ABSTRACT
The fall of Singapore has entered popular imagination, and sometimes the imagination of historians too, as the fall of an island-fortress which proved not to be an island and not to be a fortress. With the myth that Britain could guarantee to send a fleet exposed the Japanese swept down the Malayan mainland, across the Straits, and in through Singapore’s back-door. The impression left is sometimes of a navy that never was, of defenders in the dark, and of guns uselessly pointing out to sea. Each image has assumed mythic quality because it symbolises one of the flaws which together proved fatal. Britain could no longer guarantee eastern naval supremacy. The incompetence in defence preparations was startling. The equipment provided was not what was needed. 2
