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The Hunting Of Force Z
A famous account of one of the most dramatic and tragic episodes of the Second World War * Published to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the outbreak of World War II * Also famous as a major television documentary under the same title
- GenresNaval HistoryHistory
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1963
7 people are currently reading
37 people want to read
About the author
Richard Hough
140 books24 followersRichard Alexander Hough was a British author and historian specializing in naval history. As a child, he was obsessed with making model warships and collecting information about navies around the world. In 1941, he joined the Royal Air Force and trained at a flying school near Los Angeles. He flew Hurricanes and Typhoons and was wounded in action.
After World War II, Hough worked as a part-time delivery driver for a wine shop, while looking for employment involving books. He finally joined the publishing house Bodley Head, and then Hamish Hamilton, where he eventually headed the children’s book division.
His work as a publisher inspired him to turn to writing himself in 1950, and he went on to write more than ninety books over a long and successful career. Best-known for his works of naval history and his biographies, he also wrote war novels and books for children (under the pseudonym Bruce Carter), all of which sold in huge numbers around the world. His works include The Longest Battle: The War at Sea 1939-45, Naval Battles of the Twentieth Century and best-selling biographies of Earl Mountbatten of Burma and Captain James Cook. Captain Bligh and Mr Christian, his 1972 account of the mutiny on the Bounty, was the basis of the 1984 film The Bounty, starring Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson.
Hough was the official historian of the Mountbatten family and a longtime student of Churchill. Winston Churchill figures prominently in nine of his books, including Former Naval Person: Churchill and the Wars at Sea. He won the Daily Express Best Book of the Sea Award in 1972.
After World War II, Hough worked as a part-time delivery driver for a wine shop, while looking for employment involving books. He finally joined the publishing house Bodley Head, and then Hamish Hamilton, where he eventually headed the children’s book division.
His work as a publisher inspired him to turn to writing himself in 1950, and he went on to write more than ninety books over a long and successful career. Best-known for his works of naval history and his biographies, he also wrote war novels and books for children (under the pseudonym Bruce Carter), all of which sold in huge numbers around the world. His works include The Longest Battle: The War at Sea 1939-45, Naval Battles of the Twentieth Century and best-selling biographies of Earl Mountbatten of Burma and Captain James Cook. Captain Bligh and Mr Christian, his 1972 account of the mutiny on the Bounty, was the basis of the 1984 film The Bounty, starring Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson.
Hough was the official historian of the Mountbatten family and a longtime student of Churchill. Winston Churchill figures prominently in nine of his books, including Former Naval Person: Churchill and the Wars at Sea. He won the Daily Express Best Book of the Sea Award in 1972.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 22, 2021
This book is a terrific example of popular military history writing, telling in swift prose the story of the sinking of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse by the Japanese in December 1942, and providing both the longer term context in which Britain had developed its fleet of battleships and battlecruisers, and the shorter term strategic and tactical decisions which led to the fateful decision to dispatch Force Z to Singapore.
Richard Hough was an RAF pilot with Fighter Command in the Second World War, and his disposition towards the advantages of airpower over the big guns of the traditional battle fleets is apparent throughout this book and is well argued, although he perhaps underestimates how effective capital ships could be when deployed appropriately against fleets, as at Taranto and Cape Matapan, when in conjunction with suitable air support and relevant, real time intelligence. However, he is right that the early engagements of the War revealed that the heyday of the battleship was over and that, as Midway was to reveal shortly after the attack on Force Z, the future of surface fleets was to be found in the effective use of the aircraft carrier.
