HMS Prince of Wales

1941

South China Sea, Japanese torpedo bombers, Force Z Location: South China Sea, off the east coast of Malaya · Coordinates: 3.57°N 104.50°E · Casualties: 327 · Survivors: 1,285 · Depth: 68 m · Cause: aerial torpedo — Sunk together with HMS Repulse by Japanese Navy land-based torpedo bombers off Kuantan, Malaya, on the afternoon of 10 December 1941. Multiple torpedoes struck her port quarter, jamming her rudder and flooding the port engine rooms. Capsized at 13:18 after 80 minutes under attack. · Fate: war grave · protected · Type: battleship · King George V class · Tonnage: 43,786 tons · Crew: 1612 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1939 Royal Navy King George V-class battleship, flagship of Force Z, sent to Singapore to deter a Japanese advance on Malaya. Sunk together with the battlecruiser HMS Repulse by Japanese aircraft off Kuantan on 10 December 1941. The first battleship in history sunk at sea by aircraft alone, three days after the entry of Japan into the war. 327 dead including Admiral Tom Phillips, who had been warned but had not believed that capital ships could be destroyed by bombers. The loss of her and Repulse ended forever the assumption that the battleship was the backbone of sea power. The Vessel HMS Prince of Wales was a King George V-class battleship of the Royal Navy, the second of her class, laid down at Cammell Laird's Birkenhead yard on 1 January 1937 and commissioned on 19 January 1941. She was 227 metres long, 43,786 tons deep-load displacement, armed with ten 14-inch guns in three turrets, and equipped with the first operational radar fire-control system in the British fleet. She was the most technologically advanced battleship Britain had ever built; she was also rushed into service. Her working-up period at Scapa Flow in early 1941 was truncated to six weeks because the Royal Navy needed her urgently. Her 14-inch guns, a new design, were producing recurrent mechanical failures; her quadruple A-turret had been a particular and ongoing source of trouble. Vickers engineers and civilian contractors were still aboard her, still making adjustments to her main battery, when she was ordered to sea in May 1941 in company with the battlecruiser HMS Hood to intercept the German battleship Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen breaking out into the Atlantic. The Denmark Strait engagement of 24 May 1941 was her baptism of fire. She fired 55 14-inch shells at Bismarck and scored three hits that would ultimately contribute to the German ship's destruction three days later; she was hit by seven 15-inch and 8-inch shells in return. Her A-turret malfunctioned after three rounds and could not be returned to action during the engagement. She suffered 13 dead and 11 wounde The Disaster The first Japanese strike, 25 Nell bombers carrying torpedoes, attacked from the south at 11:15 on 10 December 1941. Prince of Wales maneuvered hard to port to present her broadside to the incoming aircraft; a single torpedo struck her starboard quarter at 11:44, near the propeller shaft, and jammed her port rudder at 15 degrees. She could no longer steer a straight course. The subsequent waves of Japanese attack aircraft, six groups of Nells and Bettys over the following hour, found her increasingly unable to maneuver. Between 12:45 and 13:00 she was struck by four more torpedoes on her port side, all at or below the waterline. The flooding could not be contained; her list to port grew progressively through the early afternoon. Captain Leach made the decision to order the evacuation at 13:15. The surviving destroyers Express and Electra came alongside to take off her crew under the standing gunfire of the Japanese attack. At 13:20 the Japanese delivered the final strike against Prince of Wales. A 500-kilogram bomb struck her armoured upper deck near X-turret and detonated below. The ship rolled onto her port side at 13:18 and capsized. She sank at 13:20 on 10 December 1941, bow-first, 25 nautical miles east of Kuantan, Malaya. Admiral Phillips, Captain Leach, 24 officers, and 303 ratings went down with her. 1,196 of her crew of 1,523 survived. HMS Repulse was struck by four torpedoes in the same attack sequence and sank at 12:33 on the same afternoon, 40 minutes before Princ