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Regarding the next episode; Be sure to really note that the effective final defensive line was not at the city itself. Batu Phat and Mersing was really the last line (Muar to Kuala Rompin being the forward line); Why? The most important strategic element was the reservoir, Its loss will cost the city. A big failure as the attempt to secure everywhere, when an effective fullback should have been done. Singapore did have lots of materials for defensive works, as well as significant local manpower, that could have developed even basic defensive lines. but it was never used. The loss of Singapore, in the way it was, was catastrophic; And Id say mostly due to incompetence and failure. Not to denigrate the Japanese (they had the daring do, and pulled it off after all) , but their invasion wasn't the best planned, well supplied or supported or manned...
My grandfather was on HMS Repulse - one of the survivors, thankfully. It must have been terrifying for him - he was only 17 years old. I found some old photos recently of him in the navy and a letter to his mum about him being a survivor of HMS Repulse, which is how I ended up watching this video!
Keep those letters safe Nikki, they are important historical documents. If you decide they need a proper home, then the imperial war museum will archive them if you contact them in future.
@@venaautos sadly no photos of the Repulse or Prince of Wales. Only photos of my grandad and a letter from the Admiralty to my grandad's mum when she was trying to find out news about him/his location.
A really interesting/ heartwrenching detail to add is that the Royal Navy was effectively the father of Japanese Naval Aviation. The RN taught them the basics and then they made it into an art form. And the Japanese knew it; unlike later naval engagements there wasn't a single case of strafing men in the water and the destroyers were left to pickup survivors without attack. The following day a Japanese airman who had the day before been involved in the attack returned to the site of the battle, he dropped a wreath in honour of the ships they had sunk and the men who went down with them.
John Toland relates in "The Rising Sun" that the Japanese Bomber pilots at first mistook the Repulse for the Japanese battleship Kongo, the resemblance was so close- the Kingo had in fact been built for Japan by Britain some thirty years earlier...
That's heart warming. I'm sure the surviving sailors were touched. Bataan was right around the corner and the Japanese were so compassionate to all enemy combatants.
@@coolhand411luke6 "unlike later naval engagements" - that to me is a pretty clear acknowledgement that this case represents an exception to a very cruel very brutal norm. War is fucking brutal, its bloody, its complicated, poor young men die for their flag for their religion, for the man next to them in their thousands. You don't have to apply the bagagge of a whole nation's conduct of a brutal war of conquest to every single action taken by individuals and small groups of officers and men. Its down that path that you'll find a criminally iresponsible perspective on what war is; its not a contest between good and evil, the righteous and the dammed. War isn't like a cheap Holywood war film where the brave American saints in camo take on endless hordes of heartless, evil, stupid or feckless enemies. The humanity shown in this case by Japanese servicemen after attacking a completely legitimate military target is of note exactly because of it exceptionality, not because the Japanese were somehow all lovely people (nor either were the British when we firebombed Dresden or the Americans when they nuked the Japanese mainland).
@@sionwebb1955 Of course. Of course. Years ago I asked an old Filipino friend how he might compare Spanish, American and Japanese occupation, all of which his nation had experienced. He replied that all were bad and, while he couldn’t say much about the Spanish, the Japanese were generally somewhat better behaved than the Americans. Victor history is usually heavily biased
@@niclasjohansson4333 Bismarck no, one carrier launching a late day strike with biplane torpedo bombers , they got a lucky hit on the rudder The first strike didn’t even find the Bismarck The ark Royal only carried about 30 of these planes , so one strike of about 15 aircraft reached Bismarck, and got 2 hits.
Aircover not being requested was likely due to many naval officers not respecting the danger of air attack and also interdepartmental rivalry, ie, the naval commander not wanting aid from his own air force. Too many commanders in WWI and II were too proud and hidebound to accept change, costing lives.
Phillips was 'radio silent', and maintained it even after being attacked by the Japanese. The fighters were actually available and reserved for Force Z, but only the Japanese knew where Phillips and Force Z was. Captain Tennant of Repulse was actually violating Phillips' orders when he finally radioed for help during the attack at 11:58. Pulford got the message at 12:19, and 11 Buffaloes were aloft within 6 minutes. They arrived just as PoW was going down.
I also think the fact that Malaya was under invasion while these ships were sailing had a large part in it. The movement of fleet vessels seems like a secondary consideration to warding off an invasion that might overtake the very airbases those vessels want protection from. I'm actually surprised they managed to scramble a flight at all, late or not, given that malaya must have been under constant attack. Phillips was presumably counting on surprise to be his force multiplier. He knew he didn't have the ships, had already been told that air cover would not be forthcoming, and yet he sailed anyway. Radio silence was the only measure to be taken for lack of any promised air cover ahead of time, and its plumb unfortunate that Force Z was spotted by a sub before being able to hand over their surprise to the Japanese. From that point, yes the radio silence doomed them. But he wasn't to know that the Japanese air cover was so saturated as they seemed to be hitting multiple places in different parts of the pacific at the same time. Their carriers, I assume he thought, couldn't be everywhere at once. Sometimes people are wrong, and when certain people are wrong a lot of people get killed. It's not necessarily incompetence. It was also not the naval commanders' choice to send these two particular ships. It was Churchill who was adamant that the mere presence of british capital units would scare the Japanese. So it isn't even the case that Phillips was "hidebound". He played the hand he had. The alternative was, people would be asking why Force Z sat back and watched Malaya fall. Someone had to act, and unfortunately, prior decisions over his head meant he was acting without the proper resources to address the emergency in Malaya. Maybe there's more about Phillips I'm not aware of that marks him out as some kind of incompetent, but from this video I rather sympathise with and admire his courage. I don't think I'd leave port for those odds. The prevailing consensus in the comments seems to attribute the arrogance of Churchill's reasoning to the naval commanders in the chair. That isn't what this video lays out.
Fun fact, Prince of Wales at the time had one of the best, if not the best anti-aircraft suite in any warship afloat. The number of barrels was nothing to scoff at, with up to 32 40 mm pom-poms in 4 octuple mountings, seven single 20 mm Oerlikons, plus the large calibre battery of 8 twin 5,25" guns. But where she excelled at was in her fire control. While the British HACS was markedly inferior to other systems like the American Mark 38 or even the Japanese Type 94, she mounted the most advanced version available, stabilized and equipped with a gyro unit, making it much faster and easier to operate. Additionally, she counted with a large number of radars for anti-aircraft fire control, including a Type 281 for air search, 4 Type 285s for the HACS (for 5,25" FC), and 4 Type 282s for the pom-pom directors! By December 1941, AA fire control radars were rare even in the US Navy, and radars for control of the medium calibre AA guns was unheard of outside of the Royal Navy. Of course the 5,25" and the pom-pom were not the best guns around, but they were still pretty decent and served the Royal Navy well even late in the war. Sadly, the hot, humid weather was damning and had her 40 mm ammunition not work properly, leading to frequent jams, and most of her radars weren't operationally either. Her pom-poms also lacked tracer ammunition, reducing the psychological effect on the Japanese pilots who didn't even see the AA fire, which was arguably one of the biggest effects of AA by this point. In the end, not even all of her radars and ammunition working properly would have saved her from her fate, but maybe it would have inflicted a bigger toll on the Japanese attackers.
@@bondrewdthelordofdawn3744 Well the Bismarck at least had the excuse that it didn't expect to be targeting WWI biplanes. The AA firing was always overshooting cuz they were so slow!
Mega upvotes !, thanks fo the info on the AA defenses , the value of tracers was new to me but it makes so much sense and I also think that it helps with the targeting . I think that the lack of tracers is truly a BIG mistake . With all of those good guns , radar and guidance systems is all good until you get that first Hit ! As Mike Tyson said “Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the face !” Then the wheels come off and nothing works !
A fellow Malaysian here, I wished the curricular text books that I studied back in school would mention just about anything said in this video instead of a side note that says 'The Japanese sank 2 british war ships off the coast of Malaya on ___ day, thus the japanese occupation began.' This puts the consequences and meaning behind the sinking of both ships into much more context. Thank you for educating me on my own country's history, love the content!
Hello fellow Malaysians. Yeah, the history text books just leave out those information and just say "yeah, they sank and Japan invaded, and in 1945 surrendered". It would be interesting if there is an opportunity to explore the wreck of both the Prince of Wales and the Repulse since it is rather close by.
@@whateverwhatever7465 yeah, but sadly, I doubt that will deter scrap metal dealers either. And another is that the Malaysian government is very willing to forget our colonial past if possible.
Malaysian here too, not gonna lie though I was very excited when I first heard that there were going to be both world wars being uncovered the next year, only to find out that it is only being explained in just a few pages. Even worse, the history teacher mostly focuses on exams and techniques to score them, and just making outright historical mistakes along the way (most prominent are the two world wars being mixed up, and the worse thing I heard is that Japan started expanding after Germany’s capitulation. Had to sit through the pain as I hear one by one of these mistakes being made. Also, I get ignored each time I tried to correct the teacher’s mistake, really frustrating). It was really a bummer how our history subject is being teached this way.
Same here. I remember reading the social studies textbook in primary 4 and saw a small illustration of the two capital ships being destroyed. However, it seems that that British had intended to send the ships to surprise the invading forces despite knowing that they were at a numerical disadvantage.
Mark Felton, the Operations Rooms, Drachinifel, the World War Two channel, the Chieftain and even Historigraph are uploading today ! What did we do to deserve such abundance of content ? ^^ I have been rewatching your videos and was eager to see a new one !
My Father Patrick O'Hare was a 19 year old Able Seaman on HMS Repulse when she was sunk. His action station was the 30ft Rangefinder behind the forard guns. Being above deck enabled him to abandon ship unlike many of his shipmates. He was rescued after hours in the water by HMAS Electra and returned to Singapore. He was originally detailed to air defence on the Singapore golf course, but then redirected with a shipmate to the port to join a steamer taking labourers to Sumatra as air defense once again armed with WW1 Lee Enfield rifles. They made it without trouble and he was evacuated on the SS Canberra back to Blighty where he volunteered for hazardous duties got married and soent the restof the war as coxswain on MGB 659 in the Mediterranean and Adriatic. RIP Dad
@@conistonoldman Lucky is the word! Most of his shipmates were captured by the Japanese to work on the Burma railway after th fall of Singapore. Many did not survive.
In WWII the main naval hitting power is aircraft not battleships, dreadnoughts or battlecruisers. Aircraft damaged and sunk more ships than surface ships
Yep, Battleships were already obsolete. Arguably the last naval engagement which was fought only with gunnery was the Battle of the Komandorski Islands. However, even that battle was decided by Air Power, because the Japanese, despite having outgunned and outmaneuvered the Americans, withdrew, because enough time had elapsed for bombers based in the Aleutians to have arrived (assuming they were alerted by radio when the engagement began) It's no coincidence that the planned Montana Class Battleships were cancelled, and no further orders for US battleships were placed after the Battle of Midway. That was when it was painfully apparent that a Battleship had no real purpose in a world with Aircraft Carriers. In fact, no battleships were orders by any nation after about 1942. Even the last battleship commissioned, the HMS Vanguard, Completed after the end of WWII, had been ordered in 1940.
Aircraft and radar made the battleship obsolete Imagine the ease a small force could ambush a carrier without radar like a glorious vs Sharnhorst attack
Many of the survivors of these sinkings were recovered not by the British destroyers, but by the Japanese. My uncle, a Radioman on HMS Prince of Wales, was among them. He would spend the remainder of the war as a POW in the Burmese labour camps, building railroads for the Japanese, and an extended period in hospital once freed.
Interestingly British actually prepared to send two aircraft carriers to Singapore for air cover, but neither failed to arrive in time. HMS Indomitable, the newest of the carrier, ran aground in Jamaica and had to spend time in U.S. port for repair, while HMS Hermes was too slow to reach Singapore on time from South Africa.
@Gene Hunt Don't forget that the two types of aircraft you mention are ground-based aircraft. They couldn't operate on cv's, so they weren't used. Only from the leftover English and American ground bases. In 1942, HMS Indomitable carried Sea Hurricanes, Martlets and Albacores. I indeed wouldn't call all of the three inferior to Japanese fighters and strike aircraft.
@@ironmantooltime sorry, but the irony is there if you look for it. PoW, modern BB crippled same as Bismarck, also a modern BB that it had faced only half year prior. ... but LOL nonetheless :)
Well the simple problem was they used extremely large propellers and rudders all ships (German/french/British) were designed to operate in rough Atlantic while the Pacific was fairly stable in terms of weather thus many European ships especially battleships risked losing their rudders and propulsion to close detonation of bombs and torpedos a survey of Americans of HMS king George V found that it's rudder and propellers were larger than the IOWA by 35% and when compared to Missouri it was 25% larger that's why both ships were lost .
@@shubhendudash5534 interesting, probably was a factor but the couldn't have operated in the atlantic without large rudders so every ship had the same vulnerability..
As they say the victor gets to tell the story. Churchill was a dud in every area. The inspirational issues and speeches were all prepared for him. Very little was his work.
This cannot be denied. He blundered in the first world war with his Gallipoli campaign and he certainly blundered in the second. However, his determination to keep on fighting and not to surrender, as other British politicians would have done, is something to be admired.
@@marianom125 True, but it did help in the end with the D-Day landings. It made the allies realise they needed to have a port - which in the allies case were the mulberry harbours.
