Churchill Feared Japanese Attack on Falklands

Hmm....
"WARTIME prime minister Winston Churchill feared the opening of a new front in the Falklands, a scholarly historical book reveals.

He told his commanders he was worried the South Atlantic islands would be invaded by Japan.

It could have been used as a base to harry shipping.

He was so concerned he sent about 1,000 soldiers to protect the islands and ensure Britain would not have to retake them. His fears were aired 40 years before Argentina invaded, triggering the 1982 Falklands War.

Churchill’s South Atlantic nightmare is revealed by historian Stephen Haddelsey.

Sukey Cameron, of the Falkland Islands Government Office in London, said yesterday: “In the Second World War there were more troops on the Falklands than now. It just shows how ­strategically important the ­Falklands have always been.” Churchill spoke of his fears when ­Britain was near its lowest ebb in the war.

In the ­Second World War there were more troops on the Falklands than now. It just shows how ­strategically important the ­Falklands have always been.
Sukey Cameron
In 1942 Hitler’s armies were ­blitzkrieging through the Soviet Union, Nazi U-boats were threatening to starve Britain out, and the country suffered arguably its greatest defeat when its forces had to surrender ­Singapore to the Japanese.

Two months later Churchill told his commanders that he feared Japan would turn to the Falklands.

At the time the islands’ only defence was provided by 300 local volunteers, armed with a few dozen rifles.

With British forces overstretched, America and Canada turned down his requests to provide a garrison.

Churchill then ordered a battalion of soldiers on the way to India to be diverted and sent to the Falklands."
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/474214/Winston-Churchill-feared-that-Falklands-would-be-invaded-by-Japan-new-book-reveals

 

A Japanese garrison on the Falklands would be as useful as the Japanese held Aleutian Islands I believe. Did the Allies send a lot of shipping through the Drake Passage anyway? The Japanese were at the end of their rope to keep their forces on Guadalcanal supplied, so going all the way to the Falklands would be more than a stretch. More like a Herculean effort is more like it. I think Churchill was way off base on this one, but I have been mistaken in the past. Interesting story though.

 

Aye, I agree.

 

I can imagine the troops in that battalion sent there to the Falklands garrison being really P.O.'d about that job.

 

I have a logbook from a French sailor dating from late 1939 which tells the Battleship Jeanne D'Arc patrolled in the Falklands waters during the Phoney war . I suppose the British also came by now and then just in case. Rather than the Japanese, the Graf Spee would have been closer .

 

Indeed. It's often forgotten that the French Navy played a considerable part in the hunting groups searching for the "Admiral Scheer" in late 1939

There were actually a number of RN vessels that patrolled occasionally from the anchorage at the Falklands during the war...because of the Beef trade from South America Especially once the Graf Spee showed them how vulnerable the trade could be to potential disruption...but there'sno sign that the Japanese ever thought of economic warfare in that theatre at all...

Although, to be fair, their potential possession of the Falklands COULD have taken on a very different complexion if one of the various Japanese ideas for attacking the Panama Canal had come to fruition!

The book itself might be a good read I wouldn't be suprised if any of the troops sent were Scottish, the British did that in the occupation of the Faroes, sent troops who general outlook wasn't too different from the locals! You can equate the Falkland Islanders, the "Kelpers", socially and economically to Scottish island crofters in the period...and they stayed at that level of social development for many years more! In the 1960s and 1970 there were also a lot of Northern Irish emigrated to the Islands - my dentist as a child took up employment in Port Stanley in the 1960s as an employee of the Falkland Island Company.

As a town and a "liberty port" though, it can't have been any worse than some of the tiny Scottish ports and harbours the RN patrol Service used during WWII, places like Lamlash on the Isle of Arran http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamlash that hub of civilisation where RNPS trawlers in service around the coast of Scotland put in for boiler cleaning periodically, or some of the towns on the Orkneys and Shetlands. And Stanley was still an RN anchorage, the sound there was still filled with old coaling hulks...whence the Great Eastern was brought home in the 1970s!...tho' I really doubt there were any Pompey-style knocking shops!

The "home guard" on the Falkland Islands wasn't JUST manned by "locals" A few years ago when researching the circumstances of the repair of HMS Exeter after River Plate, and trying to track down exactly which of two possible vessels brought steel from the mainland to the Exeter...I came across several references to "volunteers" for the home guard travelling back and forth from the British Ex-pat community in and around Buenos Aries for a few weeks' service on the Falklands each time.

 

"...the sound there was still filled with old coaling hulks...whence the Great Eastern was brought home in the 1970s!..."

That was the Great Britain, another of Brunel's pioneering ships from about ten years earlier. In her day she was the great Atlantic liner, the first to have both an iron hull and a screw propellor.

German merchant raiders operated in the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean into 1942, and blockade runners and German, Italian, and Japanese submarines continued to travel between France and the Far East, so perhaps its not too surprising that the alklands popped into Churchill's wide-ranging mind. Something being completely impossible didn't necessary rule out Churchill thinking of it. If he had been prime minister of Japan, he would probably have been pestering his service chiefs to do it

 

Quite right, my bad!

Last time I saw any film from the Falklands, there are STILL the remains of some old hulks there! For a short while this was even the plan for the Exeter...!