Sea Combat: From World War I To The Present Day by Robert Jackson

Author:Robert Jackson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amber Books Ltd

The Prince of Wales was a relatively new battleship at the time of Pearl Harbor, but she had already seen action, having engaged the German battleship Bismarck in May 1941.

The Prince of Wales, meanwhile, flagship of Rear-Admiral Sir Tom Phillips, had sailed from the Clyde on 25 October accompanied by the destroyers Electra and Express. Their orders were to proceed to Singapore via Freetown, Simonstown and Ceylon, where they were joined on 28 November by the Repulse from the Atlantic and the destroyers Encounter and Jupiter from the Mediterranean. The force reached Singapore on 2 December. The Admiralty had always been reluctant to concentrate its warships on Singapore, preferring to base them further back on Ceylon. The fact that they were there at all was at the insistence of Winston Churchill, whose view – supported by the Foreign Office – was that their presence would be enough to deter the Japanese from taking aggressive action. In view of the Indomitable’s absence, the force was vulnerable to enemy air attack, for the RAF’s air defences on Singapore and the Malay peninsula were woefully weak.

EXPOSED POSITION

Anxiety over the exposed position of Phillips’ ships led the Admiralty to urge him to take them away from Singapore, and on 5 December 1941 the Repulse (under Capt Tennant) sailed for Port Darwin in North Australia. The next day, however, a Japanese convoy was reported off Indo-China, and Tennant was ordered back to Singapore to rejoin the flagship. Only hours later came the news of the Japanese attack on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, with simultaneous amphibious assaults elsewhere, including Malaya and Siam. On the evening of 8 December, Admiral Phillips took the Prince of Wales, Repulse and four destroyers, collectively known as Force Z, to attack Japanese amphibious forces that had landed at Singora on the northeast coast of Malaya. Early the next morning, Singapore advised him that no fighter cover would be available and that strong Japanese bomber forces were reported to be assembling in Siam. This, together with the knowledge that his warships had been sighted by enemy reconnaissance aircraft, persuaded Phillips to abandon his sortie at 2015 on 9 December, reversing course for Singapore. Force Z had also been sighted by the submarine I-65, but the position it transmitted was inaccurate, and other enemy submarines failed to detect the ships at this time.

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