@michael boultinghouse I'd probably find that amusing if that's what happened. They weren't meant to be sneaky they were there to cause a large Japanese force to be dispatched just to contain them. Which would give forces closer to Japan more leeway. If as intended they had a fleet carrier escorting them, this would have probably happened.
My wife's late father(later MAA) Henry (Harry) William York was one of the survivors of HMS Prince of Wales - He and his follow survivors spent a total of 10 days in an open boat and managed to be rescued and transported back to Ceylon. Harry had previously been a Petty Officer (Gun Layer) aboard HMS Dorsetshire, and actually fired the last / final torpedo which was part of the naval action which sank the Bismark in May 1941. For his part in the engagement Harry was awarded the BEM by the King. Harry was drafted to HMS Prince of Wales later in 1941, as part of the crew who sailed her to Singapore. In 1966 I was a team member of a Royal Naval Clearance Diving team who (under the command of a Royal Marine Colour Sergeant) dived off the wreck HMS Prince of Wales in the China Sea on the anniversary of her being sunk by Japanese aircraft; as a team we secured a Royal Naval White Ensign to her superstructure along with (underwater) floats which permitted the White Ensign to 'fly underwater'. The event was captured (and published) by the UK Daily Express newspaper - I was so proud at being able to relate the event to my (then to be) father-in-law in 1968, and witnessed the emotion it created in a strong and brave man. God bless you Harry and all your shipmates.
I dove her and the HMS Prince of Wales in 2013, as part of a multi week live aboard expedition to explore the USA, British, and Japanese wrecks in the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea off of Malaysia . As a technical diver and WW II history buff, these dives were very special to me, giving me a personal connection with their place in history, in events that occurred so long ago. On the dive's technical level, utilizing mixed gas closed circuit rebreathers and underwater propulsion vehicles, we were able to explore a great deal of the Repulse in particular. these were fantastic and enjoyable dives, but at the same time the realization of all the lives lost was very sad and sobering. As of our dives in 2013, divers have been maintaining a Union Jack on the wrecks. as a side note, we saw first hand what terrible damage the locals have done, salvaging the wrecks for metal to sell with zero regard for the fact that they are war graves and it is both legally and morally wrong to harm the wrecks. this i am sure continues to this day. very disgusting.
@@yosman-609 . first off, all war graves irregardless of country should be respected for what they are, a GRAVE. i am sure you would be perfectly happy to have someone destroy the grave of a relative for profit (which is just what they are doing), as long as the destroyer was of a political or cultural persuasion you agreed with. the japanese invaded their country (Malaysia). the Brits opposed them. the Japanese were among the most racist people on the planet. ask the local Maylasian and chinese about the Japanese occupation. the Brits weren't perfect when they held sway over their country, but they were not the brutal regime that the Japanese were, killing thousands that they referred to as inferior races.
Can't view the looting as 'disgusting'- more in an amoral way. These people need to live and you can't expect them to care about a sunken ship. There are lots of sunken ships and this one sunk close enough in history for people to care about it.
Hhahaha of course the Brit fascinated with keeping their flag flying in an underwater grave finds the locals struggle to survive *uncivilized* Perhaps don’t deliver war boats to their front yard. Perhaps don’t try to subjugate others. Etc 😂
As a tech diver, I always wanted to dive some of WW2 wrecks. Alas, I never had the opportunity and now my diving days are behind me. You had a special opportunity, cherish it.
My dad was born in Sydney in 1915, and during WW2 he told me that the local newspapers were full of stories about this incident, with drawings and photos showing how it would be impossible for any aircraft to get anywhere near to these ships, what with all of their anti aircraft guns and weapons. How wrong were they...
The Titanic was an unsinkable ship. Thalidomide was safe for pregnant mothers to take. The Covid19 vaccines were touted by all governments as safe and effective.
The interesting thing about Prince of Wales is that the driveshaft kept spinning inside the fittings that held it, despite being badly bent by the torpedo. This basically gutted everything connected to the ships power plant and propulsion and led to catastrophic flooding
Sad to note, the RAAF planes of the 453 Squadron reached the locations at about 1.18pm, witnessing the sinking of Prince of Wales. The next day, Left. Haruki Iki of the Japanese Air Group Kanoya flew over the sinking sites and supposedly dropped 2 flower bouquets for the fallen airmen and sailors.
Funny how Churchill believed emulating the German strategy with Bismarck was a good idea after it proved to be very vulnerable to aerial attacks and the Japanese already had bases in Indochina. I feel he gets a lot of historical blank checks for his amazing oratory and charisma, but had some stellar strategic blunders even after Gallipoli.
Churchill was an idiot. Simple. I don't understand the post war beatification. He was even caught by the Boers. Lord Louis Mountbatten, General Montgomery, so many other illustrious courageous and intelligent British forgotten. Mountbatten was very wise to realize he was being used by the Dutch postwar to re-occupy an unwilling hostile populous- rapidly organized a truce with Indonesian Republicans and the work of repatriating Japanese and PoW's was allowed to continue aided by the Indonesian Nationalists (there were problems with non-regulated Indonesian groups). As such, Indonesia first aircraft and jets were British. Vampires, Fairey Gnats etc.
The Repulse under command of Capitan Tenneant , was and still today the best example of seamanship, next to the Seydlitz at the battle of Jutland!.P.S. the last anouncment over the Repulse's P.A. system was, All hands prepare to abandon ship!, May God be with you!!!.
Congratulations on going full time, I really hope you make it. I have nothing to offer but my like, a comment for the algorithm, and my thanks for the amazing content!
Minor error at 4:51 and 5:36 The Islands towards the East, near Borneo are the Riau Islands. They are part of the Dutch East Indies and were never part of British Malaya
Apparently, Australia warned the british about sending the ships to Singapore. And repeatly asked them to send tge ships to India or if needs be, Perth in Western Australia.
You see this in the early war in the pacific for all defending nations. The brits are obsessed with Singapore, the Dutch with Borneo, the Americans with the Phillipines and the Australians with Australia. All but the Australians suffer big defeats piecemeal because of this. If they pooled all their resources earlier and were prepared to give up ground they might have been much more succesful. But they all needed a big licking by the Japanese before they would give up their arrogance and focus on their own territories.
@@Jajalaatmaar It also didn't really help the Japanese on under-estimating the Aussie spirit. For those troops stationed in Indonesia, losing meant giving the Japanese an easy place to strike directly at Australia. It's not often mentioned, but the ANZAC and Ghurka forces were perhaps the only military force to earn the respect of the Japanese, as they just refused to give up. The Ghurka's were especially scary, as they knew the land, and stealth attacks were what they were good at. Not only was Australia prepared, in securing an effective ally with the Ghurkas, but they made the Japanese pay heavily for any advancement. When Japan eventually managed to attack Darwin, they were promptly pushed back.
@@nyk2000m But all countries messed up the proposed pre-war alliance and contingency plans because they all wanted to protect their own little turf. And MacArthur was a 'tard who didn't even stick to the American battle plan for defending the Phillipines.
Thanks to the German commerce raider "Atlantis", that captured to British steamer "Automedon" in November 1941, the Japanese had full insight into the British codes used by their forces in Malaya.
This is the opening shot of WW2. Beforehand NO Capital Ships has ever been sunk while on active duty by planes. Sinking of Prince of Wales & Repulse is a significant footnote in WW2. Pity not popularly discussed for obvious reasons...
@@daveevans1236 Its bloody pity, not many historians pointed this out, and a good bloody research being done to document it. The funds would be of good use to help preserve the war graves frm freakin Scrap metal thieves. Such sadness...
I do wonder if the royal navy had special training for dodging torpedoes, dodging that many torpedoes is so impressive and you hear it in many other stories.
Yes if they had listened to the Admirals they would have lost four capital ships. Also remember why they had so many battleship instead of aircraft carriers was because of the admirals. So as bad as the politicians are the military has proven themselves to be as bad or worse.
Ironic that Churchill wanted Prince of Wales and Repulse to act like a "British Bismarck" and both Bismarck and Prince of Wales ended up receiving the same kind of damage to their steering systems from air-launched torpedoes.
The writing was already on the wall. The era of battleships and battlecruisers was over. But neither side wanted to admit that the aircraft and aircraft carriers would be the unchallenged rulers of the seas.
@@mightyTMP Nope, you said that aircraft and aircraft carriers would be unchallenged and unbeatable to BB, submarines also have something to say about that.
@michael boultinghouse They were a bit busy in a death grip with Germany. I can understand them being a bit slack on the other side of the world. Those same troops on bicycles as you called them had just trashed the US Pacific fleet and for now, were the most powerful Navy in the Pacific and with their adept use of carriers maybe the world. Though you might like reading about US Fleet Adm. King. I'm not sure if he disliked British in general or just the RN, but he really had no use for the RN and was incandescently angry about having to clear Europe before being able to release everything on the Japanese. (in fairness, incandescent anger was pretty much his default mood.)
9:00 the reason why was the torpedo protection system stopped just before where the torpedo hit, interestingly all subsequent King George V class battleships had this fixed.
The torpedo that hit Prince of Wales at 1144 had a number of things go right for it (and wrong for the ship). The torpedo detonated forward of the port strut close to the stern tube of the outboard shaft being powered from B Engine Room. The explosion under the stern created upwards (lifting) force, which was resisted by the inertia of the very heavy aft quadruple 14-inch turret and associated barbette armour. This resistance deformed the surrounding structure and likely ruptured seams. The shaft itself and stern tube were damaged, and the port propeller, still turning at high speed, started wobbling and vibrating, so much so it appears the inboard strut arm broke in half and the outboard strut arm broke off cleanly at the hull. The twisting shaft ruptured the glands preventing sea water from entering via the shaft tunnel's interior bulkheads, and promptly a few thousand tons of water rushed in, causing a list. To compound matters, electrical power was cut which prevented the pumps from working.
This was a question of which combination of capital ships to send. The alternative course suggested by others in the admiralty would just have led to the loss of different capital ships.
US totally lost 3 battleships(Arizona, Utah & Oklahoma) in Pearl Harbor (the rest I didn't mention, because they could be raised and returned to service.) British lost one battleship and one Battlecruiser near Malaya All happened in 3 days, Japanese sunk 4 Battleships and 1 Battlecruiser.
You can thanks the japanese for that. If they haven't use planes/carriers to attack pearl harbor and Repulse/PWales we would be seeing by now "super battleships" like the Montana or the A-150 Super Yamato.
@@guaporeturns9472 Both of them are responsable of that. Montana dry dock was ready to start working on the ship. After the air raids all super BBs were cancelled.
Force Z actually showed the weakness of the RN at that time to the Japanese navy. If the RN remained in the India ocean (Ceylon) it would have much better in the long run. The RN itself wasn't overly enthusiastic with the Idea of Force Z. its was very aware of Japans strength. However Eden and Churchill thought it would be sufficient to ward Japan off. The general and long standing plans were that in a scenario such as this, the China station would need to wait for the Mediterranean fleet to be freed up. The Mediterranean fleet would be a considerable threat. However that would be secondary to planned, extensive commerce raiding of japan. The raiders being available sooner, more flexible and or important to a sustained war. One can suppose that that the Idea of not requesting Air cover was that Singapore's air cover was very limited and outdated*, and to use it as an escort risks depriving the land forces, and may not have been seen as needed until to late.
It's another shining example of Churchill's armchair military genius mindset. He insisted on taking troops from North Africa to support the Greeks against the Italians, despite the army insisting it would simply cause the Germans to intervene and the army wasn't prepared to meet the Germans in Europe once again. Big disaster in Greece, followed by the army in North Africa holding on by its fingernails. He insisted on an invasion of mainland Italy, despite the bottleneck of the country and its terrain favouring the German defenders as pointed out to him by both British and American generals. And he insisted on sending these two warships half way around the world with minimal support... Then of course there was Gallipoli in the First World War. It's funny to me how Churchill and Hitler's constant meddling in the conduct of the war had such serious impacts on it. Two men with minimum military experience convinced they were military genius'.
@@Schmidty1 I won't put my hopes up for that single aircraft carrier that was supposed to join the Force Z, remember that its aircrafts were inferior to what the US flat tops had during that time, what more to IJNs? Even the land based IJN aircarfts can outrange and outgun those British ones.
@@DomWeasel The alternative was to let Australia recall all their boys (e.g. from Tobrouk, Rangoon) if GB didn't honor their promise to keep "fortress Singapore" defended, as far as I understood. Somehow similarily, UK's need to reassure other nations of their -hability- commitment to defend their allies might be part of them landing in Greece. I'd stand by your side about the bloody Dardanelles in WWI and the Italian front in 1943-44, even though I am sure her Majesty's government had some strategic reasonning behind Churchill obsession with the Mediterranean. Also I hope you guys can excuse my creepy English, sorry.
HMS Indomitable was supposed to deploy with Repulse and Prince of Wales but sustained damage in a grounding accident off of Virginia and was in drydock for repairs, the Admiralty could of spared the HMS Eagle but she was too slow to keep up with the other ships.
You do realize the UK carrier planes of the time were total crap for dogfighting, right? The US planes were better at the time, and they were dogmeat against the Zeroes. Saying the UK needed carriers against the Japanese is fine, but they first needed a Fleet Fighter and Torpedo bomber to be effective. The fleet standards of the time were the Blackburn Roc (awful) The Gloster Sea Gladiator(outdated) and everyone knows the Fairy Swordfish Torpedo bomber. The UK didn't have a answer to the Zero. Sending the Sea Air arm out in 1940 would have just added to the body count.
