Scapegoat: The Death of Prince of Wales and Repulse (3 page)

Perhaps crucially for
Prince of Wales
and
Repulse,
what the inter-war years had not produced was any foray into inter-service co-operation. One nadir of such ‘co-operation’ was the escape of the
Scharnhorst, Gneisenau
and
Prince Eugen
from France back to Germany in February 1942 when large numbers of RAF aircraft were flung without proper coordination or fighter support against the well-escorted German ships. In fairness to the RAF, this was a very rare example of fruitful co-operation between the German Navy and the Luftwaffe. The destruction of Force Z has rarely been seen as in any way connected to this lack of any real tradition of inter-service cooperation, yet the need to liaise with the RAF was always going to be crucial to the success or failure of the mission.

With the above list of weaknesses and frailties it might be wondered that the Royal Navy in 1939 was able to fight at all. Rather than being a criticism of the Navy, the list of the problems it faced in 1939 is a huge tribute to the spirit with which it fought the war, and a remarkable illustration of just how much it did achieve and had to overcome to fight as successfully as it did. It was just unfortunate that so many pre-war chickens were to come home to roost in the rigging of
Prince of Wales
and
Repulse
in December 1941.

The Political and Historical Background

There is a body of opinion that sees Japan in the inter-war period as a wanton aggressor. Another camp, although acknowledging its failings, sees it as much put-upon and perhaps even driven to war by the USA. An ally of Britain in the First World War, Japan posed a real problem to both Britain and America in the post- and inter-war years. It seemed clear to many contemporary observers that Japan was intent on building a new order in East Asia. Rather like someone who had decided it owned a house it needed to kick out the existing tenants, in this case the colonial powers including America. It was clearly in Japan’s interests to create a large closed area from which it could draw nearly all the raw materials it needed, which in turn would allow it to gain sufficient power to threaten major parts of the British Empire in Australia, New Zealand, Borneo, Malaya and New Guinea and American links with the Philippines, as well as being poised to disrupt the crucial trade in tin and raw rubber, with south-east Asia supplying over two-thirds of both commodities to the west. It was not lost on western commentators that an alliance with Germany and Italy was a logical step on the route to a new position of dominance, which increased the threat to Britain even more. British Chiefs of Staff wrote on 12 November 1937: ‘… we cannot foresee the time when our defence forces will be strong enough to safeguard our entire territory, trade and vital interests against Germany, Italy and Japan simultaneously.’
³

An increasingly expansionist Japan, desperate for sources of raw materials, saw a General as its Prime Minister in 1928 and there was growing resentment at what it saw as racist attitudes and western determination to limit its power. In 1936 a strident book written by an officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy, titled
Japan Must Fight Britain
, sold 11,000 copies in translation. It is true that Britain and America might have handled Japan more tactfully, but a major problem in their doing so was Japanese warmongering in Indo-China and the atrocities conducted by their forces. They did nothing to make the voting populace sympathetic towards Japan, and to that extent the hands of the politicians were tied.

As war with Germany grew more and more likely so did the possibility of war with Japan, if only because war in Europe presented a classic opportunist opening. It was not that the British Government did not know of the threat, rather that it simply did not have the naval resources to deal with it or to leave a significant enough deterrent threat in Singapore. Some would argue that it was the First World War that brought an end to the British Empire with an impoverished nation simply unable to afford to defend itself to the four corners of the world.

If economic hardships in the inter-war years meant that the British would be hard-pushed in the event of war to send anything other than a token naval force to the Far East, political necessity demanded that such a force would be sent. To that extent Tom Phillips’s fate and that of his men had been sealed before the keel of his flagship touched the water for the first time. Great Britain’s Empire was not about waving the flag, colouring the map red or even promulgating the Gospel. It was about trade and raw materials. Following the ruinous cost of the First World War, the greatest recession the world had ever seen and with an ageing industrial plant, Britain was nearly broke, more dependent than ever on its Empire as a cheap market for its goods, not to mention its petrol, rubber and tin. It would have been economic suicide to lose the Empire and political suicide as well. It is difficult for us now to conceive of a country that defined so much of itself through Empire, but that was what it did.

In fact that Empire in the Far East posed two quite different problems. To some countries Britain was simply the occupying power exerting supremacy over an indigenous population by virtue of visible military strength and an ability to keep other nations out of its patch. Singapore was just such a colony which was why its fall was a death-knell to Empire. Never mind that it eventually regained what it had lost: the Japanese had broken not just an army when they took Singapore in 1941, but also the credibility of the colonial rulers and the myth of British invincibility.

