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Borneo campaign (1945)
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The Borneo Campaign of 1945 was the last major Allied campaign in the South West Pacific Area, during World War II. In a series of amphibious assaults between 1 May and 21 July, the Australian I Corps, under General Leslie Morshead, attacked Japanese forces occupying the island. Allied naval and air forces, centred on the U.S.
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The Borneo Campaign of 1945 was the last major Allied campaign in the South West Pacific Area, during World War II. In a series of amphibious assaults between 1 May and 21 July, the Australian I Corps, under General Leslie Morshead, attacked Japanese forces occupying the island. Allied naval and air forces, centred on the U.S. 7th Fleet under Admiral Thomas Kinkaid, the Australian First Tactical Air Force and the U.S. Thirteenth Air Force also played important roles in the campaign. They were resisted by Imperial Japanese Navy and Army forces in southern and eastern Borneo, under Vice-Admiral Michiaki Kamada, and in the north west by the Thirty-Seventh Army, led by Lieutenant-General Baba Masao.
Although the campaign was criticised in Australia at the time, and in subsequent years, as pointless or a "waste" of the lives of soldiers, it did achieve a number of objectives, such as increasing the isolation of significant Japanese forces occupying the main part of the Dutch East Indies, capturing major oil supplies and freeing Allied prisoners of war, who were being held in increasingly worse conditions (see, for example, the Sandakan Death Marches and Batu Lintang camp articles).
The Allied campaign in Borneo was planned as a series of operations under the code name "OBOE", and being the second stage of the "MONTCLAIR" operations which were aimed at destroying local Japanese forces and re-occupying the Netherlands East Indies, the Southern Philippines and British North Borneo. The first phase of "MONTCLAIR", known as "VICTOR", witnessed landings on Panay, Cebu and Negros in the Philippines and was completed by mid-April 1945.
Originally "OBOE" was planned in six stages: "OBOE 1" against Tarakan; "OBOE 2" against Balikpapan; "OBOE 3" against Banjermasin; "OBOE 4" against Surabaya or Batavia (Jakarta); "OBOE 5" against the eastern Netherlands East Indies; and "OBOE 6 against British Borneo (Sabah). In the end only the operations against Tarakan, Balikpapan and British Borneo - at Labuan and Brunei - bay took place. The campaign opened with Operation Oboe One, with a landing on the small island of Tarakan, off the north east coast on 1 May 1945. This was followed on 10 June 1945 by Operation Oboe Six: simultaneous assaults on the island of Labuan and the coast of Brunei, in the north west of Borneo. A week later, the Australians followed Oboe Six with attacks on Japanese positions in North Borneo. The attention of the Allies then switched back to the central east coast, with Operation Oboe Two, the last major amphibious assault of World War II, at Balikpapan on 1 July 1945.
These operations ultimately constituted the last campaigns of Australian forces in the war against Japan.
Battles
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