The fighting in the Burma campaign in 1944 was among the most severe in the South-East Asian Theatre of World War II. It took place along the borders between Burma and India, and Burma and China, and involved the British Commonwealth, Chinese and United States forces, against the forces of Imperial Japan and the Indian National Army. British Commonwealth land forces were drawn primarily from the United Kingdom, British India and Africa.
The Allies had overcome the logistic and organisational difficulties which had crippled their earlier efforts, and they were preparing to invade Japanese-occupied Burma at several widely separated points. The Japanese forestalled them by launching their own offensive into India, and this offensive became larger in scope than originally intended. By the end of the year, the Allies had achieved significant territorial gains only in one sector, the extreme north-east of Burma, but the Japanese attack on India had been defeated with very heavy casualties. This handicapped the Japanese attempts to defend Burma against renewed Allied offensives in the following year.
Rival plans
Allied plans
After the Japanese invasion of Burma in early 1942, the Allies had launched tentative counterattacks in late 1942 and early 1943, despite lack of preparation and resources. This resulted in an Allied defeat in the coastal Arakan Province of Burma, and a questionable success in the first Chindit long-range raid into Burma (codenamed Operation Longcloth).
In August 1943 the Allies created South East Asia Command (SEAC), a new combined command responsible for the South-East Asian Theatre. Its Commander in Chief was Admiral Louis Mountbatten. This brought a new sense of purpose and in November, when SEAC took over responsibility for Burma, the newly formed British Fourteenth Army was ready to take the offensive. The substantial improvement in the effectiveness of the troops which Fourteenth Army inherited has been credited to its commander, Lieutenant General William Slim. He enforced the use of anti-malarial drugs as part of an emphasis on individual health, established realistic jungle warfare training, rebuilt the army's self-respect by winning easy small-scale victories and developed local military infrastructure.
Slim's efforts were aided by improvements to the Allied lines of communication. By October 1944, capacity on the North-East Indian Railways had been raised from 600 tons a day at the start of the war to 4,400 tons a day. The Allied Eastern Air Command, which consisted mainly of Royal Air Force squadrons but also several units of the Indian Air Force and bomber and transport units of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), had gained air superiority and this allowed the Allies to employ new tactics, relying upon air support and aerial resupply of troops.
SEAC had to accommodate several rival plans: Admiral Mountbatten, as a naval officer who had previously served as commander of Combined Operations HQ, favoured amphibious landings. The first of these was to be on the Andaman Islands (Operation "Buccaneer"), but the landing craft assigned to the operation were recalled to Europe in preparation for the Normandy Landings. The previous year, a British attack into the Burmese coastal province of Arakan had been heavily defeated. Having been reorganised, XV Corps had taken over this part of the front and was preparing to renew the offensive with the aim of capturing Akyab Island, important for its port and airfield. A limited amphibious move (Operation "Pigstick") in support of this attack had to be abandoned for lack of the necessary landing craft and other shipping.