The island was used as the Royal Navy’s East Indies Station during the Second World War and repulsed a Japanese invasion attempt in 1942, thus preventing the island being transformed into a bridgehead for an Axis invasion of India. Winston Churchill, commented in 1945 that:
“the sighting of the Japanese fleet had averted the most dangerous and distressing moment of the entire conflict. Ceylon’s capture, the consequent control of the Indian Ocean and the possibility of a German conquest in Egypt would have closed the ring, and the future would have been bleak”
