Well that might have been the desired target, but the Japanese timetable actually allowed for as much as six months too capture Singapore. The whole Malay operation was run on a very tight logistic rope, had the first assault on the island failed another could not have been mounted for some time, so they had to allow for the possibility of a protracted siege. The penalty would have been a delay in the capture of northern Burma, though other forces could (and did) seize Rangoon which pretty much doomed any defence of the place.PainRack wrote: The target date for the fall of Singapore was February 11, a major holiday in Japan and a political coup for Yamashita if he had succeeded.
With Singapore besieged the operation against south Sumatra could go ahead unhindered, as its staging base was in Indochina. No major Japanese invasion actually needed Singapore as a staging base, except Operation T to hit Northern Sumatra which was pretty devoid of objectives of value. As it was the convoy to capture Palembang in south Sumatra (the single most important objective in all of south East Asia because it had the only refinery that made AVGAS) sailed on Febuary 10th from Camranh Bay, the landing went ahead on the 14th. The place was only defended by about 2000 men and demolition of the refinery was incomplete… its too bad about 15,000 men couldn’t have been shipped over from Singapore. That might have played hell with Japanese planning and certainly would have given enough time to blow the refinery off the map.
The British made some pretty dumb strategic moves (besides building the naval base, instead of continuing to rely on bases in India) before the war even began, like filling northern Malay with airfields without bothering to place them position which could be defended against ground attack.
I'm not a trained military historian, but to me, it always feel as if the Malayan Campaign was fought the best the British could strategically, but they screwed up in every way tactically and on the minute level due to the level of strategic resources and attention the British Empire could send to the region.