I'm not sure of OP's stance on this, but i have another comment that speaks of my opinion. There, i said that even the presence of HMS Indomitable will make no difference, what more to HMS Eagle. What's worse is that the Japanese were using torpedoes, not aerial bombs.
@michael boultinghouse either way, the demise of the Prince of Wales and Repulse was the final undeniable proof that Battleships were no match against aircraft and the formers dominance was a thing of the past.
@@Knight860 I actually disagree that the Battlewagon's days were numbered. The Aircraft of the day had advanced faster than the AA armaments of the day would be more accurate to say. By the end of WW2, AA had largely cought up with Airplane technology. Both in fleet defense strategy, and in a layered Gun defense. By the time USS Missouri retired in the 1990's she was no less likely to be sunk than any other type of ship.
Thank you for covering a pivotal moment in history. I live in Malaysia in Kuantan, where HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales was sunk just off the coast. I heard from the locals that illegal salvagers had already robbed the war graves of both battlewagons for scrap and war loot, which is sad when you think about it. Graves being desecrated and such. Anyways, thanks for the vid!
The Commonwealth War Grave Commission in 1961 had a chance to do so when Indonesian Government formally requested the scattered plethora of war graves to be amalgamated so that the bereaved would not have to cope with the then extremely underdeveloped outer eastern islands and not incur huge maintenance costs. The two major graves were established by the CWGC to the then best serviced city of the region Ambon, with commercial flights and ferries to Ambon War Grave (formerly Ambonia, Moluccas- re-intering corpses from all around the then Moluccas, Celebes, Timor and the multitudinous small outer islands in-between) and Kembang Kuning (yellow flower) Jakarta, former Batavia- and reinterring those from Bangka etc to Jakarta. Ambon, Maluku is a short flight directly from Jakarta or a long boat ride. Then in the 1980s when arguably Indonesian-UK relations were at their peak under Thatcher, Soeharto bought a huge tranche of UK kit Alvis armour Stormers, Scorpions & Scimitar and other equipment, Leyland and Dennis lorries, Land Rovers, Hawk jets and huge amount of former Troubles 1950-s1960's surplus (many of which still in full readiness reserve) Daimler Dingos, Humbers. The UK said and did nothing. They had the Commonwealth War Graves Commission active on Indonesian land since 1961- that could have requested a marine grave. They did not. The Guardian Article 20 Dec 2016 "Can anything be done to stop the vanishing wwII shipwrecks of java" The Netherlands has a significant illegal salvage industry, notably looting HMS Aboukir, HMS Hogue, and HMS Cressy off the Dutch coast. Similarly, UK salvagers have exploited historic Dutch shipwrecks. At a recent lecture at the British Museum, Dr. Innes McCartney presented evidence showing the widespread salvage of the ships from the Battle of Jutland. A recent report showed it to be a Dutch salvage firm. UK and Dutch officials know the responsible salvers, but neither government has taken action beyond strongly worded letters. Andy Brockman, an archaeologist and researcher in maritime crime, said the UK government had not done enough to stop undersea looting. “My feeling is that the Ministry of Defence files the issue of taking active steps to protect historic Royal Navy wrecks under the heading of too difficult and too expensive,” he said. “However, I think it is becoming ever more clear that this attitude is not acceptable to the wider public, not least to veterans and their families.” Bambang Budi Utomo, the head of the Indonesian National Archeological Centre, part of the education and culture ministry, said on Thursday that Indonesia could not be expected to protect the sites without assistance, "The Dutch government cannot blame the Indonesian government because they never asked us to protect those ships. As there was no agreement or announcement, when the ships go missing, it is not our responsibility." Indonesia’s navy said the ships should not have been disturbed but it was not its responsibility to protect them. “The Indonesian navy cannot monitor all areas all the time,” navy spokesman Gig Jonias Mozes Sipasulta told Agence France-Presse. “If they ask why the ships are missing, I’m going to ask them back, why didn’t they guard the ships?” Guardian 17 November 2016: "Indonesia says its not to blame for missing shipwrecks.
Glad to see you're back, Historigraph! Really enjoy your videos, no matter if about naval or land-based warfare. Now I know you focus on WWI and WWII for the most part, but have you considered taking a look at earlier battles? Like Trafalgar or Austerlitz to just name two famous battles.
I'm from Penang, Malaysia. And TBH, we learnt little about this part of the history. The Japanese conquered the Malaya peninsular on bicycle, without much resistance from the British. Fun fact, Penang Island is formerly known as Prince of Wales Island. Thumbs up for the video 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Suggest you look up more history of this event,our soldiers fought valiantly but had No tanks,or usefull anti-tank guns,Japanese light tanks were ideal for jungle warfare,they were advancing so fast,soldiers used bicycles to keep up,Also bad decisions by Gen Percival!British guns were ordered Not to fire on Palace where Japanese Gen Mashita was directing his army take Singapore!!He ordered them to surrender prematurely
It's real name is PINANG because PENANG is aurally guttural vernacular peninsular Malay dialect. Like Nyamuk and Nyamok, amuk and amok. And worse your awful title Dato' being a bastardisation of the original Malay Datuk. Your Sultans look like Sumatran supir and gardeners. Pulau Pinang- meaning Pulau Sirih or betel (areca) nut in Javanese. You're on stolen Javanese & Sumatran not to mention Sultan Riau-Johor land and Sultan Palembang. You Malaysians speak awful Malay as a remnant of Sriwijaya from Melayu Kingdom Jambi River north of Palembang. Every "Malaysian" "sultan" is a fugitive traitor from Java that fled Gadja Mada and his 200,000 man attack on Javanese possession Temasek alias Singapura. That's why Indonesia retains arms against theiveing Malaysians islands Blitung, Bintun, Karimun, Ruwi, Nuki, Sugi, Durian, Sanglar, Bulu, Bela (war/defence as in modern usage bela diri self defence- staging post for invasion Temasek), Urung, Mendol- these are not Malay names but Javanese. What language is Dusunpusaka, Siah Seri Indrapura, Tanjung Kebadu Port of the Baduese? Certainly not Malay it's Sansakerta high Javanese.
@@ivomac416 It was a forgone conclusion the British had lsot a war they ill conceived could be fought. Americans famously said tanks couldn't be used in jungles only to be ambushed by them time and again in the Pacific and yet again in Vietnam. The Japanese tanks were tinny but perfectly capable of pushing through light jungle exactly as the Dutch KNIL had used their Vickers Mark VI light tanks ordered and fielded from Britain. I'm shocked British technicians who definitely would have come to Batavia etc to train the Dutch never relayed how the Dutch used these light tanks in a jungle environment to the Royal Army- but perhaps it was info better ignored or not pressing. I suppose British tank armaments figures were focused on the most immediate threat Germany and possibly Red Russia. Not coincidentally, the Japanese ordered the same Vickers light tank and made their type 92. The racket that panicked the Indian Sepoys was the Japanese nicked bicycles mainly from former Batavia whose tread had run out and they were riding on rims- imagines tens of thousands of those- on crappy roads- ear splitting. the reports were the British held their ground until literally they had no where to go. Although the ANZAC-British suffered depredations (conditions the Japanese thought were perfectly adequate)- the Japanese were far less contemptuous of them than the Indians. That the IJN was modelled on the Royal Navy with many shared societal commonalities ie aristocrats as officers (often ex-UK university) thus the Japanese Naval tribute to the gallant PoWales. Togo wanted: "a British Navy and a German Army".
Maybe on some other action where there were no so tragic consequences. I would leave at as is. Serious but the people who know what you are referring to will get the joke.
Fun little trivial thw Imperial Japanese navy in 1938 started preparing the Yamato Battleships that had thick Anti torpedo shields that are like 200mm worth of armour. That is like King tiger tank THICK.
I saw a ‘Drain the Ocean’ episode on the sinking of the POW. She sustained in total only 4 torpedo hits. One in the stern away from the armour belt. This caused the primary damage to her gear and one engine combination. She took another in the bow, which was also unprotected. The bulkheads collapsed inside causing flooding and a severe list. She then received a torpedo hit near amidship and it hit below the main armour belt (due to the listing) She then received the 4th hit amidships on the other side above the armour belt. There was no escape. So she sank with only 4 torpedo hits. Not good results for a new battleship
HMS Prince of Wales was perhaps the unluckiest ship in the Royal Navy during WWII, just about nothing went right for her during her short service life aside from getting a couple significant damaging hits on Bismarck and transporting Churchill to sign the Atlantic Charter with the US.
I just came across this video and want to thank you for the content, I was able to learn a lot about this battle. My father, Midshipmen Walter W. Robinson, was on the HMS Prince of Wales. I have pictures of the Prince of Wales as well as a picture of the crew. My grandmother, my dad’s mom, wrote in her journal about this event: “When Walter had finished school he entered a Naval College and became a midshipman on the HMS Conway. During the war he was aboard the [Battleship, HMS] Prince of Wales, when it was torpedoed. The attack caused some crew members to be thrown into the water. Walter was an excellent swimmer and quickly swam to three drowning sailors. He got them over to some debris and told them to hang on until he could come back for them. Using his lifesaving skills he swam one man to [safety], then the second and finally the third. Walter had swum many miles back and forth and he was totally exhausted. Walter and the men he rescued were carried to a safer place by some English soldiers. When they saw that Walter could hardly breathe, they got him to a hospital where the doctors realized his lung had collapsed. The doctors and nurses looked after him and in a few months he had recovered from his spontaneous pneumothorax condition. After the war was over he was awarded a medal for his bravery.” I always thought this lifesaving event happened later in the war when another ship he served on was sunk but I can’t remember for sure. I was too young and not interested in these things and now unable to confirm these stories as he passed away more than 38 years ago. Young and stupid!
What exactly is the cutoff between a battleship and a battlecruiser? I've heard HMS Hood also referred to as a battlecruiser, but both Hood and Repulse were large ships with 15-inch guns (while battleship Prince of Wales has only 14-inch guns?).
@@folgore1 alot is down to the main armour depth etc.gun size and ship size doesn't really matter . Ie why the hood rip went down so fast vrs the bismarck.both great ships but one was pre 1920s BC design the other a heavy latest spec battleship that didn't follow any treaties.
I'm always amazed at how incredibly fragile battle ships and ships in général are. A few planes with one crewmember and weighting à few tons destroy 2 ships with thousands of sailors and weighting 10's of thousand tons.
Well, you still need a dozen bombers to land one hit. Jes you could build the ships with better protection but the sea doctrine of that day preferred speed as defense.
@@stc2828 Modern warships? You meen that destroyers and glorified cruisers or the ancient Iowas? There was a nice scene in the movie "battleship" which showed the difference in armor between old and new warships. No modern shop is build to withstand bomb rund or missle attacks. At best the machine room is isolated, otherwise they reley on radar, hydrophone or anti missle defense systems. You could build a ship with enough armor to withstand modern missiles (look at the tirpitz for example, they needed absurd big bombs to finish it). But it would be to expensive and to slow.
*UPDATE* The Chinese and Malaysians have been "salvaging" these ships, which are essentially war graves, and both are showing signs of blasting and removal. Other ships in the area show signs of salvage blasting, including American and Australian navy vessels, and two Dutch naval ships have "disappeared" completely. Wholesale scooped, human remains and all.
Bismarck *Torpedo disables steering and is out of control* British "haha" Prince of Wales *Torpedo disables steering and is out of control* British "Okay, it's not funny anymore"
There are several comments here about how this further showed the battleship was obsolete. They fail to realize that the uses for a battleship are many, and no amount of weapons development changed that I point out that once air power was understood and accounted for, the battleship remained effective in two key roles: fleet defense and bombardment. It was often battleships that provided the necessary anti-air screens for the precious few carriers the USN had up till late 1943. Further, it was the volume of fire that battleships could lay down which enabled landings at Normandy, Leyte, Iwo Jima, Tarawa and Okinawa. It was also two battleships that provided the ultimate final defense for Henderson Field during the Guadalcanal campaign. WWII was not the end of the battleship. They served during the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and the Persian Gulf War. In each of these conflicts, the battleships provided a key asset that other ships could not. But what the battleship could not survive was not the weapons of their enemies, but the red pen of budget cuts. Battleships are notoriously expensive to build and operate, and not conducive to peace time military budgeting.
An interesting thought is that it took Germany 21 months to sink 2 British battleships, both of which were old WW1 Era ships, HMS Royal Oak, and HMS Hood. Imagine the horror when Two Battleships were sunk in a single hour, one of which being the most modern battleship the British possessed. That on top of the crippling of the US Fleet at Pearl Harbour.
@@markiobook8639 It wasn't an issue of under estimation though. It was a simple case of the Royal Navy was tied down between fighting the Germans and Italians across 3 theatres with a majority WW1 era navy. They couldn't afford to send anything more - they did send a carrier along originally, though it was damaged on route. The British had recognised the Japanese as a major power in the interwar years, with them having the third largest navy.
In my mind's eye, I can see the tall war memorial in downtown Singapore and the military cemetery in Manila. I am an American and it is still quite painful to contemplate this disaster. In the Far East, the Americans, British and Dutch failed miserably in the interwar years to organize for their collective security. Sympathies to the families of those lost at sea, in the battles for Singapore and the Philippines, and their aftermaths.
