{"id":119529,"date":"2021-10-24T16:33:21","date_gmt":"2021-10-24T23:33:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=119529"},"modified":"2021-10-24T16:33:21","modified_gmt":"2021-10-24T23:33:21","slug":"world-war-ii-the-battle-of-the-indian-ocean-5-april-1942-over-colombo-ceylon-interview-with-commodore-leonard-birchall-obe-dfc-cd-retdthe-saviour-of-ceylon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/10\/24\/world-war-ii-the-battle-of-the-indian-ocean-5-april-1942-over-colombo-ceylon-interview-with-commodore-leonard-birchall-obe-dfc-cd-retdthe-saviour-of-ceylon\/","title":{"rendered":"WORLD WAR II – THE BATTLE OF THE INDIAN OCEAN (5 April 1942 – over Colombo, Ceylon) Interview with Commodore Leonard Birchall, OBE, DFC, CD (Retd)\u201cThe Saviour of Ceylon\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Asoka Weerasinghe\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

(Introduction)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want to take you back 51 years to present to you an important vignette in Sri Lanka\u2019s military history,\u00a0 The year was 1942.\u00a0 Sri Lanka was then known as Ceylon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sir. Winston Churchill, in his monumental work on the Second World War referred to an incident that took place somewhere over the Indian Ocean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said, Scarcely had the fleet reached Addu Atoll on April\n4th when a Catalina aircraft on patrol sighted our enemy forces approaching\nCeylon.  While reporting their position and strength, the Catalina was\nshot down.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The aircraft was shot down some 400 miles south of Ceylon, and the\nyoung pilot was taken prisoner by the Japanese.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the thousand dollar question is\u2026.how many of you knew that this brave young pilot was a Canadian from the Canadian Air Forces 413 Squadron?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well…I have the great pleasure and honour to introduce to you\nthis brave Canadian, Air Commodore Leonard Birchall.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A.W : <\/strong> Air Commodore, what intrigues me is to find out, if Ceylon\u2019s\ncolonial  master was indeed the British, then how was it that a young\nCanadian was flying on guard over Ceylon?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leonard Birchall (L.B<\/strong>.):  We were actually a marine\nsquadron stationed in the Shetland Islands in the North of England, and we have\nbeen flying out of there.  And I gather according to history that the\nAllied forces, they needed long range aircraft down in Ceylon to try to find\nout where the Japanese navy was, and the radars were practically non-existent\nand they had to rely on long range aircraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So they asked Canada to assist in this and the Canadians agreed.\n  So our Squadron 413 were moved from Shetland Islands out to\nCeylon.  That is how we happened to be there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A.W.<\/strong> :  Why was Ceylon important in that part of the theatre of\nWorld War II?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

L.B.<\/strong> :  Yes, it was very important.  Let me put it this\nway.  The loss of Ceylon would have been just tremendous. It would have\nhad a tremendous effect.  It would have cut off all the oil\nsupplies.  It would have broken the route for supplies getting through to\nIndia to support the Burma campaign. And it would have disrupted the line going\nthrough from the East from Bazra and so on with all the oil from the Gulf all the\nway to Australia.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It would have disrupted the whole thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A.W. <\/strong>: What was the general purpose of your patrol when you were shot\ndown?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

L.B. <\/strong> :  I had only arrived there on the 2nd.  So I was\nnot familiar with what  was going on.  We arrived on the 2nd and on\nthe 3rd of April we were getting ready for the rest of the Squadron coming in\nbehind us.  There were only two Squadrons, the lead Squadron with two\naircraft.  And we were trying to find out what was going on and suddenly\nthat night they asked me whether I would take a patrol.  And I wondered\nwhat it was all about.  They told me just to go out and report all\nshipping, anything and everything because they didn\u2019t know what was in the\nIndian Ocean.  They didn\u2019t know where the British allied ships were and\nthey asked us to go and do this patrol.  But also it was a patrol that\nwould have been enough out of Ceylon or Sri Lanka that any invading force\ncoming in would not be able to get close enough that they could steam in the\nnight and then release aircraft  the next morning.  So that is why we\nwere out in that exact position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A.W. <\/strong>:  At what point did you see the Japanese steaming in?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

