Sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse

• 1. Introduction

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  The sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse took place on the 10th of December 1941, in the South China Sea, about 70 miles east of Kuantan. A modern battleship and an older battlecruiser of the Royal Navy were both sent to the bottom by aircraft. The attackers were land-based bombers and torpedo bombers of the Imperial Japanese Navy. The rumble of the attack carried all the way to Singapore. The two ships belonged to a small squadron called Force Z, sent to meet a Japanese invasion fleet. They never reached it. Why would a squadron meant to deter a war sail into it without fighters overhead? How did Japanese airmen find ships that did not know they were being hunted? And what did the loss of two ships cost the British at Singapore?

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• 2. Sent as a Deterrent

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  On the 17th and the 20th of October 1941, Britain's Defence Committee met to discuss reinforcing the Far East. The Japanese Konoe government had fallen on the 16th of October. Winston Churchill and his cabinet favoured sending a modern battleship, hoping it would deter Japan. The Royal Navy had wanted to send the Nelson class ships, but they could not deploy. The earliest either could reach the Far East was August 1942. On the 20th of October the committee chose to send Prince of Wales as far as Cape Town, South Africa. A review there would decide whether she went on to Singapore, which kept her available for an emergency in home waters.

  First Sea Lord Sir Dudley Pound argued that Singapore could be defended only if most of the Royal Navy's capital ships went there. That would match an estimated force of nine Japanese battleships. Yet Britain was fighting Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy much closer to home, so such a force was impractical. Churchill still sounded optimistic about the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean. He advocated sending two capital ships and an aircraft carrier to defend Malaya, Borneo and the Straits Settlements.

  Capital ships had been part of the Admiralty's plans for Singapore since the naval base was expanded and fortified in the early 1920s. The planned scale shrank during the 1930s, as Germany and Italy became threats. Churchill's plan assumed that the United States would send its Pacific Fleet, with eight battleships, to Singapore if war came. Failing that, the British ships would add to the deterrent value of an American fleet that stayed at Pearl Harbor. Critics have accused Churchill of "considerable ignorance" and an "exaggerated belief in the power of the battleship." Admiral Sir John Tovey, head of the Home Fleet, opposed sending any of the new King George V class battleships. He believed they were not suited to tropical waters.

  On the 3rd of November 1941, the new carrier HMS Indomitable ran aground at the entrance to Kingston harbour, Jamaica. She had been allocated to the force, carrying one squadron each of Fairey Fulmars and Hawker Sea Hurricanes. Repairs took 12 days in dry dock at Norfolk, Virginia, so she never joined the action. Another carrier, which had been with Prince of Wales at Cape Town, was too slow to be deployed.

  The force that did go was called Force G. It held the battleship Prince of Wales, the First World War era battlecruiser Repulse, and four destroyers. It reached Singapore on the 2nd of December 1941 and was renamed Force Z. On the 1st of December, Sir Tom Phillips had been promoted to full admiral and appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Eastern Fleet.

  Churchill announced publicly that the two ships were bound for Singapore to deter the Japanese. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto answered by sending 36 Mitsubishi G4M bombers to reinforce the Kanoya and Genzan Air Groups, which flew Mitsubishi G3M aircraft. Crews of the Kanoya, Genzan and Mihoro Air Groups then trained to drop torpedoes from less than 10 metres (30 ft) above the water. They also practised long-range navigation over open ocean, so they could strike warships moving fast at sea. Lt Cdr Niichi Nakanishi led the Genzan group, Lt Cdr Shichizo Miyauchi the Kanoya group, and Lt Hachiro Shoji the Mihoro group. No bomber force in this war had before been trained and equipped specially for "ship killing." Ordinary land-based bombers, particularly in the Mediterranean, had achieved only limited success against ships. British intelligence failures meant that nobody in Singapore realised what these crews had been prepared to do.

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• 3. The Admiral's Gamble

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  Early on the morning of the 8th of December 1941, bombers of the Mihoro Air Group attacked Singapore. Prince of Wales and Repulse fired back. No planes were shot down, and the ships took no damage. The same day, Japanese troops landed at Kota Bharu, Malaya, beginning the invasion. Then came news from Pearl Harbor, where eight American battleships had been sunk or disabled. Pre-war planning had imagined the United States Pacific Fleet sending major units to Singapore. That was now impossible.

