Odd Man Out

by Peter Elphick and Michael Smith

Published 15 July 1993
Two days after the start of the 1941 invasion of Malaya, Captain Patrick Stanley Vaughan Heenan, a New Zealander serving in the Indian Army, was caught sending secret codes to the Japanese. The authorities ordered an immediate blackout of all information on his arrest, and the secrets he betrayed were ordered to be suppressed for 100 years. This book looks at these secrets and how they enabled the Japanese to win the air war and then dominate the campaign. It also looks at the reasons behind his behaviour and what caused his guards to become his executioners.

The fall of Singapore in 1942 was the largest capitulation in British military history, and Winston Churchill's "worst disaster". Churchill's promised enquiry was never instituted, and only in 1993 were many crucial official documents released into the public domain. The author of this book investigates these dcouments, meets the existing participants, and tells the story of the fall of Singapore in full.