L.B. :<\/strong>   We did our patrol all day long.  One more point about\nthis was the lake we were in, Lake Koggola, was full of reefs and so on, which\nyou are probably well aware of.  And we had no practice at night landings\nin that area at all.  However, we did have long range tanks.  So we\ncould come back in the night and circle and land in the dawn.  That is\nwhat we were going to do. So we had lots of time to waste.  So we were out\nduring the day doing the patrol and suddenly the navigator said to me, will I\nplease do one more circuit so that we could get a shot of the moon to get the\nexact position.  We did. We got his exact position.  And then just as\nwe were going to turn to come home at dusk, and that is when we saw the specs\nright down South.  Nothing but time to burn off, we said.  Let\u2019s go\nand see what it is\u201d.  So we turned and went down.  The closer we got,\nthe more ships.  Then we realized that it was the Japanese navy that we\nwere running into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s what happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A.W.<\/strong> :  Were you able to send out coded messages at all of the\nsightings?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

L.B . <\/strong> :  Yes.  Well what you did for the first sighting\nreport was that you had to code the message up very quickly  and you used\nthe figures A\u2019 and behind that the number of battleships and then \u2018B\u2019 the\nnumber of cruisers, and \u2018C; the number of carriers and so on.  And then\nwhen you go down the alphabet you then give the position, the course and the\nspeed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And we had just got a very accurate position, so we knew exactly\nwhere they were, we had seen them long enough.  We knew the speed, we knew\nthe course, so we got a signal going.  You repeat the signal three times\nand then wait  for a confirmation that they received it.,   So we got\nthe message out twice and then during the third transmission when they hit the\nradio compartment with explosive shells and blew everything up.  So we\nnever did get confirmation and we did not finish the third transmission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A.W.  <\/strong>:  I understand the Japanese fleet\nconsisted of 5 aircraft carriers, each with 54 bombers and 18 fighters making\nit a total of 360 aircraft, 4 battleships, 2 heavy cruisers, 1 light \ncruiser, 11 destroyers and 7 submarines.  All of this to destroy the\nBritish sea power in the Indian Ocean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

L.B.  <\/strong>:   Yes, it was going to do that and also\nto go and take out the main major installations of which there were two. \nThere was the one on the east coast which was Trincomalee which was  a\nmajor one which the British navy had and, the second one was over Colombo on\nthe complex over in that area,  So they were going to go over and do\nthat.  That was the reason for the heavy strength they had and also the\nfact that they didn\u2019t know what they were going to run into in the way of a\nBritish navy out that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A.W.<\/strong>  :  Was it the same Japanese fleet that struck Pearl\nHarbour under the Command of Admiral Nagumo that was sent to attack Ceylon?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

L.B.<\/strong>  :  Yes, with the exception that there were two of\ntheir carriers which they did not have with them that they had at Pearl\nHarbour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Now what they did when they came back from Pearl Harbour,\nthese carriers they used  their aircraft to supplement the ones from the\nother carrier which had been marked out, and so they then the carriers which<\/p>\n\n\n\n

had stripped off some of their aircraft and went back to Japan to\nre-equip, whereas the rest stayed with the fleet and came on down through\nSingapore and into the Indian Ocean, (this explanation was a bit\nincoherent.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A.W<\/strong>. :  How close were the Japanese to Ceylon shores before they\nreleased the fighters and bombers?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

L.B.<\/strong>  :  They would have been about 200 miles off the south\nof Ceylon when they launched them at first.  They launched them just\nbefore first light in the morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A.W. : <\/strong> I don\u2019t think the majority of the Ceylonese ever knew that\nwe were that close to being captured by the Japanese, and perhaps possibly\nchanging the course of World War II.  Am I right in saying that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

