Pacific War: In a few hours, England’s naval power was history

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was certain that the Royal Navy’s battleships would pose “that vague threat that heavily armed capital ships with unknown positions pose to enemy fleet plans.” He identified the imperial admirals in Tokyo as the originators of this threat, who had been systematically expanding their presence in the Pacific since the summer of 1941.

In October, against fierce opposition from his own cabinet, Churchill finally pushed through a massive reinforcement of the British Navy in Asia, even though the fleet in Europe was still the most important weapon against a German invasion war. A modern battleship and a modernized battlecruiser were sent to Singapore together with a destroyer escort. But instead of threatening the Japanese, the ships became their victims.

The fast battleship “HMS Prince of Wales” was one of the most modern ships in the Royal Navy. Shortly after her commissioning in January 1941, she took part in the hunt for the German “Bismarck” in May. While the “Hood”, which accompanied her, was destroyed by the “Bismarck”, the “Prince of Wales” was able to withdraw just in time. She displaced 44,000 tons, had ten 36.6-centimeter guns and could run at a good 27 knots.

The “Repulse”, which was commissioned shortly after the Battle of Jutland in 1916, had been rebuilt several times. Above all, its armour had been reinforced. It had six 38-centimetre guns, displaced a good 30,000 tonnes and could reach speeds of up to 31 knots. Both ships were, it seemed, equipped with more than enough anti-aircraft guns, so that an aircraft carrier escort was not required. The “HMS Indomitable”, which had originally been intended for the operation, had previously run aground and had to be repaired.

The two capital ships were intended to simulate a strength in the huge port facilities of the colonial fortress of Singapore that they did not actually possess. The most important British naval base in the Pacific had neither a combat-ready garrison nor suitable warships that could support the so-called Force Z. The few cruisers that were available were too slow or not operational. Even the few dozen aircraft that Singapore had at its disposal were in no way a match for the modern Japanese types.

Commander of Force Z, War Admiral Tom Phillips. When he heard of the Japanese air attack on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, he decided to put his ships to sea, even if he could not be supported by land-based aircraft. The Royal Navy still assumed that its capital ships would move under a kind of protective bellow of anti-aircraft shells.

When a reconnaissance plane reported that a Japanese convoy was approaching the Gulf of Siam, Phillips had his target. He immediately headed north at top speed, burning so much fuel that one of his four destroyers had to be sent back. “The Prince of Wales looked magnificent,” recalled one survivor from the Repulse. “I felt a sense of anticipation as I imagined her driving her force between the enemy’s landing craft and accompanying warships.”

Despite all the excitement, the Japanese submarine that had been shadowing the fleet since December 9 remained undetected. The Japanese had also been fully informed by agents on the island of Singapore of the deficiencies in its defenses. So Phillips searched in vain for Japanese landing sites, while he himself became the hunted. On December 10, at around eleven o’clock, his ships were sighted by Japanese aircraft.

Then everything happens very quickly. The “Repulse” was able to fend off the first wave of torpedo bombers. But a horizontal bomber attacking from above found its target. Although the hit did not cause any significant damage, the ship’s zigzag course, which it used to try to avoid the enemy torpedoes, caused it to move away from the “Prince of Wales”.

The ship now drew all of the Japanese fire. One torpedo did not penetrate the armor, but its detonation damaged a drive shaft, which jumped out of its bearings. Finally, water entered the generator rooms, knocking out the power supply to the rear of the ship. This meant that the gunners could hardly operate the guns. The devilish chain reaction had left the huge ship almost defenseless. “It seemed impossible that these fragile aircraft could do such a thing,” wrote the dismayed observer on the “Repulse.”

After more torpedoes hit the battleship, it moved to the side. During the evacuation, the still intact “Repulse” was hit by several torpedoes and 513 sailors were dragged into the depths. The “Prince of Wales” soon followed with 327 crew members. The survivors were lucky to have jumped into the water earlier. They were able to be rescued by the destroyers.

After destroying the American Pacific Fleet on December 7 (although without the aircraft carriers), the Japanese had also succeeded in eliminating the fleet with which Great Britain had wanted to demonstrate its power in the region. The vast Pacific seemed to lie at the Emperor’s feet. His generals and admirals pushed ahead with their lightning campaigns in Malaysia, China, the Philippines and Indonesia.

Unlike in Pearl Harbor, where the sunken ships had been anchored, the attackers had succeeded in eliminating a war-ready fleet on the move. In just a few hours, the battleship’s centuries-long success story had come to an abrupt end. “During the entire war, no unexpected blow struck me,” Churchill described his horror in retrospect. Only later “did I grasp the immense significance of this news… Japan ruled the vast expanses of these oceans without restriction; we were naked and exposed wherever you looked.”

Churchill’s most dangerous enemy in Berlin also saw this. “This is the greatest sensation of the naval war so far,” Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary. “Japan now has absolute supremacy in the Pacific Ocean.” Hitler saw it that way too. Although his Wehrmacht suffered a heavy defeat against the Red Army just outside Moscow and was pushed back hundreds of kilometers, some historians believe that the news of the sinking of the British fleet in East Asia was a reason for Hitler’s presumptuous speech on December 11, 1941. In it, he declared war on the USA.

This article was first published in 2018.