Johore Battery

Johore Battery
Part of World War II-era Defence of Singapore
Cosford Road in Changi, Singapore
One of Singapore's five 15-inch coastal-defence guns elevated for firing, probably some time in 1941 or 1942.
Coordinates 1°21′55″N 103°58′47″E / 1.365167°N 103.979667°E / 1.365167; 103.979667
Site information
Owner Currently Singapore Government
Controlled by Formerly British military; now Singapore Government
Open to
the public		 Yes
Condition Originals demolished and gone after WWII and now replaced with a single replica
Site history
Built In 1939
Built by British Government
In use Early- to mid-February of 1942
Materials Concrete and steel
Demolished Mid-February of 1942
Battles/wars Battle of Singapore (WWII)
Events Shelling of southern Malaya (Johor) where invading Japanese forces were at in early 1942 during the war
Garrison information
Current
commander		 None
Past
commanders		 Unknown
Garrison Formerly controlled by British military; now none
Occupants Formerly British naval artillery troops; now vacated

The Johore Battery was a former British coastal artillery battery located in Changi on the easternmost side of mainland Singapore. It consisted of three large BL 15-inch Mk. I naval guns installed on land by the British government in the late 1930s to defend the approaching path to the east of the island to their large naval base located at Sembawang in the north (accessed via the Johor Straits) from an attacking enemy naval force.

History

Five massive 15–inch naval guns were installed in Singapore by the British government before 1940, with three based in Changi to the east and two located in Buona Vista to the southwest. Collectively, the three naval guns in Changi formed the Johore Battery, named after the King of Johor, Sultan Ibrahim, who gave King George V of the UK a grand royal gift of £500,000 for his Silver Jubilee in 1935, of which £400,000 of the amount was used by the British government to fund the installation of the three large naval guns in Changi. In early 1942, the Johore Battery was employed in the Allied artillery bombardment of Johor Bahru, which at that time was under Japanese military occupation following the retreat of all Allied forces from British Malaya to Singapore.

Singapore in early February of 1942, with the disposition of Allied ground forces shown in red. The British naval base at Sembawang is on the northern tip of the island and Changi being on the small peninsula on the easternmost side.

Built by the British government in 1939 for the naval defence of Singapore (in particular, to defend Singapore from an aggressive Imperial Japan, which had possessed a strong and a powerful navy by the later part of the 1930s and was expanding deeper and deeper into China), the Johore Battery is a large gun emplacement site consisting of a labyrinth of underground tunnels. These tunnels were used to store quantities of ammunition for the three 15-inch guns (most of which were of the armour-piercing (AP) type rather than the high-explosive (HE) type as these naval guns were intended to be employed against heavily-armoured enemy warships).

A 15-inch AP shell in the process of being hoisted up to the gun-breech in Singapore in 1940 (note the size of the shell in relation to the soldier standing beside).

These naval guns were the largest to be installed on land outside of Britain itself during World War II. They were all destroyed before the official surrender of the British Army on the 15th of February in 1942 to the conquering Imperial Japanese military and the related tunnels (for the storage of the ammunition for the guns and gun-crew quarters) were sealed up and almost forgotten after the war in 1945. The location remained a largely-unknown secret until the Singapore Prisons Service re-discovered them by chance in April of 1991.

Conservation

A replica of the large naval gun and a dummy 15-inch shell, placed upon a modern large lifting-lever (allowing visitors to have a feel of its mass (of 800kg) by trying to hoist it up from the ground), together with the maze of above-ground trails marking where the old (and still-inaccessible) tunnels are at, are all located at the former site of the Johore Battery, along with a newly-opened restaurant located just beside it within the compound (access to the area is through a small hut-like structure with a plaque telling the history of and all about the old Johore Battery). Admission to the site is free and is open for 24 hours every day of the week .

See also

References

    Further reading

    • Chung, Ong Chit (2011). Operation Matador: World War II—Britain’s Attempt to Foil the Japanese Invasion of Malaya and Singapore. Marshall Cavendish International Asia Pte Ltd.
    • Blackburn, Kevin and Hack, Karl (2003). Did Singapore Have to Fall?: Churchill and the Impregnable Fortress. Routledge.
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