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You are indeed correctDon't know where Colin1 gets the reference for Spits as they didn't start appearing in Burma until 1943 (Singapore fell on 15 Feb 42)
If the question was Could the British have sent enough aircraft to Singapore to have control of the air. The simple awnser is yes the RAF had over a dozen squadrons of Spit V's achieving nothing in the South East of England.
Do I believe these resources would have been wasted with the leadership that was in place, Yes
I agree. Fix the leadership issues and Malaya can hold without reinforcements. The same applies to American defense of the Philippines. If you fail to fix the leadership then you are just throwing additional units away.
2.) Australia The problem is that there is a limited supply of aircraft, which have to be brought in from the UK. Are the Aussies building Beaufighters in 1941?
My source give only 165 RAAF aircraft in Dec 1941, including trainers those in the Solomons (excluding Malaya)
Would the Wirraways/Harvards have been any use against the Japanese?
Could Australia afford to send aircraft or pilots to malaya?
The RAAF was in no way capable of supplying more aircraft and aircrew to Malaya,
Whats needed was a wholsesale transfer of forces from another theatre. Since shipping was in short supply, these formations would have to come from the only active theatre then in play....the med. A wholsesale redeployment to the far east probably means abandonment of Malta, and probably Tobruk, and the transfer of at least 200 aircraft with seasoned crews.
the problem lay with how the aerial assets were implemented once in-theatre. There was never an instance where even most of the Hurricane contingent was serviceable, the best that could be achieved was around a dozen, although frequently less.
There was no attempt to withold the Hurricanes from action until a sizeable force of serviceable aircraft could be built up. Consequently, a coherent plan for a properly planned defence could not be devised. Aircraft that were serviceable were often damaged staging through refuelling strips that were gouged by heavier aircraft. Knee-jerk command decisions simply put aircraft into the air as soon as they were flyable, and finally, early warning for the incoming raids was non-existent.
Small, ineffectual (wrt the sizes of the formations that they invariably faced) pockets of fighters were almost always flown off too late against an enemy who was waiting for them.