The infantry-lean, navy-poor Southeast Asia Command last week recorded its first major kill at sea: a British submarine had destroyed a 5,100-ton Japanese cruiser almost within sight of Jap-held Sumatra and Malaya. It was the most successful invasion of enemy waters by a British submarine since H.M.S. Truant torpedoed two Japanese ships on its historic, 80,000-mile cruise through the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific in 1942.
The Admiralty referred to the submarine as a unit of a new "Eastern Fleet," which presumably includes warships withdrawn from the...
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