Hough, a biographer of Admiral Fisher, is stinging in his questioning of the effectiveness of battleships in the Great War, regarding them as excessively costly and relatively ineffective compared to emerging fighter and bomber aircraft. However, he underestimates the strategic value of the British Grand Fleet in both keeping the German High Seas Fleet in harbour for most of the war and the strategic victory achieved by the Royal Navy at Jutland. The failures of Jutland were not of the battleships, but of Beatty in exposing his battlecruisers to superior German firepower, and of insufficient and faulty intelligence that misled Jellicoe to the location of his enemy after the brief engagement of early evening of 31 May 1916 had been broken off. Jellicoe was right not to risk his fleet in a pursuit through the night, but had Room 40 cryptology at the Admiralty been successful in identifying the course taken by Scheer on his return to port, and he had therefore been able to position his fleet between the Germans and the coast as dawn rose and so bring the enemy onto his guns, the superiority provided by his 28 battleships would have given him a total victory. Instead, he had to settle for a strategic victory that confined the Germans to port for the remainder of the War. Jellicoe had proven the value of the battleship if propetjy deployed in a fleet-on-fleet confrontation and sensibility used by an admiral understanding of its weaknesses as well as strengths and one who never lost sight of the bigger picture, unlike the rash and overrated Beatty.
What changed between 1916 and 1941 was the new role aircraft, particularly those armed with torpedoes, could have against capital ships, the vital importance of an air screen for fleet defence, and the necessity of fleets being built around aircraft carriers rather than big gun ships, but these factors were insufficiently appreciated by Royal Navy planners when Force Z sailed into Singapore Harbour on 2 December 1941, a failure which was to result in the disaster Hough vividly retells.
What Hough clearly shows is that the loss of Prince of Wales and Repulse was an avoidable tragedy, while exposing where the responsibility lies. Primarily, the destruction of Force Z was a consequence of a twenty-year failure of policy makers to provide for the defence of Malaya and to plan how, when, and in what strength a fleet could and should be despatched to eastern waters, and what role it should then play. Politicians before 1941 had failed both to assess the vulnerability of Malaya and Singapore and to provide an effective defence, the main reason why British defeat was so total by February 1942.
However, the tactical and operational decisions which ensued from this strategic neglect were equally seriously flawed. In the first place, the sending of a battle fleet to Singapore as a bluff to warn off the Japanese was a total failure, having no impact upon the decision to invade Malsya. Churchill, supported by Eden, sought to use Force Z as a deterrent, but then insured its deterrent force was insufficient - two capital ships and four destroyers on their own posed no real threat to the Japanese battle plan. Secondly, and here Churchill bears ultimate responsibility, the decision to deploy Force Z without an aircraft carrier, as originally intended, once HMS Indefatigable ran aground in the Caribbean, was highly reckless, particularly when ground air cover in theatre was so poor, a result of government decisions to favour the Middle East and Mediterranean over the Far East - a reversal of previous contingency planning where the defence of the Far East came second only to the home front - while ordering the fleet to proceed to Singapore and within range of enemy aircraft in Indochina made no sense if the object was, as was said, to operate as a raiding force and a means of maintaining British control of the Indian Ocean. The use of an eastern fleet to defend Singapore was never properly planned, and once the bluff had failed and Malaya had been invaded, Prince of Wales and Repulse should have been withdrawn to safer waters, either off Ceylon or Australia, and maintained as a fleet in being as a theat to Japanese operations and their planning.
Hough argues with much sense that once Force Z had arrived in Singapore, its withdrawal in the face of the Japanese attack would have been disheartening and demoralising, while the offensive spirit of the Royal Navy conditioned officers to aggrrsive action in the face of attack, but nonetheless the politicians should have made the decision to withdraw as the tactical situation had changed and the reasoning for advanced deployment as a deterrent no longer applied. Again, responsibility lies with Churchill, and with First Sea Lord Dudley Pound, who had originally opposed the sending of the fleet and had only complied on the basis it would not proceed beyond Columbo without review, but did not resist its further dispatch to Singapore. In effect, Churchill had overridden Admiralty concerns in order to make a futile political gesture that had no strategic or operational good sense, and which Pound felt he could not reverse, later taking full responsibility for a decision that was not his.
