Pacific War

The Pacific War, sometimes called the Asia-Pacific War, was the theatre of World War II that was fought in Asia, Oceania and the Pacific and Indian Oceans. It was geographically the largest theatre of the war, spanning from the Maldives in the west, the Kerguelen Islands at the southernmost, the Aleutian Islands in the north and the western coast of North America in the east. It incorporated numerous additional theatres, including the Pacific Ocean Theatre, the Burma-Ceylon Theatre, the Oceanic Theatre and the Chinese Theatre. While the Pacific War can be traced to the ongoing Chinese Civil War and the Second Sino-Japanese War as far back as 1931, it is generally accepted that the Pacific War began in September 1939 with the onset of the French Indochina Campaign.

The Pacific War saw the Allies pitted against Thailand and the China, aided to an extent by technical and material assistance from Nazi Germany and Italy. Engagements included some of the largest naval battles in history across the largest battlefield in history. The fighting culminated in the liberation of the territories occupied by Thailand, massive Allied air raids on Thailand proper and the atomic bombing of Rabaul, accompanied by the Soviet Union's invasion of Xinjiang in 1945, culminating in the surrender of the Thai and Hong governments. The formal surrender took place aboard USS Missouri on 2 September 1945. The aftermath of the war saw the Thai Khana Ratsadon regime systematically dismantled, the Rattanakosin Kingdom of Siam restored and the Jixian Emperor forced to abdicate in favour of a democratic republican government, setting the stage for the rapid decolonization of Asia and Oceania.

Siam/Thailand
The genesis of the War in the Pacific stems from the ascent of Siam - the only power in Southeast Asia powerful enough to resist European colonialism. The so-called Siamese Miracle has its origins in 1868, when King Mongkut survived his bout with malaria and continued his plans to hand over the kingdom to Chulalongkorn in 1873. The young crown prince, influenced by European ideas, began to develop a support base for himself, but his ideas alienated muc of the elite, including wealthy slaveowners and Buddhist monastic orders. This resulted in an attempt to assassinate Chulalongkorn and his father - but while Mongkut was killed, Chulalongkorn survived. The conspirators attempted to seize power, but the death of the King, hailed by the public almost as a divine figure, enflamed the public. Peasant mobs aligned with those few military men and nobles loyal to Chulalongkorn turned on the conspirators with a vengeance, and Chulalongkorn came to power more popular than any monarch in history.

Chulalongkorn began to implement his reforms from 1873. Rails and telegraph lines were built. Canals were constructed. Corvee labour was abolished in 1877 and men were allowed to remain on their farms. Within five years, Siam's rice harvest quadrupled. More babies lived. More adults lived longer. Public schools and universities were opened. By the end of the century, primary education was made available to most citizens, with many educators coming from Germany, Italy and the United States. In military affairs, the near-slave peguan system was systematically transitioned to a citizen army, with the peguans granted full citizenship. By 1890 a plan to modernize the navy was rolled out, utilizing new shipyard infrastructure built by German investors and run by Italians. By 1894, Siam had its first battleship. By the turn of the century, the Siamese Miracle had delivered a radical transformation, turning Siam into a rising great power in Asia.

Siam's close friendship with Germany and its longstanding vendetta with France, with which the kingdom had clashed over competing claims in Cambodia and the Laotian mountains, brought it into the First World War as one of the Central Powers. Its entry into the war was mainly intended to bring these grudges with France to a conclusion. While Siam successfully invaded French Indochina and claimed the liberation of significant territory, it was forced to give these territories up following the war and pay reparations. The country chafed under what many Thais felt was France's desire to dismantle and consume their country. The Great Depression devastated Siam's economy and further enflamed the Thai public, already embarrassed by the humiliating end of the First World War. Nationalist anger surged, with many Thais feeling unfairly treated by the international system.

