Scapegoat: The Death of Prince of Wales and Repulse (23 page)

Phillips had not had any combat experience himself, and for this reason alone was a surprising choice. Historians have in general stopped at this point, and not noted a further area in which, outwardly, the appointment of Phillips was bizarre. Phillips was widely recognized as having the best brain of any senior officer at the time. He had clearly made an immense impact on the quality of Staff work at the Admiralty, was widely seen as irreplaceable and was also highly valued by the beleaguered Dudley Pound, who used him as his right-hand man. There were a number of other British Admirals in 1941 who had shown they could fight, in addition to Layton, Somerville and Cunningham: Harwood, the victor of the Battle of the River Plate, was another. Yet something prompted the powers-that-be to send the country’s most intelligent Staff officer to command a highly vulnerable force that contained one of the Royal Navy’s most valuable
materiel
assets, the ‘unsinkable’
Prince of Wales,
with one of its most valuable human assets – its most brilliant Staff officer – on board it. The most common explanation is that Churchill, who had fallen out with Phillips over the bombing of Germany and the Greece/Crete Campaign, had repeated his behaviour of the First World War when he had fallen out with Sir Doveton Sturdee, and sent him to an overseas command. It is a theory whose main strength lies simply in its having been repeated so much over so many years. It offers much more of an explanation of why the appointment was made if Phillips was chosen on his political and diplomatic skills, not on his ability to mix it with the Japanese. If there was the hope of what has been called a ‘secret alliance’ – one that would come into effect before hostilities and either act as a deterrent or, in the event of war breaking out, see Britain and America acting as one, it was political dynamite for the strong isolationist lobby in the States, and if mishandled could have done serious if not indeed lethal damage to Roosevelt’s Presidency. Tom Phillips could claim to have moved in the company of Britain’s political leadership and be in their confidence, know their minds and act as their spokesman and messenger. If this was why Phillips was chosen, Churchill and the Admiralty got two for two for the price of one; their diplomat seems to have found it quite straightforward to change overnight into an aggressive raiding force leader.

Three further facts give strength to the idea that the sending of Force Z was conceived more as a diplomatic than a military mission. Firstly, it has been accepted without comment as unremarkable by historians that on his way out to Singapore Phillips stopped off and had a private conversation with South Africa’s leader at that time, General Smuts. But why did he do so? Why was this meeting deemed important enough to delay the arrival of the Commander of British naval forces to an increasingly troubled region? Brilliant man though he was, Smuts was hardly in a position to advise a British Admiral on how to handle his ships or meet the military threat of the Japanese. Such a meeting, and the importance attached to it, makes much more sense if its purpose was to discuss wider strategy and the intricacies of a defence pact with the United States with the man Churchill admired above all other leaders of the time, and one of the few he trusted enough to know his real mind. Smuts thought highly of Phillips when they met (most people who had one-to-one conversations with him did), but his comments are usually given as proof of the idiocy of sending out Force Z, with Smuts being cast as the prophetic voice who predicted disaster. Smuts sent a telegram to Churchill after he and Phillips met in Pretoria:

‘Admiral Tom Phillips has been here for most useful talks and will reach Cape Town before noon today. He has much impressed me and appears admirable choice for most important position… In particular, I am concerned over present disposition of two fleets, one based on Singapore and other on Hawaii, each separately inferior to Japanese navy which thus will have an opportunity to defeat them in turn. This matter is so vital that I would press for rearrangement of dispositions as soon as war appears imminent. If Japanese are really nippy there is here opening for first class disaster.’
³

This signal makes perfect sense if Phillips had made it clear that his mission was to forge a pre-emptive alliance between the USA with both fleets having their main base at Singapore and a forward base at Manila. Smuts is in effect agreeing with what may have been Churchill’s plan, but telling him to hurry up with it and seal the knot
before
hostilities broke out. What is rarely commented on in the many books that refer to this telegram is that it does not suggest joining forces as such, but seems to accept that it is contrary to good strategic sense to have the two fleets in separate bases. In other words, Smuts does not suggest a united fleet at Singapore as a new idea, but argues for the early completion of an idea already in place.

