 The break-out was the objective of the Japanese Twenty-Eighth Army with support at first from the Thirty-third Army and later the Fifteenth Army.As a preliminary, the Japanese Thirty-third Army attacked Allied positions in the Sittang Bend, near the mouth of the river, to distract the Allies.The British had been alerted to the break-out attempt and it ended calamitously for the Japanese, who suffered many losses, with some formations being wiped out.