Battle of Madagascar

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Madagascar began on the 5th of May 1942, when British forces landed on a remote island in the Indian Ocean that most people had never given a second thought. Madagascar was Vichy French territory, officially neutral in the war. But the Imperial Japanese Navy had submarines with a range of more than 10,000 miles. And Allied planners had begun to ask a frightening question: what would happen if Japan got there first?

  The answer, they concluded, could sever the shipping lanes to India, Australia, and Southeast Asia. It could hand the Axis powers a base from which to reach the South Atlantic. And it could finish off an Allied Eastern Fleet already battered and forced to retreat. The campaign to seize Madagascar would last six months, span the length of the island, and mark a milestone: the first Allied operation of the war to combine sea, land, and air forces on a large scale. When it was over, a Vichy governor was on the run near Ihosy, and a Free French general was on his way to take charge of an island that had just changed hands entirely.

• 2. Why Madagascar Mattered

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  Diego-Suarez is a large bay that cuts so deeply into Madagascar's northern Cape Amber that it almost severs the cape from the rest of the island. Its harbour was fine, its coastal batteries formidable, and its position at the northern tip of the island made it a natural staging point for naval power projection across the Indian Ocean.

  The threat that drove Allied planners toward Madagascar crystallised in early 1942. Japanese aircraft carriers raided merchant ships in the Bay of Bengal in March and struck the bases at Colombo and Trincomalee in Ceylon. That raid forced the British Eastern Fleet to abandon the region altogether and relocate to Kilindini Harbour in Mombasa, Kenya. Further from the action, the fleet was more vulnerable, not less.

  Japanese Kaidai-type submarines already had the longest range of any Axis submarines. If they could refuel and rearm from Madagascan ports, Allied communications could be threatened across an arc running from the Pacific to the Middle East and down to the South Atlantic.

  On the 17th of December 1941, Vice Admiral Fricke, Chief of Staff of Germany's Maritime Warfare Command, met Japanese naval attaché Vice Admiral Naokuni Nomura in Berlin to carve up the Indian Ocean between their two navies. By the 27th of March 1942, Fricke was telling the Japanese that Ceylon, the Seychelles, and Madagascar deserved higher Axis priority than operations against Australia. The Allies had heard these rumours. Their British naval advisors were already urging pre-emptive occupation of the island.

• 3. Planning the Invasion

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  General Charles de Gaulle sent Winston Churchill a letter on the 16th of December 1941 urging a Free French operation against Madagascar. Churchill understood the strategic value of Diego-Suarez, but he had two reservations: Britain lacked the resources for such an operation, and after the failed joint landing at Dakar in September 1940, he did not want Free French forces involved.

  By the 12th of March 1942, Churchill had changed his mind. Planning began in earnest under the codename Operation Bonus, and the Free French were explicitly shut out. Churchill's guidelines kept Force H guarding the western Mediterranean while an American task force covered Gibraltar. Lord Mountbatten had proposed a nucleus force of around 4,000 men, and the planners were told to build around that core.

  Major-General Robert Sturges of the Royal Marines was given command of Force 121, with Rear-Admiral Edward Syfret commanding the naval contingent. Force 121 left the Clyde in Scotland on the 23rd of March and joined Syfret's ships at Freetown in Sierra Leone. From there, two convoys proceeded to Durban on the South African east coast.

  At Durban, Field-Marshal Jan Smuts warned that seizing only Diego-Suarez would not be enough. He urged the immediate occupation of Majunga and Tamatave as well. The chiefs of staff rejected this advice, citing lack of manpower, and kept the initial objective as Diego-Suarez alone. South African Air Force reconnaissance flights over Diego-Suarez had been running since March, with No. 32, 36, and 37 Coastal Flights withdrawn from maritime patrol and sent to Lindi on the Tanganyikan coast, supported by eleven Bristol Beauforts and six Martin Marylands.

• 4. Operation Ironclad

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  On the 5th of May 1942, the first wave of the British 29th Infantry Brigade and No. 5 Commando landed in Landing Craft Assault at Courrier Bay and Ambararata Bay, just west of Diego-Suarez. The beach landings met virtually no resistance. The 17th Infantry Brigade pushed through mangrove swamp and thick bush, took the town of Diego-Suarez, and captured a hundred prisoners.

  The 29th Independent Brigade headed for the French naval base at Antisarane. Six Valentine tanks of 'B' Special Service Squadron and six Tetrarch light tanks of 'C' Special Service Squadron helped them advance 21 miles against light resistance. Antisarane was defended with trenches, two redoubts, pillboxes, and impenetrable swamps on both flanks.

  Air cover came from Fairey Albacore and Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers. A Swordfish sank the armed merchant cruiser Bougainville and then a Vichy submarine. One Swordfish was shot down by anti-aircraft fire while dropping surrender leaflets in French; its crew were taken prisoner.

  Defending the island was Governor General Armand Léon Annet with around 8,000 troops, roughly 6,000 of them Malagasy tirailleurs. Their naval and air defences included eight coastal batteries, two armed merchant cruisers, two sloops, five submarines, 17 Morane M.S. 406 fighters, and ten Potez 63 bombers.