Secondly, Phillips’s first action on arriving in the Far East was to rush to see the American Admiral Hart in Manila. Was this the action of someone whose prime job was to bring a fighting force up to full readiness? What was so important to Phillips to mean that out of everything else it was the Americans who could not wait?

Thirdly, after being silent about the ships he had been supplied with, the moment war breaks out Phillips asked for an ‘R’ class battleship, detached the cruiser
Exeter
from convoy duties to join him, and asked for the Australian cruisers
Achilles
and
Hobart
, as well as complaining of a serious lack of modern cruisers at his disposal. The inevitable reaction of an Admiral to a war situation? Or the actions of an Admiral suddenly having to assemble a fleet that might have to fight rather than merely impress?

Whatever the truth of Phillips’s mission, his appointment was unpopular within the Navy. Admirals Layton and Somerville were scathing in their criticism, but both could reasonably have expected to have been offered Phillips’s command. Admiral A. B. Cunningham was also critical. Part of this may have been connected to Cunningham’s dislike of anyone he saw as a rival: ‘There was probably a considerable element of jealousy in the dislike [by Cunningham of Phillips]. I often noticed, with surprise a strong streak of jealousy where other “up and coming” Flag Officers were concerned. Surprising in a man of such sterling qualities.’
⁴

But Cunningham probably shared other reasons for his disapproval with senior officers. Phillips was a Staff officer, and Staff officers rarely win popularity contests among those who are not privileged. He had been a friend of Churchill’s, a cause for suspicion amongst some. Phillips, a small man, did not fit into the very masculine worship of physical prowess that was part of the naval culture of the time. He was closely associated with an Admiralty resented by a number of fighting admirals for its supposed interference in naval operations. He was also accused, probably unjustly, of being a bad seaman. Part of the problem may have been the jealousy, perhaps inevitable in a relatively small and very close-knit service, of a man who had received promotion so young and so rapidly. Ironically, Phillips had fallen out with Churchill over the latter’s support for the bombing of Germany and over the evacuation of Crete, whilst one of his critics, Admiral A. B. Cunningham had caved in to Government pressure to withdraw his opposition to the Greece and Crete disaster.

Phillips not only lacked relevant experience in the eyes of the Navy. A number of historians made much of what they saw as a reputation as a difficult personality to work with, and someone unwilling to listen to anyone who disagreed with him:

‘Sir Tom Spencer Vaughan Phillips, KCB, aged fifty-three
,
had been behind a Whitehall desk since 1939 and he had last experienced action in 1917. A very small man – he needed to stand on a box when on the compass platform and was nicknamed “Tom Thumb” – he was notorious for his angry impatience and, more seriously, his strong conviction that aircraft were no match for properly handled warships, arguing that only greater resolution on the ships’ commanding officers was needed to defeat the dive-bomber. He had always refused to listen to anyone who tried to persuade him that fighter protection was necessary for all ships operating within reach of enemy bombers.’
⁵

On a minor point, the comment about Phillips standing on a box on the bridge seems little more than reporting a joke by ‘Bomber’ Harris as fact. On more important matters, it is now clear that Phillips had changed his mind about the vulnerability of surface ship to air attack by mid-1941, following the massive damage suffered by Royal Navy warships from German aircraft in the battle for Greece and evacuation of Crete, in which his own son had been heavily involved. It is simply untrue to write: ‘Yet it is probable that Phillips’s views were considerably more out of touch and mistaken than those of most of his contemporaries.’
⁶

Admiral A. B. Cunningham, Phillips’s most famous contemporary, wrote in favour of the battleship and was an opponent of technology, and intellectually if not experientially is one of many Admirals who might reasonably have under estimated the threat to surface ships. Commentators have applied the benefit of hindsight to the loss of
Prince of Wales
and
Repulse
to culpable levels. In particular, they have underestimated an action in which
Prince of Wales
was herself involved, Operation Halberd, or the successful attempt to get a convoy through to Malta in September 1941. It is true that the three battleships included in the escort had the benefit of the aircraft carrier
Ark Royal,
but the ships fought off brave and persistent bomb and torpedo attacks from the Italian air force, which itself was the service arm of a modern nation state. Only one merchant ship was sunk.
Nelson
took a torpedo hit, but all it did was slow her down, and ‘there was no hint that well-fought battleships had much to fear from aircraft.’
⁷
Phillips was
not
a dinosaur when it came to shrugging off the dangers of air attack, though it makes a better story if he is portrayed as being one.