Countries such as Australia and New Zealand were different. The majority of their population was not indigenous but could trace their ethnic origins back to the home country of Great Britain. Such countries were not retained as paid-up members of the British Empire by military force and indeed made a significant contribution to Britain’s military strength themselves. However, these were countries increasingly maturing into nation states with their own identity and culture. Japanese militarism and expansionism posed a real threat to them – one Australian Prime Minister described his country as being but ‘a stone’s throw’ away from Japan – and they exerted continuous pressure on the British to station a permanent fleet in Singapore. A naval force in Singapore to deter or impress Japan was essential to persuade Australia and New Zealand that London cared and mattered.
Repulse
was actually on its way to Australia when it was recalled to sail with
Prince of Wales
to disrupt Japanese invasion forces. Politics and economics placed two nails in the coffin of Phillips and his men before 1941. A further practical factor was the need for Britain’s war effort to be reinforced by Australian troops, something it was made clear would not happen unless Britain in turn showed tangible support for its colonies. There was persistent pressure from the governments of Australia and New Zealand throughout the 1930s for Britain to station a fleet at Singapore. Unable to do so, but desperate to reassure, British policy was to build Singapore up into a major naval base complete with massive defensive 15-inch guns (which contrary to post-war belief did not only point out to sea), and to evolve the ‘main fleet to Singapore’ plan whereby Singapore would be organized so as to defend itself before the ninety or so days it would take for a ‘main fleet’ to be mobilized and sail there. All these factors dictated that a naval force would be sent to Singapore if war with Japan threatened, yet politics and economics dictated that the force would be inadequate. The main fleet promise was a cheque written against an account which simply did not have enough funds to meet it.

Certain facts about the decision to send
Prince of Wales
and
Repulse
to Singapore have been well-documented for years, though there may have been a completely different undercurrent of political intrigue that has not been nearly so well documented. If a force was to be sent at all, the Admiralty wished it to be composed of the Royal Navy’s old and obsolete ‘R’ class battleships, watered-down versions of the Queen Elizabeth class and ships that had not been deemed worthy of significant modernization post-war. The Admiralty was overruled, not just by Churchill but by partners in the Coalition such as Anthony Eden, and the new KGV battleship
Prince of Wales
was sent instead, joining the old battle-cruiser
Repulse
(which unlike her sister
Renown
had not received a full modernization) which was already in the Indian Ocean. It was long thought that it was always a part of the plan to add a modern carrier –
Indomitable
which was working up in the West Indies – to the force, something we have been led to believe was only halted by
Indomitable
running aground and suffering damage that ruled her out. The decision to mobilize a force was finalized at a meeting of the War Cabinet scheduled for 12.30pm on Monday, 20 October, 1941. There were no representatives of the Army or the RAF at the meeting, only the Navy. What is clear is that Churchill, and probably Sir Anthony Eden and the Foreign Office, believed that the force would deter Japan from opening hostilities and that Malaya and Singapore were not directly threatened. There may also have been another driving force, discussed below, in the ‘Secret Alliance’ that was needed to ensure full military support and co-operation from the United States in the Far East.

What caught everybody out was the timing of the Japanese attack, unless one believes in some fairly extreme variants of conspiracy theory that Roosevelt actually concealed the likelihood of the attack from his commanders on the ground at Pearl Harbor in order to draw the United States into a war he deemed inevitable. It seems likely that the British Government was simply unaware of the ambition of Japanese war plans and of the speed and power with which they could execute them. Churchill was obsessed with the idea that
Prince of Wales
would do what the
Tirpitz
was doing in European waters – act as a distant threat and tie down huge resources guarding against it. Even though the KGV battleships were slower than the modern battleships built by other nations such as Italy, Germany and the USA, they were faster than their Japanese equivalent, at least until the massive
Yamato
was commissioned.
Repulse
had been built for speed at the expense of her armament and armour, but together the two ships could reasonably be seen as a fast raiding force. The Admiralty thought the removal of a KGV from northern waters might encourage
Tirpitz
to come out and argued in vain that the situation in the Far East was not comparable. But this was not Japan: the Royal Navy took orders from the Government, rather than issuing orders as the Government.

