by Asoka Weerasinghe
(Introduction)
I want to take you back 51 years to present to you an important vignette in Sri Lanka’s military history, The year was 1942. Sri Lanka was then known as Ceylon.
Sir. Winston Churchill, in his monumental work on the Second World War referred to an incident that took place somewhere over the Indian Ocean.
He said, Scarcely had the fleet reached Addu Atoll on April
4th when a Catalina aircraft on patrol sighted our enemy forces approaching
Ceylon. While reporting their position and strength, the Catalina was
shot down.
And we all know that the young pilot of the aircraft was Leonard Birchall, the Deputy Commanding Officer of a Squadron that was stationed in Koggala, in the South of Ceylon, It was his brave action that enabled Ceylon to be ready for the air-raid that took place on Easter Sunday morning over the capital Colombo.
The aircraft was shot down some 400 miles south of Ceylon, and the
young pilot was taken prisoner by the Japanese.
But the thousand dollar question is….how many of you knew that this brave young pilot was a Canadian from the Canadian Air Forces 413 Squadron?
Well…I have the great pleasure and honour to introduce to you
this brave Canadian, Air Commodore Leonard Birchall.
A.W : Air Commodore, what intrigues me is to find out, if Ceylon’s
colonial master was indeed the British, then how was it that a young
Canadian was flying on guard over Ceylon?
Leonard Birchall (L.B.): We were actually a marine
squadron stationed in the Shetland Islands in the North of England, and we have
been flying out of there. And I gather according to history that the
Allied forces, they needed long range aircraft down in Ceylon to try to find
out where the Japanese navy was, and the radars were practically non-existent
and they had to rely on long range aircraft.
So they asked Canada to assist in this and the Canadians agreed.
So our Squadron 413 were moved from Shetland Islands out to
Ceylon. That is how we happened to be there.
A.W. : Why was Ceylon important in that part of the theatre of
World War II?
L.B. : Yes, it was very important. Let me put it this
way. The loss of Ceylon would have been just tremendous. It would have
had a tremendous effect. It would have cut off all the oil
supplies. It would have broken the route for supplies getting through to
India to support the Burma campaign. And it would have disrupted the line going
through from the East from Bazra and so on with all the oil from the Gulf all the
way to Australia.
It would have disrupted the whole thing.
A.W. : What was the general purpose of your patrol when you were shot
down?
L.B. : I had only arrived there on the 2nd. So I was
not familiar with what was going on. We arrived on the 2nd and on
the 3rd of April we were getting ready for the rest of the Squadron coming in
behind us. There were only two Squadrons, the lead Squadron with two
aircraft. And we were trying to find out what was going on and suddenly
that night they asked me whether I would take a patrol. And I wondered
what it was all about. They told me just to go out and report all
shipping, anything and everything because they didn’t know what was in the
Indian Ocean. They didn’t know where the British allied ships were and
they asked us to go and do this patrol. But also it was a patrol that
would have been enough out of Ceylon or Sri Lanka that any invading force
coming in would not be able to get close enough that they could steam in the
night and then release aircraft the next morning. So that is why we
were out in that exact position.
A.W. : At what point did you see the Japanese steaming in?
L.B. : We did our patrol all day long. One more point about
this was the lake we were in, Lake Koggola, was full of reefs and so on, which
you are probably well aware of. And we had no practice at night landings
in that area at all. However, we did have long range tanks. So we
could come back in the night and circle and land in the dawn. That is
what we were going to do. So we had lots of time to waste. So we were out
during the day doing the patrol and suddenly the navigator said to me, will I
please do one more circuit so that we could get a shot of the moon to get the
exact position. We did. We got his exact position. And then just as
we were going to turn to come home at dusk, and that is when we saw the specs
right down South. Nothing but time to burn off, we said. Let’s go
and see what it is”. So we turned and went down. The closer we got,
the more ships. Then we realized that it was the Japanese navy that we
were running into.
That’s what happened.
A.W. : Were you able to send out coded messages at all of the
sightings?
L.B . : Yes. Well what you did for the first sighting
report was that you had to code the message up very quickly and you used
the figures A’ and behind that the number of battleships and then ‘B’ the
number of cruisers, and ‘C; the number of carriers and so on. And then
when you go down the alphabet you then give the position, the course and the
speed.
