Scapegoat: The Death of Prince of Wales and Repulse (9 page)

The facts are that Tom Phillips and Force Z were alone on the morning of 10 December. Sent on a wild-goose chase based on faulty intelligence, the reinforcements of surface vessels they could call on were a joke, and as far as they knew there was no air cover. They were the only effective naval force available from Singapore and their intelligence was that the RAF and their airfields were collapsing like dominoes in a row. Force Z should never have been sent in the first place, was hopelessly outclassed and should have been either called home or ordered in to hiding before honour and duty forced it to engage in a battle it could not win. The Phillips papers contain a story that suggests Phillips correctly predicted the scenario that saw him lose his life. Prior to the war, Phillips confided to Captain S.E. Norfolk that ‘correct course’ in the event of a deterrent force being sent to Singapore would be withdrawal from Singapore, but said that ‘the decision to carry it out could not be left to the man on the spot as it would look like cowardice …’ He little knew that when the time came he would be the man-on-the-spot and that the order would not be given by the man responsible.
¹³

There is one other possible explanation for
Prince of Wales’
s radio silence. Evidence that the ship could transmit radio signals throughout the action seems to be, when it comes down to it, based on the comments of one survivor, a senior rating in charge of one of the two transmitting stations inside the ship’s armoured citadel, quoting in the hugely influential book by Martin Middlebrook and Patrick Mahoney,
Battleship
.
¹⁴
The fact remains that it is known that
Prince of Wales’
s radio aerials were affected by the shock of the first torpedo hits and that the flagship appears to have sent no signals by radio until 1220. It is clear also that she was having trouble communicating, failing to respond to
Repulse
before the latter was sunk:

‘Tennant was beginning to feel disquiet about the state of his flagship’s communications. Signals inquiring about the
Repulse
’s damage and describing her own were being transmitted only by Aldis lamp, and even these were disjointed and uncertain. It was clear that the internal damage to the
Prince of Wales
was serious and that she was no longer able to report progress of the battle to Singapore by wireless, and that this duty was now Tennant’s.’
¹⁵

In other words, Tennant’s signal was not prompted by concern about his Admiral’s judgment in not signalling Singapore, but rather by concern that he lacked the capacity to do so.

There is an explanation as to why a signal reporting the first attack on
Prince of Wales
might not have been sent:

‘The first torpedo … that struck the
Prince of Wales
is known to have flooded the wireless cypher office, where all signals were being handled. In the ensuing hurried evacuation of this office it would have been easy for even an important signal to fall by the wayside. That the need for such a signal (under attack) cannot have entered the mind of the Admiral at all is improbable. There were various officers with him …’
¹⁶

The failure to send an ‘under attack’ signal may be as simple as something lost in the hurried evacuation of a communications centre, or something that each individual involved felt someone else had been tasked with. Were this to be so, it would be far less culpable than the failure of Singapore to act on the news that the Japanese had sighted Force Z.

An objective assessment of the known facts suggests that Admiral Sir Tom Phillips had no reason to think air cover was available to Force Z and every reason to think that, if it were, it would be sent to Kuantan – as indeed it was. Singapore, on the other hand, had every reason to send that cover, but failed to do so. On the day, British pilots, the British military based at Singapore and Phillips’s own Chief of Staff were simply not good enough.

Chapter 5

Churchill and ‘The Secret Alliance’

Few wartime leaders have aroused such controversy as Winston Churchill. For many, his charismatic leadership and indomitable will to win were the difference between defeat and victory for Britain in the Second World War. For others, his inveterate meddling, particularly in naval matters, mercurial temperament and some of the undoubted mistakes he made undid much of the good he did. There were hugely contradictory elements to his character: ‘A.V. Alexander noted in his diary … “Yesterday Pound remarked to me ‘At times you could kiss his [Churchill’s] feet – at others you feel you could kill him.’”
¹

Churchill achieved many things for the Royal Navy. He was made First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, though is probably still best remembered for the debacle that was the Dardanelles campaign of 1915 which was largely responsible for him losing his job. As an idea – in effect, the opening of a second front with a view to ending the carnage and stalemate of the western front, a killing ground that Churchill had the prescience to predict – it had merit. Its problem was that it did not make sufficient allowance for the flat trajectory of naval shells being as ineffective as they were against forts on land and it faced a lethal combination of command incompetence and inexperience of both combined operations and amphibious landings. Churchill was probably more personally culpable for the disastrous Battle of Coronel in which a hopelessly outclassed British force was outgunned and outfought by German cruisers acting as surface raiders. Back at the Admiralty in 1939, and subsequently as Prime Minister, he maintained a close involvement with naval affairs at all times. If it is true that what the good men do is oft interred with their bones while the bad lives on, some of Churchill’s major achievements, such as the easing of conditions for lower ranks and support for convoys are forgotten whilst his meddling in the Norwegian campaign is not.

The sinking of
Prince of Wales
and
Repulse
is in many ways a miniature version of the whole debate over Churchill revealing both sides of the man and the leader.