All new information for me just the idea of being sunk by Japanese planes losing half of your shipmates , picked up destroyers taken to Singapore, fighting and losing in terrible battles against the Japanese, being torchered by the Japanese , packed into camps to work on the Bridge over the river Kuai until finally freed at the end of the war ! By God these men had suffered enough !!!! I can not Fathom surviving all of this , and I am sure that there was even more terrible things that are over shadowed by this event !
Watching these videos, one realizes what a special psychological tension (or should one better call it horror?) it must have been to serve on a warship. Not only were you threatened with being shot to pieces by the guns of other ships, but you had to constantly reckon with the fact that submarines were lurking somewhere, just waiting to torpedo you. Or that you would be bombed or torpedoed from the air. And once the ship you're on duty on is "mortally wounded" it can well sink within minutes and drag most of your comrades with it into the watery grave. And dead by drowning is anything but pleasant. Not to mention what a challenge that must have been for the commanders. Be it those of the particular ship or those of a fleet. It must have been an enormous challenge to keep nerves and calm when suddenly the ship next to you explodes and sinks within a short time or when you find yourself in a deadly game of cat and mouse with the enemy.
It should be noted that Japanese bombers let destroyers rescue the survivors by not attacking them. They also came back on next day to offer bouquets to honor the dead for their bravery.
Thinking of my Dad John Bryant who was in the belly of The Repulse along with other stokers, whilst they were being attacked by the Japanese. He survived but suffered badly. The ship is now in a sorry state due to the salvage 'pirates' who plunder at their will. It is a war grave and it is a disgrace that it cannot be left in peace. Shame on successive governments who have stood by. Lest we not forget. Richard Bryant
This happened the same time as Pearl Harbor. Frankly the US couldn't be spared time to say "Gee look at what happened to 2 UK ships" They were busy scraping the Pacific fleet from where they sank.
The Imperial Japanese Navy was the cause of the exit of the Royal Navy from the Indian Ocean. In a manner similar to the land battles in the Malayan Peninsula in the early part of the Pacific War, the Japanese Navy won stunning victories over the much fancied British, American, Commonwealth, and Dutch navies. The chasing of the British Royal Navy from the Indian Ocean by the Imperial Japanese Navy effectively ended the gunboat diplomacy of the British Empire, paving the way for the grant of independence for the British colonies in Asia.
@@Timathius17 It is time to grow out of WW2 propaganda of the Allies and look at the results of WW2. The biggest beneficiaries were the enslaved people in European colonies in Asia and Africa. They were granted independence one after the other soon after the end of the war in 1945. Though the Allies won the war by dropping Atom Bombs on the Japanese, it was a Pyrrhic victory. With the defeat of the Royal Navy at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Navy in the seas of Asia, and gunboat diplomacy no longer possible without a strong Navy, and the British Empire rapidly collapsing, Clement Atlee, British P.M. took the wise decision to call it ' quits'. A large share of the credit for the retreat of the West from the East soon after the end of the War must go to Japan. Make no mistake on that.
@@senakaweeraratna741 And look at the shitholes most of the former colonies have turned into.... now they're doing the same to GB. Ah well our 300 years in the sun was good while it lasted.
Also worth acknowledging was that, if I recall correctly, either not all the British AA guns had tracer rounds or the tracer rounds they had didn't work in the tropical environment (can't remember which was the case). This was significant because it meant that a lot of the time the Japanese pilots didn't entirely realize they were being targeted and so continued on their run, whereas had they been able to see the tracers, they would have been more likely to have their runs disrupted, which could have helped the two ships avoid some of the more devastating torpedo salvos. In any case, great video as usual.
I read that somewhere as well. I think they were both lacking the tracer rounds as well as also suffering from some other malfunctions due to the tropical climate.
Wasn't there also something about the larger AA guns being order to fire at the planes instead of in front which also contributed to the loss of PoW and Repair because the Flak didn't scare the pilots because they weren't in front of them?
@@bakaweiner6956 and the Japanese forces wrecked the air cover requested by Battlecruiser Repulse. One Ace of the Battle of Britain was also shot down in this battle.
AFAIK, the destruction of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse signaled more about the end of the era of battleships than the attack on Pearl Harbor because this was the first when battleships were sunk on the open sea using air power alone. US battleships at Pearl Harbor were sitting ducks while the Prince of Wales and the Repulse had much better chances to defend themselves by trying to evade torpedoes and bombs.
@@kms_scharnhorst Good point, but whether it would of deterred the attackers or even upset their aim is up for debate. What is certain is that Bismarck couldn't effectively fend of torpedo bombers either, in fact she probably did worse that PoW and Repulse. Without air cover or at least radar directed AA guns and/or proximity fuses your in deep trouble really.
@@kms_scharnhorst I think it's as simple as learning to fight a modern war. The British had to catch up in WW1 too, she suffered from not having a serious challenge or rival for decades. Also perhaps grossly underestimating the Japanese, dismissing them as daft little yellow men who couldn't see very well. Racist and ignorant of course, the Japanese taught them otherwise.
An appalling decision made by Churchill effectively squandering two valuable warships and along with the squandering of Empire troops and those from France on Gallipoli were badly made decisions that cost a large number of men for no gain that could ever be realised. Churchill real strength was not of a military planner,, but as a unifying force with glib oratory that resonated with the people of the Empire giving them strength and resolve and hope.
That's exactly why the Australian PM, Jack Curtin, refused to allow Churchill to divert the Australian troops returning home from the Middle East to India - he could just see Churchill sacrificing them like he did the Australian 8th Division at Singapore. Instead, those troops went on to fight in New Guinea and helped stopped the Japanese advance there, eventually retaking the island.
Apparently everyone here is a tactical genius. It's really easy to call these men dumb when they are dead and we already know the outcome of the battles and statistics . I really doubt anyone here including myself would contribute to high command . Respect to those who fell .
Hi everyone! As of June, I will be making Historigraph my full time endeavour- its time to find out whether I can make this work as a long term business. So any support you can spare will help even more than normal. The new era of historigraph has begun, and its going to be epic www.patreon.com/historigraph
Come join the historigraph discord: discord.gg/cjTaHFNAjS
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Before you make your videos can you consult someone because you made mutiple mistakes and left out crucial details.
@@Alex-cw3rz Can you give examples?
When you say "full time endeavour" does this mean 1 video a month? Dare I say, 2 videos per month!!! 😁
My green Historiograph t-shirt is one of my favorites. I highly recommend it!
Regarding the next episode; Be sure to really note that the effective final defensive line was not at the city itself. Batu Phat and Mersing was really the last line (Muar to Kuala Rompin being the forward line); Why? The most important strategic element was the reservoir, Its loss will cost the city.
A big failure as the attempt to secure everywhere, when an effective fullback should have been done. Singapore did have lots of materials for defensive works, as well as significant local manpower, that could have developed even basic defensive lines. but it was never used.
The loss of Singapore, in the way it was, was catastrophic; And Id say mostly due to incompetence and failure. Not to denigrate the Japanese (they had the daring do, and pulled it off after all) , but their invasion wasn't the best planned, well supplied or supported or manned...
Congrats on going full time buddy!
Cheers very much! With all the extra videos I'm going to be making, perhaps we can fit a collab in somewhere 👀
@@historigraph COLAB, WITH DRACH. LETS GO
@@historigraph can you please make a video on the battle of Philippine sea and leyte gulf please
@@historigraph *_MONKE NOISE TIME_*
@@historigraph That would be EPIC.....
"While the Repulse was practicing its torpedobeats"
You really got me there
I bet he watches Yuro's videos too, lol. x)
Relatable feeling
*sigh* Loads up WOWS again.
Glad I'm not the only one to have caught that.
I see he is a man of culture too
8:45 "...As steering gear and engine rooms were smashed, putting the ship into a slow, continual turn to port..."
*Bismarck:* Sucks, doesn't it?
A taste of their own medicine I'd say
Yeah, but even after taking 9 more torpedos including bigger ship based weapons and almost 200 shells from main guns she still did not sink.
@@harvykatalbas9989 Nazi supporter
@@davidbooth46ify how?
@@secondlayer7898 World war II, you saw what happened to them.
My grandfather was on HMS Repulse - one of the survivors, thankfully. It must have been terrifying for him - he was only 17 years old. I found some old photos recently of him in the navy and a letter to his mum about him being a survivor of HMS Repulse, which is how I ended up watching this video!
Keep those letters safe Nikki, they are important historical documents. If you decide they need a proper home, then the imperial war museum will archive them if you contact them in future.
Bless him.
My great grandfather was on the Prince of Wales. He survived too.
Any pictures of the Repulse or Prince of Wales would be incredibly appreciated at the Australian War Mueseum or the Singapore War Museums
@@venaautos sadly no photos of the Repulse or Prince of Wales. Only photos of my grandad and a letter from the Admiralty to my grandad's mum when she was trying to find out news about him/his location.
Churchill wanted "British Bismark" and he go exactly it
Lol 😂
Except that the Bismarck at least sank the Hood, while PoW and Repulse did literally nothing to the Japanese.
Prinz Eugen didn't support Bismarck in the last battle
They might have won if Prinz Eugen helped
fortunately Germany had the tirpitz the backup Bismarck
A really interesting/ heartwrenching detail to add is that the Royal Navy was effectively the father of Japanese Naval Aviation. The RN taught them the basics and then they made it into an art form. And the Japanese knew it; unlike later naval engagements there wasn't a single case of strafing men in the water and the destroyers were left to pickup survivors without attack. The following day a Japanese airman who had the day before been involved in the attack returned to the site of the battle, he dropped a wreath in honour of the ships they had sunk and the men who went down with them.
John Toland relates in "The Rising Sun" that the Japanese Bomber pilots at first mistook the Repulse for the Japanese battleship Kongo, the resemblance was so close- the Kingo had in fact been built for Japan by Britain some thirty years earlier...
That's heart warming. I'm sure the surviving sailors were touched. Bataan was right around the corner and the Japanese were so compassionate to all enemy combatants.
@@coolhand411luke6 "unlike later naval engagements" - that to me is a pretty clear acknowledgement that this case represents an exception to a very cruel very brutal norm. War is fucking brutal, its bloody, its complicated, poor young men die for their flag for their religion, for the man next to them in their thousands. You don't have to apply the bagagge of a whole nation's conduct of a brutal war of conquest to every single action taken by individuals and small groups of officers and men. Its down that path that you'll find a criminally iresponsible perspective on what war is; its not a contest between good and evil, the righteous and the dammed. War isn't like a cheap Holywood war film where the brave American saints in camo take on endless hordes of heartless, evil, stupid or feckless enemies. The humanity shown in this case by Japanese servicemen after attacking a completely legitimate military target is of note exactly because of it exceptionality, not because the Japanese were somehow all lovely people (nor either were the British when we firebombed Dresden or the Americans when they nuked the Japanese mainland).
@@flightographist There is no saving the Canucks from their fine political leadership!
@@sionwebb1955 Of course. Of course. Years ago I asked an old Filipino friend how he might compare Spanish, American and Japanese occupation, all of which his nation had experienced. He replied that all were bad and, while he couldn’t say much about the Spanish, the Japanese were generally somewhat better behaved than the Americans. Victor history is usually heavily biased
You've got to admire the skill of the captain Tennant and his crew dodging so many torpedoes for so long.
*STEER CRANKING INTENSIFIES*
*TORPEDOBEAT INTENSIFIES*
Probably the most skilful display of ship handling in history
@@johnlavery3433 Chad William Tennant. Dodging torpedoes with sheer willpower.
Dogging? Are you British?
@@johnlavery3433 Don't get overexcited
Repulse managed to dodge 19 torpedoes in one of the most impressive displays of ship handling in history.
Yes, still several ships most likely dodged even more than that, Bismarck and Yamato being the the most famous.
They used the hydro acoustic search consumable.
@@niclasjohansson4333 Bismarck no, one carrier launching a late day strike with biplane torpedo bombers , they got a lucky hit on the rudder
The first strike didn’t even find the Bismarck
The ark Royal only carried about 30 of these planes , so one strike of about 15 aircraft reached Bismarck, and got 2 hits.
For what,the end was the same.
@@niclasjohansson4333
Yamato and Musashi definitely, but Bismarck? No.
Aircover not being requested was likely due to many naval officers not respecting the danger of air attack and also interdepartmental rivalry, ie, the naval commander not wanting aid from his own air force. Too many commanders in WWI and II were too proud and hidebound to accept change, costing lives.
Disastrous incompetence.
Phillips was 'radio silent', and maintained it even after being attacked by the Japanese. The fighters were actually available and reserved for Force Z, but only the Japanese knew where Phillips and Force Z was. Captain Tennant of Repulse was actually violating Phillips' orders when he finally radioed for help during the attack at 11:58. Pulford got the message at 12:19, and 11 Buffaloes were aloft within 6 minutes. They arrived just as PoW was going down.
A cruel irony. Radio silence insured that only the Japanese knew their position and peril.
I also think the fact that Malaya was under invasion while these ships were sailing had a large part in it. The movement of fleet vessels seems like a secondary consideration to warding off an invasion that might overtake the very airbases those vessels want protection from. I'm actually surprised they managed to scramble a flight at all, late or not, given that malaya must have been under constant attack.
