Military Economics, Culture and Logistics in the Burma Campaign, 1942–1945

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Graham Dunlop

Warfare, Society and Culture

Following the capture of Burma by the Japanese in May 1942, reopening and expanding the link from India to China through Burma became the allied forces' principal war aim in South-East Asia. Dunlop studies the operational and strategic effects of logistics on the campaign. He argues that the campaign's development was driven more by what was logistically possible than by pure strategic intent.

With Singapore lost to the Japanese, the western allied forces had to transform India into a strategic base for further offensive operations, a role for which she was singularly ill-prepared. In Burma, the campaign had to be fought in a hostile environment. The battlefield comprised remote, disease-ridden, jungle-covered mountains, thinly inhabited and largely trackless. At the start of the campaign, the supporting area for lines of communication lacked adequate infrastructure, all of which had to be built from scratch or radically developed. Methods had to be found to sustain troops without reliance upon the few roads, enabling them to hold on to defensive positions and to outmanoeuvre their enemy.

Sample pages

• Military Economics: Introduction
• Military Economics: Index

Readership

Military History, World War II Studies, Twentieth-Century Studies, Asian Studies

Contents

Introduction
Part I
1 The Loss of Burma, January–May 1942
2 India’s Readiness for War in the East, May 1942
Part II
3 The Development of India as the Strategic Base
4 The Development of the Operational Lines of Communication
5 The Development of Tactical Maintenance
Part III
6 The Logistic Influence: Defensive Victory, 1944
7 The Logistic Influence: Planning the Invasion of Burma, 1944–5
8 The Invasion of Burma, 1945
Conclusion

Appendix 1: The British Army Supply System, 1942
Appendix 2: Outline Order of Battle of the Burma Garrison, 20 January 1942
Appendix 3: Outline Order of Battle of the Allied Burma Army, 19 March 1942
Appendix 4: Illustration of Ordnance Factory Output, Years Ending March 1940, March 1942 and March 1944
Appendix 5: Extract from 14th Army Operational Research Report No. 24
Appendix 6: Outline SEAC Forces, December 1943
Appendix 7: Operation STAMINA: Airlift of Army Stocks to IV Corps at Imphal
Appendix 8: Outline ALFSEA and CCTF Forces, January 1945

Related titles

• Military Manpower, Armies and Warfare in South Asia
• Orde Wingate and the British Army, 1922–1944
• War and the Militarization of British Army Medicine, 1793–1830

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