page_title: Landing at Pontian
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Landing at Pontian / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: Aerial view of the Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Victorious (R38), taken circa 1958-1960, when the Royal Navy operated the Douglas Skyraider AEW.1.
context_page_description: The Landing at Pontian was an amphibious landing made by a small body of Indonesian troops in the Pontian District of southwestern Malaysia. The landing took place during the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation, an undeclared war fought between Malaysia and Indonesia during the early 1960s over the creation of a Malaysian Federation encompassing parts of northern Borneo, areas that Indonesia sought to increase her own power in Southeast Asia.
  On 17 August 1964, Indonesian President Sukarno announced a 'Year of Dangerous Living' as a part of his country's Independence Day celebrations. To reinforce his point, Sukarno had ordered that a force of Indonesian troops and exiled Malaysian-Chinese land in mainland Malaysia to kick off a campaign of such invasions to create guerrilla bases in enemy territory and stir up Communist sympathizers. The effort was a failure, as targeted Malaysians proved unreceptive to Indonesian efforts and the invaders were swiftly rounded up by Anglo-Malaysian security forces.
  The landing shocked the British, who had not expected such a strong and prominent step from the Indonesians, but did not incite them to respond to Sukarno's escalation of tensions.
context_section_description: The landings at Pontian, though small in scale, and unsuccessful in nature, caused a huge political crisis for Britain. The Malaysian government was infuriated, and accused the Indonesians of "blatant aggression," threatening to strike (through Britain) at their bases in Sumatra, simultaneously putting immense pressure on London to act. Though Sukarno had suffered a minor defeat, he had still managed to put the British in an extremely awkward position: if they did not retaliate, they would be seen to have lost face and to lack enough resolve to risk escalating the crisis. Retaliation, however, might bring the Confrontation towards open war, which the British were understandably unwilling to consider. The debate whether or not to act raged on in Cabinet backrooms. Lord Anthony Head proved an influential voice in the conversation, stating that interrogation had shown that more raids were impending, which would stretch British forces between the Malaysian Peninsula and Borneo, forcing an unwanted reinforcement of Southeast Asia. Head advocated preventative strikes against Indonesian bases should another raid occur.
  Before the British could decide upon a policy, however, Sukarno struck again, making an airborne assault Labis in the night of 1–2 September. Though the raid was a catastrophic failure, with one of the transport planes crashing en route, and the remainder of the troops arriving scattered with little food and battered morale, the move further infuriated the Malaysians, who in turn put pressure upon the British to act. The next day, colonial secretary Duncan Sandys authorized on-site naval commander Admiral Varyl Begg to plan for strikes against Indonesian bases in Sumatra. The British plans for retaliation were pre-empted once again, but this time by an act of their own. On August 27, the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious had sailed through the Sunda Straits without proper permission being gained from Indonesian authorities. The Indonesians, who feared that the British were attempting to provoke them into attacking the carrier as the Americans had the Vietnamese during the Gulf of Tonkin incident that had occurred earlier that month, were incensed. Indonesian Foreign Minister Subandrio barred Victorious return passage through the Strait on 2 September, posing a direct challenge to the British. Officials in London determined that the challenge had to be met, and that Victorious should return through the way it came. This stance, however, met important opposition. Washington did not want to be dragged into a military action due to the British overreaching themselves. And even more importantly, Begg himself opposed the passage, due to the inability of Victorious to defend herself in the Strait. What became known as the Sunda Straits Crisis was peacefully resolved, after several weeks of tension, by the Indonesians offering London another strait to pass through at Lombok, that gave the Allies an out from war, and Jakarta a passage that could be easily screened by their warships. By this time, tensions were beginning to wind to a close, though more landings were attempted that December, as both sides seemed to recognize the disadvantage of fully escalating the Confrontation through any greater action.
caption: HMS Victorious, central to the Sunda Straits Crisis of 1964.
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