Furthermore, it is probable that no one knew more about what had been learnt about naval matters and tactics since the start of the war than Tom Phillips, sitting as he had at the nerve centre of Royal Navy operations.

What Phillips and no-one else knew was that his flagship contained far more flaws than the superstitious dislike of the Navy for a ship that had broken off the action against the
Bismarck,
or a crew who had never had the chance properly to work up. The 14-inch main armament quadruple turrets were never made to function properly in any ship of the class. The 5.25-inch secondary armament was too heavy for anti-aircraft work, and lacked tachometric directors and fire control. The short-range anti-aircraft armament tended to be effective only after an attacking aircraft had launched its munitions load, and jammed in tropical heat because the ammunition separated out. The ship was too small for its ‘torpedo-bulge’ protection to be fully effective, and aspects of the design made the class prone to flooding. A bomb falling between the ship and the dockside in 1940 may have weakened a section of the hull significantly more than was realized at the time. The class had a large turning radius, making them more vulnerable to bomb and torpedo attack. Most crucially, the ship’s electrical systems and hence its ability to defend and save itself were particularly prone to battle damage.

As important as anything else was the fact that as a result of a failure of Intelligence, Phillips and the Royal Navy in general did not realize the range, hitting power and efficiency of Japanese aircraft. There is also some evidence that the Admiralty and Singapore may have known that there were Japanese torpedo-bombers in range, but failed to pass this on to Phillips. Phillips was also sailing to a military base whose organization descended in to near-chaos when hostilities broke out and whose command structures were confused and riven by jealousies. In particular, the RAF was vulnerable to Japanese invasion and had aircraft more suited to a museum than a forward front. Phillips and his ships were going largely to be on their own.

Phillips’s ships were initially designated ‘Force G’, later changed to ‘Force Z’.
Prince of Wales
set sail from the Clyde at 1308 hours on 25 October 1941, with the destroyers
Electra
and
Express
who were to accompany her, and
Hesperus
as additional protection for the first part of the voyage through dangerous northern waters.
Repulse
was already in Far Eastern waters. It appears that the Admiralty had intended
Prince of Wales
to halt its journey at Cape Town to allow for a review of the situation in the Far East. No document trail has been found that explains why this plan seems to have been dropped, with the result that the ship steamed on to Singapore. The most common assumption has been that the cautious Dudley Pound saw a South African stopover as a last chance to review the mission, but was overruled by Churchill and the ships hurried on and through.

Phillips refused the chance to acquire a carrier, albeit a lesser one than the
Indomitable,
a decision for which he has been criticized:

‘Yet on the very day that the
Prince of Wales
departed from South African waters the veteran carrier
Hermes
had arrived at Simonstown. She carried only 15 aircraft and her maximum designed speed was a disappointing 25 knots. But she had the ability to provide a modicum of seaborne air support in the shape of Swordfish torpedo-bombers and reconnaissance machines. And even a little was better than none.’
⁸

This criticism is entirely unfounded.
Hermes
had not just ‘arrived’ at Simonstown. She had docked there for what was technically a refit, but which in all practical terms were serious repairs, including to her old and ailing engines. She was old, slow and unarmoured, and such serviceable aircraft as she carried would have been no use against the modern, fast and high altitude Bettys and Nells. For once, it does not matter what Phillips’s role actually was.
Hermes
would not have impressed the Americans, deterred the Japanese or fought them. As for the latter, adding
Hermes
to Force Z would have been akin to asking a boxer to take his aged aunt in to the ring alongside him. For much the same reason, Phillips also refused further reinforcement, this time of an older battleship that the Admiralty had wished to form the core of the Far Eastern fleet: