On February 19, 1945, during the Burma Campaign of World War II, an incredible and terrible incident occurred. During the fighting on the small island of Ramri, located southwest of Burma, the Japanese unit was attacked by saltwater crocodiles that live in the local swamps. This case has gone down in history as one of the worst episodes concerning the relationship between humans and these reptiles.
The Battle of Ramri Island, known as Operation Matador, began on January 14, 1945. On that day, troops from the 29th Indian Infantry Division were landed on the island with the aim of capturing a strategically important port in the northern part of the island and an airfield not far from it.
British landing on Ramri Island
The Japanese garrison at Ramree Island consisted of the 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment, part of the 54th Division, artillery and engineering units acting as an independent force. Heavy fighting began. The British, supported by naval artillery and aircraft, pushed the Japanese deeper into the island.
Japanese during the battles for Burma
On January 21, the 71st Indian Infantry Brigade was additionally landed on the island. It was then that a turning point came in the battle for the island. On February 17, hostilities ceased, the Japanese left their positions in the north of the island and began moving south in order to connect with the rest of the garrison. Their path ran through local mangrove swamps.
British units did not pursue the Japanese; the soldiers did not have uniforms for operating in swampy terrain. The command limited itself to sending small reconnaissance groups in the wake of the retreating enemy. Although there is an opinion that the British deliberately allowed the Japanese to go into the swamps.
The Japanese unit entered a swampy area. In addition to problems with water, which was undrinkable, the Japanese were plagued by snakes, scorpions and tropical mosquitoes. But the worst was yet to come. On the night of February 19, while moving, the Japanese were attacked by local saltwater crocodiles, which lived in large numbers in the swamps.
As a result, nearly a thousand Japanese soldiers who entered the mangrove swamps of Ramri Island were eaten alive by crocodiles. The 22 soldiers and 3 officers who managed to escape from the deadly trap and survived were captured by the British.
Naturalist Bruce Stanley Wright, who participated in the battle on the side of the English battalion, described what happened in his book “Sketches of Fauna”:
This night was the worst any fighter had ever experienced. Scattered in the black swamp slurry, bloody, screaming Japanese, crushed in the jaws of huge reptiles, and the strange alarming sounds of spinning crocodiles formed a cacophony of hell.
I think few people could observe such a spectacle on earth. At dawn, the vultures flew in to clean up what the crocodiles had left behind... of the 1,000 Japanese soldiers who entered the Ramree swamps, only about 20 were found alive.
This incident was subsequently included in the Guinness Book of Records and is recognized as "the worst crocodile disaster in the entire world" and "the largest number of people killed by a crocodile attack."
The saltwater crocodile is still considered the most dangerous and most aggressive predator on the planet. The strength of his jaws is such that in a few seconds he can crush a buffalo skull or a sea turtle shell, or bite an adult in two.
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ALL PHOTOS
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands, located nearby, became the object of close attention of ecologists and the public around the world when it became known that the tribes who had stopped their development and lived on the islands could be completely destroyed
In the south of the Andaman Islands, an 18-year-old girl was found who managed to survive alone for 45 days after the terrible tsunami that hit Southeast Asia December 26, 2004.
Thus, the girl, who called herself Jenny, had to eat coconuts and fruits for 45 days. Luckily, she also managed to find fresh water.
The girl was saved when one of the local residents returned to the island on a ship to assess the scale of the destruction, Interfax reports.
The Andaman and nearby Nicobar Islands became the object of close attention of ecologists and the public around the world when it became known that the tribes living on the islands, who had stopped in their development, could be completely destroyed by a tsunami wave. However, later these fears were not confirmed - it became known that thanks to the natural ability of dowsing, ancient people were able to sense the approach of danger in advance, move away from the shore and escape. In total, about 550 islands were affected by the tsunami.
However, Jenny's case is not the only time people miraculously survived the December 26 earthquake and tsunami. So, at the end of January, on the islands of the Andaman archipelago there were 5 men, one woman and 3 children who ate only coconuts and coconut milk for 38 days, due to which they managed to survive. Those rescued said that when the waves hit the island, they climbed to higher ground. After 4-5 days they descended into the forest to a devastated land. It was raining heavily on the island at that time, which disoriented them. The island's mangrove forests are infested with crocodiles, so rescuers were unable to examine the entire island for a long time.
Around the same time, 4 Indonesians miraculously escaped. They were found alive at the bottom of a boat drifting in Indian Ocean. The boat was found near the Andaman Islands. The people in it were taken to the administrative center of the archipelago - Port Blair. The rescued Indonesians were extremely weakened. When asked what their name was, they were able to mutter one word: "Indonesia."
