Sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse information
December 1941 naval engagement in the Pacific Theater of WW2
Sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse
Part of the Pacific War of World War II
Prince of Wales (left, front) and Repulse (left, behind) after being hit by torpedoes on 10 December 1941. A destroyer, HMS Express, is manoeuvring in the foreground.
The sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse was a naval engagement in World War II, as part of the war in the Pacific, that took place on 10 December 1941 in the South China Sea off the east coast of the British colonies of Malaya (present-day Malaysia) and the Straits Settlements (present-day Singapore and its coastal towns), 70 miles (61 nautical miles; 110 kilometres) east of Kuantan, Pahang. The Royal Navy battleship HMS Prince of Wales and battlecruiser HMS Repulse were sunk by land-based bombers and torpedo bombers of the Imperial Japanese Navy. In Japan, the engagement was referred to as the Naval Battle of Malaya (マレー沖海戦, Marē-oki kaisen).
The objective of Force Z, which consisted of one battleship, one battlecruiser and four destroyers, was to intercept the Japanese invasion fleet in the South China Sea north of Malaya. The task force sailed without air support. Although the British had a close encounter with Japanese heavy surface units, the force failed to find and destroy the main convoy. On their return to Singapore they were attacked in open waters and sunk by long-range torpedo bombers. The commander of Force Z, Admiral Sir Tom Phillips, elected to maintain radio silence and an alert was not sent (by the Repulse) until one hour after the first Japanese attack.
With the attack on Pearl Harbor only two days earlier, on the other side of the International Date Line, the Malayan engagement illustrated the effectiveness of aerial attacks against even the heaviest of naval assets if they were without air cover. This added to the importance for the Allies of the three United States Navy aircraft carriers in the Pacific: USS Enterprise, Lexington, and Saratoga.[N 1] The sinking of the two ships severely weakened the British Eastern Fleet in Singapore, and the Japanese fleet was engaged only by submarines until the Battle off Endau on 27 January 1942. Singapore itself would fall to the Japanese on 15 February, leading to the largest surrender in British history.
^Paul S. Dull (2007), page 40
^3 aircraft were shot down in the attack, 1 crash-landed later, and 2 scout aircraft failed to return from their
missions.
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Global Information
Tom Phillips †
Niichi Nakanishi
