Chugalug,
I have started on the first link (
http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/document...st-Air-War.pdf)
My comments added as [..] - no authority except what was common knowledge (?) out there at the end of 1942.
Danny.
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THE RAF AND THE FAR EAST WAR 1941-1945
p.7
Then came the appalling naval disaster as the Prince of Wales and Repulse set sail – knowing they would have no air cover –to try to attack the Japanese invasion forces, failed to achieve the surprise they needed, and turned back.
[They could have had air cover had they asked, but maintained radio silence even after they should have known they had been spotted, and sailed on until the first torpedo bomber attack.
Then they turned round and started limping back home.]
Unaccountably Admiral Phillips refused to break radio silence even when the ships knew they had been spotted, and it was 1½ hours later,when the ships had been under attack for three quarters of an hour, that the Captain of Repulse – not Phillips – sent a signal to tell Singapore what was happening.]
[Phillips
did break radio silence to send a signal after the first attack - but not a request for air cover against a second attack, which would surely come, but only for a tug to help get his crippled flagship back to Singapore. The tale goes that a Flt Lt Tim Vigors picked this up, and in the absence of any order from Singapore, but on his own authority, scrambled the squadron of Buffaloes, of which he was in temporary command, but they arrived only after the second, fatal attack and the
P.o.W. and
Repulse were on the bottom.]
Buffaloes could certainly have caused them serious problems. The question, ‘Why did Phillips not signal?’has never been satisfactorily answered – he himself did not survive – and perhaps it is Arthur Harris, who had worked with him in London..........
p.8
.........on the planning staff before the war, who gives us the clue in his parting words to his friend: ‘Tom, you’ve never believed in air. Never get out from under the air umbrella; if you do, you’ll be for it.’ Phillips we must presume had remained unpersuaded.
[He was on record as saying: "A properly handled capital ship can always defend itself against air attack" (I believe this was Naval belief at the time, and in fact
AFAIK, no capital ship had been sunk by aircraft in open waters before (Taranto and Pearl Harbor were "sitting ducks").
[In the account of the Singapore disaster, no mention is made of the stranglehold the Japanese had won on the city water supply - IMHO, this would have compelled surrender in any (military) case.]
What it really came down to was the nation’s reluctance to devote enough resources to defence in the 1930s, a reluctance which nearly led to defeat in 1940 and which certainly made it impossible to prepare adequately for another major war on the other side of the world.
[Are we any wiser now ? - Will the significance of the 15th September pass unnoticed ?]
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