Special issue to commemorate the 70th Anniversary of the Battle of ...

Decoding the Enigma of the Fall of the Shing Mun Redoubt Using Line of Sight Analysis
Figure 6: View of the Shing Mun Redoubt from Needle Hill area
CONCLUSION
We carried out a land survey exercise for the Shing
Mun Redoubt due to a number of bewildering questions
that arose from our documentary analysis. Why were
there so few casualties for a fight that both sides took
so seriously (especially the defenders)? The defenders’
post-war consensus was that the attack first hit the OP
and then swept northwards towards PB401 and PB402,
but the Japanese account showed that it was a direct
north-south movement that branched off to catch the
15 to 20 mysteriously trapped soldiers in a position
(factually separate from the rest of the redoubt in terms
of tunnel connection) with at least three exits, which
a site visit could easily establish. So the defenders’
explanation that they were locked in from the outside
by a private had to be incomplete.
Whether the construction of a redoubt with pillboxes
connected by underground tunnels could enable a
numerically inferior garrison of 42 soldiers, slightly
larger than one platoon, stationed at lower ground to
resist for a considerable period of time a full regiment
of a determined enemy attacking from a commanding
height (Needle Hill) and enjoying a good view of the
defenders’ exposed positions was an issue on which
this paper attempted to shed some light.
This professional land survey of the Shing Mun
Redoubt, based on questions of documentary analysis,
is the first of its kind for any battlefield in Hong Kong
or elsewhere in Asia that was defended by the British.
It employed techniques used by the surveying industry
and GIS researchers, and the findings are useful not
only for historians and enthusiasts of a small battle in
a small theatre of war in the Pacific during World War
II, but also for heritage conservationists. The line of
sight analysis was pivotal in locating and disseminating
information on the vantage points of a heritage
site. The results of our analysis are of immediate
practical use for the battlefield tourist development
of Shing Mun Reservoir as part of a looming heritage
conservation movement in Hong Kong, while the
methods used should serve as a solid reference for
developments elsewhere.
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