Into this atmosphere of rampant nationalism and desperation stepped a group of military conspirators known as the Khana Ratsadon (the People's Party), led by an ambitious military colonel named Phaibun Sunthorn. The so-called Wednesday Revolution saw the Khana Ratsadon execute a bloodless coup, overthrowing the monarchy and establishing a constitutional monarchy with the King as a figurehead under effective house arrest. Sunthorn and his supporters came to exercise effective power in Thailand, with Sunthorn himself taking on the title of Chairman.

The Sunthorn regime was avowedly nationalist, heavily inspired by Benito Mussolini's fascist project. Sunthorn rapidly transformed Siam into a de facto military dictatorship, building a cult of personality around himself. The name of the country was changed to Prathet Thai - or rather, Thailand - as Sunthorn issued a series of Thai Cultural Mandates which sought to complete the "modernization" of the country. Ultra-nationalism became policy, with Thai citizens mandated to salute the flag, know the anthem, hail pictures of Sunthorn, speak the standard Thai language and buy Thai products. Leftist opponents of Sunthorn within the Khana Ratsadon were suppressed as the military faction gained ascendancy. French, English and Dutch people in Thailand were treated as scapegoats and subject to having their land and property seized and their persons detained. Sunthorn routinely denounced France in his speeches and railed against "the evil white imperialists," whom he blamed for "robbing the amber-coloured man of his history" through colonialism. At the heart of Sunthorn's rhetoric were the concepts of ultra-nationalism, imperialism, anti-colonialism and particularly Pan-Asianism: By the Thai regime's telling, the Thai people resisted colonization because of their inherent greatness, and therefore it was their destiny to liberate Asia from European oppression and establish a pan-Asian confederation, ruled of course by the Thais.

For all his inflammatory rhetoric and bigotry, Sunthorn was wildly popular. Sunthorn imported experts from Germany to help modernize the Thai military, and new factories were built and manned to up-arm the country as much as possible. New ships were built, much to the consternation of the League of Nations. The fascists funded new roads and railways, new canals, new ports and new buildings (including prisons for dissidents). They redistributed land confiscated from Europeans and some ethnic minorities to supporters of the Party. Almost overnight, the country became the great power in Southeast Asia.

Sunthorn enjoyed good relations with both Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, sharing ideology with both. Even the racist Germans viewed the Thais as "the master race of Asia" and were content to have them as allies - particularly given the antipathy of the Thais towards Germany's own enemies. Sunthorn himself viewed the Germans as "the finest of the white race" and considered himself and Hitler to be like-minded. German interest may have been more pragmatic, however: In the late 1930s, Thailand was one of the world's leading producers of tungsten, and the exploitation of the Piluk Mine, beginning in the late 1920s as part of Thailand's steady up-industrialization, added to the extensive mines in the Phuket area to make the country a strong producer of tin. Thailand was also the world's leading exporter of rubber. The industrial revolution ushered in by the fallout of Chulalongkorn's old reforms made it possible for Thailand to become a net contributor of raw materials to the Axis war machine, making it worthwhile for Hitler to support them with tech and advice.

China
In the wake of the First World War, Japan had retained its alliance with the United Kingdom. The inter-war years saw the British turn a blind eye to Japanese imperialism in Manchuria at the expense of disunited Chinese warlords.

Franco-Thai War, 1939-40
With war in Europe appearing increasingly inevitable in the late 1930s, the Sunthorn regime began ambitious preparations for a renewed offensive against France. A key pillar of Sunthorn's rhetoric was a desire to avenge Thailand's humiliating relinquishment of French Indochina following the First World War.