  On the morning of the 6th of May, a frontal assault on the defences failed and three Valentines and two Tetrarchs were lost. The South Lancashires worked around the Vichy line, captured the radio station and a barracks, took 200 prisoners, and then had to withdraw when their radio set failed. Admiral Darlan sent Annet a message from Vichy France ordering him to fight to the limit and make the British pay dearly.

  The deadlock broke when an old destroyer dashed straight into Antisarane harbour under fire and landed fifty Royal Marines from the battleship Ramillies in the Vichy rear. The marines took the French artillery command post, the barracks, and the naval depot. The 17th Brigade broke through the defences simultaneously, and that evening Antisarane surrendered. In three days of fighting, the British suffered 109 killed and 283 wounded. The French suffered 700 casualties.

• 5. The Japanese Midget Submarines

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  Three weeks after Operation Ironclad concluded, the Japanese submarines I-10, I-20, and I-16 arrived on the 29th of May. I-10 carried a reconnaissance aircraft, which spotted the battleship Ramillies at anchor in Diego-Suarez harbour. The plane was detected; Ramillies changed her berth. But the Japanese were already in motion.

  I-20 and I-16 each launched a midget submarine. One of them entered the harbour and fired two torpedoes while under depth charge attack from two British corvettes. One torpedo seriously damaged Ramillies. The other sank the oil tanker British Loyalty, which was later refloated. Ramillies was eventually repaired in Durban and Plymouth.

  The crew of midget submarine M-20b, Lieutenant Saburo Akieda and Petty Officer Masami Takemoto, beached their craft at Nosy Antalikely and moved inland toward their pick-up point near Cape Amber. They bought food at the village of Anijabe and were betrayed. Royal Marines caught up with them, and both were killed in a firefight three days after beaching. One marine also died in the action. The second midget submarine was lost at sea; the body of one of its crewmen was found washed ashore the following day.

• 6. Securing the Whole Island

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  Hostilities continued at a low level across Madagascar through the northern winter of 1942. Two brigades of the 5th Infantry Division left for India on the 19th of May. Replacements arrived: the 22nd (East Africa) Brigade Group on the 8th of June, and the 7th South African Motorized Brigade on the 24th of June. The 27th (North Rhodesia) Infantry Brigade landed on the 8th of August.

  On the 2nd of July, a separate force captured the Vichy-held island of Mayotte, taking its valuable radio station and most of its sleeping defenders without a single casualty. The Chief of Police and a few others tried to escape by car, but Allied roadblocks stopped them.

  The three-part operation to clear the rest of Madagascar, Stream Line Jane, launched on the 10th of September. Stream was the amphibious landing at Majunga. No. 5 Commando led the assault under machine gun fire, stormed the quayside, seized the local post office and the governor's residence, and raised the Union Jack. Jane was the landing at Tamatave on the 18th of September. Heavy surf disrupted it; French shore batteries opened fire on a launch heading to shore, and the launch turned back. The cruiser Birmingham then opened fire, and within three minutes the French raised the white flag.

  Line was the overland advance from Majunga to Tananarive, the French capital, which fell on the 23rd of September. Vichy forces had tried to destroy a bridge on the Majunga-Tananarive road, but only managed to sag its central span 3 feet into the river, and Allied vehicles drove across anyway. A Vichy Potez-63 aircraft was sent to finish the job with bombs, but failed.

  On the 29th of September, two companies of the South African Pretoria Highlanders carried out the only amphibious landing by South African forces during the entire war, at the harbour town of Tulear, some 900 miles south of Diego-Suarez. The landing was unopposed, supported by the cruiser Birmingham, two destroyers, and 200 Royal Marines.

  The last major action came on the 18th of October at Andramanalina, a U-shaped valley where Vichy troops planned an ambush. The King's African Rifles divided into two columns, marched around both arms of the valley, and struck the Vichy troops from the rear instead. The counterambush succeeded; 800 Vichy troops surrendered. Governor Annet kept moving south, escaping Fianarantsoa before the King's African Rifles arrived on the 25th of October, but he was cornered near Ihosy, 100 miles further south. He sent an envoy asking for terms. An armistice was signed at Ambalavao on the 6th of November; Annet surrendered two days later.

• 7. Aftermath and Legacy

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  With Madagascar in Allied hands, the island's deep water ports were placed beyond the reach of the Axis for the rest of the war. They were vital for controlling the passage to India and the Persian corridor. Free French General Paul Legentilhomme was appointed High Commissioner for Madagascar in December 1942, replacing British administration.

  Historian John Grehan has argued that the British capture of Madagascar, before Japan could take it, was so consequential to the Allied war effort that it contributed to Japan's eventual defeat.

  Julian Jackson, in his biography of de Gaulle, noted that Vichy French forces held out longer against the Allies in Madagascar in 1942 than French forces had against the Germans in France in 1940.

  Service in Madagascar did not qualify for the British and Commonwealth Africa Star. It was covered instead by the 1939-1945 Star.

  Madagascar's postwar path was troubled. In 1947, the island experienced the Malagasy Uprising, a costly revolution that was crushed the following year. It was not until the 26th of June 1960, almost two decades after the Allied landings, that the Malagasy Republic proclaimed its independence from France.