L.B. :<\/strong>   I would think that\u2026.it wasn’t until after the end of the\nWar that they were\u2026 well Churchill told them how close it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A.W.<\/strong> : We were obviously ready to meet the challenge of the Japanese\nair-raid. How well did we do?  Did we do well when they came in?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

L.B. <\/strong>:  Yes. The Japanese launched a lot more than they had\nanticipated and in fact that was really the big turning point in that they, as\na result of that they could not send all their carriers down to the coral sea\nand that is why they lost that battle down at the coral sea because they did\nnot have sufficient airpower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A.W<\/strong>.  :  Can you relate to us how you were taken Prisoner-of-War?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

L.B. <\/strong> :   How I was taken Prisoner-of-War?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A.W. <\/strong>:   Yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

L.B.<\/strong>  :   We were shot down as you may know.  We got\ndown on to the waters, as low to waters as we could get to stop them from\ncoming, to stop the fighters coming underneath us.  But the tanks inside,\nthey caught on fire, the tanks.  The waves started to catch on fire\nburning the gasoline coming down.  The aircraft started to break up. \nWe were too low to jump, so we bounced them off the water and two, one of the\nchaps had one of his legs blown right off and he didn\u2019t get out of the\nairplane.  And there were two others who were very badly wounded and so we\nput Mae Wests on them and threw them into the water and we jumped in after them\nand we swam to get away from the burning gasoline and also the depth charges.\nWe didn\u2019t know whether they would go off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then the Japanese fighters, they kept strafing us, coming down\nstrafing  us while we were swimming, and we had to  dive down under\nthe water to get away from this,  But the two lads in Mae Wests, they\ncouldn\u2019t do that so they were blown right out of the water,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then a destroyer came over and dropped a small boat and picked\nup the six of us which were still alive and swimming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A.W. :<\/strong>   When did you come to know that you were tagged as \u2018The\nSaviour of Ceylon?\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

L.B. <\/strong> :   Not until after the War,  We didn\u2019t even know\nthat the message had gotten through until the end of the War.  That was\nwhen I was recovering in Manila.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A.W. <\/strong>:  This was a fascinating story, Air Commodore.  And I\nwant to thank you for joining us immensely and sharing your experience as \u2018The\nSaviour of Ceylon\u2019.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank You very much<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                                         (end\nof the interview)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 for \u2018Song of Sri Lanka\u2019<\/em><\/strong>, an ongoing  \nMacLean-Hunter Cable TV programme, one of nine  produced by \nexpatriate Asoka Weerasinghe, Director of Communications of the Sri Lanka High\nCommission in Ottawa whose appointment was questioned in Parliament by\nMinister <\/p>\n\n\n\n

C.V, Gunaratne  This interview was televised three times on\nOttawa\u2019s Cable TV in December 1993.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About 30 minutes before dawn on\nEaster Sunday,  April 5, 1942, when Japanese Captain Mitsuo Fuchida led\nhis attack force of 36 fighters<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