Britain was not ready for war with Japan in 1940. Many of the reasons lay at doors other than those of the Royal Navy. Yet whatever the detail of the arguments on the day, it seems clear that the Royal Navy in the 1930s itself underestimated the strength of the threat posed by Japan and did not take seriously enough the likelihood that Britain and Japan would go to war. Tom Phillips was one of the most influential senior naval officers in the late 1930s and must therefore take his share of the corporate responsibility for the fact that the Royal Navy in crucial areas was unprepared for war against Japan in 1941. He and the Navy in general could do little about the squeezing of their funding in the 1920s and 1930s, but they could have done more to integrate Intelligence input and access information about the capabilities of Japanese aircraft and ships. In a much earlier era, Queen Elizabeth I was starved for cash for any army or navy but found investment in Walsingham’s spy network a very healthy compensation for the lack of cash to pay soldiers and sailors. Quite simply, the Royal Navy did not know enough about its enemy in 1941, down to the fact that one of its best brains, Tom Phillips, in all probability was simply unaware that he was within the range of the torpedo bombers that sank his two ships. Failure of Intelligence was also a failure of the naval establishment for which Phillips must take his share of the responsibility, and one he paid for by the loss of his life.

It is possible that Churchill’s insistence on the deterrent effect of Force Z was in fact a cloak for his real motives in sending the ships out, which may have been as an act of good faith designed to draw the United States in to full military co-operation against the Japanese in the Far East. Fierce argument has raged over many aspects of Churchill’s thinking before and during the war. It is at least a possible view that Churchill, as a realist, had long given up all hope that Britain could defend its empire in the Far East from within its own resources, and as a result was reliant on the active help of the United States. Deterrent to the Japanese or lure for the Americans came down to the same thing. Force Z was a military force sent on a diplomatic mission that should not have required it to fight, its job being either to deter the Japanese or to cement an alliance with America, or both. The government of the day and the Admiralty not only sent out a force that even by its own inadequate standards was ill-equipped for the job but was also designed to tackle what turned out to be the wrong job altogether. When that job changed its immediate reaction should have been to call the two capital ships back, or at least order them out of danger. As it was, it left them with no option but to take on a fight in which the odds were stacked against them.

Chapter 2

The Loss of
Prince of Wales
and
Repulse
The Action: The Case Against Tom Phillips

I
t is a basic truth of human nature that the immediate reaction to a disaster is a massive closing of stable doors, the main feature of which is the overwhelming need to find a culprit or culprits. The racket caused by the stampede to find a scapegoat also helps to drown out the noise of those covering their backs. The sinking of
Prince of Wales
and
Repulse
has been the subject of, or covered in, numerous books. The sheer volume of comment has produced an orthodoxy summed up in what is probably the best – and certainly the most vivid – book about the engagement: ‘… the facts speak for themselves: two great ships and many good men were lost because one stubborn old sea-dog refused to acknowledge that he had been wrong.’
¹

To varying degrees most historians have tended to load the lion’s share of blame for the disaster upon the shoulders of Admiral Sir Tom Phillips. To understand who actually was to blame one obviously has to know details of the action. These details are well publicized and documented and rank alongside the story of the sinking of the
Bismarck
in terms of the coverage they have received and the number of published books devoted to the action. In this chapter I have chosen to describe the events that led to the loss of the ships as briefly as possible and to combine in that account the majority of the negative comments and interpretations made by historians about Tom Phillips and his part in it. In fairness to post-war historians, no single book is as negative towards Phillips as what follows. Even some of those who condemned him most strongly for what happened list some things in his favour, one example being the recognition even by one of his fiercest critics that his calling off of the action was an act requiring considerable moral courage. However, if the charges laid against Tom Phillips are to receive a proper trial it is necessary to list all the charges against him so they can be re-examined, and concentrating the charges against him in one chapter is the most convenient way to do this. What follows is therefore wilfully unorthodox in that it expresses precisely the views that this book intends later to seek to demolish. My final two chapters give an account of the engagement that I believe tells it as it was. As this is a bare historical narrative I have not included here the vivid recollections of survivors from
Prince of Wales
and
Repulse.
I must also apologize that my chosen approach – to make a statement for the prosecution and then hear the case for the defence – does lead to some repetition.

The Preliminaries

Contrary to the Admiralty’s wishes the force it was decided to send to Singapore as a deterrent to Japanese aggression did not consist of older ‘R’ class battleships, but of the new battleship
Prince of Wales,
the old but fast battle-cruiser
Repulse
and the newly-completed carrier
Indomitable.
Unfortunately the latter grounded outside Kingston Harbour on her working-up in the West Indies and was unable to join.

