Scapegoat: The Death of Prince of Wales and Repulse (13 page)

Added to these were the problems of a navy having to cope with a vast influx of ‘hostilities only’ ratings. There has been much debate over the morale and efficiency of the crew: all that can be said with any certainty is that Tom Phillips’s flagship was not manned to a peak of efficiency that best fitted it to sail into extreme hostilities. Of crucial significance was the inability to give proper training in anti-aircraft gunnery, if only through the lack of trial targets. Captain Tennant of
Repulse
wrote in his official report:

‘
Prince of Wales
and
Repulse
had both been without serious anti-aircraft practice for some months and I am afraid the shooting was not good – torpedoes were mostly fired outside pom-pom range at about 2,500 yards.’
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Yet a much more alarming episode that could have played a major part in her sinking took place before she was finished. On 31 August 1940, while in the fitting-out basin at Cammell Lairds, a low-level German attack dropped a bomb that landed between the basin wall and the hull. Quite serious damage was caused. It has been suggested that whilst obvious damage was repaired, the impact of the bomb may have sheared off or weakened bolts and rivets beyond the area of obvious damage that appeared whole, but which subsequently contributed to the opening up of the hull under Japanese bomb attack. There is no record of remedial work being undertaken or examinations carried out beyond the area of immediate damage, which was towards the stern. Examination of the USS
Pennsylvania,
which suffered a similar torpedo hit to
Prince of Wales
but survived to be examined, suggested that the hidden, unsuspected damage inflicted by such as shock could extend a significant way beyond the point of impact. It is possible that the explosion and downward pressure of the quadruple turret ripped a line out along the hull, effectively following a fault line caused by the dockyard hit.
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Armament

Prince of Wales
should have been the best-ever British battleship in terms of its anti-aircraft armament. The 5.25in dual-purpose secondary armament, housing in eight twin-turrets, was a good idea in theory. Most battleships, including
Bismarck,
had a four tier arrangement of main armament, anti-destroyer armament, heavy and light anti-aircraft armament. Guns that could be dual purpose, and throw a heavy enough shell to cripple a destroyer but still have a high enough rate of fire to be used against aircraft, saved weight that could be transferred to the other eternal two points of the designers’ triangle, propulsion and armour. The problem was that the twin 5.25in turrets did not work well enough: ‘There is little doubt that these guns (or perhaps more accurately their fire-control systems) were still not combat efficient.’
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The turrets were cramped, and the guns were too heavy and slow to track to fulfill their anti-aircraft role. Designed for ten to twelve rounds per minute, seven to eight was more normal and all that could be attained. The lack of a fully-mechanized ammunition supply was a serious drag on rate of fire, crew having to transfer 80lb shells and their cordite charge manually from hoists to loading trays. Perhaps more importantly, the four directors that controlled the guns had major weaknesses. They were not tachometric (fully stabilized) and ‘… did little better than guess at the location of the aircraft they targeted.’
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No gun is better than its director. The 14-in gun that sank
Scharnhorst
in 1943 was a defective weapons system of relatively light caliber that nevertheless benefited from highly accurate gunnery radar directing fire. It is a pity that the Admiralty’s decision to buy the outstanding foreign 40mm Bofors gun for anti-aircraft defence in 1939 came too late for more than one of them to be mounted on
Prince of Wales
(on her stern), or that the sacrifice of buying foreign was not extended to the outstanding American 5-inch dual-purpose gun, sometimes known as the 5in/38.

It is often stated that the crews had no time to work up, anti-aircraft fire in particular needing practice targets that were simply not available on the way to Singapore. This is certainly true, and the aim of
Prince of Wales
’s gunners does not seem to have been good, but when push came to shove, the much-vaunted secondary armament proved not fit for purpose. In fairness to the designers the loss of electrical power rendered half the turrets useless for much of the action.

Nor were the multi-barrelled ‘pom-poms’ an antidote to Japanese air power. Essentially short-range weapons, they all too often took effect on a target after it had launched its load of munitions. Captain Tennant of
Repulse
, quoted in the following chapter, believed the weapons consistently shot behind their target – an ironic comment if true, as it was exactly the criticism made against
Bismarck
’s anti-aircraft fire. The pom-pom’s ammunition also took badly to the tropical climate, which caused the round to separate from the casing before it could be fired. Bad ventilation on board the ship caused many problems, as discussed below, including an inability to store ammunition at temperate and humidity-levels that kept it serviceable.

Power Supply

The loss of electrical power played a crucial role in the sinking of
Prince of Wales.
Electrical power was provided by six turbine-driven dynamos and two diesel-driven generators for emergency power. It was realized too late to save
Prince of Wales
that turbine-driven generators in particular were very susceptible to battle damage. The loss of electrical power resulting from the first torpedo hits on the ship took out of action half of its main defence against aircraft, the 5.25in dual-purpose turrets, but the effect was even more serious than this. It seriously restricted internal communications, with an appalling impact on the ability of those in charge to muster damage control resources where they were needed, and communicate with those doing the job when they were there.
Prince of Wales
was a modern ship, and as such electricity was the life-blood that powered through its veins and arteries. The minute that blood supply stopped, the body started to die.

