Battle of the Sittang Bend

Battle of the Sittang Bend
Part of the Burma campaign, the South-East Asian theatre of World War II and the Pacific Theater of World War II

5.5-inch guns of the Royal Artillery firing on Japanese troops attempting to break out of the Sittang Bend in early August 1945
Date2 July – 7 August 1945
Location
Result British victory[1][2]
Belligerents

British Empire United Kingdom

Empire of Japan Japan
Commanders and leaders
United Kingdom Montagu Stopford
United Kingdom Frank Messervy
United Kingdom Francis Tuker (acting)
Empire of Japan Heitarō Kimura
Empire of Japan Shōzō Sakurai
Empire of Japan Masaki Honda
Strength

United Kingdom 12th Army

United Kingdom Force 136

Empire of Japan Burma Area Army (remnants)

Casualties and losses

Total: 2,000

  • 95 killed, 322 wounded & 1,600 non-combat[3]

Total: 14,000

  • 8,500 killed, 740 captured & over 5,000 non-combat[2][4]

The Battle of the Sittang Bend and the Japanese Breakout across Pegu Yomas were linked Japanese military operations during the Burma Campaign, which took place nearly at the end of World War II. Surviving elements of the Imperial Japanese Army who had been driven into the Pegu Yoma attempted to break out eastwards in order to join other Japanese troops retreating from the British forces. The break-out was the objective of the Japanese Twenty-Eighth Army with support at first from the Thirty-Third Army and later the Fifteenth Army. As a preliminary, the Japanese Thirty-Third Army attacked Allied positions in the Sittang Bend, near the mouth of the river, to distract the Allies. The British had been alerted to the break-out attempt and it ended calamitously for the Japanese, who suffered many losses, with some formations being wiped out.

There were around 14,000 Japanese casualties, with well over half being killed, while British forces suffered only 95 killed and 322 wounded.[4] The break-out attempt and the ensuing battle became the last significant land battle of the Western powers in the Second World War.[5][6]

  1. ^ Shaw p 185
  2. ^ a b Allen pp 524–525
  3. ^ China-Burma-India theater, Volume 3. University of Minnesota: Historical Division, Dept. of the Army, 1959. p. 329.
  4. ^ a b Slim pp. 600–04
  5. ^ Tucker p 60
  6. ^ Saunders, Hilary St. George (1954). Royal Air Force 1939–1945. Vol. III. London: HMSO. pp. 362–63.