Battle of the Sittang Bend

Battle of the Sittang Bend
Part of the Burma Campaign of World War II
5.5-inch guns of the Royal Artillery firing on Japanese troops attempting to break out of the Sittang Bend in early August 1945
Date 2 July – 7 August 1945 Location Pegu Yoma, Sittang River, Burma Result British victory[1][2]
Belligerents
United Kingdom India Burma	Japan
Commanders and leaders
Montagu Stopford Frank Messervy Francis Tuker (acting)	Heitarō Kimura Shōzō Sakurai Masaki Honda
Strength
12th Army IV Corps Force 136	Burma Area Army (remnants) 28th Army 33rd Army 15th Army
Casualties and losses
Total: 2,000 95 killed, 322 wounded & 1,600 non-combat[3]	Total: 14,000 8,500 killed, 740 captured & over 5,000 non-combat[2][4]

The Battle of the Sittang Bend and the Japanese Breakout across Pegu Yomas were linked Japanese military operations during the Burma Campaign, which took place nearly at the end of World War II. Surviving elements of the Imperial Japanese Army who had been driven into the Pegu Yoma attempted to break out eastwards in order to join other Japanese troops retreating from the British forces. The break-out was the objective of the Japanese Twenty-Eighth Army with support at first from the Thirty-Third Army and later the Fifteenth Army. As a preliminary, the Japanese Thirty-Third Army attacked Allied positions in the Sittang Bend, near the mouth of the river, to distract the Allies. The British had been alerted to the break-out attempt and it ended calamitously for the Japanese, who suffered many losses, with some formations being wiped out.

There were around 14,000 Japanese casualties, with well over half being killed, while British forces suffered only 95 killed and 322 wounded.^[4] The break-out attempt and the ensuing battle became the last significant land battle of the Western powers in the Second World War.^[5][6]