Japan’s Indian Ocean Raid 1942: The Allies' Lowest Ebb Spiral-Bound | December 19, 2023

In the wake of Japan’s conquest of Burma in early 1942, plans were formed by the Imperial high command to capture Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka) to consolidate Japan’s defensive perimeter and disrupt British shipping lanes to India, Australia, and the Middle East. The Imperial Japanese Army, however, could not release sufficient troops for an invasion, and so in response the Japanese Navy developed Operation C, an aggressive raid by the Combined Fleet into the Indian Ocean under Admiral Chuichi Nagumo. The key objective was to destroy Admiral Sir James Somerville’s Eastern Fleet in port. Though the operations failed to find and neutralize the Royal Navy’s Eastern Fleet, the Japanese destroyed a large number of British naval and merchant ships.


In this book, expert naval author Mark Stille documents the high point of Japanese naval air power as its carriers struck Ceylon – the heart of British naval power in the East – sinking several Allied ships (including the carrier HMS Hermes). He goes on to cover the Allied air attempts to destroy Nagumo’s force, and the separate Japanese attacks against British shipping and the cities along the Indian coast. The result is a dramatic visual exploration of the Imperial Japanese Navy at its most powerful and most deadly.