Operation Dracula - Dracula Reinstated

Dracula Reinstated

During February and March, 1945, the Fourteenth Army, under Lieutenant General William Slim, fought the major Battle of Central Burma. The Japanese were heavily defeated. Most of their forces were reduced to fractions of their former strength, and were forced to retreat into the Shan States. Slim ordered his forces to exploit their victory by advancing south along the Irrawaddy River and Sittang River valleys towards Rangoon. During April, Indian IV Corps under Lieutenant General Frank Messervy, spearheaded by an armoured brigade, advanced almost 200 miles (320 km) southward. They were approaching Pegu, 40 miles (64 km) north of Rangoon, by the end of the month. Pegu was one of the largest towns in Southern Burma, and was only a few miles north of the roads and railways which linked Rangoon with Thailand and Malaya.

Despite these spectacular successes, Slim was uneasy. Although Messervy and several of his commanders considered there was a sporting chance of capturing Rangoon at the beginning of May, Fourteenth Army's supply lines were strained to the limit by the rapid advances. The monsoon was imminent, and the heavy rains would make many roads impassable and make resupply by air difficult. It was feared that the Japanese would defend Rangoon to the last man, as they had done elsewhere in the Pacific Theatre, as for example, at Manila in the Philippines. By that stage of the war, Manila was of less strategic importance than Rangoon, but Japanese forces defended the city for a month before they were eliminated. 100,000 civilians died during the fighting, and the city of Manila was left in ruins.

Since Slim's forces would be in a disastrous supply situation if Rangoon was not captured, in late March he asked that Operation Dracula be reinstated, to take place before the monsoon began in early May. On 2 April, Admiral Louis Mountbatten, the Supreme Commander of South East Asia Command, issued orders for Rangoon to be captured by seaborne invasion not later than 5 May. As a necessary preliminary step, IV Corps was ordered to capture the airfields at Toungoo, regardless of cost, so that air cover could be provided for the invasion. The airfields were captured by the Indian 5th Division on 22 April.