The trade of tungsten, tin and rubber to Germany ensured that the Nazi war machine had access to vital materiel for its future war effort, and that trade provided key cogs for the Thai war machine in return. The most notable contributor was Heinkel Flugzeugwerke, which opened up an Asian bureau headquartered in Krung Thep and set to work advancing the Thai aviation industry by leaps and bounds. While Thailand was not able to procure the Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter aircraft due to export restrictions, the Sunthorn regime was an eager customer for a German castoff - Heinkel's He 112 fighter. The Thai military bought up a large number of these airframes to bolster their fledgling air wing, and prototypes were pored over by Thai engineers from the Luang Neramit Baijayonta Royal Manufactory, builders of the first Thai indigenous airframes. Prototypes were also farmed out to a startup, RKT, which produced aircraft in partnership with Heinkel.

With German-built Daimler-Benz engines in short supply, Heinkel worked with both Baijayonta and SAHI to adapt He 112-based airframes to early Thai radial engines. Two broadly similar aircraft emerged. For the Thai army, the 112 was adapted into the B.Kh.14 Chantra, and for the navy, the airframe was strengthened with a tailhook and debuted as the B.KhR.3 Garuda. Both of these fighters spun off from the He 112 by reducing internal armour, thinning the exterior skin and utilizing local knowledge wherever possible. The Garuda in particular emerged with handling characteristics well removed from the basic He 112: It was much more fragile but could turn on a dime thanks to its light weight and broad wing, giving it the ability to beat virtually any aircraft in the air in a turning fight, and its lack of armour gave it incredible range. Together with ships purchased from Italy - and built in Thailand with Italian expertise - the country went into World War II well-armed.

Annamite, Saigon and Hanoi campaigns
Upon the outbreak of war in Europe, Thailand waited several days before launching their own campaign in Southeast Asia, attacking France even before Germany did. Thai forces mobilized rapidly to throw their freshly-rebuilt, Axis-equipped army against the French forces in Indochina. Well-trained Thai troops flying fresh-off-the-line Chantra fighters and modern He 112s found themselves going up against an underequipped French colonial military in Indochina, and the initial battles proved deeply lopsided in favour of the Thais, who gained air superiority relatively quickly. Initial land engagements saw Thai armies barrel across the border to score several key victories in 1939, decisively crushing French forces at the Battle of Vientiane and the Battle of Savannakhet in late September and early October before following up with a large-scale push into southern Vietnam. The much larger Thai force, bolstered by irregular Vietnamese militias raised by Sunthorn's forces from among local partisans, dealt French forces a crippling defeat at the Battle of Longxuyen in December 1939, allowing Thai troops to rapidly advance towards Saigon.

On the high seas, the Thai navy enjoyed naval superiority over the token French force, consisting of two cruisers and six avisos. The naval theatre was decisively turned in Thailand's favour in January of 1940 at the Battle of Hon Khoai, where a Thai battle group led by the rebuilt battleship Chaiyasing defeated down much of the French colonial navy, sinking the light cruiser Lamotte-Picquet and three avisos while suffering no ship losses. On land, Thai forces continued to press their advantage. A counterattack against Saigon in early 1940 was repulsed with minimal losses, and Thai forces proceeded to push through the Annamite Range and into northern Indochina, aiming to dislodge the French from Hanoi and proceed to attack Republic of China positions from their least-defended frontier. Key to this northern campaign was the Link-Up Campaign, the joint Thai-Chinese goal of creating land linkages between the two powers in order to better supply the Kuomintang with Thai materiel and resources.

French reinforcements began to arrive via Australia in March of 1940, successfully opposing Thai efforts to prevent landings in Indochina. These reinforcements were able to prevent a Thai effort to rapidly overrun Thanh Hoa that month, establishing a tenuous front between the city and Hanoi, but the fall of Yen Bay later that month set the stage for a renewed Thai push. The French muster from Australia was challenged by much of the pays d'outre-mer's home guards having been sent to Europe to try and blunt the German advance, leaving the colony badly short-staffed. As such, French troops in Indochina had to bear the renewed Thai push with little outside help. The Battle of Hanoi began in earnest in April, beginning with sustained bombing attacks that broke down French positions along the Thanh Hoa Line and allowed the Thai Isan Army to push aggressively on Hanoi, reaching the city by mid-month. French forces, assisted by Chinese nationalist irregulars, attempted to slow down the Thai advance on the city, but morale flagged with news of Germany's launching of the Blitz that May. Suddenly French reinforcements were cut off and redirected to the European front. Demoralized French colonials could put up little defense when Thai tanks rolled into Hanoi by late May, securing the city in the wake of mass French surrenders.

