Far Eastern War Plans and the Myth of the Singapore Strategy

Abstract

The ‘Singapore Strategy’ has been the subject of derision for generations of historians. According to the conventional view, Britain, unable to maintain a large naval presence in the Far East in peacetime, planned to despatch a battle fleet from European waters to Singapore once war with Japan had begun. Before these vessels arrived, British forces already present in the Far East would prevent Singapore from falling into enemy hands. Subsequent operations would be directed exclusively towards securing a fleet action with the Japanese navy.1 This is little more than a caricature of the Admiralty’s real intentions, but a consensus has nevertheless emerged that the idea of sending a fleet to the Far East was unrealistic when it was conceived in the early 1920s; that it became completely impractical during the 1930s; and that the Admiralty stubbornly clung to it long after its flaws should have been obvious. It has also been suggested that devotion to this strategy was responsible for the destruction of the Prince of Wales and Repulse off the Malayan coast in December 1941.