Burma - The Turning Point

The turning point of the war in Burma in the Second World War was the Imphal/Kohima campaign of 1944. For four months there was intense and savage fighting with the heaviest of all along the road leading from Tiddim in Burma to Imphal.

The Japanese plan was to encircle and destroy this division before bursting into the plain and seizing Imphal. They failed in their first aim but, nothing deterred, General Mutaguchi, who commanded the Japanese 15th Army, took personal command and brought up all his available reserves, including all his tanks and most of his heavy artillery and prepared a final all-out thrust for Imphal. However, the British 4th Corps struck first. After three weeks the Japanese were virtually annihilated and Mutaguchi admitted in his diary that the campaign was lost.

With the door to Burma now undefended, General Slim's Fourteenth Army flooded through it to win the great victories of 1945.