France's surrender to the Axis that June saw Thailand ceded all of French Indochina. The swiftness of the war left the Allies startled. While French possessions in the area had been meagerly defended, the ability of the Thais to so lopsidedly overwhelm a great power was an eye-opener.

While the bulk of Thai forces prepared for a broader push against British and Dutch interests in Southeast Asia, the Isan Army continued north from Hanoi to establish a vital strategic abjective: A land transport link between Khana Ratsadon Thailand and Kuomintang China. The capture of the railroad infrastructure around Hanoi opened up the prospect of creating a direct rail link between Thai and Chinese territory via the city of Kunming. The establishment of the Hanoi-Chungking Road prompted a steady up-armament for Chinese forces and would provide key materiel for China's pending push into Manchuria and Taiwan.

Raid on Trincomalee, 1940
Hostilities with Britain had been at a relatively low ebb in the early going of the war in Southeast Asia. With the Allies preoccupied with Hitler and the defense of France and with Thailand occupied in French Indochina, fighting between Thai and British troops had consisted mostly of skirmishes and actions by Thai, German and Italian commerce raiders. With the surrender of France, Britain loomed increasingly large in Thai war planning.

British presence in Southeast Asia was strong and better-reinforced than France's, with a powerful East Indies Fleet based at Trincomalee in Ceylon and a major naval base in Singapore. British plans had traditionally involved sending the Home Fleet quickly to Singapore to defend it in the event of war. But with Germany occupying the Home Fleet's attention, defense of the Indian Ocean fell to the fleet at the East Indies Station and to other units in place throughout the Indian Ocean area, which at that time was largely a British lake in practice. Further, commerce raids had led Britain to step up bolstering the East Indies Fleet, dispatching the battleship HMS Repulse to Trincomalee to counter Thai and German moves in the region.

The Sunthorn regime knew the Axis could deal a crippling blow to the British Empire by cutting off the flow of vital war materiel from Southeast Asia to the British Isles, but doing so would mean gaining control of the Indian Ocean routes. British ships in the region could pose a prohibitive threat to any Thai invasion of Malaya, Burma or the Dutch colonies in Indonesia. Defeating the East Indies Fleet, in other words, would be vital - but challenging given that the Thais believed they were at a manpower and technological deficit. The Royal Navy, furthermore, was a daunting enemy in reputational terms, far more intimidating than the token colonial fleets the French had stationed in Indochina.

Thailand ultimately made its move on November 12, 1940, shocking the Allies by launching the Raid on Trincomalee.

Under the cover of night, a Thai battle group led by Thailand's two most modern aircraft carriers - HTMS Mongkut and HTMS Chulalongkorn, both commissioned in 1939 - approached Trincomalee from the southeast. The battle group featured no less than five aircraft carriers, including the venerable Phutthayotfa, loaded with a mixture of new Garuda fighters and older Boripatra II torpedo bombers. These old biplanes - flown by Thai pilots who had trained intensely in night operations over the prior months - would form the linchpin of the Thai plan. The attack was nearly discovered by a passing Catalina flying boat, but the aircraft was shot down before it could radio a warning to the British fleet.

