What did the Royal Navy retake possession of in 1945?
I was told that I did not learn respect at school. I learned one thing: I learned about self-respect and self-regard for Australia—not about some cultural cringe to a country which decided not to defend the Malayan peninsula, not to worry about Singapore and not to give us our troops back to keep ourselves free from Japanese domination. This was the country that you people wedded yourself to, and even as it walked out on you and joined the Common Market, you were still looking for your MBEs and your knighthoods, and all the rest of the regalia that comes with it.
A fleet was necessary for the defeat of Japan, and eventually a sizeable one, the British Pacific Fleet, did go to the Far East, where it fought alongside the United States Pacific Fleet. The closer relations that developed between the two navies prior to the outbreak of war with Japan, and the alliance that developed from it afterwards, became the most positive and enduring strategic legacy of the Singapore strategy.The Singapore Naval Base suffered little damage in the fighting and became the Imperial Japanese Navy's most important facility outside of the Japanese home islands. The 15-inch guns were sabotaged by the British before the fall of Singapore, and four of them were deemed beyond repair and scrapped by the Japanese. The floating dry dock was scuttled by the British, but raised by the Japanese. It was damaged beyond repair by a raid by Boeing B-29 Superfortresses in February 1945, and ultimately towed out to sea and dumped in 1946. The Royal Navy retook possession of the Singapore base in 1945.
The Singapore Naval Base