Borneo campaign

Borneo Campaign (1945)
Part of World War II
A map showing the progress of the Borneo Campaign
Date 1 May - 1 August 1945 Location Borneo Result Australian victory; and supplies of oil for the Japanese Empire are cut off at their sources.
Belligerents
Australia Armyand Royal Australian Air Force United States Navy, U.S. Army Air Forces	Empire of Japan
Commanders and leaders
General Leslie Morshead of the Australian Army Admiral Thomas Kinkaid of the U.S. Navy	Vice-Admiral Michiaki Kamada of the Japanese Navy (commanding groud troops) Lieutenant General Baba Masao of the Japanese Army
Strength
35,000	15,000
Casualties and losses
About 8,000	10,000

The Borneo Campaign of 1945 was the last major Allied campaign in the Southwest Pacific Area during World War II. In a series of amphibious assaults between 1 May and 21 July, the Australian Army's I Corps, under the command of the Australian General Leslie Morshead, attacked Japanese Army troops and Marines occupying the important petroleum-producing coastal areas of Borneo (the world's third-largest island). The vast majority of its area consisted of sparsely-populated or uninhabited areas of the heavily-jungled and mountainous interior, and also sizeable costal areas that neither the Japanese Army nor the Australian Army had any interest in or use for.

In this campaign, the major sources of oil for the Japanese Empire on Borneo were cut off at their sources, and potentially made available to the Australian and American armed forces for the remainder of the war. However, most of the oil supply for the Japanese Empire had already been cut off by U.S. Navy submarines and surface warships in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, and the Straits of Formosa; and also by U.S. Army Air Forces bombers newly-based in the Philippines (such as on Luzon, beginning in early 1945).

Allied naval and air forces, centered on the U.S. Navy's Seventh Fleet under the command of Admiral Thomas Kinkaid, the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF)'s First Tactical Air Force, and the U.S. Army Air Forces Thirteenth Air Force, based on Morotai Island, also made important contributions to the Borneo campaign.

The Army troops of the Australian I Corps were resisted by Japanese Army and Marine Corps troops on the southern and eastern coasts of Borneo, commanded by Vice-Admiral Michiaki Kamada of the Japanese Navy (commanding ground troops), and on the northwestern coast of Borneo by the Japanese Thirty-Seventh Army under the command of Lieutenant General Baba Masao of the Japanese Army.

By the beginning of the Borneo Campaign in April 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy had been beaten, broken, and reduced to a state of impotence by the operations of the U.S. Navy, especially by the American Fast Carrier Task Force and the Navy's large fleet of submarines. Thus, any operations of the Japanese Navy in the Dutch East Indies during 1945 were negligible. Also, the Royal Australian Air Force and the U.S. Army Air Forces had attained the state of air supremacy over Borneo by the beginning of 1945, especially from their bases on western New Guinea and Morotai. Furthermore, the naval commander, Admiral Kinkaid, had within his fleet at least 20 small escort carriers which extended air power over the actual amphibious landings until airfields could be captured or constructed ashore. Thus, any operations by the Japanese Army's and Japanese Navy's air forces was negligible in the East Indies in 1945. Due to campaign the U.S. Navy and the Army Air Forces against all Japanese shipping in 1943 - 45, the Japanese troops on Borneo were poorly-supplied with ammunition, weapons, and other important military supplies.

Although the Borneo Campaign was criticized in Australia at the time, and in some following years, as "pointless" or a "waste" of the lives of soldiers, it did achieve a number of objectives, such as increasing the isolation of the Japanese Army troops occupying the major islands of the Dutch East Indies; capturing major oil supplies - hence cutting them off from Japanese use at their sources; and freeing thousands of Allied prisoners of war, who were being held in increasingly worse conditions (see the articles on the Sandakan Death Marches and Batu Lintang camp}.

Invasions making up the Borneo Campaign

The Allied campaign in Borneo was planned as a series of operations under the code name "OBOE", and being the second stage of the "MONTCLAIR" operations which were aimed at destroying local Japanese forces and reoccupying the Dutch East Indies, the Southern Philippines and British North Borneo. The first phase of "MONTCLAIR", known as "VICTOR", witnessed landings on Panay, Cebu and Negros in the Philippines and was completed by mid-April 1945.

"OBOE" is not to be confused with the Royal Air Force's radio navigation system of 1940 - 43 with the code-name "Oboe".

Originally the OBOE operation was planned in six stages: "OBOE 1" against Tarakan; "OBOE 2" against Balikpapan; "OBOE 3" against Banjermasin; "OBOE 4" against Surabaya or Batavia (Jakarta); "OBOE 5" against the eastern Dutch East Indies; and "OBOE 6 against British Borneo (Sabah, northern Borneo). By the time of the end of the war in mid-August 1945, only the OBOE operations against Tarakan, Balikpapan, and British Borneo - at Labuan and Brunei Bay had taken place.

The Borneo Campaign opened with Operation Oboe One, with an amphibious landing on Tarakan Island, a rather-small islang just off the northeastern coast on 1 May 1945. This was followed on 10 June 1945 by Operation Oboe Six: simultaneous assaults on the island of Labuan and the coast of Brunei, on the northwestern coast of Borneo. A week later, the Australians followed Oboe Six with attacks on Japanese positions in North Borneo. The attention of the Allies then switched back to the central east coast, with Operation Oboe Two, tha Battle of Balikpapan, the last major amphibious assault of World War II, at the seaport of Balikpapan on 1 July 1945.

The Borneo Campaign contained the last battles of Australian military forces in the War in the Pacific against Japan.

Battles

• 1945-05-01 – 1945-05-25 Battle of Tarakan (Operation Oboe One)
• 1945-06-01 – 1945-06-22 Operation Oboe Six (Labuan and Brunei)
• 1945-06-17 – 1945-08-15 Battle of North Borneo
• 1945-07-01 – 1945-07-21 Battle of Balikpapan (Operation Oboe Two)

See also

Media related to Borneo campaign (1945) at Wikimedia Commons

References

• Dennis , Peter; et al. (1995). The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. {{cite book}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |last= (help)