  In an earlier discussion with General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Thomas C. Hart, Phillips had concluded that his two capital ships could not confront the Japanese alone. But Malaya was in danger of being overrun, and he was pressed to use his ships offensively. He assembled his flotilla to intercept Japanese invasion convoys in the South China Sea. Air cover worried him. The RAF had only limited numbers of fighters, and Phillips had asked for protection before leaving. He was told it was not possible. That reply applied only to the morning of the 10th off Singapore, but he may have taken it to mean fighters would never be available. Two earlier proposals for daylight fighter cover had been turned down by Phillips and his staff.

  No. 453 Squadron RAAF, with 10 Brewster F2A Buffalos at RAF Sembawang, had been designated the "Fleet Defence Squadron." Its acting commander, Flight Lieutenant Tim Vigors, proposed keeping six aircraft over Force Z throughout daylight. Phillips declined. Wing Commander Wilfred Clouston of No. 488 Squadron RNZAF offered daytime cover too, under a plan called "Get Mobile." That was also rejected. The squadron was never told where the ships were, and no radio request for fighters went out until the commander of Repulse sent one an hour after the Japanese attack began.

  Historians believe four factors shaped Phillips's decision. He thought Japanese planes could not operate so far from land. He believed his ships were nearly immune to fatal air damage. He did not know the quality of Japanese aircraft and torpedoes. And like many Royal Navy officers, he underestimated Japanese fighting ability. No capital ship at sea had yet been sunk by air attack. At the Battle of Cape Matapan in March 1941, single torpedo hits from Fairey Swordfish had disabled the Italian battleship Vittorio Veneto and the heavy cruiser Pola. Vittorio Veneto escaped further damage thanks to her escorts. Pola was later finished off by a destroyer's torpedo. Royal Navy experience around Malta also showed that German and Italian aircraft could damage convoys without stopping them. Phillips expected mostly level bombers, not specialist torpedo squadrons. The Japanese force was far larger than the British raid at Matapan, and his escort screen was thinner than the Italian one.

  Prince of Wales carried one of the most advanced anti-aircraft systems of the time, the High Angle Control System. It had shown accurate long-range radar-directed fire during Operation Halberd in August and September 1941. In Malayan heat and humidity, however, her anti-aircraft fire control radars stopped working and her 2-pounder ammunition deteriorated. RAF technicians looked at the radars and said repairs needed a week. Force Z would be sailing in a few days.

  The naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison wrote that Admiral Hart had faced "precisely the same problem" in the Philippines, and had decided the risk outweighed the gain. Phillips chose differently, Morison argued, because with the RAF and Army fighting for their lives, the Royal Navy "could not be true to its tradition by remaining idly at anchor." The squadron left Singapore that same evening.

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• 4. The Chase

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  At 17:10 on the 8th of December, Force Z sailed from Singapore. It comprised Prince of Wales, Repulse and the destroyers Electra, Express, Vampire and Tenedos. Phillips hoped to strike off Singora on the 10th. Had he left one day sooner, he might have reached his objective without facing air attack, because the Japanese squadrons had not yet arrived.

  At 07:13 on the 9th, the force passed the Anambas Islands and turned onto a new course of 330 degrees. Two Japanese reconnaissance aircraft flew over without reporting it. At 14:00 the Japanese submarine I-65 spotted the ships and shadowed them for five hours, radioing their positions. Phillips did not know. On hearing the report, Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa ordered most of his warships to escort the empty transports back to Cam Ranh Bay in southern Vietnam. Japanese bombers that were loading bombs for an attack on Singapore Harbour switched to torpedoes. They were not ready until 18:00.

  At about 17:30, half an hour before sunset, three Aichi E13A seaplanes catapulted from Japanese cruisers found Force Z and kept shadowing. At about 18:30, Tenedos was sent back to Singapore because she was low on fuel. At 19:00 Phillips turned toward Singora to deceive the watching aircraft. At 20:15, once darkness covered him, he turned south. Japanese bombers tried a night attack but bad weather hid the ships, and the crews returned to their airfields at Thu Dau Mot and Saigon around midnight.

