Operation Matador, 8th August 1941

By the late 1930s it became clear that the Japanese would push-on with their ambitions in Southeast Asia, and it was highly likely that a Japanese attack was underway.

There was a lot of activity up north and Commonwealth troops in Malaya, not unaware of the danger that this posed to Commonwealth territories, formulated a plan to stall the Japanese in Thailand. The plan was called operation matador.

Operation matador was designed to thwart highly anticipated amphibious landings in Songkhla, Pattani, and Kota Bharu. The person in charge of the operation, and its chief architect was Air Chief Marshal Robert Brooke-Popham, and his findings recommended that large reinforcements be sent immediately to Malaya. His suggestions however were ignored by the higher-ups in the chain of command, partly because the Commonwealth lacked the resources to do so.  

There were some troops stationed in Malaya but the size of the Japanese army that eventually crossed the border from Thailand, outnumbered anything that the Commonwealth could muster in Malaya.

A bulk of the troops that amassed in Malaya crossed over from Thailand and their numbers were far more sizeable than the troops that had come via the sea-route.

It was this unprecedented infantry attack that forced Commonwealth troops in Malaya to surrender and to concede.

According to the plan the Isthmus of Krah was the most likely area where an attack would come from, reinforced by amphibious landings in Pattani, Songkhla, and Kota Bharu, and the plan or the Commonwealth plan was to stop these attacks by launching counter attacks into Thailand.

That task was allotted to the 11th Indian Infantry Division under the command of Major General Murray Line and the same division was also tasked with defending Jitra.

That task was made all the more difficult by the defeat of the 8th Indian Infantry Division in Kota Bharu, Kelantan, and the attack on Jitra came two to three days after the attack on Kota Bharu, between the 10th and 11th of December 1941, and its success was largely due to border crossings from adjoining provinces in Thailand.

The problem was compounded by the fact that the RAF had lost three air bases, the three air bases in Kota Bharu, Machang, and Gong Kedah.

Had the air bases remained intact then there was the possibility of planes belonging to the RAF and RAAF taking off from the air bases and launching attacks to stop Japanese troops from advancing, or at the very least make it difficult for them to do so.

In addition to that, operation matador also encountered diplomatic problems because a non-aggression treaty had been signed between the British Commonwealth and the ambassador of Thailand to Britain, at the time that it was being formulated, so despite the fact that Japanese troops were allowed to use Thai territory, little could be done about it on the diplomatic front, not for as long as the non-aggression pact remained in force.

Thailand in all fairness did not take any part in the war, it remained a neutral state. In short, it was a buffer state that allowed Japanese troops passage into Malaya.

According to most sources the reason that the Japanese never invaded Thailand was because Thailand was a sovereign state that had never succumbed to a foreign power, at that time there were only three Asian nations that had never succumbed to a foreign power, and those nations were the Kingdom of Thailand, the Kingdom of Bhutan and Japan, and hence Thailand was never invaded despite the fact that the Japanese Army needed its territories to reinforce its lines not only in Malaya but to also reinforce its lines in Burma which saw a lot of intense fighting especially for the control of its oilfields.

Thailand and Bhutan remain the two Asian nations that have never been defeated by a foreign power or a western power.

Operation matador or the plan to stop the Japanese in Thailand never materialized and on the 8th of December 1941, it became clear that the Commonwealth had lost all hope of carrying out any incursions into Thailand, or conducting any air raids into Thai territory, and operation matador was shelved.

Copyright © 2024 by Kathiresan Ramachanderam