Battle of Meiktila and Mandalay - Fall of Mandalay

Fall of Mandalay

During late January, Indian 19th Division had cleared the west bank of the Irrawaddy, and transferred its entire strength into its bridgeheads on the east bank. By the middle of February, the Japanese 15th Division opposed to them was very weak and thinly spread, and General Rees launched an attack southwards from his division's bridgeheads in mid-February. By 7 March, his leading units were within sight of Mandalay Hill, crowned by its many pagodas and temples.

Lieutenant General Seiei Yamamoto, commanding the Japanese 15th Division, was opposed to defending the city, but received uncompromising orders from higher headquarters to defend Mandalay to the death. Lieutenant General Kimura at Burma Area Army was concerned about the loss of prestige should the city be abandoned. Also, there were still large supply dumps south of the city, which could not be moved but which the Japanese could not afford to abandon.

A Gurkha battalion (4/4th Gurkha Rifles), commanded by an officer who had served in Mandalay before the war, stormed Mandalay Hill on the night of 8 March. Several Japanese held out in tunnels and bunkers underneath the pagodas, and were slowly eliminated over the next few days, although most of the buildings survived substantially intact.

Fighting its way further into the city, Rees's division was stopped by the thick walls of Fort Dufferin (as the ancient citadel was named by the British), surrounded by a moat. Medium artillery and bombs dropped from low altitude failed to make much impression on the walls and an assault via a railway tunnel near the angle of the north and west walls was driven back. An attempt was made to breach the walls by "skip bombing" using 2000 lb bombs, but this created a breach only 15 feet wide. The 19th Division prepared to make another assault via the sewers on 21 March but before the assault cauld be made the Japanese abandoned the fort, also via the sewers. King Thibaw Min's teak palace inside the fort had burned down during the siege, only one of many historic buildings destroyed.

Elsewhere on XXXIII Corps's front, 20th Indian Division launched an attack southwards from its bridgehead. The Japanese 31st Division (with part of the 33rd Division) facing them had been weakened by casualties and detachments to the fighting elsewhere and was thrown into disorder. A tank regiment and a reconnaissance regiment from the 20th Division, grouped as "Claudecol", drove almost as far south as the Meiktila fighting, before turning north against the rear of the Japanese facing the bridgeheads. The British 2nd Division also broke out of its bridgehead and attacked Mandalay from the west. By the end of March, the Japanese Fifteenth Army had been reduced to uncoordinated remnants trying to move southwards to regroup in the Shan States.