Imphal & Kohima
WWII's Forgotten Jungle Battle

March 1944. Three Japanese divisions crossed the Chindwin River into northeastern India. Their objective: seize the Allied supply base at Imphal, cut the road through Kohima, and collapse British rule in India. It was Japan's largest land offensive in Asia. It ended in the worst military defeat in Japanese history.

The Battles of Imphal and Kohima are barely known outside specialist circles. No major film has covered them. Yet the men who fought there — British, Indian, Gurkha, Naga — held against odds that rival anything at Stalingrad or Bastogne. Lord Mountbatten called it the greatest battle in British military history. The veterans called themselves simply the forgotten army.

Historical Background: Operation U-Go

By early 1944, Japan's strategic position in Burma was deteriorating. Lieutenant General Renya Mutaguchi, commanding the Japanese 15th Army, conceived Operation U-Go as a decisive strike — encircle Imphal's Allied supply hub and simultaneously cut the single mountain road connecting it to the railhead at Dimapur via the hill town of Kohima. Without Imphal, General Slim's Fourteenth Army could not be supplied. Without the road, Imphal could not be relieved.

What Mutaguchi did not account for was a fundamental change in Allied doctrine. Rather than withdrawing when encircled — as British and Indian forces had done repeatedly in 1942 — Slim ordered his commanders to stand fast and be supplied by air. The Allies had the aircraft, the fuel, and for the first time in Burma, the will to use them.

The Siege of Imphal: 88 Days on the Plain

The Imphal plain sits roughly 800 metres above sea level, ringed by steep jungle hills. When Japanese encirclement was complete in late March 1944, approximately 155,000 Allied troops were surrounded — but they held one critical asset: a functioning airstrip. Over 19,000 supply sorties kept the defence alive through the entire siege.

The fighting was not a static siege but a grinding series of engagements on surrounding ridgelines, where both sides attacked through terrain that made movement agonising and resupply almost impossible. Japanese soldiers, promised resupply from captured Allied dumps that never fell, began to starve within weeks. Mutaguchi's logistical calculations had assumed a rapid fall of Allied positions. They were catastrophically wrong.

The M3 Lee at Imphal

Armour played a rare but decisive role in this theatre. The 254th Indian Tank Brigade deployed M3 Grant medium tanks throughout the Imphal battle — ungainly by European standards, with their sponson-mounted 75mm guns and conspicuously tall silhouette, but effective in close jungle terrain when supporting infantry against Japanese bunker complexes.

The Grant's height, usually considered a tactical liability, occasionally worked in its favour on the hill approaches around the plain — the sponson gun could elevate at angles a lower-slung vehicle could not manage. Grants operated in small packets, moving along the few trafficable tracks to provide direct fire support that infantry alone could not deliver against well-prepared Japanese positions.

M3 Lee tanks of the 254th Indian Tank Brigade provided the primary armoured support at Imphal — one of the few occasions armour played a significant role in the Burma campaign.

Kohima: The Tennis Court of Death

If Imphal was a siege, Kohima was hand-to-hand combat on a hilltop. The garrison — initially just 1,500 men of the Assam Regiment and the Royal West Kents — held the ridge against Japan's entire 31st Division for thirteen days before relief arrived on 20 April 1944.

At its most extreme, the fighting came down to the Deputy Commissioner's garden. The DC's tennis court became a front line, with Japanese and Allied troops dug in on opposite sides of the net — throwing grenades across a gap of metres, calling in artillery at near point-blank range. The ridge changed hands multiple times in fighting so close that supply and casualty evacuation were essentially impossible.

When the monsoon arrived in May, every position turned to mud and disease began killing as many men as enemy fire. The Japanese 31st Division, which had surrounded Kohima with confidence, was progressively destroyed on the heights it had captured — caught between Slim's relieving force below and the stubborn garrison above.

Why It Mattered: The Collapse of U-Go

By June 1944, Operation U-Go had failed completely. The retreat across the Chindwin became a catastrophe — soldiers who had crossed into India in March as a confident offensive staggered back in July as broken individuals, abandoning weapons, equipment, and their dead.

• Japanese losses: an estimated 55,000–65,000 killed and died of disease — roughly two-thirds of the force committed
• Allied casualties: approximately 12,500 killed and wounded
• Strategic result: Japan never launched another major offensive in Burma
• Consequence: Slim's Fourteenth Army went on the offensive and liberated Burma by 1945
• Tactical legacy: Slim's use of air supply to redefine encirclement is now standard doctrine, studied in military colleges worldwide

The Kit: What You'll Need

Why This Battle Deserves to Be Remembered

The veterans of the Fourteenth Army came home to a world that had moved on. Victory in Europe dominated the headlines. Burma was a sideshow in the public imagination.

But the numbers tell a different story. Imphal-Kohima was the largest land battle ever fought on Indian soil. The Japanese suffered their single worst defeat of the entire war. The Naga people who sheltered Allied soldiers at enormous personal risk have never received adequate recognition. And Slim's multinational Fourteenth Army demonstrated that a well-led, determined force could defeat a larger enemy even under complete encirclement — a lesson that changed military doctrine permanently.

If you build one diorama from a theatre nobody knows, make it this one.