54 dive bombers and 90 level\nbombers from the deck of the carriers Akagi,<\/strong> Soryu<\/strong> and Hiryu, <\/strong>he\nnoticed from the plane\u2019s cockpit his enemy target below, the city of Colombo\nglistening in the sun, still wet from a recent rain squall.  Fuchida hoped\nthat he would demolish the British carriers, battleships and cruisers in\nColombo\u2019s harbour, the major British naval base in Ceylon, and the shore\ninstallation, to give his nation a free rein of the Indian Ocean<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The control of Ceylon was important\nto both the Japanese and the British in early 1942.  The Japanese wanted\nto protect the western flank of their newly won territories and open sea supply\nlines to her forces fighting in Burma.  This would have placed them in a\nfavourable position for a possible link up with Hitler\u2019s armies in the Middle\nEast, should the Germans continue to overrun the reeling Soviet Union’s\narmies.  And if the British wanted to have a counterattack in the Far\nEast, then ships and materials would have likely been assembled at Colombo and\nTrincomalee, the two British naval bases in Ceylon.  Thus for the Japanese\na pre-emptive strike was imperative.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the British could not let\nCeylon fall to the Japanese for the very reason that its naval bases ensured a\ncontinuous supply line (Particularly of Ceylon rubber) from vital British Far\nEasten sources to the home islands, and also kept communications open to\nAustralia and the Persian Gulf.  Sir Winston Churchill dispatched five\nbattleships and three carriers under the command of Sir James F.\nSomerville.  Somerville was the aggressive Admiral who had hunted down\nHitler\u2019s feared battleship Bismark.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sixty British fighters and a\nhandful of short range bombers were also hurriedly sent to Colombo. \nAlthough this was a much weaker air force than what Churchill wanted, the\nexpectations were that it would at least make sure that a Japanese air attack\nwould be sharply resisted.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On March 28, 1942, British\nIntelligence informed Somerville that a potent Japanese force had entered \nthe Indian Ocean from Singapore and predicted a possible attack on the British\nnaval bases in Colombo and Trincomalee by April 2 or 3.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Nagumo Force\u201d, the fleet\ncommanded by Admiral Chuichi Nagumo which had already devastated Pearl Harbour,\nraided Dawin, Australia, and created havoc throughout much of the Pacific had\nleft the southeast Celebes on March 26, entering the Indian Ocean via Ombai\nStraits between Flores and Timor, and not from Singapore as the British\nintelligence thought they did, for a planned attack on Colombo on April 5.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At dusk on April 4, Deputy\nCommanding Officer of the  Squadron stationed at Koggala, Leonard\nBirchall, in a British Catalina, stumbled on the fleet about 500 nautical miles\nsouth of Ceylon, steaming toward Colombo, and radioed in on the sighting.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Admiral Ngumo steamed within 200\nmiles off Colombo and released 125 aircraft under the command of Mitsuo Fuchida\nwho led the raid on Pearl Harbour.  Having climbed on course for the coast\ntoward Colombo,the Japanese formations appeared overhead of Colombo at 7:50 AM,\non 5 April.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the British were readily\nwaiting for their enemy, the fight was short and furious,  Ferocious\nanti-aircraft bursts greeted Fuchida\u2019s pilots as they  dove towards their\ntargets.  The British Hurricanes<\/strong> quickly leaped into the fray,\ntransforming the field day having run into the Japanese bombers until the Japanese\nfighters caught up with them,  Despite this, the British got a blistering\nattack from the Japanese.   Six Swordfish <\/strong>with torpedoes which\narrived from Trincomalee at the middle of the battle were  shot\ndown,  However, the British claimed 27 enemy aircraft destroyed that\nmorning.  The British also lost 17 Hurricanes<\/strong> and  four Fulmers.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Fuchida who led the raid\nhad intercepted a message that two British cruisers had been sighted in the\nsouth which may be intended to attack the Negumo fleet.   Fuchida wanted\nto return quickly to offer aid.,  but a group of British fighters\nthreatened to delay him.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fuchida ordered Itaya\u2019s Zeros<\/strong>\nto engage the British while he led his bombers home.  It was hard to\nleave the fighters to find their way back alone, but it ha<\/strong>d to be done.\n  Most of them returned safely, but several never made it<\/strong>,\u201d lamented\nFuchida.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The message that Fuchida had\nintercepted was in fact the sighting report of the DORSETSHIRE and the\nCORNWALL, which were trying to join the fleet.  The Japanese lost no time\nin sending out the bombers.  By 1:40 P.M. the planes struck and by 1:48\nP.M.  DORSETSHIRE was sunk.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The CORNWALL followed very shortly\nlater.  Of the 1,546 officers and sailors, 1,122 survivors were picked up\nafter about 27 hours in the water.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus ended the battle between the\nBritish and the Japanese on Easter Sunday of 1942, over Ceylon\u2019s (Sri Lanka)\ncapital Colombo and its surrounding waters in the Indian Ocean.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Asoka Weerasinghe\u00a0 (Introduction) I want to take you back 51 years to present to you an important vignette in Sri Lanka\u2019s military history,\u00a0 The year was 1942.\u00a0 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asoka-weerasinghe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}