Even if
Indomitable had not run aground in the entry channel to Kingston Harbour, she would still have NOT made it to Singapore in time to cover
POW &
Repulse's sortie... not even if she never entered port in Singapore but sailed directly on north!
POW sailed for Singapore on 25 October, met up with
Repulse at Colombo, Ceylon on 29 November, and arrived Singapore 2 December. They were sunk 8 days later.
Indomitable was entering harbor in Jamaica
9 days after POW sailed for Singapore, to START her pre-deployment work-ups! Therefore,
she was intended to be in that area for several more days (if not weeks) before heading for the Far East. She had been commissioned only a month earlier, and her crew needed to gain familiarity and proficiency in both operating the ship and in handling aircraft on the flight deck, including take-offs and landings.
If she had not run aground, and
if her orders had been changed that day to sail immediately for Singapore, she would probably have arrived the day
after POW &
Repulse were sunk. Remember, the UK was not yet at war with Japan, nor did they know that war would start in one month (despite the claims of tin-foil-hat conspiracy theorists), so they would not have been proceeding with any more speed than POW had been.
The crew would also not have been very good at working the ship (although this would have improved during the passage). The real problem would be that the flight deck crews and pilots would be hard-pressed to conduct sufficient training during the passage... especially if they ran into any bad weather.
World Naval Ships Forums - View Single Post - Aground off Kingston - an Indomitable tale
Originally Posted by post linked above
The following is largely based on the story told by Hugh Popham, then a young FAA pilot aboard Indomitable, as told in his book Sea Flight,first published in 1954.
On November 3, 1941 in the tranquil tropical waters off Kingston, Jamaica and event occurred that arguably had repercussions far beyond the immediate problem of the event itself.
The new aircraft carrier HMS Indomitable, completed on October 1, 1941 was undergoing her working up exercises and was arriving in Kingston which was to be her Caribbean base.
Kingston Harbour is a large lagoon protected from the open Caribbean Sea by a narrow peninsula called the Palisadoes Strip with its entrance being at the western end. On the tip of Palisadoes is the famous town of Port Royal – home of 17th Century privateer Sir Henry Morgan and his buccaneers. Halfway along Palisadoes is the location of the Norman Manley International Airport.
Ships entering the harbour travel from east to west parallel to the strip then make a sharp turn to starboard to enter the lagoon. They have to navigate between numerous shoals along a channel which would be identified by buoys.
On the afternoon of November 3, Indomitable swung into the entry channel, cutting her engines to very slow ahead, almost drifting along at about 5 knots. FAA pilot Hugh Popham noted that the ship was quiet with the “ripple of the bow wave” being louder than the hum of the engines. It was a clear, calm day with a plain view of the city (then town) of Kingston beyond the Palisadoes Strip against the backdrop of the green hills and partly cloudy sky.
Suddenly there was a crash and a shudder and the ship stopped dead in her tracks. Initially there was the thought of a torpedo, but there weren’t supposed to be u-boats in the vicinity. There was only one explanation – they had run aground.
More info at the link above.