Thunder Run: Meiktila 1945

Many histories of the Burma Campaign climax with the incredible battles of Imphal and Kohima in 1944. The reconquest of Burma that followed in 1945 is often, taken for granted: ‘it was just mopping up’. It reality it was the culmination of the journey that the British and Indian armies had gone through since December 1941. This was achieved without the lavish scale of materiel afforded in other theatres, in a location that posed varied and extreme geographical challenges.

This campaign, especially around the Japanese supply hub at the town of Meiktila, should be the stuff of legend in our collective memory of the Second World War. Had it been carried out by Monty, Patton, Rommel, or Zhukov, it would be as well-known as the battles of France, Alamein, the Bulge, Kursk, or Overlord. Yet it is the most incredible battle that you’ve never heard of. It was the culmination of all-arms manoeuvre warfare in the Second World War: tanks, motorised infantry, self-propelled artillery and air support charging across the dusty dry belt of central Burma, striking the Japanese Burma Area Army by surprise in unexpected places. Outnumbered and surrounded, 17th Indian Infantry Division and 255th Indian Tank Brigade annihilated their enemy in the battle that really finished the Japanese in Southeast Asia.

This is Thunder Run: Meiktila 1945.