There has been a tendency to cite the fact that the crew of
Prince of Wales
never had time to work up as a contributory factor to the ship’s loss. Of course it would have been better for the ship if more of its complement had been trained for longer, but the best damage control officers in the world still need to know where and what the crucial damage is, and the best men in the world need to be able to be told where to go, see it when they arrive, and, if needs be, coordinate what they are doing with other damage control parties. Loss of electrical power also crucially reduced the ship’s capacity to pump water out, and made existing serious ventilation problems even worse. The breakdown of much of the ship’s electrical generating capacity appears to be the result of both the shock of the crucial torpedo hit on the stern and flooding. In any event, the shock seemed to have knocked out a significant portion of the ship’s electrical generating capacity, perhaps because machinery was not secured to the hull by shock-proof mountings.
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There is also the unexplained failure to use the ring breaker system to switch power to vital areas. Instead, time and energy were taken up running cables to areas which had lost power. It is tempting to blame the lack of working-up time for this failure. It is more likely that the crew of
Prince of Wales
were the first in the war to have to deal with such a situation (though it may have played a part in the loss of
Ark Royal
), and the lessons to be learnt could only be acquired through hard and bitter experience.

Anti-flooding Measures

If
Prince of Wales
found herself in a situation where she could not pump out the water that was coming in, her design added to the problems flooding caused when the water was inside the hull. The KGVs as originally designed had an Achilles heel that at one time it was believed resulted in her capsizing. The most recent research on the wreck suggests otherwise, but does not lessen the seriousness of the design flaw.

The whole midships section of
Prince of Wales
between her funnels was dominated by the hangar and catapult for her Walrus aircraft. Aircraft were removed from British battleships from 1942 onwards. A Japanese bomb pierced the catapult deck, bursting in the cinema flat below and blowing out a large section of the side of the hull, with resultant large-scale flooding. The cinema flat extended right across the hull, and the flooding that collected in it played a clear role in her capsizing. Modifications to the other vessels relocated and eliminated this space, and with hindsight extra tanks for watertight integrity were also added.

Rarely commented on is the fact that
Prince of Wales
was also designed with what are known as centreline machinery space bulkheads. These are in effect watertight subdivisions designed to increase a ship’s survivability, but war experience showed they severely restricted a ship’s ability to counter flood, and so reduce a list, if a ship was hit on one side. The only other major navy to adopt these was the Japanese navy, and of seventeen cruisers heavily damaged on the one side of the hull, all bar one capsized. The system only worked in larger ships, and has been described as a ‘serious design flaw’.
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Added to this might be the fact that there were significant gaps round the trunking and cables that ran through the hull, as they passed through supposedly watertight bulkheads, compromising watertight integrity, and weak bulkheads that collapsed under water pressure. All in all,
Prince of Wales
had design flaws which gave her a significantly increased risk of capsizing, particularly in a situation where she took most of her hits on one side. It is ironic that the design brief for the ship stipulated that it should be able to survive six torpedo hits on one side of the ship, more than it actually received.
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Ventilation

Whereas the Admiralty were in all probability not aware of the increased risk of capsizing inherent in the design, there were other weaknesses they were aware of. In fairness, they did raise these as reasons why KGVs should not be sent to the Far East. Admiral of the Home Fleet Sir John Tovey cited the ships’ ventilation systems as a reason why they should not be sent to the Far East, along with the fact that their evaporators were not designed to cope with long periods at sea and fears that a crucial gearing mechanical element of the main 14-inch gun turrets would not work effectively in very hot climates.
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A ventilation system can seem to an outsider as a convenience rather than a necessity for fighting a ship. In fact it is vital, in three ways. The possible negative effect on ammunition has already been mentioned. In addition, unless controlled, the temperature inside a metal hull can rise to levels, particularly in engineering spaces, in which humans simply cannot work, and will quite literally collapse. Temperatures on board
Prince of Wales
on her journey out reached 136° Fahrenheit in boiler rooms, 122° in engine rooms and a staggering 150° degrees in machinery rooms where the machines were run for more than four hours, and these temperatures were reached with all electrical ventilation systems working. Even before the temperature reached a level where men simply cease to function it could make a savage cut to efficiency of working. Finally, an efficient ventilation system clears a hull of smoke and fumes from battle damage.

One would imagine that a blue-water navy created in part to service a world-wide empire would design ships that could cope in the tropics. In fact, the KGVs seem to have been designed for service in the north Atlantic. One problem faced by British designers was the compromise between the need for ships on long overseas cruises to have relatively large spaces to house the crew and make life bearable for them, and the clash between this design requirement and the need for smaller and smaller watertight subdivision to guard against sinking. The German Navy in two world wars sacrificed habitability for watertight subdivision, assuming that for much of a ship’s life its crew would be housed on shore in barracks. However, this does not excuse the failure to install an efficient forced ventilation system, a different matter entirely. The KGVs, and most British battleships, could not cope with tropical climates, at least at the start of the war. Bad ventilation cannot be said to have sunk
Prince of Wales
. It can be said to have significantly reduced her fighting capacity.

Turning Radius

There is one other failing of the KGV class that was the fault of its designers. The turning circle of a vessel – how far it takes to make a turn – is a crucial factor in its ability to manoeuvre and dodge both bombs and torpedoes; it is, in effect, how nimble the ship is. The KGVs compared badly with some other British and American ships as regards their turning circle. Under the same speed and helm, the USS
Washington
had a turning radius of 575 yards. The equivalent for
King George V
was 930 yards, ironically much the same as for
Repulse
’s sister ship
Renown,
but with both comparing badly to the 625 yards of the older battleship
Nelson.
The reason
Repulse
dodged her first onslaught of torpedoes so much better than
Prince of Wales
was not so much that she was brilliantly handled, though she was, but rather that her earlier attacks were concentrated on one side. Nevertheless, the poor turning ability of
Prince of Wales
, probably the result of the decision to give her only one rudder, meant that in another area Britain’s newest battleship lagged behind in the features she would most need to survive: ‘To sum up, while the Japanese torpedo-bombers had already given Captain Leach an extremely difficult problem, the
Prince of Wales
’s poor turning radius may have made his job impossible.’
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