Phillips was presumably counting on surprise to be his force multiplier. He knew he didn't have the ships, had already been told that air cover would not be forthcoming, and yet he sailed anyway. Radio silence was the only measure to be taken for lack of any promised air cover ahead of time, and its plumb unfortunate that Force Z was spotted by a sub before being able to hand over their surprise to the Japanese. From that point, yes the radio silence doomed them. But he wasn't to know that the Japanese air cover was so saturated as they seemed to be hitting multiple places in different parts of the pacific at the same time. Their carriers, I assume he thought, couldn't be everywhere at once.
Sometimes people are wrong, and when certain people are wrong a lot of people get killed. It's not necessarily incompetence. It was also not the naval commanders' choice to send these two particular ships. It was Churchill who was adamant that the mere presence of british capital units would scare the Japanese. So it isn't even the case that Phillips was "hidebound". He played the hand he had. The alternative was, people would be asking why Force Z sat back and watched Malaya fall. Someone had to act, and unfortunately, prior decisions over his head meant he was acting without the proper resources to address the emergency in Malaya.
Maybe there's more about Phillips I'm not aware of that marks him out as some kind of incompetent, but from this video I rather sympathise with and admire his courage. I don't think I'd leave port for those odds. The prevailing consensus in the comments seems to attribute the arrogance of Churchill's reasoning to the naval commanders in the chair. That isn't what this video lays out.
@@cakecakeham5823 Excellent observations.
Fun fact, Prince of Wales at the time had one of the best, if not the best anti-aircraft suite in any warship afloat. The number of barrels was nothing to scoff at, with up to 32 40 mm pom-poms in 4 octuple mountings, seven single 20 mm Oerlikons, plus the large calibre battery of 8 twin 5,25" guns. But where she excelled at was in her fire control. While the British HACS was markedly inferior to other systems like the American Mark 38 or even the Japanese Type 94, she mounted the most advanced version available, stabilized and equipped with a gyro unit, making it much faster and easier to operate. Additionally, she counted with a large number of radars for anti-aircraft fire control, including a Type 281 for air search, 4 Type 285s for the HACS (for 5,25" FC), and 4 Type 282s for the pom-pom directors! By December 1941, AA fire control radars were rare even in the US Navy, and radars for control of the medium calibre AA guns was unheard of outside of the Royal Navy. Of course the 5,25" and the pom-pom were not the best guns around, but they were still pretty decent and served the Royal Navy well even late in the war.
Sadly, the hot, humid weather was damning and had her 40 mm ammunition not work properly, leading to frequent jams, and most of her radars weren't operationally either. Her pom-poms also lacked tracer ammunition, reducing the psychological effect on the Japanese pilots who didn't even see the AA fire, which was arguably one of the biggest effects of AA by this point. In the end, not even all of her radars and ammunition working properly would have saved her from her fate, but maybe it would have inflicted a bigger toll on the Japanese attackers.
And so did Bismarck
@@bondrewdthelordofdawn3744 Well the Bismarck at least had the excuse that it didn't expect to be targeting WWI biplanes. The AA firing was always overshooting cuz they were so slow!
@@wolfshanze5980 I gonna be honest biplane is to op ask Italy and you know Bismarck
@@bondrewdthelordofdawn3744 Don't bring up Taranto!
Mega upvotes !, thanks fo the info on the AA defenses , the value of tracers was new to me but it makes so much sense and I also think that it helps with the targeting . I think that the lack of tracers is truly a BIG mistake . With all of those good guns , radar and guidance systems is all good until you get that first Hit ! As Mike Tyson said “Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the face !” Then the wheels come off and nothing works !
A fellow Malaysian here,
I wished the curricular text books that I studied back in school would mention just about anything said in this video instead of a side note that says 'The Japanese sank 2 british war ships off the coast of Malaya on ___ day, thus the japanese occupation began.' This puts the consequences and meaning behind the sinking of both ships into much more context. Thank you for educating me on my own country's history, love the content!
Hello fellow Malaysians. Yeah, the history text books just leave out those information and just say "yeah, they sank and Japan invaded, and in 1945 surrendered". It would be interesting if there is an opportunity to explore the wreck of both the Prince of Wales and the Repulse since it is rather close by.
@@whateverwhatever7465 yeah, but sadly, I doubt that will deter scrap metal dealers either. And another is that the Malaysian government is very willing to forget our colonial past if possible.
Malaysian here too, not gonna lie though I was very excited when I first heard that there were going to be both world wars being uncovered the next year, only to find out that it is only being explained in just a few pages. Even worse, the history teacher mostly focuses on exams and techniques to score them, and just making outright historical mistakes along the way (most prominent are the two world wars being mixed up, and the worse thing I heard is that Japan started expanding after Germany’s capitulation. Had to sit through the pain as I hear one by one of these mistakes being made. Also, I get ignored each time I tried to correct the teacher’s mistake, really frustrating). It was really a bummer how our history subject is being teached this way.
They mention the 2 ship sank cause of kamikaze attack in buku sejarah
Same here. I remember reading the social studies textbook in primary 4 and saw a small illustration of the two capital ships being destroyed. However, it seems that that British had intended to send the ships to surprise the invading forces despite knowing that they were at a numerical disadvantage.
Mark Felton, the Operations Rooms, Drachinifel, the World War Two channel, the Chieftain and even Historigraph are uploading today !
What did we do to deserve such abundance of content ? ^^
I have been rewatching your videos and was eager to see a new one !
World War II - Epic Batles have also uploaded today.
Patreon
FF as well!
history buffs too
Naming Mark Felton along them is an insult to the other channels.
My Father Patrick O'Hare was a 19 year old Able Seaman on HMS Repulse when she was sunk. His action station was the 30ft Rangefinder behind the forard guns. Being above deck enabled him to abandon ship unlike many of his shipmates. He was rescued after hours in the water by HMAS Electra and returned to Singapore. He was originally detailed to air defence on the Singapore golf course, but then redirected with a shipmate to the port to join a steamer taking labourers to Sumatra as air defense once again armed with WW1 Lee Enfield rifles. They made it without trouble and he was evacuated on the SS Canberra back to Blighty where he volunteered for hazardous duties got married and soent the restof the war as coxswain on MGB 659 in the Mediterranean and Adriatic. RIP Dad
Probably lucky he got that posting to Sumatra. The small-scale chance events of war that can decide people's future!
@@conistonoldman Lucky is the word! Most of his shipmates were captured by the Japanese to work on the Burma railway after th fall of Singapore. Many did not survive.
He was very lucky to survive.
I pray for your father,God have mercy on him and Keep him.
When Bismarck and Prince of Wales duelled it was the battle of the doomed giants. The fate of both was decided by aircraft.
In WWII the main naval hitting power is aircraft not battleships, dreadnoughts or battlecruisers. Aircraft damaged and sunk more ships than surface ships
@@ramal5708 You're definitely right here.
Yep, Battleships were already obsolete. Arguably the last naval engagement which was fought only with gunnery was the Battle of the Komandorski Islands. However, even that battle was decided by Air Power, because the Japanese, despite having outgunned and outmaneuvered the Americans, withdrew, because enough time had elapsed for bombers based in the Aleutians to have arrived (assuming they were alerted by radio when the engagement began) It's no coincidence that the planned Montana Class Battleships were cancelled, and no further orders for US battleships were placed after the Battle of Midway. That was when it was painfully apparent that a Battleship had no real purpose in a world with Aircraft Carriers. In fact, no battleships were orders by any nation after about 1942. Even the last battleship commissioned, the HMS Vanguard, Completed after the end of WWII, had been ordered in 1940.
Aircraft and radar made the battleship obsolete
Imagine the ease a small force could ambush a carrier without radar like a glorious vs Sharnhorst attack
No Bismarck was scuttled. Robert Ballard has documntary evidence. Seacocks full open.
Many of the survivors of these sinkings were recovered not by the British destroyers, but by the Japanese. My uncle, a Radioman on HMS Prince of Wales, was among them. He would spend the remainder of the war as a POW in the Burmese labour camps, building railroads for the Japanese, and an extended period in hospital once freed.
Poor bloke. Glad he survived the war.
You may live in a different reality , as long as you like it.
Interestingly British actually prepared to send two aircraft carriers to Singapore for air cover, but neither failed to arrive in time.
HMS Indomitable, the newest of the carrier, ran aground in Jamaica and had to spend time in U.S. port for repair, while HMS Hermes was too slow to reach Singapore on time from South Africa.
I doubt it's gonna make too much difference. British aircrafts were inferior to Japanese. The student had bcm the Master.
@Gene Hunt why not? Early WW2
@Gene Hunt Don't forget that the two types of aircraft you mention are ground-based aircraft. They couldn't operate on cv's, so they weren't used. Only from the leftover English and American ground bases. In 1942, HMS Indomitable carried Sea Hurricanes, Martlets and Albacores. I indeed wouldn't call all of the three inferior to Japanese fighters and strike aircraft.
Both carriers would have been sunk.
Neither failed to arrive in time ?
I'm thinking you meant both failed to arrive (in time)
9:00 IRONY that Bismarck had suffered the same crippling hit to its steering
I think that falls into the Alanis Morissette bucket of irony: when you're sailing away, and get shot in the rud-dah! 🎶
@@ironmantooltime sorry, but the irony is there if you look for it. PoW, modern BB crippled same as Bismarck, also a modern BB that it had faced only half year prior.
... but LOL nonetheless :)
Repulse didnt get Eugen’s invincibility thouugh
Well the simple problem was they used extremely large propellers and rudders all ships (German/french/British) were designed to operate in rough Atlantic while the Pacific was fairly stable in terms of weather thus many European ships especially battleships risked losing their rudders and propulsion to close detonation of bombs and torpedos a survey of Americans of HMS king George V found that it's rudder and propellers were larger than the IOWA by 35% and when compared to Missouri it was 25% larger that's why both ships were lost .
@@shubhendudash5534 interesting, probably was a factor but the couldn't have operated in the atlantic without large rudders so every ship had the same vulnerability..
It seems that Churchill while being an inspirational leader, committed a lot of strategic mistakes in his life spanning both WWI and WWII.
As they say the victor gets to tell the story. Churchill was a dud in every area. The inspirational issues and speeches were all prepared for him. Very little was his work.
This cannot be denied. He blundered in the first world war with his Gallipoli campaign and he certainly blundered in the second. However, his determination to keep on fighting and not to surrender, as other British politicians would have done, is something to be admired.
@@nigelsw55 Also the fiasco at Dieppe...
@@marianom125 True, but it did help in the end with the D-Day landings. It made the allies realise they needed to have a port - which in the allies case were the mulberry harbours.
@@kentriat2426 Except Churchill specifically told the Royal Navy not to sail without air cover.
I let out an audible "ooh!" of excitement when I saw this notification. Wish there was more content like this with this high quality!
"While Repulse was practicing it's torpedobeats"
*I've heard that before*
I suppose you would be well versed in this, eh chancellor?
Repluse dodging that many torpedoes is amazing
he had the song of tokyo drift and deja vue in his mind
Someone was playing Initial D.
Kido Butai dodging level bombers for an hour: finally, a worthy opponent!
The skill of her command crew was really on display. Repulse did everything that could be expected of her that day.
@michael boultinghouse I'd probably find that amusing if that's what happened. They weren't meant to be sneaky they were there to cause a large Japanese force to be dispatched just to contain them. Which would give forces closer to Japan more leeway. If as intended they had a fleet carrier escorting them, this would have probably happened.
My wife's late father(later MAA) Henry (Harry) William York was one of the survivors of HMS Prince of Wales - He and his follow survivors spent a total of 10 days in an open boat and managed to be rescued and transported back to Ceylon. Harry had previously been a Petty Officer (Gun Layer) aboard HMS Dorsetshire, and actually fired the last / final torpedo which was part of the naval action which sank the Bismark in May 1941. For his part in the engagement Harry was awarded the BEM by the King. Harry was drafted to HMS Prince of Wales later in 1941, as part of the crew who sailed her to Singapore.
In 1966 I was a team member of a Royal Naval Clearance Diving team who (under the command of a Royal Marine Colour Sergeant) dived off the wreck HMS Prince of Wales in the China Sea on the anniversary of her being sunk by Japanese aircraft; as a team we secured a Royal Naval White Ensign to her superstructure along with (underwater) floats which permitted the White Ensign to 'fly underwater'. The event was captured (and published) by the UK Daily Express newspaper - I was so proud at being able to relate the event to my (then to be) father-in-law in 1968, and witnessed the emotion it created in a strong and brave man. God bless you Harry and all your shipmates.
I dove her and the HMS Prince of Wales in 2013, as part of a multi week live aboard expedition to explore the USA, British, and Japanese wrecks in the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea off of Malaysia . As a technical diver and WW II history buff, these dives were very special to me, giving me a personal connection with their place in history, in events that occurred so long ago. On the dive's technical level, utilizing mixed gas closed circuit rebreathers and underwater propulsion vehicles, we were able to explore a great deal of the Repulse in particular. these were fantastic and enjoyable dives, but at the same time the realization of all the lives lost was very sad and sobering. As of our dives in 2013, divers have been maintaining a Union Jack on the wrecks.
as a side note, we saw first hand what terrible damage the locals have done, salvaging the wrecks for metal to sell with zero regard for the fact that they are war graves and it is both legally and morally wrong to harm the wrecks. this i am sure continues to this day. very disgusting.
