The 29th Army Guarded the Wrong Coast. Britain's 'Least Bad' Beach Did Their Job for Them

On the ninth of September 1945, two Japanese officers stood on a Malayan beach and watched the British invasion they had prepared for arrive in the wrong place, and get stuck anyway. Operation Zipper 1945 was the largest amphibious operation Britain mounted in the Far East: the landing at Morib beach in Malaya, one week after the Japanese surrender. From the enemy's chair: what the 29th Army got right, what SOE's deception made them get wrong, and why the beach itself, three to four inches of sand over mud, would have been defence enough. Chapters: 0:00 The landing nobody fired at 1:31 The chair: what the 29th Army knew 3:34 Eleven months watching the wrong coast 5:23 The survey that never arrived 8:05 Nine September at Morib 11:35 What the beach remembers If your family served in the 25th Indian Division, 46 Beach Group, or the Fourteenth Army's return to Malaya, tell us their name and unit below. From the Enemy's Chair tells the stories of British and Allied military engineering and logistics feats from the point of view of the people who were certain they were impossible.