ABSTRACT
While naval power had contributed mightily to the rolling up of the Japanese Empire in the Pacific from the Battle of the Coral Sea onwards, it had been much less influential in dictating the progress of the war in the littoral states of the Indian Ocean. This was about to change in January 1945 with the success of the third Arakan offensive. A start was made with Operation Lightning on 2 January when Rear-Admiral Bernard Martin left Chittagong with TF 64, part of Vice-Admiral Sir Arthur Power’s British East Indies Fleet (BEIF), to put 1,000 Commandos ashore on the Akyab Peninsula so that they could capture the port city of Akyab (Sittwe) from which Japanese troops had already withdrawn. Securing Akyab would provide the Allies fighting in northern Burma with a very useful port for the landing of both additional troop reinforcements and supplies – a point underlined by the landing shortly thereafter of the Indian 74th Brigade.1 A few days later TF 64 was again on hand to land more Commando units further south near Myebon on Hunter Bay (Operation Passport). These were small-scale affairs and mere precursors for Operation Matador which put the British 4th and Indian 71st Brigades ashore from eighty-four landing craft on the northern coast of Ramree Island off the Arakan coast on 16 January. Martin, with his flag in the Australian destroyer Napier, was assisted in this enterprise by the presence of a fire support group, containing the battleship Queen Elizabeth, which pounded the landing sites ahead of the invasion and by an air wing provided by the escort carrier Ameer which soon proved its worth by repelling an attack on the invasion fleet by eighteen Japanese aircraft bent on its destruction. Another incremental incursion followed on 26 January with the landing further south on Cheduba Island (Operation Sankey) of 500 Marines and an even smaller contingent found their way to the island of Sagu Kyun on 30 January (Operation Pendant).2