@@yosman-609 . first off, all war graves irregardless of country should be respected for what they are, a GRAVE. i am sure you would be perfectly happy to have someone destroy the grave of a relative for profit (which is just what they are doing), as long as the destroyer was of a political or cultural persuasion you agreed with.
the japanese invaded their country (Malaysia). the Brits opposed them. the Japanese were among the most racist people on the planet. ask the local Maylasian and chinese about the Japanese occupation. the Brits weren't perfect when they held sway over their country, but they were not the brutal regime that the Japanese were, killing thousands that they referred to as inferior races.
Can't view the looting as 'disgusting'- more in an amoral way. These people need to live and you can't expect them to care about a sunken ship. There are lots of sunken ships and this one sunk close enough in history for people to care about it.
Hhahaha of course the Brit fascinated with keeping their flag flying in an underwater grave finds the locals struggle to survive *uncivilized*
Perhaps don’t deliver war boats to their front yard. Perhaps don’t try to subjugate others. Etc 😂
As a tech diver, I always wanted to dive some of WW2 wrecks. Alas, I never had the opportunity and now my diving days are behind me. You had a special opportunity, cherish it.
@@CoercedJab i am not a Brit. i just believe in respecting graves, even yours
Captain Leach and the crew of Repulse dodged as many as 19 torpedoes... Incredible seamanship.
My dad was born in Sydney in 1915, and during WW2 he told me that the local newspapers were full of stories about this incident, with drawings and photos showing how it would be impossible for any aircraft to get anywhere near to these ships, what with all of their anti aircraft guns and weapons. How wrong were they...
The Titanic was an unsinkable ship. Thalidomide was safe for pregnant mothers to take. The Covid19 vaccines were touted by all governments as safe and effective.
Typical war propaganda. Goering said no allied plane would fall on Berlin or he'd eat his hat.
The interesting thing about Prince of Wales is that the driveshaft kept spinning inside the fittings that held it, despite being badly bent by the torpedo. This basically gutted everything connected to the ships power plant and propulsion and led to catastrophic flooding
Sad to note, the RAAF planes of the 453 Squadron reached the locations at about 1.18pm, witnessing the sinking of Prince of Wales. The next day, Left. Haruki Iki of the Japanese Air Group Kanoya flew over the sinking sites and supposedly dropped 2 flower bouquets for the fallen airmen and sailors.
Funny how Churchill believed emulating the German strategy with Bismarck was a good idea after it proved to be very vulnerable to aerial attacks and the Japanese already had bases in Indochina.
I feel he gets a lot of historical blank checks for his amazing oratory and charisma, but had some stellar strategic blunders even after Gallipoli.
Mustafa Kemal beating Churchill was the biggest embarrasement churchill had mentioned in his memoirs.
Churchill was an idiot. Simple. I don't understand the post war beatification. He was even caught by the Boers. Lord Louis Mountbatten, General Montgomery, so many other illustrious courageous and intelligent British forgotten. Mountbatten was very wise to realize he was being used by the Dutch postwar to re-occupy an unwilling hostile populous- rapidly organized a truce with Indonesian Republicans and the work of repatriating Japanese and PoW's was allowed to continue aided by the Indonesian Nationalists (there were problems with non-regulated Indonesian groups). As such, Indonesia first aircraft and jets were British. Vampires, Fairey Gnats etc.
The Repulse under command of Capitan Tenneant , was and still today the best example of seamanship, next to the Seydlitz at the battle of Jutland!.P.S. the last anouncment over the Repulse's P.A. system was, All hands prepare to abandon ship!, May God be with you!!!.
Happily, Bill Tennant survived, played an important role in Overlord, and retired as a Vice-Admiral.
Congratulations on going full time, I really hope you make it.
I have nothing to offer but my like, a comment for the algorithm, and my thanks for the amazing content!
"Shizumu, Reparusu! Shizumu, Prince of Wales!"
-the only line i can remember from a song about their sinking
Gross
There's a song?
@@theknave1915 yeah, now I remember, it's called "Destruction of the British Oriental Fleet"
@@davidbooth46ify mad? 😂
Minor error at 4:51 and 5:36
The Islands towards the East, near Borneo are the Riau Islands. They are part of the Dutch East Indies and were never part of British Malaya
Ah! It would appear the map I used as a source was mistaken then
@michael boultinghouse Yep, Riau is to the West of Malaya Peninsula.
@michael boultinghouse the random capitalization is obnoxious
Apparently, Australia warned the british about sending the ships to Singapore. And repeatly asked them to send tge ships to India or if needs be, Perth in Western Australia.
You see this in the early war in the pacific for all defending nations. The brits are obsessed with Singapore, the Dutch with Borneo, the Americans with the Phillipines and the Australians with Australia. All but the Australians suffer big defeats piecemeal because of this. If they pooled all their resources earlier and were prepared to give up ground they might have been much more succesful. But they all needed a big licking by the Japanese before they would give up their arrogance and focus on their own territories.
@@Jajalaatmaar It also didn't really help the Japanese on under-estimating the Aussie spirit. For those troops stationed in Indonesia, losing meant giving the Japanese an easy place to strike directly at Australia. It's not often mentioned, but the ANZAC and Ghurka forces were perhaps the only military force to earn the respect of the Japanese, as they just refused to give up. The Ghurka's were especially scary, as they knew the land, and stealth attacks were what they were good at.
Not only was Australia prepared, in securing an effective ally with the Ghurkas, but they made the Japanese pay heavily for any advancement. When Japan eventually managed to attack Darwin, they were promptly pushed back.
@@Jajalaatmaar They can't gave up those lands without a fight. Political.
@@nyk2000m But all countries messed up the proposed pre-war alliance and contingency plans because they all wanted to protect their own little turf. And MacArthur was a 'tard who didn't even stick to the American battle plan for defending the Phillipines.
Can you please give me a link to this information?
Thanks to the German commerce raider "Atlantis", that captured to British steamer "Automedon" in November 1941, the Japanese had full insight into the British codes used by their forces in Malaya.
But fair play- the US had broken the Japanese highest encryption Purple Codes.
Incredible stupidity exposing these ships to the Japanese without giving them air cover!
This is the opening shot of WW2. Beforehand NO Capital Ships has ever been sunk while on active duty by planes.
Sinking of Prince of Wales & Repulse is a significant footnote in WW2. Pity not popularly discussed for obvious reasons...
@@kentershackle1329 the Bismark was crippled in May of that year by air power.
@@daveevans1236
Crippled, but sunk, the rest of Navy took care of her. This was the first Capital ship in active sunk purely by Air attack.
@@daveevans1236
Its bloody pity, not many historians pointed this out, and a good bloody research being done to document it. The funds would be of good use to help preserve the war graves frm freakin Scrap metal thieves. Such sadness...
@@kentershackle1329 It's more because St. Churchill was the one who dispatched them...
I do wonder if the royal navy had special training for dodging torpedoes, dodging that many torpedoes is so impressive and you hear it in many other stories.
Aiming torpedoes wasn't easy either
Well listening and reading about Jutland I believe they generally turn into or away at speed to evade and outrun them....
they had YT sessions of Yuro's videos
@@samarkand1585 I know, but no other navy dodges that many torpedoes!
Those are IJA, not IJN, thus they are not well versed against ships
Winston Churchill was a menace. When he was 1st Lord of the Admiralty in WW1 Admiral Jackie Fisher thought he was more dangerous than the Germans.
And how did Fisher’s battle cruisers do at Jutland? Churchill wasn’t the only menace to the Royal Navy.
This is the problem when politicians instead of military experts make the decisions
If only they make the majority of the casualty reports...
@@bakaweiner6956 yes
The military experts wanted something akin to four old battleships instead of two new ones... neither would have made a difference in this case.
Yes if they had listened to the Admirals they would have lost four capital ships. Also remember why they had so many battleship instead of aircraft carriers was because of the admirals. So as bad as the politicians are the military has proven themselves to be as bad or worse.
@@matthewhuszarik4173 theyre not floating marshmallows dude, more ships means less chance one loss loses naval superiority
Ironic that Churchill wanted Prince of Wales and Repulse to act like a "British Bismarck" and both Bismarck and Prince of Wales ended up receiving the same kind of damage to their steering systems from air-launched torpedoes.
The writing was already on the wall. The era of battleships and battlecruisers was over. But neither side wanted to admit that the aircraft and aircraft carriers would be the unchallenged rulers of the seas.
@@mightyTMP Nope, aircraft and aircraft carriers did the BBs job better.
@@adamtruong1759 That ist what I said?
@@mightyTMP Nope, you said that aircraft and aircraft carriers would be unchallenged and unbeatable to BB, submarines also have something to say about that.
Losing two capital ships for nothing. One can imagine how the news shocked London
I expect the level of shock experienced mirrored that of losing HMS Hood about 6 months and a half earlier.
Hubris and arrogance.
@michael boultinghouse They did surrender their whole nation so....
@michael boultinghouse You were talking about Japan. Neither the Poles nor the Soviets were mentioned.
@michael boultinghouse They were a bit busy in a death grip with Germany. I can understand them being a bit slack on the other side of the world. Those same troops on bicycles as you called them had just trashed the US Pacific fleet and for now, were the most powerful Navy in the Pacific and with their adept use of carriers maybe the world.
Though you might like reading about US Fleet Adm. King. I'm not sure if he disliked British in general or just the RN, but he really had no use for the RN and was incandescently angry about having to clear Europe before being able to release everything on the Japanese. (in fairness, incandescent anger was pretty much his default mood.)
9:00 the reason why was the torpedo protection system stopped just before where the torpedo hit, interestingly all subsequent King George V class battleships had this fixed.
The torpedo that hit Prince of Wales at 1144 had a number of things go right for it (and wrong for the ship). The torpedo detonated forward of the port strut close to the stern tube of the outboard shaft being powered from B Engine Room. The explosion under the stern created upwards (lifting) force, which was resisted by the inertia of the very heavy aft quadruple 14-inch turret and associated barbette armour. This resistance deformed the surrounding structure and likely ruptured seams. The shaft itself and stern tube were damaged, and the port propeller, still turning at high speed, started wobbling and vibrating, so much so it appears the inboard strut arm broke in half and the outboard strut arm broke off cleanly at the hull. The twisting shaft ruptured the glands preventing sea water from entering via the shaft tunnel's interior bulkheads, and promptly a few thousand tons of water rushed in, causing a list. To compound matters, electrical power was cut which prevented the pumps from working.
@@deonprins1583
Mega upvotes thank you for comment very informative !!!!
@@deonprins1583 In other words the ship was poorly designed and could not stand up to the punishment any warship could be expected to receive.
I know of this engagement while playing on the Japanese campaign in battlestation: pacific.
Wow someone else who plays bsp? I must be dreaming.
@@papatango2362 You shouldn't be, the game has literally a renaissance of mods lately.
Same
Man that game MADE my childhood (Well BS Midway) and I credit it to my fascination with WW2
At least Prince Of Wales and Repulse had some air cover that time...
Prince of Wales: "we'll be the Pacific's Bismark", a couple months later "Not like that!" as their rudder goes out
So glad you making this full time. It’s our passion that drives us more than the profit!
Churchill was a disastrous lord of the admiralty in WW 1 he knew zero about how to manage a Navy this all rests on him.
This was a question of which combination of capital ships to send. The alternative course suggested by others in the admiralty would just have led to the loss of different capital ships.
@@ColonelGreen not necessarily as the circumstances would have been entirely different in every respect.
@@jwadaow Either the capital ships try to fight the Japanese or they flee the scene (which _Prince of Wales_ and _Repulse_ could also have done).
US totally lost 3 battleships(Arizona, Utah & Oklahoma) in Pearl Harbor (the rest I didn't mention, because they could be raised and returned to service.)
British lost one battleship and one Battlecruiser near Malaya
All happened in 3 days, Japanese sunk 4 Battleships and 1 Battlecruiser.
The battleship reached the pinnacle of design about fifteen years after they became functionally obsolete. Great video!
You can thanks the japanese for that. If they haven't use planes/carriers to attack pearl harbor and Repulse/PWales we would be seeing by now "super battleships" like the Montana or the A-150 Super Yamato.
@@davhot4107 and even then the raid on Taranto showed Pearl harbour was possible
@@davhot4107 actually thank the British and the raid on Taranto
@@guaporeturns9472 Both of them are responsable of that. Montana dry dock was ready to start working on the ship. After the air raids all super BBs were cancelled.
@@davhot4107 true..I’m just saying the concept of it was really put on display for the world to see at Taranto.
Force Z actually showed the weakness of the RN at that time to the Japanese navy. If the RN remained in the India ocean (Ceylon) it would have much better in the long run. The RN itself wasn't overly enthusiastic with the Idea of Force Z. its was very aware of Japans strength. However Eden and Churchill thought it would be sufficient to ward Japan off.
The general and long standing plans were that in a scenario such as this, the China station would need to wait for the Mediterranean fleet to be freed up. The Mediterranean fleet would be a considerable threat. However that would be secondary to planned, extensive commerce raiding of japan. The raiders being available sooner, more flexible and or important to a sustained war.
One can suppose that that the Idea of not requesting Air cover was that Singapore's air cover was very limited and outdated*, and to use it as an escort risks depriving the land forces, and may not have been seen as needed until to late.
One thing not mentioned is that force Z was supposed to have an aircraft carrier with it, but it ran aground. That doomed force Z from the start.
It's another shining example of Churchill's armchair military genius mindset.
