HMS Prince of Wales was a of the Royal Navy that was built at the Cammell Laird shipyard in Birkenhead. Despite being sunk less than a year after she was commissioned, Prince of Wales had an extensive battle history, first seeing action in August 1940 while still being outfitted in her drydock, when she was attacked and damaged by German aircraft. In her brief career, she was involved in several key actions of the Second World War, including the May 1941 Battle of the Denmark Strait, where she scored three hits on the , forcing Bismarck to abandon her raiding mission and head to port for repairs. Prince of Wales later escorted one of the Malta convoys in the Mediterranean, during which she was attacked by Italian aircraft. In her final action, she attempted to intercept Japanese troop convoys off the coast of Malaya as part of Force Z when she was sunk by Japanese aircraft on 10 December 1941, three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

She was sunk alongside her consort, the battlecruiser , in an attack by 85 Mitsubishi G3M and G4M bombers of the Japanese navy air service. Prince of Wales and Repulse became the first capital ships to be sunk solely by air power on the open sea, a harbinger of the diminishing role this class of ships was subsequently to play in naval warfare. The wreck of Prince of Wales lies upside down in of water, near Kuantan, in the South China Sea.

Construction In the aftermath of the First World War, the Washington Naval Treaty was drawn up in 1922 in an effort to stop an arms race developing between Britain, Japan, France, Italy and the United States. This treaty limited the number of ships each nation was allowed to build and capped the tonnage of all capital ships at 35,000 tons.Raven and Roberts, p. 107 These restrictions were extended in 1930 through the Treaty of London, however, by the mid-1930s Japan and Italy had withdrawn from both of these treaties, and the British became concerned about a lack of modern battleships within their navy. As a result, the Admiralty ordered the construction of a new battleship class: the King George V class. Due to the provisions of both the Washington Naval Treaty and the Treaty of London, both of which were still in effect when the King George Vs were being designed, the main armament of the class was limited to the guns prescribed under these instruments. They were the only battleships built at that time to adhere to the treaty, and even though it soon became apparent to the British that the other signatories to the treaty were ignoring its requirements, it was too late to change the design of the class before they were laid down in 1937.Konstam, p. 20

Prince of Wales was originally to be named King Edward VIII but upon the abdication of Edward VIII the ship was renamed at Cammell Laird's shipyard in Birkenhead on 1 January 1937, before being laid down. She was launched on 3 May 1939. She was still fitting out when war was declared in September, causing her construction schedule, and that of her sister, , to be accelerated. Nevertheless, the late delivery of gun mountings caused delays in her outfitting.Garzke p. 177

In early August 1940, while she was still being outfitted and was in a semi-complete state, Prince of Wales was attacked by German aircraft. One bomb fell between the ship and a wet basin wall, narrowly missing a 100-ton dockside crane, and exploded underwater below the bilge keel, about six feet from the ship's port side in the vicinity of the aft group of 5.25-inch guns. The shell plating buckled over a distance of , rivets were sprung and there was considerable flooding in the port outboard compartments in the area of damage, causing a ten-degree list to port. The flooding was severe, because final compartment air tests had not yet been made and the ship did not have her pumping system in operation.

The water was pumped out through the joint efforts of a local fire company and the shipyard, and Prince of Wales was later dry-docked for permanent repairs. This damage and the problem with the delivery of her main guns and turrets delayed her completion. As the war progressed there was an urgent need for capital ships, and so her completion was advanced by postponing compartment air tests, ventilation tests and thorough testing of her bilge, ballast and fuel-oil systems.

Description

Prince of Wales displaced as built and fully loaded. The ship had an overall length of , a beam of and a draught of . Her designed metacentric height was at normal load and at deep load.Campbell, p. 15Garzke, p. 249

She was powered by Parsons geared steam turbines, driving four propeller shafts. Steam was provided by eight Admiralty boilers which normally delivered , but could deliver with forced draft, for a top speed of .Garzke, p. 238 The ship carried of fuel oil,Garzke, p. 253 of diesel oil, of reserve feed water and of freshwater. During full-power trials on 31 March 1941, Prince of Wales at 42,100 tons displacement achieved 28 knots with 111,600 shp at 228 rpm and a specific fuel consumption of 0.73 lb per shp.Brown 1995, p. 28. Prince of Wales had a range of at .Chesneau p. 6

Armament

Prince of Wales mounted 10 BL 14-inch (356 mm) Mk VII guns, mounted in one Mark II twin turret forward and two Mark III quadruple turrets, one forward and one aft. The guns could be elevated 40 degrees and depressed 3 degrees. Training arcs were: turret "A", 286 degrees; turret "B", 270 degrees; turret "Y", 270 degrees. Training and elevating was done by hydraulic drives, with rates of two and eight degrees per second, respectively. A full gun broadside weighed , and a salvo could be fired every 40 seconds.Garzke, p. 227 The secondary armament consisted of 16 QF 5.25-inch (133 mm) Mk I guns mounted in eight twin mounts, weighing 81 tons each.Garzke, p. 229 The maximum range of the Mk I guns was at a 45-degree elevation, the anti-aircraft ceiling was . The guns could be elevated to 70 degrees and depressed to 5 degrees.Garzke, p. 228 The normal rate of fire was ten to twelve rounds per minute, but in practice, the guns could only fire seven to eight rounds per minute. Prince of Wales also carried 32 QF 2 pdr (1.575-inch, 40.0 mm) Mk.VIII "pom-pom" anti-aircraft guns and 80 UP projectors, short-range rocket-firing anti-aircraft weapons used in the early days of the Second World War by the Royal Navy.

