1944
The Battle of Kohima
The setting
Kohima, Naga Hills, in modern Nagaland, north-east India
Steep forested ridges at ~1,500 m, monsoon mud, and a single road. Part of the fighting was across the District Commissioner's tennis court, the two sides at opposite ends of it.
Reveal the outcome
Recorded sideImperial Japanese Army 31st Division, with elements of the Indian National Army
Recorded resultdefeated; the division withdrew without orders, having largely starved
Japanese defeat. With Imphal, it ended the invasion of India and became the turning point of the Burma campaign.
How the atlas explains it
The Japanese plan assumed the offensive would capture Allied supplies within three weeks, because it carried barely three weeks of rations. Allied air resupply meant the depots were never taken and never had to be. Sato's 31st Division then starved on the ridges. He eventually withdrew in defiance of orders - one of the very few Japanese generals of the war to do so - and was relieved of command.
What followed
Voted in 2013 the greatest battle ever fought by British and Commonwealth forces, ahead of Waterloo and D-Day, and still largely absent from popular memory of the war. ⚠ The majority of the troops who fought it were Indian, and the Naga people carried supplies and wounded through the fighting on their own ground. ⚠ Sato is a Volume III case: he refused an order that was killing his division, and the record of him is largely the record of a commander who was blamed.