Remembering Prince of Wales & Repulse
December 10, 1941.
Winston Churchill received a phone call from Sir Dudley Pound, the First Sea Lord:-
Pound: Prime Minister, I have to report to you that the Prince of Wales and the Repulse have both been sunk by the Japanese - we think by aircraft. Tom Phillips is drowned
Churchill: Are you sure it’s true?
Pound: There is no doubt at all.
Churchill hangs up, and later wrote:
“ In all the war, I never received a more direct shock… As I turned over and twisted in bed the full horror of the news sank in upon me. There were no British or American ships in the Indian Ocean or the Pacific except the American survivors of Pearl Harbor, who were hastening back to California (for repairs). Over all this vast expanse of waters Japan was supreme, and we everywhere were weak and naked.”
In slightly more than an hour, the country that prided itself with the patriotic song “Britannia rule the waves” discovered the painful truth that the fleet that once rule the seven seas have been reduced to sitting ducks from ‘birds’ that rule the sky.
The cruiser Repulse under the command of Captain Tennant sank at 1223 noon and the pride of the Royal Navy, the battleship Prince of Wales commanded by Captain John Leach followed 18 minutes later. Both ships are now resting in peace as artificial reefs under 200 feet of water in the South China Sea off Kuantan.
The two were the first capital ships actively defending themselves to be sunk solely by airpower while steaming on the open sea. This incident demonstrated the vulnerability of even the most modern surface ships to the potency of air attack and drove home the necessity of air cover.
When I wrote the article ‘Hang Jebat and the white elephant’, it was to highlight the necessity of effective air defense system. Regrettably, many cited unreasonable reasons and could not accept the possible consequences from the botched firing exercise of our surface to air missiles.
Admiral Sir Tom Phillips, the fleet commander of force ‘Z’ comprising, beside the battleship and cruiser, four escort destroyers Electra, Encounter, Express and Jupiter made that fateful mistake of neglecting the importance of air cover. A decision he would have regretted and paid with his life - he refused to abondon ship and decided to accompany the Prince of Wales to the bottom.
Philips should have known that even if fighter aircraft from the RAF are no match for the Japanese Zero, at least they could have caused distractions or even shoot down the slower but lethal torpedo bombers.
Before arriving in Singapore, Prince of Wales had the honour of engaging the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and the state-of-the-art battleship Bismarck in what is known as the Battle of the Denmark Strait.
Although the engagement lasted no more than 15 minutes, she witnessed the tragic end of HMS Hood, a blow that ranked alongside the sinking of the Royal Oak in Scapa Flow in 1939. Hood blew up in a blink of an eye when a 15-inch shell from Bismarck penetrated the ship’s armor belt and exploded in an after magazine. The Hood, for 20 years the largest warship in the world, sank without a trace, taking down with her 1,415 officers and ratings. Only three men survived. The badly damaged Prince of Wales threw up a smoke screen and disappeared into the distance.
Three days later, on May 27, 1941, Bismarck met her end.
The crippling blow that spelt her doom came from a torpedo launched by the obsolete slow-moving Swordfish biplane from the aircraft carrier Ark Royal. The torpedo released at point blank range struck the stern and jammed both her rudders at 12 degrees to port (left). Thereafter, Bismarck became target practice for the Royal Navy gunners. Endless pounding from British surface ships turned her into a blazing wreck. The pride of the German Navy went to the bottom with a loss of more than 2,000 sailors.
How could an obsolete slow-moving aircraft flew so near to the ship before releasing its torpedo?
Bismarck’s fire control system was too sophisticated for the gunners to draw an accurate bead on low flying aircraft. But the most telling was the absence of air cover similar to that of Prince of Wales and Repulse.
Could the disaster of December 10, 1941 be avoided?
First Sea Lord Sir Dudley Pound felt Singapore could not be adequately defended, unless the Royal Navy sent the majority of its capital ships to the Far East, to achieve parity with the estimated nine Japanese battleships. But Churchill had other ideas.
Had Churchill left the decisions pertaining to naval matters in the hands of the navy, the Japanese would have had to fight on two fronts, the American Navy in the Pacific and Royal Navy in the Indian Ocean. Their rapid advance in Malaya could have been checked.
But the misplaced confidence in their superiority sowed the seeds of arrogance and complacency. From the onset, the British had very little respect for the Japanese.
And hence, Churchill publicly (or arrogantly) announced that Prince of Wales and Repulse will be sent to Singapore as a deterrent to the Japanese. Two capital ships, one a vintage cruiser of WW1, to neuteralise the might of the Japanese Navy? It must have been the joke of the decade.
While the British were basking on their glorious past, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander-in-cheif of the Japanese Imperial Navy responded by reinforcing the Kanoya Naval Force and Genzan Air Group based in Saigon. Their pilots began vigorous training for an attack on the two capital ships.
The arrogance of the Admiralty was echoed and best described by able seaman Bert Wynn:
“On leaving Singapore, Repulse was a hive of activity, all necessary equipment was checked, then double-checked; nothing was left to chance. For the first couple of hours I was in my action station - where the main topic of conversation was how long would it take us to sink the Japanese warships felt to be in attendance around the coast of Singora. I still remember the feeling of absolute confidence running throughout the ship. Everyone was eagerly awaiting the kind of action we’d trained for during the past two years, furthermore the outcome of such an engagement was felt to be a formality“
And the actual outcome is history.
What lesson can we learn from the above?
State of-the-art equipment and adequate training is of paramount importance. Leave military decisions to the professionals entrusted with the defense of the country.
Unwarranted interference could be catastrophic.
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