In addition, it was reported that twenty-year-old policeman Rizal Shahputra spent 8 days at sea clinging to a tree. It was found by a South African merchant ship 200 kilometers west of the coast of the Indonesian province of Banda Aceh and delivered to one of the ports of Malaysia.
Rizal said that he was working on the construction of a mosque when a huge wave hit the city. “I saw my parents and sister being carried away by the water, then I noticed a tree that had been uprooted and I clung to it,” he said after he came to. For eight days, Rizal lived on coconuts and instant noodle packets, which floated around the tree in large quantities. “There were also corpses all around, a lot of corpses,” he said. “At first, my tree could hardly float among them.”
On the eighth day, when the Indonesian’s strength was already leaving him, he was noticed by one of the sailors of a South African ship sailing past. “He was saved by the yellow jersey, if not for it, we might not have noticed him,” the ship’s skipper told reporters. Rizal, in turn, said that on the sixth or seventh day he saw a ship on the horizon, but was unable to attract the attention of the crew.
But most striking is the story of a 14-year-old boy named Murlidharan who survived the tsunami, described by Stern. The boy, who also lived on one of the Andaman Islands, sat on the top of a tree for 11 days without food or water. From a medical point of view, this seems impossible, but the will to live turned out to be stronger than the laws of nature.
On the morning of December 26, Murlidharan was playing cricket on the beach with his friends when the ground suddenly began to shake. Soon after this, he heard a roar from the sea and saw his parents, sister and neighbors running as fast as they could. A huge wave was approaching the village. Murlidharan ran as fast as he could. He did not know how to swim and was afraid to enter the sea, even when it was smooth as a mirror. He called his parents, fell, got up, ran on, fell again. Then the water overtook him. She carried him and after a while nailed him to a tree, which he grabbed with all his might. He grabbed a branch, pulled himself up and climbed to the top. From there, he saw how the water below him was destroying his village, carrying away people, uprooting palm trees. He heard people screaming for help, walls collapsing, boards and logs breaking. But his saving island - a strong fruit tree - survived.
Murlidharan spent a night and a day on the branch. The sea calmed, but did not retreat. The tree was still deep in the water. Murlidharan did not see or hear any people. He did not dare to get down from the tree because he did not know whether he would reach the bottom. Once he saw villagers in the distance who were trying to find at least something in their destroyed houses, but by that time he was already hoarse from screaming - they did not hear him.
He sat on the top of the tree for eleven days and nights, without food or water. He was to die of thirst, become more and more dry day after day, and finally fall from the tree dead. Attending doctors at a hospital in Port Blair suggested that due to shock, his body went into a kind of trance state in which all functions were reduced to a minimum. On the morning of the eleventh day, the boy’s strength left him; in a semi-fainting state, he fell from the branch. Having touched the water, he woke up and realized that it was only up to his chest. He got out to a dry place, where the villagers soon found him and carried him to military base Next door. He was sent to Port Blair on the next Indian Air Force flight. Outwardly, the boy turned into a skeleton: his arms were no thicker in girth than the thumb of a man’s hand. With a height of 1 m 50 cm, he weighed 21 kg, but his eyes shone with joy as he was informed that his family had managed to escape.
Until now, the situation in the Andaman Islands archipelago, located in the Bay of Bengal and numbering 572 islands, remains unclear. Even the Indian authorities do not know exactly how many people lived there before the tsunami, or how many died or became homeless. Large areas of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are inaccessible, stretching over 700 km and some less than 50 nautical miles from the earthquake's epicenter. More than a third of the estimated 400,000 inhabitants lived in and around the city of Port Blair, while the rest were scattered across 35 other islands. Some villages from the capital require several days to travel by sea and then a few more hours to walk. Because the tsunami destroyed many piers and the dense jungle prevented military helicopters from landing, rescue teams have still not reached many areas at all.
Only in recent years Andaman Islands turned into an exotic holiday destination. The tsunami destroyed this paradise, often leaving only a narrow strip of beaches. The Nicobar Islands to the south were a restricted area for foreigners; even Indians needed special permission to visit them. Thus, the military could expand its base on the island of Car Nicobar in strict secrecy. On the other hand, this made it possible to protect local residents living in primitive tribes from extinction. An attempt by the Indian Air Force to establish contact with one of the tribes failed. The savages fired arrows at the low-flying helicopter, and on the beach the warriors threatened the military with long spears.
