Following the fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942 the loss of Burma presented India with economic and strategic crises that she was ill-equipped to address. It also threw into stark relief the economic, operational and logistical challenges which had to be overcome before the war could be taken back to the enemy. Some of these emerged from the lessons of defeat in Malaya and Burma and some from India's own economic and strategic position in May 1942, when the Japanese arrived on her eastern frontier. The following two chapters explore the logistic contribution to, and implications of, the loss of Burma, and then the state of India's preparedness for war against Japan, in which she was to be the front line and strategic base. From these examinations emerge the main logistic problems that had to be solved at the strategic, operational and tactical levels of warfare before the allies could go back onto the offensive.

Burma covers an area of some 240,000 square miles (see Map 2). If overlaid on Europe, Burma would extend south to north from Sicily to Hamburg, and, at its widest part, from east to west, across France from Normandy to the Ruhr. Burma's land borders with India to the west and China, Laos (French Indo-China in the 1940s) and Thailand to the east are mountainous and widely covered, even today, in dense jungle. During the south-west monsoon, which blows from May to October each year, the coastal areas and the mountainous periphery of the country are subject to exceptionally heavy rain and stormy conditions, which, in the 1940s, rendered both ground and air movement difficult and dangerous at best, and well nigh impossible for much of the time. The central part of Burma comprises the basins of the Irrawaddy and Sittang Rivers. These plains are (and were in the 1940s) extensively cultivated, especially in their southern areas, around Rangoon, mainly for rice production. That part of the country is also subject to very wet conditions during the south-west monsoon. However, the area bounded roughly by Meiktila, Yenangyaung, Kalewa and Shwebo, around the confluence of the Irrawaddy and Chindwin Rivers, is known as the ‘dry zone’.