Osprey's Campaign title for the Battle of Kohima during World War II (1939-1945), which saved India from Japanese attacks. In March 1944 the Japanese Army launched Operation U-Go, an attack on Assam in India intended to inspire a rising by the Indian populace against British rule. The Japanese plan would rely on mobility, infiltration and captured supplies to maintain the momentum of the attack. A month earlier the Japanese had launched Operation Ha-Go, which was intended as a feint to draw British attention away from the Imphal area where the brunt of the U-Go attacks would take place. But British forces employed new defensive techniques to counter the Japanese infiltration tactics; forming defensive boxes, supplied by air, they held out against determined Japanese assaults until the Japanese were forced to withdraw, short of supplies. These tactics were again employed on a larger scale when Imphal and Kohima were surrounded during Operation U-Go. Kohima (the 'Stalingrad of the East') was the crucial key point to the successful defence of Imphal, and took place in two stages. From 3 to 16 April the Japanese attempted to capture Kohima Ridge, which dominated the road along which the British and Indian troops centred on the Imphal plain were supplied. As the small garrison held out against fierce and repeatedly desperate attempts by the Japanese 31st Division to destroy them, so the British 2nd Division fought to break through and relieve them. Then for over two months from 18 April, British and Indian troops counter-attacked in an effort to drive the Japanese from the positions they had already captured that blocked the road to Imphal. The battle ended on June 22 when British and Indian troops from Kohima and Imphal met at Milestone 109, thus ending the siege.

By the end of 1943 the Japanese had occupied most of South-East Asia. On 6 March 1944, the first units of the Japanese 15 Army crossed the inhospitable border of what was then Burma, and invaded India. At the township of Kohima they were met by a small, hastily assembled force of Indian and British troops, later reinforced by 2 Division of Slim's 14 Army, who fought valiantly and forced the Japanese to retreat. Described by Mountbatten as 'the British/Indian Thermopylae', Kohima was a turning point in Japanese fortunes, heralding their continued defeat in battle until their formal surrender on 2 September 1945. Using extensive research in primary sources and many previously unpublished first-hand accounts, Leslie Edwards presents a definitive analysis of this pivotal battle.

Winner of the British Army Military Book of the Year 2011The story of one of the most brutal battles in modern history - fought at a major turning point of the Second World War.

Having driven the British and Indian Forces out of Burma in 1942, General Mutaguchi, Commanding the 15th Japanese Army, was obsessed by the conquest of India. In 1944 the British 14th Army, under its commander General Slim, drew back to the Imphal Plain, before Mutaguchis impending offensive. To the north, however, the entire Japanese 31 Division had crossed the Chindwin and, on April 5, arrived at the hill-station and road junction of Kohima, cutting off Imphal except by air, from the supply point at Dimpapur.Kohima was initially manned by only 266 men of the Assam Regiment and a few hundred convalescents and administrative troops. They were joined, on April 5, by 440 men of the Fourth Battalion of the Royal West Kent Regiment, straight from the Battle of Arakan.In pouring rain, under continual bombardment, this tiny garrison held the assaults of thirteen thousand Japanese troops in hand-to-hand combat for sixteen days, an action described by Mountbatten as probably one of the greatest battles in history ... in effect the Battle of Burma, naked, unparalleled heroism, the British/Indian Thermopylae.

A unique collaboration between a senior Naga journalist and an eminent British historian looking at Naga involvement in the Second World War after Japanese and British forces converged on their land. The devastating battle lasted only a few months but in that time the Nagas played a key part in what was recently voted Britain's greatest battle.

In the final years of World War II, the campaign against Japan stepped up in a series of bloody battles with each side having much to lose. While much of the history of the period focuses on the Pacific Campaign and the American island hopping, this book studies the 'forgotten war' and the Allied fight to push the Japanese out of Burma. The Allies (British, American, Indian and Chinese soldiers) saw the battles of Imphal and Kohima as a way to avenge the crushing defeats of 1942, while the Japanese viewed the battles as the precursor to a victorious drive into India and domination of Asia. David Rooney examines the aims of both sides alongside the battles themselves, which secured victory in Burma, and the roles of Wingate, Stilwell and the Chindits. Following the defeats of 1942 the Allies re-emerged to fight the Japanese; their troops had seen a revival of morale with the new Fourteenth Army under General Slim and the development of new tactics and and Allied air and firepower superiority.

'A first-rate popular history of a fascinating and neglected battle... James Holland is a master of spinning narrative military history from accounts of men and women who were there and BURMA ’44 is a veritable page-turner' - BBC History In February 1944, a rag-tag collection of clerks, drivers, doctors, muleteers, and other base troops, stiffened by a few dogged Yorkshiremen and a handful of tank crews managed to hold out against some of the finest infantry in the Japanese Army, and then defeat them in what was one of the most astonishing battles of the Second World War. What became know as The Defence of the Admin Box, fought amongst the paddy fields and jungle of Northern Arakan over a fifteen-day period, turned the battle for Burma. Not only was it the first decisive victory for British troops against the Japanese, more significantly, it demonstrated how the Japanese could be defeated. The lessons learned in this tiny and otherwise insignificant corner of the Far East, set up the campaign in Burma that would follow, as General Slim’s Fourteenth Army finally turned defeat into victory. Burma '44 is a tale of incredible drama. As gripping as the story of Rorke's drift, as momentous as the battle for the Ardennes, the Admin Box was a triumph of human grit and heroism and remains one of the most significant yet undervalued conflicts of World War Two.