Free Scapegoat: The Death of Prince of Wales and Repulse by Dr Martin Stephen

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 6
    The Ships: Prince of Wales
    ‘… the weakest battleships completed by any nation during the Second World War era…’ 1
    P rince of Wales was a new King George V class battleship, of which five were to be completed. It was the second unit to be commissioned in 1941, King George V having completed on 1 October 1940. From the outset they were seen as being outclassed by the bigger German Bismarck and Tirpitz. Churchill complained that the fact of three KGVs being needed to offset Tirpitz was, ‘… a serious reflection upon the design of our latest ships, which through being undergunned and weakened by hangars in the middle of their citadels, are evidently judged unfit to fight their opposite number in a single ship action.’ 2
    This was slightly unfair – only by