And we had just got a very accurate position, so we knew exactly
where they were, we had seen them long enough. We knew the speed, we knew
the course, so we got a signal going. You repeat the signal three times
and then wait for a confirmation that they received it., So we got
the message out twice and then during the third transmission when they hit the
radio compartment with explosive shells and blew everything up. So we
never did get confirmation and we did not finish the third transmission.
A.W. : I understand the Japanese fleet
consisted of 5 aircraft carriers, each with 54 bombers and 18 fighters making
it a total of 360 aircraft, 4 battleships, 2 heavy cruisers, 1 light
cruiser, 11 destroyers and 7 submarines. All of this to destroy the
British sea power in the Indian Ocean?
L.B. : Yes, it was going to do that and also
to go and take out the main major installations of which there were two.
There was the one on the east coast which was Trincomalee which was a
major one which the British navy had and, the second one was over Colombo on
the complex over in that area, So they were going to go over and do
that. That was the reason for the heavy strength they had and also the
fact that they didn’t know what they were going to run into in the way of a
British navy out that way.
A.W. : Was it the same Japanese fleet that struck Pearl
Harbour under the Command of Admiral Nagumo that was sent to attack Ceylon?
L.B. : Yes, with the exception that there were two of
their carriers which they did not have with them that they had at Pearl
Harbour.
Now what they did when they came back from Pearl Harbour,
these carriers they used their aircraft to supplement the ones from the
other carrier which had been marked out, and so they then the carriers which
had stripped off some of their aircraft and went back to Japan to
re-equip, whereas the rest stayed with the fleet and came on down through
Singapore and into the Indian Ocean, (this explanation was a bit
incoherent.)
A.W. : How close were the Japanese to Ceylon shores before they
released the fighters and bombers?
L.B. : They would have been about 200 miles off the south
of Ceylon when they launched them at first. They launched them just
before first light in the morning.
A.W. : I don’t think the majority of the Ceylonese ever knew that
we were that close to being captured by the Japanese, and perhaps possibly
changing the course of World War II. Am I right in saying that?
L.B. : I would think that….it wasn’t until after the end of the
War that they were… well Churchill told them how close it was.
A.W. : We were obviously ready to meet the challenge of the Japanese
air-raid. How well did we do? Did we do well when they came in?
L.B. : Yes. The Japanese launched a lot more than they had
anticipated and in fact that was really the big turning point in that they, as
a result of that they could not send all their carriers down to the coral sea
and that is why they lost that battle down at the coral sea because they did
not have sufficient airpower.
A.W. : Can you relate to us how you were taken Prisoner-of-War?
L.B. : How I was taken Prisoner-of-War?
A.W. : Yes.
L.B. : We were shot down as you may know. We got
down on to the waters, as low to waters as we could get to stop them from
coming, to stop the fighters coming underneath us. But the tanks inside,
they caught on fire, the tanks. The waves started to catch on fire
burning the gasoline coming down. The aircraft started to break up.
We were too low to jump, so we bounced them off the water and two, one of the
chaps had one of his legs blown right off and he didn’t get out of the
airplane. And there were two others who were very badly wounded and so we
put Mae Wests on them and threw them into the water and we jumped in after them
and we swam to get away from the burning gasoline and also the depth charges.
We didn’t know whether they would go off.
And then the Japanese fighters, they kept strafing us, coming down
strafing us while we were swimming, and we had to dive down under
the water to get away from this, But the two lads in Mae Wests, they
couldn’t do that so they were blown right out of the water,
And then a destroyer came over and dropped a small boat and picked
up the six of us which were still alive and swimming.
A.W. : When did you come to know that you were tagged as ‘The
Saviour of Ceylon?”
L.B. : Not until after the War, We didn’t even know
that the message had gotten through until the end of the War. That was
when I was recovering in Manila.
A.W. : This was a fascinating story, Air Commodore. And I
want to thank you for joining us immensely and sharing your experience as ‘The
Saviour of Ceylon’.
Thank You very much
(end
of the interview)
for ‘Song of Sri Lanka’, an ongoing
MacLean-Hunter Cable TV programme, one of nine produced by
expatriate Asoka Weerasinghe, Director of Communications of the Sri Lanka High
Commission in Ottawa whose appointment was questioned in Parliament by
Minister
C.V, Gunaratne This interview was televised three times on
Ottawa’s Cable TV in December 1993.
