The Battle of the Atlantic Expedition 2011: The Battle of Convoy KS-520, North Carolina, 15 July 1942
Nathan Richards ecu.academia.edu
The Battle of the Atlantic Expedition 2011: The Battle of Convoy KS-520, North Carolina, 15 July 1942
In an effort to dissuade Japan from making any further moves towards Southeast Asia, in late October 1941 Winston Churchill overrode the objections of an over-stretched Royal Navy and sent “Force Z”, a small naval force consisting of the capital ships Prince of Wales and Repulse, with two escorting destroyers, the Electra and the Express, to the newly completed British Naval Base at Singapore. The plan had called for an accompanying, brand-new, twenty-three thousand-ton aircraft carrier, the Indomitable, with sixty aircraft, but a grounding accident in the West Indies prevented its inclusion. On arrival on 2nd December 1941, Force Z was out-numbered out-gunned by the Japanese forces that were arrayed for the coming attack on Malaya.. In order to succeed in its foray against Japan’s combined forces in the Gulf of Thailand, which consisted of (i) surface (2 battleships, 4 cruisers, and many destroyers), (ii) aircraft (~136) and (iii) submarine (~14) units, ‘Force Z’ needed to have sufficient anti-aircraft and anti-submarine capability. This also assumes the ten fourteen-inch gun batteries of the Prince of Wales and the six fifteen-inch guns of the Repulse would be sufficient for the surface threat which may have outnumbered Force Z two to one. One of the crucial issues, then, is what was the AA armament of Force Z? Was it sufficient to deal with the threat that was faced? In seeking to address this issue, one finds two puzzling lacunas: (i) the failure and/or inconsistency of encyclopedias of naval vessels to properly describe the anti-aircraft armament aboard the vessels, and (ii) the failure of historians of the event to adequately address this critical question. We detail six contradictory analyses of the anti-aircraft armament by date and city of publication .