dead and three men wounded to varying degrees.

Barnsby knew that he had one chance at this, he had to fire his torpedoes before the Japanese figured out what he was on about, so he ordered 127 to head for the freighter neared to land, while 121 would attack the other one. Four fish apiece should net at least one or two good hits.

He was under no illusions as to their chances of killing the both of them, but with luck one of the Nip ships would have some sort of fatal damage.

Once in position, the two boats fired their four torpedoes each in a spread, to cover as wide an area as possible. The freighters had started moving and 127 has slightly mis-aimed, so one torpedo missed by a wide margin, one squeaked past the rudder by literal inches, with another one hitting the propeller shaft. This torpedo failed to explode, but knocked the shaft out of alignment by sheer force.

In the end it did not matter as the fourth fired by 127 worked as designed and ripped a hole in the side of the thinly-armoured freighter hull several feet wide. Within minutes the machinery spaces were flooded and the engines stopped, while shock damage plunged the ship into darkness, hampering damage control efforts to the extend that the ship began to settle by the stern.

121 had more luck, though here too one torpedo failed to explode, however the other three detonated against the hull, ripping the ship's side open and would have capsized it within minutes, had the ship not been loaded to the brim with small arms ammunition.

The resulting fireworks were spectacular, and it rained down bits of ship and other unidentifiable things on the two Australian MTBs.

The two boats turned away without further orders, and even as Barnsby took off his hat to clean off some debris that had fallen on it, he wondered. This had been all too easy.


Of course he did not know that the two freighters had been there mostly because one of them had developed a mechanical fault, and that the Destroyer's Captain was not among the most competent officers of the Japanese Navy, never mind that his ship was older than most of her crew, and thus had been relegated to second line duties.

Even though the Destroyer was mostly blindly blundering about in the night, it and the rest of the boats sank three of the ten MTBs that were sent out, before superior numbers told. Several attempts were made to torpedo it, but all failed. In the end the surviving MTBs managed to disengage and fled into the night, their mission accomplished.



The Commodore commanding the Allied Light Forces in this area was not pleased with the night's action, but he knew that MTBs were, to put it in the words of an old friend, eggshells armed with sledgehammers. Targets were becoming somewhat sparse, the Japanese didn't really risk many ships in the Gulf these days, nor did they have a lot of reasons to do it. Defensive patrolling decreased losses but his men where not only couragous but also aggressive, and doing nothing but driving their boats in circles wasn't helping unit morale.

No.11 Squadron had executed it's mission with lower than expected losses, and yet, this was the first time in almost a month that this particular squadron had encountered the enemy. The only way to redress this situation was to base the boats farther forward, but since the Japanese controlled those coasts it was as of yet not possible to do so. He knew that unless he managed to come up with something his Squadrons would soon be re-assigned or deactivated completely.

The phone rang, and he picked it up. A few words were exchanged and he slammed it down again. Because of this, Lieutenant Commander Barnsby found himself with a new billet.

Six days later, on 2nd June 1943, he was dropped off in front of the camp outside Singapore by a Landrover, and he mentally prepared himself. He knew better than to let his personal feelings override his military training, but he still didn't have to like what he was being told to do.

Never mind that they had taken him away from his men.

He was able to ignore the guards on the outside of the camp and the Petty Officer who led him into the commander's office.

Once there he realized that he would have to show his 'fellows' basic civility, not only because the commander of this unit was a full Captain by the look of things but also because he had a British Lieutenant as a liaison, and he was sure that they would not have assigned someone without ensuring that he had what they saw as the politically acceptable attitudes to the place of a Chinese in polite society, for what Barnsby had been sent to was a training camp of the Republic of China Navy.


He would swallow his pride and do his job, and get out of here.

The idea that a Chinese at sea was good for anything but washing one's uniform was, if not actually repugnant, at the very least extremely strange. Still, he would do his best, if only to not totally ruin his future in the RAN. Besides, teaching them to not fall overboard on a small MTB would prove to be more interesting than doing endless circles at sea, waiting for the Nips to appear or fuel to run out. Still, what had he done to deserve this?

Later that night he was sitting in the quarters assigned to him and read through the orders that the British Lieutenant had handed.

They didn't tell him everything by a long shot, but enough to know that he was to be joined by several other officers and a dozen patrol boats identical to the ones he had used back at the Squadron.

It was then that he realized that it could have been worse, and that at least he would be away from the Commodore's influence. They had clashed before and...he paused, let his head fall back to stare at the ceiling and grinned. Now he knew why he had been given this assignment.





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Comments, questions, rotten tomatoes?

We will hear from the commander again soon. And of course, his opinions aren't that of the author.

Kurt_Steiner Yeah. Mind you, what the RoCN Light Forces will end up doing isn't quite what Barnsby and consorts will train them for.

ViperhawkZ He was assigned because his commanding officer hated him, something about a lot of booze and the shared attentions of a lady of dubious virtue in Singapore. Mind you, the assignment will be rather important for the Allies later on.

So, it's the 24th, and aside from wishing you all a Merry Christmas, I write this post so that you know that yes, I am still working on this, but at the moment my nBSG fanfiction project has totally taken over. So, rest assured, the adventures ITT will continue.

*Waves away epic dust cloud*

In case anyone is still reading this, I have finally managed to catch my WW2 muse again. The reason I haven't worked on this for so long is a combination of a missing muse, real-life issues and being bitten by the Star Trek FF bug. I don't know how regularly I can update if/when I hopefully start a new job in a few months, but until then, I will try to alternate between this, my Star Trek and my post-ME3 project. I sincerely apologize.

New update sometime this weekend, hopefully.