Breaking Seas, Broken Ships by Ian Friel

Author:Ian Friel [Friel, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Maritime History & Piracy, Europe, Great Britain, Victorian Era (1837-1901), 20th Century
ISBN: 9781526771537
Google: xLQsEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Pen and Sword History
Published: 2021-05-12T01:04:26+00:00

Dive-bombing imposed huge strains on an airframe, so specialized aircraft were needed to cope with them. In the early 1940s, Japan’s principal dive-bomber was the Aichi D3A, commonly known as the ‘Type 99’, though the Allies later codenamed it ‘Val’. It entered service in 1940, and could carry a crew of two, with one 250kg (551lb) bomb under the fuselage, and two 60kg (132lb) weapons under the wings. The aircraft’s slow rate of climb and low speed (240 mph maximum) later made it a sitting duck for Allied fighters, but the Type 99 sank more Allied vessels than any other make of aircraft in service with Japan, Germany or Italy. That list of ships included the Dorsetshire and Cornwall.13

Britain came to view Japan as a possible enemy in the 1930s, a threat to its empire and commercial interests in the East. The British adopted a strategy of deterrence against the Japanese, and this included the construction of hugely expensive naval dockyard at Singapore, finally completed in 1938. It was thought that if deterrence failed, naval forces based there might at least buy time for Britain to reinforce its overstretched fleet in the Far East.

In late 1941, with the rising danger of a Japanese war, the Admiralty (not Winston Churchill, as often claimed) decided to send ‘Force Z’ as a deterrent to the Far East, with the new battleship Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser Repulse. Sailing without air cover, both were sunk on 10 December 1941 by Japanese planes, with heavy loss of life. This was the first time that capital ships had been sunk at sea by aircraft, and it was a profound shock to both the nation and the navy. The British had possessed reasonably good intelligence about Japanese intentions and capabilities, but failed to appreciate the range and striking power of Japanese naval aviation.

The first months of the war in the Far East went very badly for Britain and its allies. The Royal Navy and the Far Eastern naval forces of its American, Dutch and Australian allies were beaten, losing many men and vessels, and the surviving ships withdrew to wait for what would come next.14

The British Eastern Fleet left Singapore, and eventually ended up in Colombo, the principal port of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). On 24 March 1942, Admiral James Somerville arrived to take command of what, on paper, was a powerful fleet, comprising five battleships, three aircraft carriers, eleven cruisers, fourteen destroyers and seven submarines. The fleet had serious weaknesses, however. Some of the vessels were old and slow, only ninety-four carrier aircraft were available, and the ships had not operated before as a single fleet.

The Japanese navy had wanted to mount a full-scale offensive in the Indian Ocean and capture Ceylon, but the Japanese army said that it did not have enough troops for this. In its place, the IJN developed ‘Operation C’, a plan for a major naval raid. Its aims were to destroy the British Eastern Fleet, to interdict British sea trade and communications in the Bay of Bengal, and to support Japanese land operations in the region.

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