IN military history There is one incredible incident: on February 19, 1945, during a fierce battle on Ramri Island (Burma), an English naval landing lured the Japanese army into mangrove swamps in which thousands of saltwater crocodiles lived. As a result, the thousandth detachment was destroyed - eaten by hungry reptiles. The British did not waste a single cartridge or shell. A report by Japanese Army Colonel Yasu Yunuko, declassified last year, testifies: “only 22 soldiers and 3 officers returned from that detachment alive from the mangrove swamps of Ramri.” An inspection by the special commission of the military tribunal, which conducted an investigation 2 months later, showed that the water in the swamp area, an area of 3 square kilometers, 24% consists of human blood.
This story took place in February 1945, when Hitler's Japanese allies were still carrying out a counter-offensive in all strategic positions, including the so-called. Southwestern Front. His key territorial link was a long-range artillery base on the Yuhan Hills, located on the Burmese island of Ramri. It was from there that the most successful attacks on English landing craft were carried out. When the object was discovered by Anglo-American military intelligence, its destruction was designated among the top five priority tasks for the 7th Airborne Operational Squadron of the Royal Navy. To protect the base, the Japanese command sent the best special forces unit of the army to the island - sabotage corps No. 1, which is considered unsurpassed in repelling attacks by mobile infantry.
The commander of the English airborne battalion, Andrew Wyert, turned out to be a very cunning and resourceful officer. He sent a reconnaissance group deep into the island, where there were impenetrable mangrove swamps, and having learned that they were simply teeming with huge saltwater crocodiles, he decided to lure the enemy detachment there at any cost. The major objected: “Our uniforms and weapons are not designed to go through swamps, unlike the Japanese, who are equipped with special suits and a decent arsenal of bladed weapons. We will lose everything." To which the commander, in his signature half-joking style, replied: “Trust me and you will live...”.
The crew was amazing in its tactical elaboration. After the Japanese detachment was led into the very depths of the swamp through positional battles (which, by the way, the Japanese officers were only happy about, thinking that they would gain an advantage here), Wyatt ordered a gradual retreat to coastline, ultimately leaving only a small detachment on the front line under artillery cover.
A few minutes later, the British officers watching through binoculars witnessed a strange performance: despite a temporary lull in the attacks, Japanese soldiers, one after another, began to fall into the muddy swamp slurry. Soon the Japanese detachment completely stopped resisting their military opponents: the soldiers who were still standing ran up to the fallen and tried to pull them out from somewhere, then also falling and falling into the same epileptic convulsions. Andrew ordered the vanguard detachment to retreat, although he met with objections from his fellow officers - they said, they had to finish off the reptiles. For the next two hours, the British, being on the hill, calmly watched as the powerful, well-armed Japanese army was rapidly melting away. As a result, the best sabotage regiment, consisting of 1215 selected experienced soldiers, which repeatedly defeated significantly superior enemy forces, for which at one time it was nicknamed “Smerch” by the enemies, was devoured alive by crocodiles. The remaining 20 soldiers, who managed to escape from the deadly trap of the jaws, were safely captured by the British.
This case went down in history as “the largest number of human deaths from animals.” The article in the Guinness Book of Records is also named. “About a thousand Japanese soldiers tried to repel an attack by the British Royal Navy ten miles offshore, in mangrove swamps where thousands of crocodiles live. Twenty soldiers were later captured alive, but most were eaten by crocodiles. The hellish situation of the retreating soldiers was aggravated by the huge number of scorpions and tropical mosquitoes that also attacked them,” says the Guinness book. Naturalist Bruce Wright, who participated in the battle on the side of the English battalion, claimed that the crocodiles ate most of the soldiers of the Japanese detachment: “That night was the most terrible that any of the fighters had ever experienced. Scattered in the black swamp slurry, bloody, screaming Japanese, crushed in the jaws of huge reptiles, and the strange alarming sounds of spinning crocodiles formed a cacophony of hell. I think few people could observe such a spectacle on earth. At dawn the vultures flew in to clean up what the crocodiles had left...of the 1,000 Japanese soldiers who entered the Rami swamps, only about 20 were found alive.”
The saltwater crocodile is still considered the most dangerous and most aggressive predator on planet Earth. Off the coast of Australia, more people die from attacks by saltwater crocodiles than from attacks by a great white shark, which is mistakenly considered the most dangerous animal by the people. This type of reptile has the strongest bite in the animal kingdom: large individuals can bite with a force of over 2500 kg. In one case recorded in Indonesia, a Suffolian stallion, weighing a ton and capable of pulling over 2,000 kg, was killed by a large male saltwater crocodile, which dragged the victim into the water and broke the horse's neck. The strength of his jaws is such that he is capable of crushing a buffalo skull or a sea turtle shell in a few seconds.
Of the documented cases of mass human casualties from animal attacks, also noteworthy is the World War II incident involving the attack of great white sharks, which ate about 800 helpless people. This happened after ships carrying civilians were bombed and scuttled.
