 After the war , the British government devoted significant resources into building a naval base in Singapore , as a deterrent to the increasingly ambitious Japanese Empire . Completed in 1939 at a staggering cost of $ 500 million , the naval base boasted what was then the largest dry dock in the world , the third @-@ largest floating dock , and enough fuel tanks to support the entire British navy for six months . It was defended by heavy 15 @-@ inch naval guns and by Royal Air Force squadrons stationed at Tengah Air Base . Winston Churchill touted it as the " Gibraltar of the East . " Unfortunately , it was a base without a fleet . The British Home Fleet was stationed in Europe and the plan was for it to sail quickly to Singapore when needed . However , after World War II broke out in 1939 , the Fleet was fully occupied with defending Britain . Lieutenant General Sir William George Shedden Dobbie was appointed governor of Singapore and General Officer Commanding Malaya Command on 8 November 1935 , holding the post based in The Istana until shortly before the outbreak of World War II in 1939 . He was responsible for forming The Dobbie Hypothesis on the fall of Singapore which , had it been heeded , may have prevented the fall of Singapore during the Second World War . 