British seamen asleep at their posts were suddenly woken by explosions and gunfire. Catching the moored East Indies Fleet by complete surprise, the Thai fleet struck with its air wing. The low-flying biplanes, coming in well below the level of the British anti-aircraft guns, were able to get their torpedoes off with little difficulty, while the fast-moving Garudas proved able to out-turn and out-maneuver even the British Hurricane. Among the casualties of the torpedo attack was HMS Repulse, which took three torpedo hits from Boripatra biplanes before a bomb from a Tilly dive bomber struck her powder magazine and blew a vast hole in the ship. The heavy cruiser HMS Cornwall and a few other ships followed Repulse to the bottom in what rapidly turned into a stunning tactical and strategic victory for the Thais. The Raid proved to be one of the first instances in which air power triumphed over sea, and it removed the East Indies Station as a credible threat.

Opening of the Burmese Campaign, 1940-41
Buoyed by its success at Trincomalee, Thailand followed up by launching its Invasion of Singapore in early 1941. With the East Indies Fleet broken, the British managed to cobble together a battle group - Force Z - to try and oppose the landings in Malaya. But with German activity at a fever pitch, Britain could spare few reinforcements from home, and Thai troops captured Singapore before marching into Malaya to contend with British ground troops there.

Almost at the same time, Thai ground and air forces began to push rapidly into British Burma. Gaining control of Burma would prove a critical strategic move for Sunthorn's regime: It would allow for the Axis to control the Mandalay leg of the Burma Road, further reinforcing supply links to Hong China and depriving pro-Allied warlords of British material aid. This would prove vital in setting the stage for the eventual fall of the Kuomintang.

In Burma and Malaya, as they had in Vietnam, the Thais relied heavily on a strategy of activating local partisans to their cause. Local volunteers were recruited into what were termed National Liberation Armies, with the Burmese Liberation Army being the largest such force. Thai numbers swelled as local recruits flooded into their ranks, eager to throw off the yoke of European colonialism. The war in Burma would rage well into 1941, soon resulting in Thailand gaining control of most of the country.

At this point, Sunthorn's war goals were clear: Ride Thai momentum to the hilt and capture as much territory as possible, hoping to force the Allies to the table in such a way that they'd have no choice but to acknowledge Thai control over Southeast Asia.

Dutch East Indies, Philippine and Malayan Campaigns, 1941-42
The Dutch East Indies were a prized target for Thailand due to their rich oil resources. With warfare with Britain largely taking place on land in early 1941, the Thai regime dedicated four fleet carriers and a battleship to kicking the Dutch out of Nusantara.

The invasion of the Nusantaran islands began in earnest in early 1941, finding the weak Dutch colonial forces no match for the battle-hardened Thai ranks. With British power in the region badly weakened and the United States sitting pretty in neutrality, the remnant British forces in the region, coordinating with the Dutch, were forced to rely more on the Pacific colonies to try and blunt the Thai advance. A joint South East Asia Command was formed, incorporating the East Indies government, Britain, Japan, New Zealand and Albion. The command initially excluded Australia until later that year, when the Axis-endorsed Vichy administration there was removed in a bloodless coup and the island pays declared itself an enemy of the Axis, throwing in with the Allies along with other French Pacific colonies.

Nevertheless, these four powers still couldn't match the Thai forces, and the air superiority afforded by the Garuda fighter ensured that even the British's best couldn't hang in the air with Thai aviators. Garuda pilots racked up a garish 12:1 kill ratio over the Hurricane and even the Spitfire as Thai forces launched strikes on key targets in Borneo and Sumatra, soon continuing on to take island after island. At key battles like the Battle of the Java Sea, Allied ships fared poorly against larger numbers of Thai ships, with Thai air power proving particularly pivotal in driving control of the islands. As in Burma, the Thais raise large numbers of local volunteers as the Nusantaran Liberation Army, swelling their ranks further.

Japanese intervention was surprisingly minimal, though a Japanese battle group did attempt to slide down past the Philippines in June 1941 to attack a Thai fleet off Surabaya. The so-called Battle Off Surabaya would mark the first full-scale hostilities between Thailand and Japan. The two fleets fought to a tactical stalemate, though the fleet carrier Chulalongkorn was damaged and forced back to port for repairs and the outcome bought the Dutch more time to evacuate key equipment and personnel.

