Operation Dracula

The plan was first proposed in mid-1944 when the Allied South East Asia Command was preparing to reoccupy Burma, but was dropped as the necessary landing craft and other resources were not available.

In March 1945 however, it was resurrected, as it was vital to capture Rangoon before the start of the monsoon (which was expected in the second week of May) to secure the lines of communication of the Allied troops in Burma.

During April 1945, units of the British Fourteenth Army advanced to within 40 miles (64 km) of Rangoon, but were delayed until 1 May by an improvised Japanese force which held Pegu.

On the same day, as part of Operation Dracula, a composite Gurkha parachute battalion landed on Elephant Point at the mouth of the Rangoon River.

However, the Imperial Japanese Army had abandoned Rangoon several days earlier, and the units of the Indian 26th Division occupied the city and its vital docks without opposition.

In December 1941, Japan entered World War II by attacking United States territory and the Far Eastern colonial possessions of Britain and the Netherlands.

However, the Allied planners considered that to mount an amphibious assault on the scale required would need resources (landing craft, escorting warships, engineering equipment) which would not be available until the campaign in Europe was concluded.

Indian XV Corps, under Lieutenant General Sir Philip Christison, captured Akyab Island with its important airfield on 31 December 1944.

During April, Indian IV Corps under Lieutenant General Frank Messervy, spearheaded by an armoured brigade, advanced almost 200 miles (320 km) southward.

Although Messervy and several of his commanders considered there was a sporting chance that they might capture Rangoon at the beginning of May, Fourteenth Army's supply lines were strained to the limit by the rapid advances.

Although he received orders from Field Marshal Hisaichi Terauchi, commander-in-chief of the Southern Expeditionary Army Group, to hold Rangoon to the death, he reasoned that this would involve the senseless destruction of his remaining forces.

Ba Maw, the Prime Minister of the nominally independent Burmese government, dissuaded the Japanese from turning the Shwedagon Pagoda into a gun emplacement.

They were dispatched north to defend Pegu, although they were delayed by lack of transport (which had been commandeered for Burma Area Army HQ and other units leaving Rangoon) and arrived only piecemeal.

[12] After making unsuccessful attempts to evacuate Allied prisoners of war unable to walk and to demolish the port installations, Matsui then went north to conduct the defence of Pegu.

Many Japanese troops left Rangoon by sea, and nine out of eleven ships of a convoy carrying a thousand soldiers fell victim to British destroyers in the Gulf of Martaban on April 30.

Most of Kimura's HQ and the establishments of Ba Maw and Subhas Chandra Bose (commander of the Indian National Army), left overland, covered by the action of Matsui's troops at Pegu, but were attacked several times by Allied aircraft.

Ba Maw himself began his journey by car accompanied by his wife and his pregnant daughter, who gave birth at Kyaikto, 16 miles (26 km) east of the Sittang.

[15] Bose regarded Ba Maw's flight as dishonourable, and marched on foot with his rearmost troops, having first arranged for lorries to evacuate a women's unit, the Rani of Jhansi Regiment.

Even more delay was imposed by torrential rain which fell on 28 April, which turned dusty tracks into mud and caused streams and rivers to rise in spate.

Indian infantry (4/12th Frontier Force Regiment) scrambled across the girders of two demolished railway bridges which remained partially intact to establish precarious bridgeheads on the west bank, protected by artillery and tank fire.

[21] Although the British knew by 24 April from Signals intelligence that Burma Area Army HQ had left Rangoon, they were not aware that the Japanese were about to abandon the city entirely.

Under the modified plan for Dracula, the Indian 26th Division under Major General Henry Chambers would establish beachheads on both banks of the Rangoon River.

The transporting and landing of British and Indian assault forces was entrusted to Rear-Admiral Benjamin Martin commanding Force W.[23] The naval covering force included the 21st Aircraft Carrier Squadron commanded by Commodore Geoffrey Oliver consisted of four escort carriers, two cruisers and four destroyers,[24] and the 3rd Battle Squadron, commanded by Vice Admiral Harold Walker, consisting of two battleships (HMS Queen Elizabeth and the Free French battleship Richelieu), two escort carriers, four cruisers (one Dutch) and six destroyers.

They eliminated some small Japanese parties, either left as rearguards or perhaps forgotten in the confusion of the evacuation and captured or destroyed several guns overlooking the sea approaches to Rangoon, suffering thirty casualties from inaccurate Allied bombing.

An Allied Mosquito reconnaissance aircraft flying over Rangoon saw no sign of the Japanese in the city and also noticed a message painted on the roof of the jail by released British prisoners of war.

[28] After three years of war and deprivation, the city was deep in filth, many of the population had fled to escape the Kempeitai (Japanese military police) and those remaining were in rags.

On 6 May, they met the leading troops of 17th Division, pushing their way through floods southwards from Pegu, at Hlegu 28 miles (45 km) north east of Rangoon.

However, the naval personnel in Matsui's force broke out separately from the main body and several days later, which allowed Allied units to concentrate against them.

A Stuart light tank of an Indian cavalry regiment during the advance on Rangoon, April 1945
A field gun is bought ashore at Elephant Point, 2 May 1945.
Indian paratroops jumping over Rangoon, Burma, 1945.