The appointment of fifty-three-year-old Sir Tom Phillips to command the new Eastern ‘fleet’ – in fact much more of a fast raiding force that could disrupt Japanese invasions – caused considerable consternation in the Navy. Commander in Chief, China, Vice-Admiral Sir Geoffrey Layton, was widely respected for his outstanding service as a submarine captain in the First World War, was an experienced flag officer and was already out in the Far East. Many thought him an obvious candidate for the post given to Phillips who had to be jumped up two ranks to Acting Admiral to give him seniority over Layton:

‘Phillips was in many ways a strange choice. He had not seen action since 1917 and had not served at sea since the outbreak of war in 1939. Although he was a staff officer of proven ability, he had never been tested in battle as a fighting admiral and he had strong, if mistaken, views of the ability of a modern battleship to fend off attack by means of gunnery alone.’
²

Phillips not only lacked relevant experience. He had the reputation as a difficult personality to work with and for being unwilling to listen to anyone who disagreed with him:

‘Sir Tom Spencer Vaughan Phillips, KCB, aged fifty-three
,
had been behind a Whitehall desk since 1939 and he had last experienced action in 1917. A very small man – he needed to stand on a box when on the compass platform and was nicknamed “Tom Thumb” – he was notorious for his angry impatience and, more seriously, his strong conviction that aircraft were no match for properly handled warships, arguing that only greater resolution on the ships’ commanding officers was needed to defeat the dive-bomber. He had always refused to listen to anyone who tried to persuade him that fighter protection was necessary for all ships operating within reach of enemy bombers.’
³

Phillips, the son of an Army Colonel, had passed out as one of the top students in his year from the then training school HMS
Britannia
. He served on destroyers in the First World War and as well as staff work in the inter-war years commanded both a destroyer and a cruiser. In 1938 he commanded the destroyer flotillas of the Home Fleet. A collision between HMS
Encounter
and HMS
Furious
earned him a reputation as a bad seaman. At the time of his appointment to the Far East he was Vice Chief of Naval Staff and seen widely in the navy as a desk admiral.

Phillips was notorious for his belief that the well-handled capital ship was more than a match for aircraft: ‘Yet it is probable that Phillips’s views [on the vulnerability of surface ships to aircraft attack] were considerably more out of touch and mistaken than most of his contemporaries.’
⁴

Phillips had acquired a reputation for believing that the well-handled surface vessel was capable of withstanding air attack, an impression confirmed by the Royal Navy’s ability to do just that in early clashes with the Italian air force in the Mediterranean:

‘The battles royal which raged between Tom Phillips and Arthur Harris … were never-ending … on one occasion … Bert Harris exploded,

“One day, Tom, you will be standing on a box on your bridge … and your ship will be smashed to pieces by bombers and torpedo aircraft; as she sinks, your last words will be, ‘that was a … great mine!”’
⁵

Harris, otherwise known as ‘Bomber’ Harris, was a friend of Phillips and his comments need to be seen in that context rather than as coming from a rival or enemy.

Phillips’s appointment over the head of others to command naval forces in the Far East may have had something to do with his friendship with Churchill, with whom he had stayed at Chequers. It was at Churchill’s instigation that Phillips had been appointed Vice-Admiral in February 1940, probably in response to pressure from the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, who had found Phillips’s work as Vice Chief of Naval Staff invaluable.

Phillips’s ships were initially designated Force G but changed to Force Z when they set sail on their final voyage from Singapore. It appears that the Admiralty intended
Prince of Wales
to halt its journey at Cape Town to allow for a review of the situation in the Far East. No document trail has been found that explains why this plan seems to have been dropped, and the ship steamed on to Singapore. The stop in South Africa allowed Phillips to meet Field Marshal Jan Smuts, Prime Minister of South Africa, who commented presciently to Churchill: ‘If the Japanese are really nippy there is here an opening for a first-class disaster.’
⁶

Phillips refused the chance to acquire a carrier, albeit a lesser one than the
Indomitable:

‘Yet on the very day that the
Prince of Wales
departed from South African waters the veteran carrier
Hermes
had arrived at Simonstown. She carried only fifteen aircraft and her maximum designed speed was a disappointing twenty-five knots. But she had the ability to provide a modicum of seaborne air support in the shape of Swordfish torpedo-bombers and reconnaissance machines. And even a little was better than none.’
⁷

Phillips also refused further reinforcement, this time of an older ‘R’ class battleship that the Admiralty had wished to form the core of the Far Eastern fleet:

‘For the second time in ten days Phillips had chosen not to strengthen his force with another major warship.
Revenge
, a vintage battleship dating back to 1916, had been berthed in Ceylon when Force G arrived but the Admiral was content to leave her behind when the other ships sailed for Singapore.’
⁸

His ships sailed in to Singapore with much fuss being made of
Prince of Wales
and her name and presence released to the media in order to enhance the deterrent effect. To the intense annoyance of her crew,
Repulse
was not named, it being thought that silence on the number and nature of the other ships might serve to exaggerate their power to the Japanese. When news broke and it became clear that the Japanese were invading at points on the Peninsula, Phillips missed a golden opportunity to hit the Japanese invasion fleets when they were at their most vulnerable, and perhaps even change the course of the war:

‘If the Eastern Fleet had been able to sail immediately the sighting reports were received and had successfully intercepted the Japanese invasion force at sea there is a good chance that the enemy might have been persuaded to turn back, for the stakes were high and the Japanese had not anticipated being discovered quite so early in the game.’
⁹

Phillips was ‘insufficiently alert to the pressing realities of the strategic situation in which he was involved.’
¹⁰
He had gone to Manila to talk to his opposite number Admiral Hart of the US Navy when the alarm was sounded and
Repulse
was on her way to Australia for a flag-waving visit. Phillips returned to Singapore by air and
Repulse
was called back, but the result was that the newly-designated Force Z set sail too late. Philips thus missed a major chance to disrupt the Japanese invasions by a lackadaisical response and failing to act at the start of the attacks when the Japanese were at their most vulnerable: ‘During a vital period, neither Phillips nor his capital ships were ready for action.’
¹¹

8 December

Phillips is in no doubt that Britain is at war with Japan. The night before, his time, the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and Singapore. He has four options: sail out to attach the Japanese invasion barges; retreat to Darwin in Australia; hide out in the islands and attempt to exert the same sense of menace that
Tirpitz
did so effectively in northern waters or stay in Singapore and risk bomb damage. He calls a conference on board his flagship and asks his commanders for their views. The silence is broken by Tennant, the Captain of
Repulse,
who says they have no option but to set sail in search of the enemy. There is no disagreement. An increasingly ill-looking Tom Phillips likens what they are doing to taking the Home Fleet into the Skagerrak without air cover, but says they have no option: ‘Still, there is a point where a decision ceases to be courageous and becomes rash, and Phillips’s decision came close to that point.’
¹²

1735 hrs:
Force Z slips its moorings at 1735. In company with the two capital ships are four destroyers –
Electra, Express
and First World War veterans,
Tenedos
and the Australian
Vampire.
Phillips asks for air reconnaissance ahead of his force on 9 December and reconnaissance and fighter cover off Singora on 10 December. As Force Z sails it is flashed a signal from the Changi signal station from Pulford saying, ‘Regret fighter protection impossible’ – at which Phillips is said to have shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Well, we must get on without it.’ A later signal from Admiral Palliser in Singapore, left behind as Phillips’s second-in-command to liaise with the other services, states, ‘Fighter protection on Wednesday 10th will not, repeat not, be possible’.
¹³
On receiving the signal informing him that no air cover is available Phillips decides to head to Kota Bharu not Singora, which is 120 miles further north:

‘… although the information available to Phillips gave him no reason to foresee the full extent of the threat from Japanese aircraft, there was clearly
some
danger from air attack, and his decision to continue on and to hazard two very valuable capital ships, rather than returning to Singapore or sailing elsewhere, was a very risky one.’
¹⁴

‘Early on 9 December Phillips was told by signal … that the Royal Air Force would not be able to provide air cover, because all the airfields in northern Malaya were being evacuated. Nevertheless he elected to press on. Lack of experience, his belief, despite all the evidence of the past two years of war, in the invincibility to capital ships, and his own temperament led to this unwise decision.’
¹⁵

The case against Phillips at this point is that once he knew air cover was not available he should have called off the operation.

9 December

0620hrs:
A single lookout on
Vampire
spots a solitary aircraft. After Phillips calls for clarification, the report is disregarded. The plane does not seem to have been Japanese. Phillips is sometimes cited at this point as believing simply what he wanted to hear, choosing to disbelieve a lookout because he was the bearer of bad news: ‘Phillips remained unconvinced and, adopting the attitude of an ostrich beset by danger, he metaphorically buried his head in the sand and shrugged off the warning.’
¹⁶