Operational service

Action with Bismarck

On 22 May 1941, Prince of Wales, the battlecruiser and six destroyers were ordered to take station south of Iceland and intercept the if she attempted a breakout into the Atlantic. Captain John Leach was aware that main battery breakdowns were expected, as Vickers-Armstrongs technicians had already rectified several that had occurred during training exercises in Scapa Flow. The technicians were retained aboard at the captain's request and played a significant role during the subsequent action.Garzke pp. 177–79

The next day Bismarck, in company with the heavy cruiser , was reported heading south-westward in the Denmark Strait. At 20:00 Vice-Admiral Lancelot Holland, in his flagship Hood, ordered the force to steam at , which it did most of the night. His battle plan called for Prince of Wales and Hood to concentrate on Bismarck, while the cruisers and would handle Prinz Eugen. However the two cruisers were not informed of this plan because of strict radio silence. At 02:00, on 24 May, the destroyers were sent as a screen to search for the German ships to the north, and at 02:47 Hood and Prince of Wales increased speed to and changed course slightly to obtain a better target angle on the German ships. The weather improved, with visibility, and crews were at action stations by 05:10.

At 05:37 an enemy contact report was made, and course was changed to starboard to close range. Neither ship was in good fighting trim. Hood, designed twenty-five years earlier, lacked adequate decking armour and would have to close the range quickly, as she would become progressively less vulnerable to plunging shellfire at shorter ranges. She had completed an overhaul in March and her crew had not been fully retrained. Prince of Wales, with thicker armour, was less vulnerable to 15-inch shells at ranges greater than , but her crew had also not been trained to battle efficiency. The British ships made their last course change at 05:49, but they had made their approach too fine (the German ships were only 30 degrees on the starboard bow) and their aft turrets could not fire. Prinz Eugen, with Bismarck astern, had Prince of Wales and Hood slightly forward of the beam, and both ships could deliver full broadsides.Garzke p. 179

At 05:53, despite seas breaking over the bows, Prince of Wales opened fire on Bismarck at .ADM 234/509 There was some confusion among the British as to which ship was Bismarck and thirty seconds earlier Hood had mistakenly opened fire on Prinz Eugen as the German ships had similar profiles. Hoods first salvo straddled the enemy ship, but Prinz Eugen, in less than three minutes, scored 8-inch-shell hits on Hood. The first shots by Prince of Wales – two three-gun salvoes at ten-second intervals – were 1,000 yards over. The turret rangefinders on Prince of Wales could not be used because of spray over the bow and fire was instead directed from the rangefinders in the control tower.Garzke p. 180

The sixth, ninth and thirteenth salvos were straddles and two hits were made on Bismarck. One shell holed her bow and caused Bismarck to lose 1,000 tons of fuel oil, mostly to salt-water contamination. The other fell short, and entered Bismarck below her side armour belt, the shell exploded and flooded the auxiliary boiler machinery room and forced the shutdown of two boilers due to a slow leak in the boiler room immediately aft. The loss of fuel and boiler power were decisive factors in Bismarcks decision to return to port. In Prince of Wales, "A1" gun ceased fire after the first salvo due to a defect. Sporadic breakdowns occurred until the decision to turn away was made, and during the turn "Y" turret jammed.

Both German ships initially concentrated their fire on Hood and destroyed her with salvoes of 8- and 15-inch shells. An 8-inch shell hit the boat deck and struck a ready service locker for ammunition, and a fire blazed high above the first superstructure deck. At 05:58 at a range of , the force commander ordered a turn of 20 degrees to port to open the range and bring the full battery of the British ships to bear on Bismarck. As the turn began, Bismarck straddled Hood with her third and fourth four-gun salvoes and at 06:01 the fifth salvo hit her, causing a large explosion. Flames shot up near Hoods masts, then an orange-coloured fireball and an enormous smoke cloud obliterated the ship. On Prince of Wales, it seemed that Hood collapsed amidships, and the bow and stern could be seen rising as she rapidly settled. Prince of Wales made a sharp starboard turn to avoid hitting the debris and in doing so further closed the range between her and the German ships. In the four-minute action, Hood, the largest battlecruiser in the world, had been sunk. 1,419 officers and men were killed. Only three men survived.