ABSTRACT
The end of 1943 saw the Axis Powers driven firmly onto the defensive against an increasingly confident set of Allies who were making headway in most of the major theatres of the war. Although fears of world domination by Germany and Japan may have been arrested by the events of the past year, defeating both of them in 1944 looked a tall order since both still held on to large swathes of territory beyond their own borders and had proved repeatedly that they could be obdurate opponents even when they were caught in the most hopeless of military positions. Ground gained at their expense was, therefore, unlikely to come cheaply and it looked as though it would take many months to roll back the military juggernaut that had once carried all before it in 1941 and early 1942. Evidence of the assertion that 1943 signified a distinct change in momentum
was illustrated in the New Year with the vast improvement in military muscle given to Sir James Somerville’s Eastern Fleet based in Ceylon. Before the reinforcements arrived, Somerville had been forced to rely upon a modest collection of naval hardware, led by his flagship the old battleship Ramillies, an Americanbuilt escort carrier (Battler), a mixed force of eight cruisers, two auxiliary cruisers, eleven destroyers, a total of thirteen corvettes, frigates and sloops, and six submarines.1 As a fleet it wouldn’t disturb Koga or the leading figures within the IJN and it wasn’t capable of doing much more than operating a convoy supply service in the Indian Ocean. Churchill and Cunningham, his first sea lord, knew that as well as anyone else but the removal of the Italian Fleet from the strategic equation in the Mediterranean meant that Somerville’s forces could now be vigorously supplemented.2