  That night, a Japanese seaplane dropped a flare over the heavy cruiser Chokai, mistaking her for Prince of Wales. A Japanese force of six cruisers and several destroyers turned northeast. The British saw the flare, feared they had been found, and turned southeast. The two forces came within about 5 miles (9 km) of each other without sighting one another. Radar on Prince of Wales did not detect the Japanese. At 20:55, Phillips cancelled the operation, saying the force had lost the element of surprise, and headed back toward Singapore.

  At 03:40 on the way back, the submarine I-58 spotted the squadron and fired five torpedoes, all of which missed. The British never saw them and never knew they had been attacked. At 06:00, ten Genzan Air Group bombers took off to search for the ships, and many more followed. The rest of the Genzan group left at 07:55, the Kanoya group at 08:14 and the Mihoro group at 08:20.

  At 00:50 on the 10th, Phillips had received a report from Rear Admiral Arthur Palliser of Japanese landings at Kuantan. He steered that way without signalling his intentions, since that would have revealed his position. Palliser did not anticipate this and requested no fighters over Kuantan. At 05:15 the ships turned toward objects on the horizon, thinking them the invasion force. They were a trawler towing barges. At 07:18 Prince of Wales catapulted a Supermarine Walrus, which flew to Kuantan, saw nothing and went on to Singapore.

  The Japanese bombers, not expecting the detour to Kuantan, were searching much farther south. At around 10:00, Tenedos, about 140 miles southeast of the main force, reported being attacked. Nine Mitsubishi G3M bombers of the Genzan Air Group, each carrying a 500 kg (1,100 lb) armour-piercing bomb, took her for a battleship. They wasted every bomb and scored no hit. At 10:15, Ensign Masato Hoashi, flying a scout plane to the north, sighted Force Z and radioed its exact position. The first bombers reached the ships less than an hour later.

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• 5. Torpedoes and Bombs

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  At 11:13, eight Nell bombers of the Mihoro Air Corps, carrying 250 kg (550 lb) bombs, attacked Repulse alone. The planes had spread out in the search and fuel was short, so they attacked as they arrived rather than massing. They scored seven near misses and one hit. That bomb pierced the hangar and upper deck and exploded in the marine mess area. It caused no serious damage, and Repulse stayed at 25 knots. Anti-aircraft fire damaged five of the eight bombers, and two had to turn back.

  Around 11:40, 17 Nells armed with torpedoes approached. Eight went for Repulse and nine for Prince of Wales, though one of those broke off and attacked Repulse instead. Prince of Wales sent eight torpedoes toward the flagship. Her gunners shot down one Nell and damaged three. Repulse took no hits in this wave. Prince of Wales took one, striking where her outer port propeller shaft left the hull. Some accounts claim two hits, but a 2007 diver survey of the wreck found only one. The shaft, still turning at maximum revolutions, twisted and ruptured the seals that kept seawater out of the shaft tunnel. The ship swallowed 2,400 tons of water, and her speed fell to 16 knots.

  Lt Takai of the 2nd Chutai, who attacked Repulse, later recalled that his crew searched the sky for enemy fighters. "Much to our surprise, not a single enemy plane was in sight." Meanwhile the damage to Prince of Wales spread. Lt Wildish, in charge of B Engine Room, testified that water rushed in when the shaft was restarted and forced its evacuation. Flooding reached the long shaft passage, Y Action Machinery Room, the port Diesel Dynamo Room, Y Boiler Room and other compartments aft. The ship took an 11.5-degree list to port, and the starboard 5.25-inch turrets could no longer depress far enough to fire at low-level attackers. Power failed to the aft turrets, to the pumps and to much of the ship's electrical system. With the inboard port shaft shut down, she could make 15 knots at best. Her electric steering no longer answered, and the ship was almost unmanageable.

  At about 12:20, 26 Betty bombers of the Kanoya Air Group attacked. They hit Prince of Wales with three more torpedoes on the starboard side. One struck at the very bow, one opposite B turret, and one abaft Y turret. That last hit bent the outer starboard propeller shaft inboard over the inner shaft and stopped it instantly. Some accounts say four hits, but the 2007 survey found three.

