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

Royal in 1941, as it was in the sinking of Prince of Wales . It is thought to have been a weakness of the Imperial Japanese Navy as well.
    The Sinking
    Much more is known now about the body-blow torpedo hits that sank Prince of Wales as the result of informed dives on the wreck. Before discussing the design weaknesses of the class, there is one feature of the sinking that has to be recognized above all. In the first torpedo attack, a Japanese torpedo struck the ship under the stern at a point where the hull was almost concave. A few feet to one side and the torpedo would have missed. The resultant blast was so concentrated under the hull that survivors saw no great plume of water as they did with other hits. The ship was lifted bodily out of the water, the upward thrust of the explosion being countered at this point by the massive weight of the aft quadruple 14-inch gun turret. The impact snapped off the ‘A’ bracket that secured the propeller shaft to the hull, and what happened then is graphically described in one of the earlier accounts of the sinking:
    ‘A massive hole had been torn in the hull but, much more seriously, the 240-foot shaft of the port outer propeller had been distorted and, still churning viciously, had fractured bulkheads, riveting and fuel-piping along its entire length before it could be stopped. Within minutes flooding had disabled several engine-, boiler- and machine rooms. Diesel and turbo dynamos failed, depriving salvage pumps of electrical power. Lighting, communications and ventilation failed, the steering-motors were dead and four of the eight AA turrets were inoperative. Prince of Wales … was crippled, with a 10° degree list, wallowing at 15 knots and with her quarterdeck only two feet above sea-level.’ 4
    This one hit effectively killed Prince of Wales, its catastrophic effect not sinking it, but leaving it totally vulnerable to the subsequent attacks that did. Was it, as has sometimes been said, a ‘lucky’ hit? It was not luck that trained the crack Japanese pilots, or saw Japan invest so heavily in aircraft and torpedoes that significantly out-matched those of the Allies. It was rather the fortunes of war, and illustration that in war protagonists sometimes get the luck they work for.
    Human Error
    It was at one stage fashionable to blame the loss on poor damage control, and in particular on failure to switch off power to the damaged shaft fast enough. Defence against this claim has been helped by the fact that one of Prince of Wales ’s leading damage control officers survived the sinking. In fact it seems unlikely that failure to withdraw power from the shaft was a significant factor. The vast port outer-shaft was revolving at 204 revolutions a minute, and once forced out of alignment it took only seconds for the shaft to destroy far more than had been destroyed by the actual explosion.
    There were damage control issues that did not help. Too much time was taken trying to lay power-lines to affected areas instead of using the ship’s other ring main to remedy the problems, the same issue which had been a factor in the sinking of Ark Royal . Some watertight doors were left open by crewmen rushing to escape the flooding. Perhaps more crucially, a Commissioned Warrant Officer lost his head and flooded the after magazines, being stopped only when he was in the process of repeating the action for the forward magazines. 5 No one likes to record these incidents, which do not typify a crew who showed great bravery and devotion to duty. Perhaps all that can be said about the inevitable, understandable and occasional human failures shown after the ship was hit was that they did not sink Prince of Wales , but they certainly did not help keep her afloat.
    Origins of the King George V Class Battleships
    When the Department of Naval Construction was asked in 1935 to submit draft proposals for a new class of battleship it was seventeen years and a world economic depression away from the last