HMS Prince of Wales
She had a short, but very important service. She engaged and inflicted decisive damage on Bismark even before being fully completed. She carried Prime Minister Churchill to the Atlantic Conference with President Roosevelt and she fought the hopeless fight of old weapons against new at her death.
HMS Prince of Wales and USS McDougal at the Atlantic Conference of Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt:
Sunday service on the HMS Prince of Wales at the Atlantic Conderence:
HMS Prince of Wales departing Singapore on her final voyage:
As she steamed north from Singapore on December 9th, 1941 in company of the battlecruiser HMS Repulse the Cabinet met to decide what to do with her. They had pretty much settled on having her turn south and, via Australia, join up with the US Pacific Fleet to combat the Japanese, but decided to sleep on it. They awoke on December 10th to the news that HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse had been sunk by Japanese aircraft, the first capital ships sunk by aircraft while defending themselves and underway in the open ocean. She was the last active, Allied capital ship in the western Pacific in 1941.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill later said of this event, “In all of the war I have never received a more direct shock."