  At the same moment, Kanoya planes hit Repulse from both sides in what was called a hammer and anvil attack. She had already dodged 19 torpedoes. One now struck her port side, and at least three more followed within minutes. Captain William Tennant ordered the crew overboard. Over about six minutes she listed heavily to port, rolled over and sank stern-first at 12:33.

  Prince of Wales, down to one working propeller shaft, still fired with her S1 and S2 5.25-inch turrets when high-level bombing began at 12:41. Most bombs straddled her, but one went through her deck amidships and exploded in the Cinema Flat, where wounded men had gathered. She began to capsize to port, even though most torpedo hits had been to starboard. HMS Express came alongside to take off the wounded and non-fighting crew. Then the order to abandon ship was given. Prince of Wales rolled over, floated briefly upside down and sank stern-first at 13:18. As she rolled, her bilge keel scraped Express and nearly dragged the destroyer down with her.

  The Japanese scored eight torpedo hits from 49 torpedoes, four on each ship, while losing three aircraft in the attack itself. A fourth plane was so badly damaged that it crashed on landing. The 2007 survey confirmed four hits on Prince of Wales but only two on Repulse, because the amidships area where the other two were reported lies buried under the seabed. The ten Buffalo fighters assigned to Force Z arrived at 13:18, just as Prince of Wales went under. They met Ensign Hoashi's scout plane, which escaped them and flew back to confirm the sinkings. Had it been shot down, the Japanese might have believed the ships had survived and struck again.

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• 6. The Survivors

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  The final toll was 840 sailors lost. Repulse lost 513 of her 1,309 men, and Prince of Wales lost 327 of 1,612. The destroyers Electra and Vampire moved in to rescue Repulse survivors, while Express picked up men from Prince of Wales. Some rescued Repulse sailors went to action stations again so that Electra's crew could keep pulling men from the water. Repulse gunners manned the X and Y 4.7-inch (120 mm) mounts, and her dentist helped Electra's medical teams with the wounded. Nearly 1,000 Repulse survivors were saved, 571 of them by Electra. Vampire collected nine officers, 213 ratings and one civilian war correspondent from Repulse, plus two sailors from Prince of Wales.

  Admiral Phillips and Captain John Leach of Prince of Wales chose to go down with their ship. The senior survivors were her First Lieutenant, Lt Cdr A. G. Skipwith, and her chief engineer, Cdr. (E) L. J Goudy, both rescued by Express. Captain Tennant was pulled out by Vampire. Back in Singapore he was met by an equally distressed Air Vice-Marshal Pulford, who exclaimed, "My God, I hope you don't blame me for this. I had no idea where you were."

  Flight Lieutenant Vigors flew over the scene, and later described it in a report published in the London Gazette. The destroyers would need hours to collect hundreds of men clinging to wreckage in oily water, with another attack likely at any moment. Yet he saw that "every man waved and put up his thumb as I flew over him." After an hour, lack of petrol forced him to leave. He wrote that the sight shook him, because it was "something above human nature."

  On its way back to Singapore, Express passed Stronghold and four American destroyers heading north. The ships kept searching the area for more survivors but found none. During that search, the American destroyer Edsall boarded the fishing trawler the squadron had sighted that morning. She proved to be the Japanese vessel Kofuku Maru. She was taken to Singapore, where her crew was interned.

  Japanese bombers returning to their bases in French Indochina had a second wave being readied. It had been given no accurate news of the battle, and the attack was cancelled when Ensign Hoashi's reports confirmed the sinkings. On the following day, Lt Haruki Iki flew to the site and dropped two wreaths of flowers into the sea. One honoured his fellow members of the Kanoya Air Group. The other was for the British sailors.

