The Battle of the Malacca Strait

On the night of 15/16 May 1945, in the Malacca Strait, a few dozen nautical miles south-west of the island of Penang, five British destroyers attacked the Japanese heavy cruiser Haguro and the destroyer Kamikaze escorting her with torpedoes and gunfire. After about an hour’s fighting Haguro sank; most of her crew died, together with the force commander, Vice Admiral Shintarō Hashimoto. The British lost two men killed. The action, known in Britain as Operation Dukedom, was one of the last major surface engagements of the Second World War fought with torpedoes and guns.

War chronologies record that on 15–16 May “a battle was fought in the Malacca Strait, ending in a British victory and the sinking of the Japanese cruiser Haguro”. This dating is consistent with the sources: on 15 May the Japanese force was detected and attacked from the air, and the night battle itself took place in the early hours of 16 May.

A ship with a long history

Haguro was one of the four Myōkō-class cruisers built in the second half of the 1920s – heavily armed ships displacing more than 13,000 tons, with ten 203 mm guns and torpedo tubes. She took part in almost all the great naval battles of the Pacific War. In February 1942 she played a leading role in the Battle of the Java Sea, in which the Allied force of Rear Admiral Karel Doorman was destroyed. She fought in the Coral Sea and off the Solomon Islands, and in November 1943 in the Battle of Empress Augusta Bay. In October 1944 she survived the Battle of Leyte Gulf, in which her force shelled American escort carriers off Samar.

After the defeat at Leyte the remnants of the Japanese fleet were split up. Some ships returned to Japan, while others stayed at Singapore, closer to the sources of oil. Haguro joined the 5th Cruiser Division, which from February 1945 came under the 10th Area Fleet at Singapore. These ships no longer had any prospect of taking part in a great battle; they were used mainly to carry troops and supplies to cut-off outposts.

A mission for Haguro

In the spring of 1945 the Japanese position in South-East Asia was deteriorating rapidly. The British Fourteenth Army had broken through the front in central Burma, and on 3 May the Allies took Rangoon. The Japanese garrisons on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal had been practically cut off from their rear. The command at Singapore decided to deliver supplies to Port Blair and to bring back part of the garrison.

On 9 May Haguro and Kamikaze left Singapore carrying food, fuel in drums and ammunition. The British, however, knew about the expedition: they had read a Japanese coded signal, and the ships’ movements were confirmed by the submarines HMS Statesman and HMS Subtle. On 10 May Force 61 of the British East Indies Fleet – battleships, cruisers, escort carriers and destroyers – sailed from Trincomalee in Ceylon. Warned of the enemy’s approach, the Japanese turned back. On 14 May they tried again.

15 May: the pursuit

On the morning of 15 May the Japanese force was steaming north through the Malacca Strait. That day it was spotted by aircraft from the British escort carriers. In the afternoon three Grumman Avenger torpedo bombers attacked the ships with bombs, but did at most minor damage; one aircraft was lost. The force commander, Vice Admiral Hashimoto, convinced that he had been detected by forces much stronger than his own, turned back towards Singapore.

The 26th Destroyer Flotilla under Captain Manley Power was assigned to intercept the Japanese: the flotilla leader HMS Saumarez and four new V-class destroyers – Verulam, Venus, Vigilant and Virago. Power, who was well versed in the principles of night torpedo fighting, deployed his ships in a wide semicircle so as to cut off the Japanese line of retreat. The night was dark, rain was pouring down and the sky was lit by lightning.

The night of 15/16 May

Late in the evening of 15 May the radar of the destroyer Venus detected a target at a range of about 34 nautical miles. The British destroyers began to close the ring round the Japanese force, guided by their radar – an advantage the Japanese lacked in night fighting. Hashimoto realised the danger and tried to manoeuvre, but could not slip out of the encirclement.

The fighting began at about 1.05 a.m. on 16 May. Haguro opened fire on Saumarez and hit her; the shells destroyed the upper part of her funnel and two sailors were killed. A few minutes later Saumarez and Verulam fired torpedoes, and at least three of them hit the Japanese cruiser. Over the following minutes Venus, Virago and Vigilant fired their torpedoes. According to Japanese data, further hits flooded the engine rooms and set the fuel cargo on fire; the cruiser’s list increased to more than 30 degrees, and her guns gradually fell silent.

Haguro sank bow first – at 2.06 or 2.32 a.m., depending on the source – at a position of about 4°49′ N, 99°42′ E. Hashimoto and the ship’s captain, Captain Kaju Sugiura, who was posthumously promoted, went down with her. The sources give differing numbers of dead: Japanese tallies speak of 751, while a large share of studies, especially in English, give more than 900. Kamikaze, lightly damaged, managed to escape, and the next day she returned to the scene of the battle and picked up about 320 survivors.

On the British side only Saumarez was damaged; besides the two killed, three sailors were burned. The other destroyers came out of the action unscathed. The flotilla, still exposed to attacks by Japanese aircraft from Sumatra and Malaya, lost no time in withdrawing.

A model night attack

For the Royal Navy the victory meant more than the sinking of a single ship. In 1942–1943 it was the Japanese who had been the masters of night fighting: thanks to superbly trained lookouts and powerful oxygen-fuelled torpedoes they had inflicted painful defeats on the Allies, as in the Java Sea and off Savo Island. Off Penang the roles were reversed. Guided by radar, the British destroyers approached the enemy in darkness and pouring rain, attacked simultaneously from several directions and sank a cruiser with many times their firepower, almost without loss to themselves.

The Supreme Allied Commander in South-East Asia, Admiral Louis Mountbatten, called the action “an outstanding example of a destroyer night attack”.

The action is sometimes described as the last gun battle between surface ships in history. That claim is too categorical – minor clashes between warships took place later too – but it was one of the last classic surface engagements of the Second World War.

Significance

The sinking of Haguro deprived the Japanese of one of the few large warships still fit for action in the south. Other vessels remained at Singapore, most of them damaged, but the Japanese navy was no longer able to supply the cut-off garrisons in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands by sea or to stand up to the British fleet. From then on British ships could move through the Malacca Strait almost freely.

For the British, who after the liberation of Rangoon on 3 May were already planning a landing in Malaya and the recapture of Singapore – lost in February 1942 in a defeat that Churchill called the worst disaster in the history of British arms – the battle was a sign that the sea route to Malaya lay open. The planned operation never took place as a combat operation: after Japan’s surrender in August 1945 British troops landed in Malaya and Singapore unopposed.

The wreck of Haguro was found by divers in 2003. It lies on the bottom of the Malacca Strait as the grave of several hundred sailors.