He insisted on taking troops from North Africa to support the Greeks against the Italians, despite the army insisting it would simply cause the Germans to intervene and the army wasn't prepared to meet the Germans in Europe once again. Big disaster in Greece, followed by the army in North Africa holding on by its fingernails. He insisted on an invasion of mainland Italy, despite the bottleneck of the country and its terrain favouring the German defenders as pointed out to him by both British and American generals. And he insisted on sending these two warships half way around the world with minimal support...
Then of course there was Gallipoli in the First World War.
It's funny to me how Churchill and Hitler's constant meddling in the conduct of the war had such serious impacts on it. Two men with minimum military experience convinced they were military genius'.
@@whateverwhatever7465 obviously one aircraft carrier wouldn't of saved Singapore or the task force but it would have definitely minimalized losses.
@@Schmidty1 I won't put my hopes up for that single aircraft carrier that was supposed to join the Force Z, remember that its aircrafts were inferior to what the US flat tops had during that time, what more to IJNs?
Even the land based IJN aircarfts can outrange and outgun those British ones.
@@DomWeasel The alternative was to let Australia recall all their boys (e.g. from Tobrouk, Rangoon) if GB didn't honor their promise to keep "fortress Singapore" defended, as far as I understood. Somehow similarily, UK's need to reassure other nations of their -hability- commitment to defend their allies might be part of them landing in Greece. I'd stand by your side about the bloody Dardanelles in WWI and the Italian front in 1943-44, even though I am sure her Majesty's government had some strategic reasonning behind Churchill obsession with the Mediterranean. Also I hope you guys can excuse my creepy English, sorry.
HMS Indomitable was supposed to deploy with Repulse and Prince of Wales but sustained damage in a grounding accident off of Virginia and was in drydock for repairs, the Admiralty could of spared the HMS Eagle but she was too slow to keep up with the other ships.
Exactly, i see no mention of this at all
You do realize the UK carrier planes of the time were total crap for dogfighting, right? The US planes were better at the time, and they were dogmeat against the Zeroes. Saying the UK needed carriers against the Japanese is fine, but they first needed a Fleet Fighter and Torpedo bomber to be effective. The fleet standards of the time were the Blackburn Roc (awful) The Gloster Sea Gladiator(outdated) and everyone knows the Fairy Swordfish Torpedo bomber. The UK didn't have a answer to the Zero. Sending the Sea Air arm out in 1940 would have just added to the body count.
I'm not sure of OP's stance on this, but i have another comment that speaks of my opinion. There, i said that even the presence of HMS Indomitable will make no difference, what more to HMS Eagle. What's worse is that the Japanese were using torpedoes, not aerial bombs.
@michael boultinghouse either way, the demise of the Prince of Wales and Repulse was the final undeniable proof that Battleships were no match against aircraft and the formers dominance was a thing of the past.
@@Knight860 I actually disagree that the Battlewagon's days were numbered. The Aircraft of the day had advanced faster than the AA armaments of the day would be more accurate to say. By the end of WW2, AA had largely cought up with Airplane technology. Both in fleet defense strategy, and in a layered Gun defense. By the time USS Missouri retired in the 1990's she was no less likely to be sunk than any other type of ship.
I missed your videos its been 5-month can't wait for the next one!
The greatest favor you can do to your enemy is to underestimate him.
The greatest favor you can do is to exit the warzone and leave behind 82 billion dollars worth of military equipment.
@@golden.lights.twinkle2329 this next level of stupidity wasnt invented yet when I made my post.
Thank you for covering a pivotal moment in history. I live in Malaysia in Kuantan, where HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales was sunk just off the coast. I heard from the locals that illegal salvagers had already robbed the war graves of both battlewagons for scrap and war loot, which is sad when you think about it. Graves being desecrated and such. Anyways, thanks for the vid!
The Commonwealth War Grave Commission in 1961 had a chance to do so when Indonesian Government formally requested the scattered plethora of war graves to be amalgamated so that the bereaved would not have to cope with the then extremely underdeveloped outer eastern islands and not incur huge maintenance costs. The two major graves were established by the CWGC to the then best serviced city of the region Ambon, with commercial flights and ferries to Ambon War Grave (formerly Ambonia, Moluccas- re-intering corpses from all around the then Moluccas, Celebes, Timor and the multitudinous small outer islands in-between) and Kembang Kuning (yellow flower) Jakarta, former Batavia- and reinterring those from Bangka etc to Jakarta. Ambon, Maluku is a short flight directly from Jakarta or a long boat ride.
Then in the 1980s when arguably Indonesian-UK relations were at their peak under Thatcher, Soeharto bought a huge tranche of UK kit Alvis armour Stormers, Scorpions & Scimitar and other equipment, Leyland and Dennis lorries, Land Rovers, Hawk jets and huge amount of former Troubles 1950-s1960's surplus (many of which still in full readiness reserve) Daimler Dingos, Humbers. The UK said and did nothing. They had the Commonwealth War Graves Commission active on Indonesian land since 1961- that could have requested a marine grave. They did not.
The Guardian Article 20 Dec 2016 "Can anything be done to stop the vanishing wwII shipwrecks of java"
The Netherlands has a significant illegal salvage industry, notably looting HMS Aboukir, HMS Hogue, and HMS Cressy off the Dutch coast. Similarly, UK salvagers have exploited historic Dutch shipwrecks. At a recent lecture at the British Museum, Dr. Innes McCartney presented evidence showing the widespread salvage of the ships from the Battle of Jutland. A recent report showed it to be a Dutch salvage firm. UK and Dutch officials know the responsible salvers, but neither government has taken action beyond strongly worded letters.
Andy Brockman, an archaeologist and researcher in maritime crime, said the UK government had not done enough to stop undersea looting.
“My feeling is that the Ministry of Defence files the issue of taking active steps to protect historic Royal Navy wrecks under the heading of too difficult and too expensive,” he said. “However, I think it is becoming ever more clear that this attitude is not acceptable to the wider public, not least to veterans and their families.”
Bambang Budi Utomo, the head of the Indonesian National Archeological Centre, part of the education and culture ministry, said on Thursday that Indonesia could not be expected to protect the sites without assistance, "The Dutch government cannot blame the Indonesian government because they never asked us to protect those ships. As there was no agreement or announcement, when the ships go missing, it is not our responsibility."
Indonesia’s navy said the ships should not have been disturbed but it was not its responsibility to protect them. “The Indonesian navy cannot monitor all areas all the time,” navy spokesman Gig Jonias Mozes Sipasulta told Agence France-Presse. “If they ask why the ships are missing, I’m going to ask them back, why didn’t they guard the ships?”
Guardian 17 November 2016: "Indonesia says its not to blame for missing shipwrecks.
Glad to see you're back, Historigraph! Really enjoy your videos, no matter if about naval or land-based warfare. Now I know you focus on WWI and WWII for the most part, but have you considered taking a look at earlier battles? Like Trafalgar or Austerlitz to just name two famous battles.
He did a video on the Battle of Ethandun a few months ago
I'm from Penang, Malaysia. And TBH, we learnt little about this part of the history.
The Japanese conquered the Malaya peninsular on bicycle, without much resistance from the British.
Fun fact, Penang Island is formerly known as Prince of Wales Island.
Thumbs up for the video 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Suggest you look up more history of this event,our soldiers fought valiantly but had No tanks,or usefull anti-tank guns,Japanese light tanks were ideal for jungle warfare,they were advancing so fast,soldiers used bicycles to keep up,Also bad decisions by Gen Percival!British guns were ordered Not to fire on Palace where Japanese Gen Mashita was directing his army take Singapore!!He ordered them to surrender prematurely
It's real name is PINANG because PENANG is aurally guttural vernacular peninsular Malay dialect. Like Nyamuk and Nyamok, amuk and amok. And worse your awful title Dato' being a bastardisation of the original Malay Datuk. Your Sultans look like Sumatran supir and gardeners. Pulau Pinang- meaning Pulau Sirih or betel (areca) nut in Javanese.
You're on stolen Javanese & Sumatran not to mention Sultan Riau-Johor land and Sultan Palembang. You Malaysians speak awful Malay as a remnant of Sriwijaya from Melayu Kingdom Jambi River north of Palembang. Every "Malaysian" "sultan" is a fugitive traitor from Java that fled Gadja Mada and his 200,000 man attack on Javanese possession Temasek alias Singapura.
That's why Indonesia retains arms against theiveing Malaysians islands Blitung, Bintun, Karimun, Ruwi, Nuki, Sugi, Durian, Sanglar, Bulu, Bela (war/defence as in modern usage bela diri self defence- staging post for invasion Temasek), Urung, Mendol- these are not Malay names but Javanese. What language is Dusunpusaka, Siah Seri Indrapura, Tanjung Kebadu Port of the Baduese? Certainly not Malay it's Sansakerta high Javanese.
@@ivomac416 It was a forgone conclusion the British had lsot a war they ill conceived could be fought. Americans famously said tanks couldn't be used in jungles only to be ambushed by them time and again in the Pacific and yet again in Vietnam. The Japanese tanks were tinny but perfectly capable of pushing through light jungle exactly as the Dutch KNIL had used their Vickers Mark VI light tanks ordered and fielded from Britain. I'm shocked British technicians who definitely would have come to Batavia etc to train the Dutch never relayed how the Dutch used these light tanks in a jungle environment to the Royal Army- but perhaps it was info better ignored or not pressing.
I suppose British tank armaments figures were focused on the most immediate threat Germany and possibly Red Russia. Not coincidentally, the Japanese ordered the same Vickers light tank and made their type 92.
The racket that panicked the Indian Sepoys was the Japanese nicked bicycles mainly from former Batavia whose tread had run out and they were riding on rims- imagines tens of thousands of those- on crappy roads- ear splitting.
the reports were the British held their ground until literally they had no where to go. Although the ANZAC-British suffered depredations (conditions the Japanese thought were perfectly adequate)- the Japanese were far less contemptuous of them than the Indians. That the IJN was modelled on the Royal Navy with many shared societal commonalities ie aristocrats as officers (often ex-UK university) thus the Japanese Naval tribute to the gallant PoWales. Togo wanted: "a British Navy and a German Army".
I never knew that Prince of Whales suffered insanely similar damage to her steering from a single torpedo much like the Bismarck! 😳
Prince of Whales! Brilliant!
Prince of Wales and Repulse got the chance to live out the experience of modern World of Warships, lucky.
rofl. Are you playing wows blitz?
We still need a few cruiser Spaming HE and 2 enemy battleships sniping behind islands for the full experience.
We still need a few cruiser Spaming HE and 2 enemy battleships sniping behind islands for the full experience.
Wait what? When I play WoW there was no Repulse or PoW battleship?! Did they just added?
What exactly do you mean?
Nice work as always!
Special like for torpedobeats joke! :)
Keep up the good work!
V tempted to edit in some faint eurobeat for that section
Maybe on some other action where there were no so tragic consequences. I would leave at as is. Serious but the people who know what you are referring to will get the joke.
"We sank the Bismark! We rule the seas!"
(Japanese pilot pulls a lever......)
This is when battleships became obsolete. Boom. Done.
Fun little trivial thw Imperial Japanese navy in 1938 started preparing the Yamato Battleships that had thick Anti torpedo shields that are like 200mm worth of armour. That is like King tiger tank THICK.
@@freelanceart1019 It's a heavy tank. Maybe 72 tons. The Yamato was a super battleship. Slightly lighter than 72,000 tons.
always nice to see a new historiograph upload. One of the underrated channels out there. Keep them coming mate.
5:37 they were meant to have an aircraft carrier with them but it had run aground this is the one thing that doomed force Z.
yeah indeed
@@fragotron I'd have preferred it in the video so that everyone understood the context
That seems like a big oversight not to mention.
@@Jajalaatmaar Quite regular thing with Historigraph. Nearly every video of his has at least one such major oversight.
Should have been called Farce Z.
I saw a ‘Drain the Ocean’ episode on the sinking of the POW. She sustained in total only 4 torpedo hits. One in the stern away from the armour belt. This caused the primary damage to her gear and one engine combination. She took another in the bow, which was also unprotected. The bulkheads collapsed inside causing flooding and a severe list. She then received a torpedo hit near amidship and it hit below the main armour belt (due to the listing) She then received the 4th hit amidships on the other side above the armour belt. There was no escape. So she sank with only 4 torpedo hits. Not good results for a new battleship
How many battleships actually did survive four torpedo hits?
HMS Prince of Wales was perhaps the unluckiest ship in the Royal Navy during WWII, just about nothing went right for her during her short service life aside from getting a couple significant damaging hits on Bismarck and transporting Churchill to sign the Atlantic Charter with the US.
Yeah, really unlucky.
On another note, I believe that South Dakota is most unluckiest US fast battleship in world war 2.
Well, though there's Hood ....
@@sctm81 Hood had one terrible moment, PoW had more than one. That is what defines a unlucky ship, in the case of being on the top of such anyway.
8:45 Bismarck in the distance: Yes! That's how it feels!
I just came across this video and want to thank you for the content, I was able to learn a lot about this battle. My father, Midshipmen Walter W. Robinson, was on the HMS Prince of Wales. I have pictures of the Prince of Wales as well as a picture of the crew. My grandmother, my dad’s mom, wrote in her journal about this event:
“When Walter had finished school he entered a Naval College and became a midshipman on the HMS Conway. During the war he was aboard the [Battleship, HMS] Prince of Wales, when it was torpedoed. The attack caused some crew members to be thrown into the water. Walter was an excellent swimmer and quickly swam to three drowning sailors. He got them over to some debris and told them to hang on until he could come back for them. Using his lifesaving skills he swam one man to [safety], then the second and finally the third. Walter had swum many miles back and forth and he was totally exhausted. Walter and the men he rescued were carried to a safer place by some English soldiers. When they saw that Walter could hardly breathe, they got him to a hospital where the doctors realized his lung had collapsed. The doctors and nurses looked after him and in a few months he had recovered from his spontaneous pneumothorax condition. After the war was over he was awarded a medal for his bravery.”
