Duty Padre's Piece, The Royal Naval Association, Cyprus, remembering others

Rev. Eric Freeman

The month of December 1941 was a very bad time for the Royal Navy and the United States of America. It proved to be a turning point however, and as a result the Americans became fully committed to defeating the Axis powers.

The attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Japanese Navy on the morning of December 7^th, 1941. The attack was intended as a preventive action in order to keep the US Pacific Fleet from interfering with military actions that Japan was planning in south east Asia against the overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and the United States.

Pearl Harbor was attacked by 353 Japanese fighters, bombers and torpedo planes in two waves, launched from six aircraft carriers. All eight of the US Navy battleships in port at that time were hit, with four being sunk although most of them were raised and/or repaired and returned to service later in the war. The Japanese also sank or damaged three cruisers, three destroyers, an anti-aircraft training ship and a minelayer.

188 US aircraft were also destroyed and 2,459 Americans were killed with a further 1,282 wounded. Surprisingly the power station, shipyard, maintenance, and fuel and torpedo storage facilities, as well as the submarine piers and headquarters building were not attacked. Japanese losses were light with 29 aircraft and five midget submarines lost and 65 servicemen killed or wounded. One Japanese sailor was captured.

The attack came as a profound shock to the American people and led directly to the American entry into World War II in both the Pacific and European theaters of operations. The following day (December 8^th) the United States declared war on Japan. Domestic support for isolationism, which had been strong, disappeared. Clandestine support of Britain (for example the Neutrality Patrol) was replaced by active alliance. Subsequent operations by the US prompted Germany and Italy to declare war on the US on December 11^th, which was reciprocated by the US the same day.

There were numerous historical precedents for unannounced military action by Japan, however, the lack of any formal warning, particularly while negotiations were still apparently ongoing, led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to proclaim December 7, 1941, as ‘a date which will live in infamy’.

On 8^th December the battle cruiser HMS Repulse and battleship HMS Prince of Wales had assembled at Singapore as Force Z under the command of Admiral Sir Tom Phillips. That evening they sailed with four destroyers to attack the Japanese landings on the northeast Malay coast. Fighter cover was requested but not readily available. In the evening of the 9th, Force Z was well up into the South China Sea but Japanese aircraft were spotted and Admiral Phillips decided to return. Around midnight he received a false report of landings at Kuantan, further down the Malay Peninsula and set course for there. The location of the ships had by now been reported by a Japanese submarine and a naval aircraft strike force was despatched from Indochina. Air attacks started around 11.00 on the 10th December, and in less than three hours both Prince of Wales and Repulse had been hit by a number of torpedoes and sent to the bottom. Nearly a thousand men were lost, but 2,000 were picked up by the destroyers. Following the Pearl Harbor attack, and the Singapore disaster, not one of the Allies' 10 main battleships in the Pacific area remained in service.

This month too I want to make a special mention of the gallant men serving in the Arctic convoys. As I am sure you are aware a campaign has been underway to get a medal awarded to survivors of those very dangerous and difficult days. One of the underlings of the Minister of Defence made some rather crass remarks the other day in a debate about this. He pointed out that Britain only awards medals to participants in particularly dangerous actions. Well I don’t know how he classified the Arctic convoys – they were certainly desperately dangerous – from both weather and enemy action – and the fact that they were so successful is a marvellous tribute to the men who manned them.