On 27 August 1964, the British aircraft carrier HMS Victorious and her two destroyer escorts sailed through the Sunda Strait, an international waterway claimed by Indonesia, en route to Australia.

Though British naval commanders in the Far East had grave concerns that the Victorious would be indefensible while in passage, the prevailing opinion was that not to send the ship would result in an immense political defeat on both a domestic and international scale as well as the loss of rights to an important waterway.

Never again was the threat of all-out war a realistic possibility, despite some large land battles in northern Borneo the following spring, and the confrontation wound down by late fall of 1965.

Sukarno opposed both the preservation of the 'imperialist' British presence in Southeast Asia, a region in which he aspired to be the supreme power, and the incorporating of the Borneo colonies into the new Federation, as his goal was to control the entire island.

The fighting in this phase, while causing some damage and casualties, was relatively minor and the incursions were usually only made up of platoon sized bands crossing the Kalimantan border into Sarawak and Sabah.

The purpose of the voyage is still disputed, but it is probable that the carrier group was passing through as a show of strength to Indonesia in the wake of the Pontian landings as well as the routine 'goodwill visit' that the vessel was purportedly making to Britain's ally.

[11] This policy, engineered by the Foreign Office, had the dual purpose of notifying the Indonesians of a possibly provocative action without recognizing what they thought to be exaggerated claims on international waters.

Thorneycroft argued that if the Victorious did not pass through the Straits on her return journey, Britain "should suffer a substantial political defeat with unpredictable effects on our military position in the Far East," and was supported in this view by Admiral Mountbatten and David Luce, First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff.

[13] The views of Whitehall were not echoed by the naval commanders, especially Sir Varyl Begg, Commander-in-Chief of British forces in the region, who believed that the carrier was too weak to defend herself against Indonesian attack or strike in turn against them.

Begg judged that the narrowness of the Strait combined with the local geography restricted the ships' movement and negated their radar, while custom prevented the carrier from flying its aircraft or even carrying them on deck, rendering it and the escorts extremely vulnerable in case of attack.

His views were supported by the High Commissioner to Malaysia, Lord Antony Head, who argued that there would be very little gain for Indonesia and loss for Britain if the carrier was not risked.

Luce, however, remained adamant that the Victorious must sail through herself, but in order to ease Begg's fears assured him that the more modern carrier HMS Centaur would be on hand to provide air cover for the task force.

[13] In the resulting Cabinet meeting on naval deployments on 7 September, Thorneycroft and Mountbatten acknowledged that though the carrier would be at risk of severe damage or loss, preventing Sukarno from achieving a victory of brinkmanship was worth the peril.

The Cabinet concurred that the ship should not be diverted, as a blockage of the carrier would increase Sukarno's prestige to no end, and approved preparations for Operation Althorpe, a plan to wipe out the Indonesian air force in retaliation for an attack.

After remembering the influential Lord Head's endorsement of Begg's views, Thorneycroft was swayed, and decided that the two destroyers should proceed through the Strait without the Victorious, using the aircraft of that vessel and the Centaur for cover.

[17] In the Cabinet meeting of the next morning, Butler raised the issue once more, informing them that Indonesia was attempting to prevent the innocent passage of the Victorious through the Sunda Strait on the pretext of naval exercises.

With the Foreign Office's backing, Thorneycroft and Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home approved the compromise and notified Suwito that the ships would take the Lombok Strait instead.

[9] The Sunda Straits Crisis was the closest the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation came to total war, and in the end, a standoff was indeed avoided, but the shadow of conflict had not entirely passed.

As a result of this success, the Tunku told the British on 18 September that he would not seek to retaliate directly and would attempt to bring the case back to the UN, to the relief of Britain, who welcomed the "let-off.

Numerous accounts, including Gregory Fremont-Barnes' History of Counterinsurgency, are content with a simplified version that Indonesia closed the Strait for one reason or another, and that the arrival of the task force assembled around the aging carrier had intimidated Sukarno into reopening it.

He states that British policy makers, relieved at the opportunity to avoid a costly war, had failed to note that diverting the task force through the Lombok Strait was militarily advantageous to Indonesia, whose warships could screen the Victorious from a nearby naval base.

This, acknowledged Toh, oddly contrasts with the defeatist views of the army, who were irritated at how close they had come to war, and who in any case carried out the policies of the Confrontation with little relish.