Scapegoat: The Death of Prince of Wales and Repulse (11 page)

Perhaps the fairest summary is to say that Churchill did not sink
Prince of Wales
and
Repulse
by his actions, but by his inaction. By his failure to act, he did not sink them: he simply failed to keep them afloat.

However, there is a third explanation as to why he sent out Force Z in the first place, and why he was reluctant to send it into hiding.

‘The Secret Alliance’

In the section below I am deeply indebted to the work of Alan Matthews, whose exhaustive research and use of original sources reflect the best traditions of historical scholarship.
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There are two questions surrounding the whole issue of the defence of Singapore that have not been satisfactorily answered. The first is why Churchill, belligerent to the core and always unwilling to cede ground, should have knowingly diverted resources from Singapore over a long period. The second is why Tom Phillips was chosen to command the force. It is not only that he lacked recent combat or sea-going experience. After many years of peace few Admirals at the time had this, and some of those had raised doubts about their ability by their conduct in the actions in which they were involved. The promotion to senior rank of one who had seen victorious combat – Harwood, the victor of the Battle of the River Plate fought against the German pocket battleship
Graf Spee –
had not been a success. Furthermore, Phillips’s position at the Admiralty meant that he was among the best informed of all senior officers as to what had been learnt so far in the war at sea. What makes his posting extraordinary is that he was widely recognized as the most brilliant staff officer in the Royal Navy and was heavily relied on by the First Sea Lord, Dudley Pound, who it is clear would sorely miss his support. So if, as is commonly argued, Force Z was simply a deterrent force that would have failed in its job if it had to fight, why did Pound and Churchill consent to their most brilliant staff officer exchanging a place at the heart of Britain’s maritime war for a seat on the Admiral’s bridge of
Prince of Wales
? This is not to say that Phillips manifested any just cause or reason for thinking that he would be as effective in a fight as any British Admiral.

The answer may lie in the consequences of the secret staff talks President Roosevelt allowed to take place in Washington in early 1941, the so-called American-British Conferences (ABC). These were held in the crucial context of two viewpoints. Firstly, it was not only Churchill who believed that on its own Britain could not defend Malaya. In October 1940 the British Chiefs of Staff warned of the strength that Japan could bring to a southward drive, not least of all in the form of the Imperial Japanese Navy:

‘In the absence of United States support, we could take no effective military action in the present circumstances to prevent Japanese penetration of Indo-China and Thailand. The greatest deterrent to Japanese aggression is the threat of American naval action on their lines of communication, and it goes without saying that we should use every endeavour to secure American co-operation in intimidating Japan.’
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It seems likely that in Churchill they were preaching to the converted. Secondly, it was not only the British who would face overstretch in the event of a war against Germany and Japan. The American Navy, big as it was, had to cope with the vast expanse of the Pacific as well as the Atlantic Oceans, and recognized that in the Philippines they had a potentially indefensible asset. In the light of this the Chief of US Naval Operations, Admiral Stark, had produced the Plan D Memorandum.
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In this it was stated that in the event of the United States becoming involved in the war America would prioritize the European theatre, with it playing a subordinate defensive role to the British in the Far East, alongside Dutch naval forces. As part of this strategy American naval forces would be sent in to the Atlantic, thus allowing the Royal Navy to reinforce its Far Eastern fleet. The British delegation hoped to persuade the Americans to adopt Singapore as a major base of their Far Eastern fleet. Admiral Stark rejected this, on the grounds that it would not provide for an effective defence of US interests. Yet given other opinion at the time and given the decision to make the Atlantic the primary area of operations, there was a sense that the Americans at this time might be prepared to accept the loss of the Philippines and base their main fleet at Singapore. Other points of disagreement were British reluctance to reinforce Hong Kong as a submarine base and let it be used by the Americans, and issues related to Brooke-Popham controlling allied forces. However, the major concern seems to have been the Royal Navy’s failure to provide an initial force of ships in the Far East. Churchill was content to leave the Singapore issue, having gained the crucial point that the US would join in the war. A low point as regards the ABC agreement was reached when the Americans advised the War Cabinet that:

‘Until such time as a plan is evolved whereby British Naval forces take a predominant part in the defence of the British position in the Far East Area, they [the US] will be constrained to withdraw their agreement to permit the United States Asiatic fleet to operate under British strategic direction in that area.’
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Following this message, a series of steps were taken or planned. Churchill agreed, contrary to his earlier approach but in line with what the Americans wanted, to reinforce Hong Kong. Brooke-Popham was informed of his impending replacement by Lieutenant General Sir Henry Pownall. The Americans were told that
Prince of Wales
was being sent to Singapore, along with the news that: ‘
Repulse
and
Revenge
are now in the Indian Ocean… with the battleships
Royal Sovereign
and
Ramillies
[leaving] during November and
Resolution
in December.’
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Thus American demands for a force capable of operating north of the Malay barrier, as asked for by the Americans, were being met, and as if to emphasize the point it was suggested that a further meeting was held with Admiral Phillips who was en route to Singapore in
Prince of Wales
. We know that Phillips’s first action in the Far East was to seek and have a meeting with the US Admiral Hart. Whatever plans were laid, they were rendered redundant by the attack on Pearl Harbor, something not envisaged in any of the meetings around a joint waging of the war in the Far East.

It is possible that both sides would have considered that they had gained the better deal if the reinforced British fleet had ever docked in Singapore. The Americans did not have enough forces at their disposal to defend the Philippines, and the proposed alliance may have been their best way of doing so. The Americans also admitted that Manila and naval facilities in the Philippines were only suitable for use as advanced operational bases which implies an outcome for the British they would welcome: a main base for the British and Americans at Singapore, and operating bases in the Philippines. Such an arrangement might well have been seen as the best defence for both Singapore and the Philippines.

It is by no means an accepted view among historians that Churchill was dominated in his thinking on Far East strategy by the hope of a military alliance that would in effect use America to retain British power and influence in the Far East, and have the British and American ‘main fleets’ using Singapore as their base. There is considerable evidence to suggest that Churchill had realized this was a practical impossibility, and that the Americans had never seen it as an idea that had enough in it for them.

However, there is an alternative scenario which envisages Churchill having an exaggerated vision of American power and strength, having a long-term ambition for Singapore to house both fleets and seeing a last-gasp chance to bring this plan to fruition with growing tension in the Far East, and having a private understanding with Roosevelt that this was a desired end. Any such understanding would, by definition not be documented. Roosevelt faced a massive block of opinion in his own country that was irreconcilably isolationist to its core, and to give any assistance to Britain’s war effort had had to adopt an element of subterfuge. In this theory, Churchill’s apparent willingness to accept the reluctance of the American naval negotiators to contemplate a move to Singapore, and tell his own team to back off, was simply because Churchill considered that if a deal was to be done it would be agreed at an altogether higher level than joint naval talks. Forcing the issue at this level would simply stir up opposition and make it even harder to quell in the event of Roosevelt being willing to take an executive decision.

There are snippets of information, which give strength to the idea that the concept of a joint naval base at Singapore was not dead. It was at the behest of the Americans that there were further naval conversations in the spring of 1939. The delegate representing the Admiralty, Commander T.C. Hampton, had to travel incognito ostensibly as a land agent called ‘Mr Hampton’. A highly secret conference was held with Admiral William D. Leahy and others at Leahy’s home. In the course of this conversation Leahy expressed as purely personal opinion that in the event of war the US fleet should move to Singapore, but that this would depend on the British sending out ‘an adequate token force’ to Singapore.
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The travelling incognito and the meeting at home illustrate just how fearful Roosevelt was of those in his own country who wanted nothing to do with a war by European countries. The token force was deemed necessary to placate wider American public opinion. Though nothing concrete emerged from the discussions, or at least nothing on paper
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, they lead the Admiralty to conclude that a token fleet of two or three battleships would suffice to satisfy American public opinion.

