15 February 1942. General Percival walks under a white flag to the Ford factory at Bukit Timah to surrender Singapore. About 80,000 British, Australian and Indian troops go into captivity, after 50,000 lost in Malaya, to a Japanese army that came down the peninsula partly on bicycles and was running short of shells.
Why then
Singapore was the base on which Britain's whole defence of Asia and Australia rested: if needed, a fleet would come from Europe. In December 1941 the fleet that came was two capital ships, sunk off Malaya in an afternoon. Japan needs the oil of the Dutch East Indies, and Singapore guards the way.
What they wanted
Tokyo is after the southern resources and a defensive ring before America recovers. London hopes to hold Singapore while it fights Germany, and has sent too little. Chinese volunteers in Malaya fight hardest, because they know what follows.
What changed
In the weeks after, Japanese troops murder tens of thousands of Chinese civilians; prisoners are sent to build the Burma railway. Indian prisoners are recruited into an army to fight the Raj. The empire that returns in 1945 is on borrowed time.
Still argued
The guns did not simply face the wrong way; that myth hides failures of air power, command and money. How much the fall hastened the end of empire is the larger argument.