There are a number of commentators who hold Churchill responsible for the loss of the two ships. When Admiral Sir Tom Phillips said to his senior officers, ‘We have to do something’, one survivor responded: ‘My own thoughts were “Yes, indeed you have got to do something but this is quite against your own reasoning and the position in which you find yourself must be laid at Churchill’s feet.’”
²

The survivor was not alone: ‘

‘He [Churchill], and he alone, had been finally responsible for sending the battle fleet to Singapore at this dangerous time, and against the strong pleas of those whose task it was to manage Britain’s maritime affairs. He had selected the ships, and even the Commander in Chief. If direct blame for the catastrophe has to be attached to one man, then Winston Churchill must accept it.’
³

Yet as we have seen there are many who blame Tom Phillips far more than Churchill: ‘Phillips, and only Phillips, was responsible for the ships being where they were …’
⁴

One of Churchill’s’ strongest defenders has written: ‘A different commander might not have endangered his ships on such a reckless mission … Force Z was destroyed in circumstances that could have been avoided, and in pursuit of objectives that neither the Admiralty nor Churchill had explicitly approved.’
⁵

The Case Against Churchill

It is comparatively easy to draw up a case against Churchill, not only for the loss of
Prince of Wales
and
Repulse
, but for the loss of Singapore as well. As Chancellor in the inter-war period he had been a player in the denial of resources to building up the defences of Singapore. Churchill was told on a number of occasions that Singapore was vulnerable, and that it should be given an even higher priority in defence terms than Egypt.
⁶
In effect, and to summarize much research, Churchill believed that Japan was unlikely to declare war on Britain, that if it did America would immediately join with Britain and declare war on Japan, and that if hostilities did commence Singapore was unlikely to be a primary target. He scornfully told Baldwin: ‘A war with Japan! But why should there be a war with Japan? I do not believe there is the slightest chance of it in our lifetime.’
⁷

It also seems likely that the Admiralty did not dismiss the threat from Japan as a military force nearly as much as Churchill did:

‘There is firm evidence, however, that the Admiralty did
not
underestimate its potential enemy and it is on the record that as late as September, 1941, Churchill was grumbling to Alexander, the First Lord: ‘The NID [Naval Intelligence Division] are much inclined to exaggerate Japanese strength and efficiency.’ In point of fact the NID had got it right. It was Churchill’s persistent and personal underestimation of Japan over a long period of years which proved to be the culprit when disaster engulfed the Royal Navy in the months that lay ahead.’
⁸

The above is important, as historians who are opposed to Phillips can imply that he had in large measure the same dismissive attitude towards the Japanese as effective fighters as Churchill was perceived to have. He may have been party to the error of judgment that believed war with Japan was unlikely; there is no evidence that he dismissed its capacity to fight effectively if war did break out. Some contemporary comment about the Japanese was simply the expression of what we would now categorize as appalling racist superiority. There is no evidence that Phillips had these opinions, any more than there is that he shared Churchill’s dangerous tendency to underestimate Japanese fighting efficiency.

The outbreak of war in Europe in 1939 did nothing to change Churchill’s priorities. Indeed, when Germany declared war on Russia in 1941, Singapore became even less of a priority. Once he had reassured himself that the Soviets could survive longer than a year at war with the Germans, Churchill focused even more on the war in Europe, if needs be to the exclusion of other campaigns: ‘Churchill and the War Cabinet accepted the necessity of providing military aid to the Soviets on the largest possible scale, even at the expense of Britain’s own military operations.’
⁹

Having knowingly starved Singapore of resources and reinforcement, when a crisis loomed with Japan Churchill overruled the Admiralty and insisted on sending a new battleship to Singapore, a ‘fast raiding force’, though possibly envisaged in the first instance as being accompanied by a modern carrier. The debate over this is well documented, even exhaustively so. The Admiralty did not wish to lose one of its few modern battleships to the Far East, wishing to retain the two in service as a counter to any breakout by the German
Tirpitz.
Instead, the Admiralty wished to send a force consisting of old ‘R’ class battleships.

The ‘R’ class are the only Royal Navy battleships subject to confusion over their name. Official and unofficial sources refer to them variously as the ‘Revenge’ or the ‘Royal Sovereign’ class. One modern historian refers to them as the ‘Ramillies-class’.
¹⁰
A First World War design, they marked a backwards step from the preceding Queen Elizabeth class. They were the last Royal Navy ships to be designed to burn both oil and coal, with the oil-fired Queen Elizabeth class giving rise to fears that Britain’s navy would depend on a fuel it could only get from overseas, as distinct from relying on coal, of which it had its own more than adequate supplies. Designed to be cheaper than the Queen Elizabeths, they were very slow, with a top speed of twenty-one knots, and had armour largely designed round the expectation that the most likely action they would be involved in was relatively close-range surface conflict, the result being inadequate deck armour such as defended against air attack. Their secondary armament of 6-inch guns had no anti-aircraft capability, and proved too heavy to be effective as quick-firing defence against the large destroyers being planned by other navies at the time. They were almost impossible to modernize, and even what could be done was estimated to need eighteen months per ship. Where they could still have a role was in shore bombardment (
Ramillies
was used in the Normandy landings for this purpose), and in convoy escort. Their slow speed did not matter nearly as much in this context, and their eight 15-inch guns could see off almost any threat to a convoy from surface raiders. The strongest argument for deploying them to the Far East was that they were the vessels the Royal Navy could most easily spare from the European theatre, but the proposal was not entirely cynical. If supported by a carrier, as was the plan, they would have air defence. Their reinforcement by the slow battleships
Rodney
and
Nelson
, better armoured and even more heavily-gunned, as was also planned, would provide a balanced force which, if it were to be overwhelmed, would require a very large concentration of Japanese forces.

