HMS Repulse

1941

South China Sea, alongside Prince of Wales Location: South China Sea, off Kuantan, Malaya · Coordinates: 3.67°N 104.33°E · Casualties: 508 · Survivors: 796 · Depth: 58 m · Cause: aerial torpedo — Sunk together with HMS Prince of Wales by Japanese Navy land-based torpedo bombers off Kuantan, Malaya, on 10 December 1941. Her older, less protected hull folded under five torpedo hits in quick succession. Capsized at 12:33, an hour before Prince of Wales. · Fate: war grave · protected · Type: battlecruiser · Renown class · Tonnage: 37,400 tons · Crew: 1304 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1916 Royal Navy battlecruiser of Great War vintage, partnered with HMS Prince of Wales in Force Z. Attacked together with her flagship by Japanese land-based torpedo bombers off Kuantan, Malaya, on the afternoon of 10 December 1941. Five torpedoes struck in quick succession; her twenty-five-year-old hull folded in under twenty minutes, capsizing at 12:33. 508 dead of 1,304. Admiral Phillips's stubborn refusal to call for fighter cover from Singapore remains a disputed command decision in Royal Navy historiography. The Vessel HMS Repulse was a Renown-class battlecruiser of the Royal Navy, commissioned at the John Brown yard at Clydebank on 18 August 1916, during the First World War. She was 242 metres long, 37,400 tons standard displacement, and armed with six 15-inch guns in three twin turrets. She was designed for the high speed characteristic of the battlecruiser concept: 32 knots on four shafts, faster than any contemporary battleship. Her original 1916 design had emphasised speed and armament at the expense of armour; her belt armour of 6 inches was substantially thinner than contemporary battleships. She had been rebuilt between 1933 and 1936 in a significant modernisation that had added approximately 9,000 tons of improved deck armour, a new anti-aircraft armament, and modern fire-control systems. As modernised she was approximately equal in protection to a contemporary battleship and retained her original speed advantage. By 1941 she was one of three surviving Royal Navy battlecruisers (with HMS Renown and HMS Hood), all of which had been heavily modernised in the 1930s. Her commanding officer from February 1941 was Captain William Tennant, 51 years old, a career Royal Navy officer who had commanded HMS Kelly with distinction in 1939-40. The Disaster At 11:15 on 10 December 1941, 85 Japanese naval aircraft of the 22nd Air Flotilla of the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service reached the Force Z position. The strike, launched from bases in southern Indochina, comprised Mitsubishi G3M Nell and G4M Betty bombers carrying a mix of aerial torpedoes and 500-kilo bombs. Repulse's initial anti-aircraft response was described by her surviving officers as effective: her modernised 20mm Oerlikons and 40mm pom-poms put up a substantial volume of close-in fire. The first wave of Japanese bombers, eight G4M Bettys, attacked Prince of Wales and scored a single torpedo hit. The second wave, six more G4Ms, attacked Repulse at 11:54 but scored no hits. Repulse had, at this point, conducted evasive manoeuvring of the highest order; Captain Tennant was universally praised in subsequent British naval writing for his ship-handling in the opening phase of the attack. The third Japanese attack wave at 12:30 was the decisive one. Nine G4M Bettys approached Repulse from two directions simultaneously; she could not evade both. Four Type 91 aerial torpedoes struck her port side in quick succession between 12:33 and 12:35. The four hits were distributed along her port side from amidships aft, overlapping her torpedo protection system. Repulse listed to port immediately. Her older hull, even as modernised, had not been designed against the kind of concentrated multi-torpedo attack that was now directed at her. Her port-side watertight subdivision failed