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• 7. The Price of Air Power

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  The morning after the battle, Churchill took a phone call at his bedside from Sir Dudley Pound. Pound told him that both ships had been sunk by the Japanese, probably by aircraft, and that Tom Phillips had drowned. Churchill asked whether it was true, and Pound said there was no doubt. Churchill later wrote, "In all the war, I never received a more direct shock." He recalled that no British or American ships remained in the Indian Ocean or the Pacific, apart from the American survivors of Pearl Harbor hurrying back to California. "Across this vast expanse of waters, Japan was supreme, and we everywhere were weak and naked."

  Before noon on the 11th of December, Churchill told the House of Commons, and a full review of the Malayan situation followed the next day. With both capital ships gone, Singapore became a land fortress, something it was never meant to be, rather than a base for projecting naval power. The Eastern Fleet spent the rest of the invasion withdrawing its vessels to Ceylon and the Dutch East Indies. No battleships reinforced it until March 1942, when four Revenge class battleships arrived. The Japanese fleet faced only submarines until the Battle off Endau on the 27th of January 1942. Singapore fell on the 15th of February, in the largest surrender in British history.

  Prince of Wales and Repulse were the first capital ships, actively defending themselves while steaming in open sea, to be sunk solely by air power. Both were fast ships, unlike the slower American battleships caught at anchor at Pearl Harbor. Prince of Wales was new and carried modern anti-aircraft defences, though her advanced fire control system was largely inoperable during the battle. Together with Pearl Harbor, the loss left the Allies with only three operational capital ships in the Pacific, all of them aircraft carriers. Those events pushed the Allies, and the US Navy in particular, to recognise how potent aircraft were. Carriers proved instrumental in the counterattack.

  In November the Royal Navy had already lost the battleship HMS Barham and the carrier HMS Ark Royal to German U-boats. Days after the attack on Force Z, Italian frogmen disabled the battleships HMS Valiant and Queen Elizabeth in the Raid on Alexandria. Over December, the Allies lost approximately 38% of their operational battleship strength.

  Vigors stayed bitter toward Phillips long after the war. He remarked, "I reckon this must have been the last battle in which the Navy reckoned they could get along without the RAF." He had kept almost his whole squadron at readiness at Sembawang while the fleet was out. When the signal arrived that the fleet was under attack, he was already sitting in his cockpit. He believed fighters could have made, in his words, "one hell of a mess" of the slow, unescorted torpedo bombers.

  The sinkings, together with the swift Japanese advance across Asia, caused a massive loss of morale. It fed unrest in Britain's Asian colonies. One result was the Cocos Island mutiny by the local Sri Lankan garrison. It was put down, and its leaders were executed, making them the only Commonwealth soldiers executed for mutiny during the war.

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• 8. The Wrecks Today

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  In the first week of March 1942, a Japanese salvage team located Repulse with little difficulty. The Japanese had considered raising the ships, or at least recovering their radar equipment. The team brought up some anti-aircraft guns and shells, but was called away to more urgent business before anyone tried to lift her.

  After the war, the wrecks were found. Repulse lies in 183 feet (56 m) of water and Prince of Wales in 223 feet (68 m). Both rest in a nearly upside-down position. Buoys are attached to the propeller shafts, with Royal Navy flags tied to the lines, and divers change the flags regularly. The wrecks are Crown property. In 2002, an authorised team of Royal Navy and civilian divers removed the bell of Prince of Wales, fearing unauthorised divers would steal it. It is now displayed at the Merseyside Maritime Museum in Liverpool. By tradition, every Royal Navy ship that passes over the site performs a remembrance service.

  In May 2007, a survey of the exterior hulls drew wide interest from naval architects and marine engineers. For the first time it detailed the damage to Prince of Wales and the location and number of torpedo hits. The Marine Forensics Committee of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers analysed the findings. Its paper, "Death of a Battleship: A Reanalysis of the Tragic Loss of HMS Prince of Wales," was presented in London by William Garzke. In October 2014, The Daily Telegraph reported that scrap-metal dealers were extensively damaging both wrecks with explosives.

  On the 10th of December 2011, a memorial was dedicated at the National Memorial Arboretum at Alrewas, near Lichfield, Staffordshire. A few surviving former crew members attended. The last living veteran of the sinking of HMS Repulse, James "Jim" Wren, died on the 4th of February 2026 at the age of 105. He was also the oldest veteran of the Royal Marines.

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