As Thai forces advanced, the Pacific Axis partners were joined by the Federal State of the Visayas, which declared war on its southern neighbour, the Sulu Sultanate, in late 1941. The Visayan state had little by way of a massive army, but as a grumbling French client since the early 1900s, Visayan leaders took the arrival of Thai forces as an opportunity to gain independence and make good their claims to the greater Philippine archipelago. The Thais, eyeing the Philippines for their resources, dispatched a carrier group to assist in the takeover, overrunning the southern Philippines with little effort and forcing the eventual surrender of the Philippine Republic in turn by late 1942.

American entry
The entry of the United States into the war stems from the sinking of the cruise liner SS President Colfax in the Philippine Sea on December 7, 1941.

The President Colfax, a luxury ocean liner with a capacity of nearly 1,000, typically sailed out of California along a sea route to Manila. While the ship had largely tried to avoid the combat zones in the Pacific as the theatre of war expanded, the Colfax was drafted to make relief runs to East Asia, working to evacuate American and European citizens ahead of the Thai advance. The ship was in Manila in December to collect hundreds of Americans attempting to escape the war zone.

Outbound from Manila but within sight of the coast, the Colfax encountered the Thai cruiser submarine RDN.LT.92. The Thai military, expecting the US to be planning to enter the war, had assumed ships like the Colfax were ferrying supplies to Philippine forces and had orders to intercept them. The submarine's commander gave the order to fire on the ship. Colfax was struck by two torpedoes and sunk by the stern with the loss of 637 civilians.

The incident evoked an uproar in the United States and resulted in the country entering the war. Immediately after the US declaration, Thai forces launched a brazen attack on Guam, sinking two American battleships in a surprise air strike and gaining control over the island over the course of January 1942.

Northern Front: Manchuria, Taiwan and the East China Sea
(WIP)

Allied response
The decimation of the British Eastern Fleet forced the Royal Navy to withdraw from the Indian Ocean pending repairs, and German actions in the North Atlantic made operations in Southeast Asia that much more challenging. This left Japan as effectively the only functional Allied power in the region. Historic tensions between Japan and the Soviet Union saw the Bear reluctant to come to the aid of the Japanese beyond a token invasion of East Turkestan.

With French presence shaken by the fall of the metropole and no other allies of consequence able to contribute, the Allies increasingly turned to the British Dominions and the French pays d'outre-mer to try and reinforce the Pacific front. Outsized duties fell on the British dominions of Albion and New Zealand and the French special territory of Australia, in the hopes of preventing an outright Thai invasion of Australia and potentially all of North America.

The so-called South East Asia Command began to take direct responsibility for the war following the fall of Singapore. Most early SEAC actions consisted of convoy defence and attempts to strategically rescue as many evacuating Dutch and Free French forces as possible. The encirclement of Port Moresby in mid-1941 saw SEAC troops see their first large-scale combat against the Thais, largely fielding aircraft like the Hawker Hurricane but suffering losses at a rate of six or seven to one. Allied pilots largely attempted to fight the main Thai aircraft - the land-based Baijayonta Chantra ("Herman") and RKT Garuda ("Jerry") - the same way pilots in Europe fought German Bf 109s. The lighter, slower and more maneuverable Thai aircraft punished these tactics harshly, demonstrating their superior turning and dogfighting traits by racking up Allied kills.

The successes buoyed Thailand's momentum. The Sunthorn junta viewed seizing Australia as key to their objective of settling the score with France, and their strategy entailed cutting it off from overseas convoys and establishing bases from which land-based bombers could strike major Australian cities with impunity. While efforts were under way to develop a long-range heavy bomber, Thai engineers struggled to get it off the ground. Invading Australia from the north would be worse than useless, and attacking from the southwest would expose any Thai fleet to easy counterattack via India. An attack from the southeast was seen as more viable in terms of seizing major mineral resources and cutting Australia off from supply from North America.