The Battle for Mandalay, 8-20 March 1945
A battle fought in the full glare of film crews from the UK and USA
I’ve just uploaded two new tours to the guidl app. If you havent yet downloaded guidl to your phone, please do so. Its a venture of which I am a co-founder: the aim to to enable cultural creators to upload audio descriptions of places that are important to them. It should be a fabulous feature for historians and guides so, if you are one such and don’t yet use the guidl app, please do so.
I’ve produced two guidl tours of the battle for Mandalay in March 1945, one (62-minutes) on the fight for Mandalay Hill and the other, a much shorter one (16-minutes) on the fight for Fort Dufferin, or Mandalay Palace. Both were made with the help of Steve Rothwell.
The place is fascinating, not least because two film crews were observing the action. On 10 March 1945, two days after the first elements of 19 Indian Division pushed into the city, a UK team under Richard Sharpe and, separately, a US team, were there to capture the action, as the 8th Battalion, 12th Frontier Force Rifles, tanks of 150 Regiment RAC and the 7th Cavalry, together with 5.5-inch guns of 134th Medium Regiment, Royal Artillery, and RAF Thunderbolts and USAAF B-25 Mitchells attempted to create a break in the massive walls of Fort Dufferin. The two films can be easily found online: parts of the original films are shown here. The first is from the US Combat Bulletin 48 (with sound); the second (without sound) of troops of the 8/12th FFR taken from the IWM (JIN 16).
Both sets of films make for some really superb combat footage, a few of which follow here
There is an interesting postscript to the battle for Fort Dufferin. Mandalay Palace was called Fort Dufferin by the British following its capture in 1885, named after Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, the 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, who was Viceroy of India between 1884 and 1888 at the time the Burma was conquered in 1885.
In 1945 his grandson, the 4th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, was serving in Burma with the Indian Field Broadcasting Unit. On 25 March 1945 he was being filmed demanding the surrender of Japanese troops who were sheltering in a tunnel; the film then captured Lord Dufferin's death when a Japanese mortar shell landed on the unit, killing him just a few weeks short of his 36th birthday.
I try to go to Myanmar/Burma each year. I’ll be there again DV in February 2026 with Sampan Travel. That trip is booked out: if you want to come with me in 2027 then let Bertie Lawson at Sampan know.
Wow, very interesting, I didn't imagine there were already film crews in the field back then. Thanks!
Good article - many thanks for sharing it.