Army Co-op in the Arakan.
Chugalug,
I'm sorry to say that we didn't take much interest in the planning of our operations; if pressed I would have to say that Wing signalled the Squadrons with targets and times, and we just got on with whatever the ALO and IO gave us at briefing. All comms were W/T, of course, except for a few field telephones.
As far as troop movement is concerned, the railways were the main thing, as you say. But in our time (and I would not be surprised if it were so still), there was no through line over the Sunderbands; part of the journey had to be by river steamer. (If you went much further north, it may have been possible). But even back from Assam, which is a fair way north, we had to take to a paddle-boat at one stage back to Calcutta.
This was an enormous hindrance to all our supplies moving east from Calcutta, but fortunately we had been able to stop the Japs in '42 before they took the port of Chittagong, and I would suppose that sea transport carried a great deal of the supplies through there to the forces in the Arakan. (The 8 Sqn ground party came over that way).
From Chittagong there was a spur down to Dohazari about 60 miles south, but after that it was MT, Dakotas, bullock carts and mules! (didn't see any elephants).
The Indian railways were truly an impressive organisation, they were steam-hauled until quite the recent past, reasonable as India had vast coal reserves, like China, but not much oil. Their operation was the stronghold of the Anglo-Indian community, to which I beleve it was reserved by law.
Goodnight, Chug,
Danny.
Last edited by Danny42C; 21st Jul 2012 at 17:44.