Battle of Ramree Island The Battle of Ramree Island was fought for six weeks during January and February 1945 , as part of the Indian XV Corps 1944 / 45 offensive on the Southern Front of the Burma Campaign during World War II . Ramree Island ( Yangbye Kywan ) lies off the Burma coast and was captured along with the rest of Southern Burma , during the early stages of the Burma Campaign , by the rapidly advancing Imperial Japanese Army in 1942 . In January 1945 the Allies were able to launch attacks to retake Ramree and its neighbour Cheduba , with the intention of building sea - supplied airbases on them . The Japanese garrison of Ramree consisted of the 121st Infantry regiment , part of the Japanese 54th Division . The regiment ' s commander was Colonel Kanichi Nagazawa . The battle is also associated with reports of many Japanese soldiers being eaten by the thousands of saltwater crocodiles lying in wait in the swamps . The Guinness Book of World Records has listed it both as " Worst crocodile disaster in the world ( disputed ) " and " Most Number of Fatalities in a Crocodile Attack " . Battle . The battle started with Operation Matador , an amphibious assault to capture the strategic port of Kyaukpyu – located at the northern tip of Ramree Island , south of Akyab across Hunter ' s Bay – and the key airfield near the port . Reconnaissance carried out on 14 January 1945 disclosed Japanese forces busily placing guns to sweep the landing beaches on Ramree , so the Royal Navy assigned a battleship and an escort carrier to provide heavy naval support to the task force . On 21 January , an hour before the 71st Indian Infantry Brigade was to land , the battleship opened fire with her main battery while planes from the escort carrier spotted for her . The light cruiser HMS " Phoebe " also joined the bombardment , along with B - 24 Liberator s and P - 47 Thunderbolt s of No . 224 Group RAF , ( under the command of HQ RAF Bengal and Burma ) , which strafed and bombed the beaches . The assault troops landed unopposed and secured the beachhead ; the following day , the 4th Indian Infantry Brigade landed . On 26 January in Operation Sankey , a Royal Marine force landed on the Cheduba , which lies to the south of Ramree , to find that it was not occupied by the Japanese . On Ramree the Japanese garrison put up tenacious resistance . The 36th Indian Infantry Brigade landed with RAF and Royal Marine units . When the Marines outflanked a Japanese stronghold the nine hundred defenders within it abandoned the base and marched to join a larger battalion of Japanese soldiers across the island . The route forced the Japanese to cross 16 kilometres of mangrove swamps and as they struggled through the thick forests the British forces encircled the area of the swampland . Trapped in deep mud - filled land , tropical diseases soon started afflicting the soldiers , as well as scorpions , tropical mosquito es , and saltwater crocodile s . Repeated calls by the British for the Japanese to surrender were ignored : the Marines holding the perimeter shot any Japanese attempting to escape , while within the swampland hundreds of soldiers died over the course of several days for lack of food or drinking water . Some , including naturalist Bruce Stanley Wright ( who participated in the battle ) , claimed that the crocodiles attacked and ate numerous soldiers . Wright ' s description occurs in his 1962 book " Wildlife Sketches Near and Far " : When the British eventually moved in on the swamp , they found that of the nine hundred troops that originally fled into the swamp , only around twenty seriously wounded and weakened Japanese soldiers were left . In all , about 500 Japanese soldiers escaped from Ramree despite the intense blockade instituted to stop them . If Wright ' s claim is true , however , the Ramree crocodile attacks would be the worst in recorded history . The British Burma Star Association seems to lend credence to the swamp attack stories but appears to draw a distinction between the 20 Japanese survivors of one attack and the 1 , 000 Japanese who were left to fend for themselves in the swamp . Furthermore there is no corroboration of the event by British military reports or by interviewed Japanese soldiers and local Burmese . These figures are disputed and the event has been described as an urban myth by British historian Frank McLynn , who opined that only a few wounded Japanese had been consumed , although he did admit that the saltwater crocodiles of the region were both " known man - eaters and opportunistic killers " . McLynn ' s criticisms of the account primarily stem from his personal incredulity that the " Japanese firepower , which tore such holes in British tanks and armour " , would be incapable of dispatching large numbers of crocodiles at night . His suspicions are not cited to any other source , nor are they echoed by other historians . Additionally , although McLynn accused Bruce Wright ' s existence of being " unverified " , his career in the Royal Canadian Navy and subsequently as a scientist and author is described in many additional sources and McLynn ' s doubts are again notably not echoed by other historians in this area .