About 30 minutes before dawn on
Easter Sunday, April 5, 1942, when Japanese Captain Mitsuo Fuchida led
his attack force of 36 fighters
54 dive bombers and 90 level
bombers from the deck of the carriers Akagi, Soryu and Hiryu, he
noticed from the plane’s cockpit his enemy target below, the city of Colombo
glistening in the sun, still wet from a recent rain squall. Fuchida hoped
that he would demolish the British carriers, battleships and cruisers in
Colombo’s harbour, the major British naval base in Ceylon, and the shore
installation, to give his nation a free rein of the Indian Ocean
The control of Ceylon was important
to both the Japanese and the British in early 1942. The Japanese wanted
to protect the western flank of their newly won territories and open sea supply
lines to her forces fighting in Burma. This would have placed them in a
favourable position for a possible link up with Hitler’s armies in the Middle
East, should the Germans continue to overrun the reeling Soviet Union’s
armies. And if the British wanted to have a counterattack in the Far
East, then ships and materials would have likely been assembled at Colombo and
Trincomalee, the two British naval bases in Ceylon. Thus for the Japanese
a pre-emptive strike was imperative.
Since the British could not let
Ceylon fall to the Japanese for the very reason that its naval bases ensured a
continuous supply line (Particularly of Ceylon rubber) from vital British Far
Easten sources to the home islands, and also kept communications open to
Australia and the Persian Gulf. Sir Winston Churchill dispatched five
battleships and three carriers under the command of Sir James F.
Somerville. Somerville was the aggressive Admiral who had hunted down
Hitler’s feared battleship Bismark.
Sixty British fighters and a
handful of short range bombers were also hurriedly sent to Colombo.
Although this was a much weaker air force than what Churchill wanted, the
expectations were that it would at least make sure that a Japanese air attack
would be sharply resisted.”
On March 28, 1942, British
Intelligence informed Somerville that a potent Japanese force had entered
the Indian Ocean from Singapore and predicted a possible attack on the British
naval bases in Colombo and Trincomalee by April 2 or 3.
The Nagumo Force”, the fleet
commanded by Admiral Chuichi Nagumo which had already devastated Pearl Harbour,
raided Dawin, Australia, and created havoc throughout much of the Pacific had
left the southeast Celebes on March 26, entering the Indian Ocean via Ombai
Straits between Flores and Timor, and not from Singapore as the British
intelligence thought they did, for a planned attack on Colombo on April 5.
At dusk on April 4, Deputy
Commanding Officer of the Squadron stationed at Koggala, Leonard
Birchall, in a British Catalina, stumbled on the fleet about 500 nautical miles
south of Ceylon, steaming toward Colombo, and radioed in on the sighting.
Admiral Ngumo steamed within 200
miles off Colombo and released 125 aircraft under the command of Mitsuo Fuchida
who led the raid on Pearl Harbour. Having climbed on course for the coast
toward Colombo,the Japanese formations appeared overhead of Colombo at 7:50 AM,
on 5 April.
Since the British were readily
waiting for their enemy, the fight was short and furious, Ferocious
anti-aircraft bursts greeted Fuchida’s pilots as they dove towards their
targets. The British Hurricanes quickly leaped into the fray,
transforming the field day having run into the Japanese bombers until the Japanese
fighters caught up with them, Despite this, the British got a blistering
attack from the Japanese. Six Swordfish with torpedoes which
arrived from Trincomalee at the middle of the battle were shot
down, However, the British claimed 27 enemy aircraft destroyed that
morning. The British also lost 17 Hurricanes and four Fulmers.
Meanwhile, Fuchida who led the raid
had intercepted a message that two British cruisers had been sighted in the
south which may be intended to attack the Negumo fleet. Fuchida wanted
to return quickly to offer aid., but a group of British fighters
threatened to delay him.
Fuchida ordered Itaya’s Zeros
to engage the British while he led his bombers home. It was hard to
leave the fighters to find their way back alone, but it had to be done.
Most of them returned safely, but several never made it,” lamented
Fuchida.
The message that Fuchida had
intercepted was in fact the sighting report of the DORSETSHIRE and the
CORNWALL, which were trying to join the fleet. The Japanese lost no time
in sending out the bombers. By 1:40 P.M. the planes struck and by 1:48
P.M. DORSETSHIRE was sunk.
The CORNWALL followed very shortly
later. Of the 1,546 officers and sailors, 1,122 survivors were picked up
after about 27 hours in the water.
Thus ended the battle between the
British and the Japanese on Easter Sunday of 1942, over Ceylon’s (Sri Lanka)
capital Colombo and its surrounding waters in the Indian Ocean.
