Scapegoat: The Death of Prince of Wales and Repulse Read online

  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

  It 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 ne
eded 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.