On 10 December 1941 Japanese navy bombers and torpedo bombers flying from Indochina sank the British battleship Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser Repulse off Kuantan, Malaya, in about two hours. Some 840 men died, Admiral Sir Tom Phillips among them. They were the first capital ships sunk at sea by aircraft.1
Battle of Dungeness, 1652: Tromp sweeps the Channel
10 December 1652 · 373 years ago
A Dutch fleet under Maarten Tromp, fresh from escorting a large merchant convoy, met Robert Blake's weaker English fleet off Dungeness in Kent in the First Anglo-Dutch War. Blake was beaten and slipped away at night, leaving the Dutch briefly in control of the Channel.
Read the full story of Battle of Dungeness, 1652: Tromp sweeps the Channel ›Sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse
10 December 1941 · 84 years ago
Force Z
Prince of Wales, flying the flag of Admiral Sir Tom Phillips, sailed from Singapore at 5:35 p.m. on 8 December with Repulse and four destroyers, a squadron known as Force Z, to strike at the Japanese transports landing troops in northern Malaya. Whether the ships had any hope of air cover is told differently. Lawrence Spinetta, writing in Air & Space Forces Magazine, says Phillips believed so strongly in the battleship that he made no effort to arrange it. The official records say that Phillips asked for fighter protection off Singora on 10 December and was told that it could not be provided.2
Once Japanese aircraft had sighted the squadron on the evening of 9 December, Phillips gave up the attack and turned back. Then a signal reported an enemy landing at Kuantan, and at 12:52 a.m. on 10 December Force Z turned toward it at 25 knots. The report was false: when the destroyer Express looked into Kuantan after the squadron arrived there at 8 a.m., she reported complete peace.3
The air attack
The Japanese bombers came from bases in southern Indochina, around Saigon. The first attack, a high-level bombing run on Repulse, came shortly after 11 a.m.. Torpedo bombers followed in waves. At 11:44 a torpedo struck Prince of Wales on the port side aft: both port propeller shafts stopped, the steering gear was damaged, and she was never again under full control. Repulse, hit by several torpedoes, rolled over and sank at 12:33 p.m.. Prince of Wales was hit again, and at about 1:20 p.m. she capsized and sank. Fighters from Singapore arrived just as she went down, after the attackers had gone.4
Repulse lost 27 officers and 486 men. The destroyers picked up the survivors, Captain Tennant of Repulse among them, but not Admiral Phillips. With 327 lost from Prince of Wales, the toll comes to 840.5
The National Maritime Museum notes that the two ships were the first capital ships to be sunk at sea by aircraft. Spinetta stresses the point: earlier air attacks, at Taranto and Pearl Harbor, had struck ships lying in port, while these were under way and fighting back on the high seas.6
