xj900uk
Posts: 1340
Joined: 3/22/2007 Status: offline
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You can't blame Admiral Phillips for the loss of force 'Z', he was acting under orders direct from Churchill, who was confident that the RN's finest (the PoW was his personal favourite ship) would soon see off the 'little yellow men', as he derisevely referred to them in Cabinet meetings up to & including 7th of December. Perhaps up until PH there was still a generally-held belief that the BB was the supreme capital ship of the oceans, and that it could overcome any opposition. Having said all that, PH showed that Force Z's position was untenable, and it's original sailing orders to harass, sink and put to flight any Malaysian-bound invasion forces, were simply no longer viable. Admiral Phillips could have contacted london for new orders, or Churchill/The War Cabinet could have had a re-think after PH and directed him differently. For what it's worth, the war cabinet were told of PH in an emergency session, and at Churchill's insistance Singapore (and Admiral Phillips) were reminded of their duty and orders in a sternly coded signal to stop the Japanese from attacking/invading Malaysia. So you could say that the fault doubly-lies with Churchill and his pig-headedness, he was personally convinced the PoW coud turn back the might of the Japanese all by herself (Repulse doesn't really count, it dated from WWI and its weapon systems had never been properly updated, it's one advange was that it was relatively fast and manoeverable for such a big and dated ship, and so it proved dodging the first wave of 19 torpedos without a single hit...)
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