I always thought this lifesaving event happened later in the war when another ship he served on was sunk but I can’t remember for sure. I was too young and not interested in these things and now unable to confirm these stories as he passed away more than 38 years ago. Young and stupid!
Repulse wasn’t a battleship; Battlecruiser is the term you are looking for
He did refer to it as a BC later in the vid
Ah yes, Azur Laner
Fellow shikikan of culture
What exactly is the cutoff between a battleship and a battlecruiser? I've heard HMS Hood also referred to as a battlecruiser, but both Hood and Repulse were large ships with 15-inch guns (while battleship Prince of Wales has only 14-inch guns?).
@@folgore1 alot is down to the main armour depth etc.gun size and ship size doesn't really matter .
Ie why the hood rip went down so fast vrs the bismarck.both great ships but one was pre 1920s BC design the other a heavy latest spec battleship that didn't follow any treaties.
I'm always amazed at how incredibly fragile battle ships and ships in général are. A few planes with one crewmember and weighting à few tons destroy 2 ships with thousands of sailors and weighting 10's of thousand tons.
Modern torpedo would sink ship of similar size with just 1-2 shots.
They were just as vulnerable to sea-launched torpedoes.
Well, you still need a dozen bombers to land one hit.
Jes you could build the ships with better protection but the sea doctrine of that day preferred speed as defense.
@@molybdaen11 Armor simply is impossible to keep up with the damage. Modern warship would be taken out of combat by a couple hits.
@@stc2828 Modern warships?
You meen that destroyers and glorified cruisers or the ancient Iowas?
There was a nice scene in the movie "battleship" which showed the difference in armor between old and new warships.
No modern shop is build to withstand bomb rund or missle attacks.
At best the machine room is isolated, otherwise they reley on radar, hydrophone or anti missle defense systems.
You could build a ship with enough armor to withstand modern missiles (look at the tirpitz for example, they needed absurd big bombs to finish it).
But it would be to expensive and to slow.
Not even my girlfriend gives me blue balls as much as Historigraph saying “we’ll be covering next time”
A history buff that has a girlfriend what is it wizardry?
Probably a history buffet
@@violetnight9043 ye you’re telling me
She’s great and loves history too
Good for you dude. That’s awesome:))
@@violetnight9043 Next you're going to say he plays video games too!
*UPDATE* The Chinese and Malaysians have been "salvaging" these ships, which are essentially war graves, and both are showing signs of blasting and removal. Other ships in the area show signs of salvage blasting, including American and Australian navy vessels, and two Dutch naval ships have "disappeared" completely. Wholesale scooped, human remains and all.
Even though I'm not native born Briton it brings tears to my eyes every time I see this documentary
Churchill’s brilliant idea!
Churchill also declared war on Finland, which just came out of Winter War. He wanted to invade Finland alongside Stalin LOL.
Bismarck *Torpedo disables steering and is out of control*
British "haha"
Prince of Wales *Torpedo disables steering and is out of control*
British "Okay, it's not funny anymore"
There are several comments here about how this further showed the battleship was obsolete. They fail to realize that the uses for a battleship are many, and no amount of weapons development changed that
I point out that once air power was understood and accounted for, the battleship remained effective in two key roles: fleet defense and bombardment. It was often battleships that provided the necessary anti-air screens for the precious few carriers the USN had up till late 1943. Further, it was the volume of fire that battleships could lay down which enabled landings at Normandy, Leyte, Iwo Jima, Tarawa and Okinawa. It was also two battleships that provided the ultimate final defense for Henderson Field during the Guadalcanal campaign.
WWII was not the end of the battleship. They served during the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and the Persian Gulf War. In each of these conflicts, the battleships provided a key asset that other ships could not.
But what the battleship could not survive was not the weapons of their enemies, but the red pen of budget cuts. Battleships are notoriously expensive to build and operate, and not conducive to peace time military budgeting.
Awesome! Love your channel. Congrats on going full time, you got atleast one happy subscriber.
I have to say, your intro music is just perfect for the subject matter! It captures the heaviness of the content very well.
An interesting thought is that it took Germany 21 months to sink 2 British battleships, both of which were old WW1 Era ships, HMS Royal Oak, and HMS Hood. Imagine the horror when Two Battleships were sunk in a single hour, one of which being the most modern battleship the British possessed. That on top of the crippling of the US Fleet at Pearl Harbour.
In 21 months the Germans sunk ALOT more than 2 battleships!
It was certainly a reality check to the nonsense Japanese wore thick glasses, used canes and couldn't fly at night.
@@markiobook8639 It wasn't an issue of under estimation though. It was a simple case of the Royal Navy was tied down between fighting the Germans and Italians across 3 theatres with a majority WW1 era navy. They couldn't afford to send anything more - they did send a carrier along originally, though it was damaged on route. The British had recognised the Japanese as a major power in the interwar years, with them having the third largest navy.
I am English .... I just came on to say God Bless to all those lads on those two ships. I know what happened and I can`t watch the video.
In my mind's eye, I can see the tall war memorial in downtown Singapore and the military cemetery in Manila. I am an American and it is still quite painful to contemplate this disaster. In the Far East, the Americans, British and Dutch failed miserably in the interwar years to organize for their collective security. Sympathies to the families of those lost at sea, in the battles for Singapore and the Philippines, and their aftermaths.
All new information for me just the idea of being sunk by Japanese planes losing half of your shipmates , picked up destroyers taken to Singapore, fighting and losing in terrible battles against the Japanese, being torchered by the Japanese , packed into camps to work on the Bridge over the river Kuai until finally freed at the end of the war ! By God these men had suffered enough !!!! I can not Fathom surviving all of this , and I am sure that there was even more terrible things that are over shadowed by this event !
@@oceanhome2023 Tortured : )
British 🇬🇧
Watching these videos, one realizes what a special psychological tension (or should one better call it horror?) it must have been to serve on a warship.
Not only were you threatened with being shot to pieces by the guns of other ships, but you had to constantly reckon with the fact that submarines were lurking somewhere, just waiting to torpedo you. Or that you would be bombed or torpedoed from the air.
And once the ship you're on duty on is "mortally wounded" it can well sink within minutes and drag most of your comrades with it into the watery grave. And dead by drowning is anything but pleasant.
Not to mention what a challenge that must have been for the commanders. Be it those of the particular ship or those of a fleet. It must have been an enormous challenge to keep nerves and calm when suddenly the ship next to you explodes and sinks within a short time or when you find yourself in a deadly game of cat and mouse with the enemy.
Great to have you back!
Always loved and looked forward to your work.. congratulations on going full time. And All the very best
It should be noted that Japanese bombers let destroyers rescue the survivors by not attacking them. They also came back on next day to offer bouquets to honor the dead for their bravery.
My grandpa was on Repulse, sadly never met him as the effects from this day stayed with him long after the war
Thinking of my Dad John Bryant who was in the belly of The Repulse along with other stokers, whilst they were being attacked by the Japanese. He survived but suffered badly. The ship is now in a sorry state due to the salvage 'pirates' who plunder at their will. It is a war grave and it is a disgrace that it cannot be left in peace. Shame on successive governments who have stood by. Lest we not forget. Richard Bryant
Respects to the memory of your father and his shipmates, Richard.
@@walterkronkitesleftshoe6684 Thank you Walter.
Good to see you back
This is why the USA started welding AA gun tubs wherever they would fit on their ships......
And the Japanese as well on their ship
Look at how many useless AA that can fit on this ship
Slap the top of a sinking Yamato
This happened the same time as Pearl Harbor. Frankly the US couldn't be spared time to say "Gee look at what happened to 2 UK ships" They were busy scraping the Pacific fleet from where they sank.
The Imperial Japanese Navy was the cause of the exit of the Royal Navy from the Indian Ocean. In a manner similar to the land battles in the Malayan Peninsula in the early part of the Pacific War, the Japanese Navy won stunning victories over the much fancied British, American, Commonwealth, and Dutch navies. The chasing of the British Royal Navy from the Indian Ocean by the Imperial Japanese Navy effectively ended the gunboat diplomacy of the British Empire, paving the way for the grant of independence for the British colonies in Asia.
Thanks Japan?
@@Timathius17 you are not wrong here ?
@@Timathius17 It is time to grow out of WW2 propaganda of the Allies and look at the results of WW2. The biggest beneficiaries were the enslaved people in European colonies in Asia and Africa. They were granted independence one after the other soon after the end of the war in 1945. Though the Allies won the war by dropping Atom Bombs on the Japanese, it was a Pyrrhic victory. With the defeat of the Royal Navy at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Navy in the seas of Asia, and gunboat diplomacy no longer possible without a strong Navy, and the British Empire rapidly collapsing, Clement Atlee, British P.M. took the wise decision to call it ' quits'. A large share of the credit for the retreat of the West from the East soon after the end of the War must go to Japan. Make no mistake on that.
@@senakaweeraratna741 And look at the shitholes most of the former colonies have turned into.... now they're doing the same to GB. Ah well our 300 years in the sun was good while it lasted.
Also worth acknowledging was that, if I recall correctly, either not all the British AA guns had tracer rounds or the tracer rounds they had didn't work in the tropical environment (can't remember which was the case). This was significant because it meant that a lot of the time the Japanese pilots didn't entirely realize they were being targeted and so continued on their run, whereas had they been able to see the tracers, they would have been more likely to have their runs disrupted, which could have helped the two ships avoid some of the more devastating torpedo salvos. In any case, great video as usual.
I read that somewhere as well. I think they were both lacking the tracer rounds as well as also suffering from some other malfunctions due to the tropical climate.
Wasn't there also something about the larger AA guns being order to fire at the planes instead of in front which also contributed to the loss of PoW and Repair because the Flak didn't scare the pilots because they weren't in front of them?
@@adamtruong1759
You'd think that AA gunners would be taught you have to lead your shots 😅
Excellent summary of a tragic defeat for the Royal Navy.
I'm so psyched you're doing work on the Pacific!
I've always loved your videos, I'm excited to see more!
The pride of the British Navy. They were sitting ducks without any air cover. It was a suicidal mission. Underestimation of the enemy.
They're got Bismarcked by the Japanese forces...
@@bakaweiner6956 and the Japanese forces wrecked the air cover requested by Battlecruiser Repulse. One Ace of the Battle of Britain was also shot down in this battle.
AFAIK, the destruction of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse signaled more about the end of the era of battleships than the attack on Pearl Harbor because this was the first when battleships were sunk on the open sea using air power alone. US battleships at Pearl Harbor were sitting ducks while the Prince of Wales and the Repulse had much better chances to defend themselves by trying to evade torpedoes and bombs.
Perhaps, but caught without air cover against a determined attacks by bombers and torpedo planes your basically doomed.
Personally, I think the sinking of PoW and Repair is misleading in the obsolescence of BB/CCs.
@@kms_scharnhorst Good point, but whether it would of deterred the attackers or even upset their aim is up for debate. What is certain is that Bismarck couldn't effectively fend of torpedo bombers either, in fact she probably did worse that PoW and Repulse. Without air cover or at least radar directed AA guns and/or proximity fuses your in deep trouble really.
@@kms_scharnhorst Sure, but air cover is essential really.
@@kms_scharnhorst I think it's as simple as learning to fight a modern war. The British had to catch up in WW1 too, she suffered from not having a serious challenge or rival for decades. Also perhaps grossly underestimating the Japanese, dismissing them as daft little yellow men who couldn't see very well. Racist and ignorant of course, the Japanese taught them otherwise.
It's all fun and games until both the Royal Navy and US Navy starts finally focusing on you
But we sure got our ass handed to ourselves the first 6 months like overconfident fools. Hopefully we can learn from the past.
Duh, it was like 80% US navy, 20% Royal Navy.
Glad to see you're back.
We’ll be covering that next time.
See you all fellas in six months ;)
Naw but seriously, good to have you back :)
An appalling decision made by Churchill effectively squandering two valuable warships and along with the squandering of Empire troops and those from France on Gallipoli were badly made decisions that cost a large number of men for no gain that could ever be realised.
Churchill real strength was not of a military planner,, but as a unifying force with glib oratory that resonated with the people of the Empire giving them strength and resolve and hope.
That's exactly why the Australian PM, Jack Curtin, refused to allow Churchill to divert the Australian troops returning home from the Middle East to India - he could just see Churchill sacrificing them like he did the Australian 8th Division at Singapore. Instead, those troops went on to fight in New Guinea and helped stopped the Japanese advance there, eventually retaking the island.
A man's got to know his limitations.
Apparently everyone here is a tactical genius. It's really easy to call these men dumb when they are dead and we already know the outcome of the battles and statistics . I really doubt anyone here including myself would contribute to high command . Respect to those who fell .
"practicing its torpedobeats"
Excuse me that took me out of the solemn tragedy for a moment
*eurobeat interrupt*
Yuro fans, where you at?
I stinkin love these videos! Keep making them!
its nice to see you again