"Why was Lt General Author Percivil the British Commander in charge of Singapore in WWII, Was he Incompetent?

 Saw this on Quora 

    My honest opinion, especially back then, the British commanders were either brilliant or incompetent, there were no in-betweens with them, partially because of their "class system", they pulled their officers from what is called their Gentry or upper-class, and no matter how incompetent, they made sure that unless there was actual cowardice they would cover it up.  Cowardice they would not tolerate.  I to this day still am flummoxed by the surrender, and to this day the Australians and New Zealanders still are a bit pissy because it was a huge chunk of their menfolks that got marched into captivity by the Japanese and many didn't return.

Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival’s surrender of Singapore to the Japanese in 1942 was the largest surrender of British forces in history and he was therefore bound to come in for a great deal of criticism, not helped by the fact that he was personally not very prepossessing and certainly not the ideal of a General Officer in public opinion.

General Percival

Percival joined the British Army as a private in 1914 and rose to the rank of (temporary) Lieutenant Colonel by the end of the war. In the process he garnered a DSO (with a later second award), a Military Cross and a Croix de Guerre. These are significant medals and so he was obviously no slouch in military matters, especially as he was not a regular soldier. After the war, having taken a regular commission, he attended Staff College and was earmarked for accelerated promotion.

Percival knew Malaya previously, having been posted there as the Chief of Staff to the General Officer Commanding Malaya in the late 1930s. Whilst in this role, Percival correctly assessed the possibility that the Japanese might make an attack on Malaya (and thus Singapore) via Thailand or, contrary to the orthodox view, by landings on the eastern seaboard of the peninsula during the northeast monsoon from October to March.

Funds to rectify the situation were not forthcoming and inter-service rivalry led to the poor placement of RAF airfields in Northern Malaya. This in turn meant that troops had to be dispersed in penny-packets in order to defend them.

In April 1941, Percival was appointed GOC Malaya which meant that he had some seven months to prepare his command before the Japanese attack. He later wrote:

In going to Malaya I realised that there was the double danger either of being left in an inactive command for some years if war did not break out in the East or, if it did, of finding myself involved in a pretty sticky business with the inadequate forces which are usually to be found in the distant parts of our Empire in the early stages of a war.

In this assessment, he was correct. Percival had on hand some 70,000 men (plus 15,000 support troops) with his main force consisting of forty-nine infantry battalions of decidedly mixed quality. The Australian Official Historian later wrote:

Only one of the Indian battalions was up to numerical strength, three had recently arrived in a semi-trained condition, nine had been hastily reorganised with a large intake of raw recruits, and four were being re-formed but were far from being fit for action. Six of the United Kingdom battalions (in the 54th and 55th Brigades of the British 18th Infantry Division) had only just landed in Malaya, and the other seven battalions were under-manned. Of the Australian battalions, three had drawn heavily upon undertrained recruits, new to the theatre. The Malay battalions had not been in action, and the Straits Settlements Volunteers were only sketchily trained.

Partly trained or newly arrived troops contributed to Percival’s problems

He possessed no armour (the Japanese had around 200 tanks) and what tanks and other material were dispatched to Malaya were diverted to Russia or Egypt. Essentially, Malaya was given a low priority and the campaign was over so quickly, a little over two months, that little could be done to redress the situation.

The RAF presence was small and under-equipped with obsolete fighters and the Royal Navy’s Force Z also suffered a catastrophic defeat with the loss of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse.

Obsolete Brewster Buffalo fighters

The premise of the Singapore Strategy was that a strong fleet would be despatched to the Far East, based on Singapore, to deter the Japanese. In the event, Force Z consisted of only two capital ships and lacked any air cover - it’s assigned aircraft carrier having run aground in the Caribbean.

This distinctly second rate response was due to the unexpected fall of France in 1940. The Chiefs of Staff reported:

The security of our imperial interests in the Far East lies ultimately in our ability to control sea communications in the south-western Pacific, for which purpose adequate fleet must be based at Singapore. Since our previous assurances in this respect, however, the whole strategic situation has been radically altered by the French defeat. The result of this has been to alter the whole of the balance of naval strength in home waters. Formerly we were prepared to abandon the Eastern Mediterranean and dispatch a fleet to the Far East, relying on the French fleet in the Western Mediterranean to contain the Italian fleet. Now if we move the Mediterranean fleet to the Far East there is nothing to contain the Italian fleet, which will be free to operate in the Atlantic or reinforce the German fleet in home waters, using bases in north-west France. We must therefore retain in European waters sufficient naval forces to watch both the German and Italian fleets, and we cannot do this and send a fleet to the Far East.

HMS Repulse hit by a Japanese bomb - the failure of the Singapore Strategy

Thus the odds were stacked against Percival even though, on paper, he had a superior force and held the defensive advantage.

However, as was common to all the Allied powers at the start of the war, the British severely misjudged the fighting capabilities of the Japanese. In addition, Percival did not grip his subordinates. His relations with Heath (III Indian Corps) and Bennett (Westforce) were not good, nor was the relationship between these two subordinates. Percival also clashed with his immediate superior, Wavell.

Percival appears to have lacked the required ruthlessness to prevail during a crisis. Although he was neither incompetent nor a coward, he was not suited to this role and the hand he was dealt was poor. Even so, his forces performed very poorly against the Japanese and he must take some responsibility for that. It is interesting to speculate of what Montgomery or Auchinleck or Slim would have made of the task.