However, proponents of the ‘secret alliance’ theory suffer firstly because if it existed at all it would have to be well and truly secret, and because if it existed at all it was much more in the way of a secret understanding than an alliance. The attraction of the idea is that it ticks so many boxes in terms of the unanswered questions surrounding Force Z. It explains:

1. Why Churchill was so willing to divert military resources away from Singapore, and deny it additional expenditure, even though he knew and had been told that his impregnable fortress was no such thing: Churchill believed the extra resources Singapore and the Far East required would come from the USA.
   
2. His enthusiasm for a new KGV battleship to be sent: it was not only to deter the Japanese, but perhaps even more to impress the Americans with his seriousness of intent, as Admiral Leahy had suggested was necessary.
   
3. The choice of Admiral Tom Phillips to command Force Z, a man who could only be spared from the Admiralty for the most pressing of causes. There is overwhelming evidence that he was the best brain working on the naval staff at the time, and an invaluable aide to Pound. To offset the need to keep him where he was, what more pressing cause was there, other than defence of the homeland, than the defence of British interests in the Far East? Tom Phillips was a highly intelligent man who proved his skills as a diplomat by the warm responses he obtained from General Smuts and the US Admiral Hart. When Admirals Cunningham and Somerville complained that someone with more combat experience should have been sent, they missed the point; what the Far East command needed was not a knight in ironclad armour but a diplomat. There was no reason to think that Phillips would perform as a fighting Admiral any less well than his peers; there was every reason to know that he was a better and more convincing envoy than most of his peers.
   
4. Why the former commander in the Far East, Admiral Layton, was not given command in the Far East. As discussed in a later chapter, Layton was a fighting admiral, but the man who could call a person he was working with a ‘black bastard’ was clearly not a diplomat.
   
5. Why Phillips’s first priority in the Far East was to visit the American Admiral Hart; negotiating a working military alliance was Phillips’s mission, not a vain assault on overwhelmingly superior Japanese forces.
   
6. That if it is true as suggested below that there never really was intent to reinforce Force Z with a carrier, the fact of this being a diplomatic mission rather than a military one explains what would otherwise be an extraordinary omission.
   
7. Phillips’s call for ‘R’ class battleships to be sent to him urgently. They would have little use as fast raiders against Japanese invasion forces, but would be a firm declaration of intent to the Americans. Phillips’s request suggested that he saw his main mission being to meet the conditions set by the Americans at the ABC Conference, which insisted on a significant number of British ships being sent to Singapore.
   
8. Why Churchill failed to order Force Z into hiding. It would have been a perfectly reasonable thing to do if Force Z’s mission had simply been to deter the Japanese. It would have been a very bad thing to order the only major British ships in Singapore to leave it if Churchill’s object remained the hope that Singapore would act as the joint base for British and American forces. We know now the speed and relative ease with which Singapore would be taken. Churchill did not, and seen from his viewpoint it was perfectly feasible that Singapore might hold out for long enough to host a part of the American fleet, and benefit from its long-range bombers and air force. What would have been disastrous would be to have ordered the Royal Navy to leave Singapore whilst trying to persuade the American Navy to join it. That alone would have killed the idea. The Americans could hardly be asked to send their ships to Singapore if Britain was sending its ships away from it. Churchill may well have seen the presence of American warships, and the long-range bomber cover they would bring with them, as the only way to ensure the survival of Singapore. After all, a brief visit by Tom Phillips to Admiral Hart had resulted in four US destroyers being despatched to Singapore.
   
9. Secret support from Roosevelt for a joint base at Singapore answers one of the questions posed by the distinguished historian Arthur Marder: ‘The persistence of the British in pushing for an American naval presence at Singapore is a puzzle.’
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