However, it was Churchill who overrode the Admiralty, and insisted on sending out a modern KGV battleship, the
Prince of Wales.
Ironically, the ship to accompany her,
Repulse
, had originally been planned as an ‘R’ class battleship, with her and her sister ship
Renown
subsequently changed to a battle-cruiser design. Churchill wanted a fast, deterrent force, but one suspects that the choice of
Prince of Wales
was a political choice more than a military one. Quite simply, Churchill gambled that by sending out one of Britain’s finest and best ships a point about British intentions and commitment to the Far East would be made both to Australia and the colonies, and to the Japanese. Churchill can thus be accused of sealing the fate of Force Z firstly by sending out a ‘fleet’ that was no such thing and was far too small, and secondly by allowing it to proceed into danger even when it became clear that it would not be accompanied by a carrier – though whether or not a carrier
was
actually ever intended to accompany Force Z is no longer certain, and is discussed in a later chapter. It should be noted that Tom Phillips was opposed to Churchill’s proposal and argued strongly against it, as spokesman for Dudley Pound who he represented, at the meeting on 17 October 1941.

Churchill can be blamed in two associated areas. Firstly, his idea of sending Force Z was ineffective as a deterrent – as if the dispatch of one new battleship and one old battle-cruiser would defer the monster that was the Imperial Japanese Navy. Secondly, it may have had the opposite effect to deterrence. Its effect seems to have been to provoke the Japanese in to redeploying two battle-cruisers and part of the Kanoya Air Group from Formosa to Saigon, these being the aircraft which eventually sank
Prince of Wales
and
Repulse.
Churchill may actually have been the agent whereby the only weapons likely to sink
Prince of Wales
were placed on the scene and enabled to do so.

A very telling criticism of Churchill, and one that arguably pins more blame on him for the sinkings than any other, is what appears to be a classic case of non-joined up thinking. One can argue that it was perfectly reasonable to send out a deterrent force, but that Churchill failed to realize that his deterrent force had changed through circumstances beyond his control in to a fighting force. As such, Force Z was clearly neither balanced nor strong enough, and should have either been called home by Churchill, or ordered in to hiding at Pearl Harbor or an Australian port such as Darwin.

What Churchill wrote and said he did could be very different from what he actually did. For example, in the First World War he claimed to be actively against investment in airships, but in fact argued strongly for them.
¹¹
Initially, he defended the actions of Tom Phillips: ‘Admiral Phillips was undertaking a thoroughly sound, well-considered offensive operation, not indeed free from risk, but not different in principle from many similar operations we have repeatedly carried out in the North Sea and the Mediterranean.’
¹²

An even more telling admission is to be found in a minute he dictated to his Chiefs of Staff on 7 December:

‘…I agree with the President [of the United States] that ‘we should obviously attack Japanese transports’ in conditions prescribed … Attack is therefore solely one of naval opportunity and expediency …’
¹³

He later sought to backtrack, as in a letter he wrote to the official naval historian for the war, increasingly implying that Phillips’s plan was his own and Churchill’s advice was either to hide in islands or join the US fleet: ‘The last thing in the world that the Defence Committee wished was that anything like the movement which Admiral Phillips thought it right to make to intercept a Japanese invasion force should have been made by his two vessels without even air cover.’
¹⁴

This is disingenuous. Phillips had signalled his intention to seek out and attack Japanese invasion forces on 8 December. It is an accepted convention in the Royal Navy that if a commander stated his intention to do something, it is to be assumed he has permission and authority to do it unless he is specifically told the contrary:

‘Now every British naval officer of those days was familiar with the convention whereby the originator of a signal using the word “Intend” neither demanded nor expected an answer
unless the addressee disapproved of the intention expressed
.’
¹⁵

Regardless of whether or not Phillips in reality had any option other than to seek out the enemy (something discussed below), it is beyond any reasonable doubt that Churchill had the time and the ability had he so wished it to countermand Phillips, and that in the absence of any reply Phillips could only have assumed that was he was doing had the full approval of his superiors. Churchill’s attempt to shift responsibility off himself and onto Phillips does him no credit. It has also left the field more open to the detractors of Phillips and deprived a dead man of a champion his reputation sorely needed. As one historian has commented: ‘… Even now his treatment of some officers, and his invariable search for scapegoats when anything went wrong, leaves an impression almost amounting to vindictiveness …’
¹⁶