That night was the most terrible the soldiers had ever experienced: rare rifle shots in the black swamp, the piercing cries of the wounded being crushed in the jaws of huge reptiles, and the vague alarming sound of scurrying crocodiles - turned into a cacophony of hell. At dawn, the vultures flew in to clean up what the crocodiles had left... About a thousand Japanese soldiers, retreating, entered the Ramri swamps. Only about twenty people were found alive.
These terrible events occurred on the night of February 19, 1945. They were described in the 1962 book Sketches wildlife, Near and Far" by eyewitness Bruce Stanley Wright, who was one of those British Army soldiers who participated in the Battle of Rumry Island, during the few days of the Second World War.
In early 1945, Allied forces began to push back the Japanese in the British colony of Burma. An important goal of the Burma campaign was the capture of Ramree Island and Cheduba Island, which would allow the Allies to gain a foothold in the region. Ramri Island, located off the coast of Burma, was at the time a large swampy island occupied by the Imperial Japanese Army.
In January 1945, ships from the British Royal Marines and their Indian allies arrived on the island in an attempt to retake the island and drive out the Japanese. The Navy blocked any possible escape routes by sea. The Army and Royal Air Force pushed about a thousand Japanese soldiers back into the treacherous mangrove swamps.
Royal Navy Captain Eric Bush describes in his report the dangers mangroves pose. From the report to the Lord Commissioners of the Admiralty dated 2 May 1945:
Parts of the Japanese found themselves in indescribably terrible mangrove swamps. Dark both day and night, acres of dense, impenetrable forest; miles of sticky black mud, mosquitoes, scorpions, flies and billions of strange insects. But the worst of it all were the crocodiles. Without food and drinking water it is hardly possible to survive for long. And it became impossible to leave the island. The Japanese were fully aware of the horror of the situation in which they found themselves. A few days later their endurance ended. The prisoners, brought out of the mangroves during one-hour operations, were in very poor physical condition.
Of the thousand Japanese soldiers, only about twenty people survived on the island. They were taken prisoner. The rest were either killed in battle, drowned in mangrove swamps, or eaten by crocodiles. Some sources estimate that as many as 500 soldiers may have left the island.
Crocodile attacks are well documented: the actual number of deaths associated with reptile attacks cannot be determined with certainty and is a matter of debate. The figure "400" is often quoted, but many historians dismiss this figure as incredible.
Despite the inaccuracy, the supposed statistic earned itself a place in the Guinness Book of World Records as "the world's worst crocodile disaster" and "the most deaths from a crocodile attack."
On February 19, 1945, during World War II, an incredible and terrible incident occurred. During the fighting on the small island of Ramri, located southwest of Burma, the Japanese unit was attacked by saltwater crocodiles that live in the local swamps. This case has gone down in history as one of the worst episodes in history concerning the relationship between man and these reptiles.
The Battle of Ramri Island, known in history as Operation Matador, began on January 14, 1945. On this day, troops were landed on the island as part of the 26th British (Indian) Division. The main goal of the landing was to capture the local airfield in the north of the island. The Japanese garrison on the island consisted of the 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment and other units. Heavy fighting began. The British, supported by naval artillery and aircraft, pushed the Japanese deeper into the island. On January 21, the 71st Indian Infantry Brigade was additionally landed on the island. It was then that a turning point came in the battle for the island. On February 17, the fighting stopped, the Japanese left their positions in the north of the island and began moving south, with the goal of connecting with the rest of the garrison. Their path ran through local mangrove swamps.
The British land on the island. Ramri.
British units did not pursue the Japanese; the soldiers did not have uniforms for operating in swampy terrain. The command limited itself to sending small reconnaissance groups in the wake of the retreating enemy. Although there is an opinion that the British deliberately allowed the Japanese to go into the swamps.
The Japanese during the battles for Burma.
The Japanese unit entered a swampy area. In addition to problems with water that was undrinkable, the Japanese were plagued by snakes, insects and difficult terrain. But the worst was yet to come. On the night of February 19, while moving, the Japanese were attacked by local saltwater crocodiles, which lived in large numbers in the swamps. British intelligence officers noted in their reports that there was panic in the enemy ranks and indiscriminate rifle fire. The next day, the British managed to find 20 Japanese people who were very scared. There was no information about the rest of the garrison that entered the swamp territory. According to British information, about a thousand people went there.
The exact number of Japanese soldiers who died while crossing the swamps is still unknown. There is an opinion that several hundred Japanese nevertheless reached southern part islands. Well, this incident itself was later even included in the Guinness Book of Records as a case of the worst disaster during an attack by crocodiles on people. Operation Matador itself and the battles for this small Burmese island finally ended on February 22, 1945.
