Good info. Imagine putting a radar station on those 6,000 ft peaks…. impossible and impracticable I know.
Pick three of the above airfields, build hardened runways with good drainage, with proper covered hangar/warehouse space for maintenance and spare aircraft, and AA and ground defences. Destroy or never build the others to begin with. Achieve this by consolidating the budget, manpower and resources from all the other airfields into three air bases. With only
160 odd active aircraft you don't need more than the Singapore airbases plus three large, all-weather and we'll-defended ones in Malaya.
The longer time, fuel use and distances between alert to aircraft arrival will be an issue to deal with. Perhaps an observer corp or improved colony-wide communications.
But just how badly affected by rain were these northern airfields?
At Kota Bharu the Japanese landing force anchored just before midnight and the first troops landed just after 0200 8th Dec. The first Hudson strike, of several in those first few hours, of 7 aircraft took off at 0208. The Buffalo det was airborne at 0630.
At Gong Kedah the Vildebeests took off just after 0600 but ran into heavy rain offshore splitting them up.
The various bombers at Kuantan, Sungei Patani, Alor Star and Tengah were all able to take off at first light to attack the Japanese at Kota Bharu. But like the Vildebeests they rain into heavy rain preventing them finding the enemy.
The problem with waterlogging wasn't so much with the runways as the dispersal areas, forcing concentration of aircraft in the open where they became easy targets so long as they remained on the ground. But aircraft can't stay airborne forever. Maintenance was also carried out in the open (would hangars really have provided more than nice targets with aircraft concentrated in them?). Add to that inadequate air raid warning systems and limited AA defences so what British fighters there were, were caught on the ground as the Japanese began to bomb the airfields. And the Japanese were careful to use smaller bombs to wreck aircraft but leave the facilities as intact as possible for their arrival.
By landing at Singora in Thailand at 0400 8th Dec, the Japanese quickly captured the airfield (also noted as rain sodden) and by first light were flying in Ki27s from 3 Sentais (over 100 aircraft). An airfield at Patani was also quickly captured. Against that the RAF had 14 Buffalos plus a dozen Blenheim If fighters in northern Malaya.
While Kota Bharu fell on 9 Dec, Alor Star in the very north west didn't fall until the 13th. But by then the RAF had been driven out of it and other bases, by the Japanese ability to strike at them regularly and with virtual impunity. Being forced to withdraw from these forward bases then hinders the ability to strike back at the Japanese at Singora even before the airfields in the NW were overrun.
www.britain-at-war.org.uk
Arguably, the airfields in the NE corner were too far forward to be defendable in the first place. But for those in the NW to survive, many, many more fighters plus improved warning systems would have been required.
Rainwater on airfields was a perpetual problem on airfields throughout South East Asia throughout the war during the wet season. This is the all weather airfield at Mingaladon, Burma in 1945 when many lessons had been learned.
In the dry season, dust then became the problem.