However, once the basic error had been made in Whitehall, the die was cast, and it was now up to Admiral Sir Tom Phillips to make the best operational choices within a worsening strategic situation he could. Hough is relatively sympathetic to Phillips, but it remains the case that it was Phillips' conviction of the superiority of his big ships and underestimation of the threat posed by Japanese torpedo bombers that led him to make a series of questionable decisions, the most important of which was his continuing to proceed northwards after he had been informed an hour after sailing that the fighter screen he was expecting would not be available. At this point Phillips should have reconsidered his plans, but he chose not so to do. Similarly, once his fleet had been sighted by enemy reconnaissance planes and he had decided to return to port, he should not have diverted to try to intercept a supposed secondary Japanese invasion force on the basis of a single intelligence report. Phillips' decision to reverse course was the correct one and was based upon the knowledge that the Japanese now knew that he was at sea, and that situation remained the same regardless of the new report. His primary responsibility should have been the security of his fleet, which was exposed in open waters under clearing daytime skies.
Hough suggests that once Phillips had changed course again after the report of a more southerly Japanese assault, his chief of staff, Palliser, knowing he would be operating under radio silence, should have sent a fighter force towards where Force Z was heading, but this assumes too much. As the Japanese Imperial Army advanced south, and British forces, including those from forward air bases, retreated, all available fighter planes were needed to support the army, so there was no deep reserve available, while Palliser would rightly have assumed that his commanding flag officer would under the threat of air attack have broken silence to request a fighter screen. It is probably the case that Phillips did ask for air support, but far too late and only once Prince of Wales had lost radio communication in the first attack. Once, Phillips knew that there would not be a fighter screen available to him on 10 December, he should have turned back, but when he decided to proceed he should have ensured there was a proper procedure for requesting air support if required and he should have broken radio silence when he re-altered course from south to south-west after receiving the erroneous invasion report. But, Phillips had excessive faith in his big guns to shield his two capital ships, at least long enough for him either to escape from attack or call upon fighter cover, which from where he was engaged by the Japanese planes was around one hour away. Instead, in an hour's bombing and torpedo attacks around noon, HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse were sunk, events chillingly and movingly recounted by Hough in his final chapter, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of men, including those of the Admiral and John Leach, commending Prince of Wales, the humiliation of Britain and the beginning of its end as an Imperial power, and the final defeat of the battleship as an effective fighting force.
Richard Hough was an RAF pilot with Fighter Command in the Second World War, and his disposition towards the advantages of airpower over the big guns of the traditional battle fleets is apparent throughout this book and is well argued, although he perhaps underestimates how effective capital ships could be when deployed appropriately against fleets, as at Taranto and Cape Matapan, when in conjunction with suitable air support and relevant, real time intelligence. However, he is right that the early engagements of the War revealed that the heyday of the battleship was over and that, as Midway was to reveal shortly after the attack on Force Z, the future of surface fleets was to be found in the effective use of the aircraft carrier.
Hough, a biographer of Admiral Fisher, is stinging in his questioning of the effectiveness of battleships in the Great War, regarding them as excessively costly and relatively ineffective compared to emerging fighter and bomber aircraft. However, he underestimates the strategic value of the British Grand Fleet in both keeping the German High Seas Fleet in harbour for most of the war and the strategic victory achieved by the Royal Navy at Jutland. The failures of Jutland were not of the battleships, but of Beatty in exposing his battlecruisers to superior German firepower, and of insufficient and faulty intelligence that misled Jellicoe to the location of his enemy after the brief engagement of early evening of 31 May 1916 had been broken off. Jellicoe was right not to risk his fleet in a pursuit through the night, but had Room 40 cryptology at the Admiralty been successful in identifying the course taken by Scheer on his return to port, and he had therefore been able to position his fleet between the Germans and the coast as dawn rose and so bring the enemy onto his guns, the superiority provided by his 28 battleships would have given him a total victory. Instead, he had to settle for a strategic victory that confined the Germans to port for the remainder of the War. Jellicoe had proven the value of the battleship if propetjy deployed in a fleet-on-fleet confrontation and sensibility used by an admiral understanding of its weaknesses as well as strengths and one who never lost sight of the bigger picture, unlike the rash and overrated Beatty.
What changed between 1916 and 1941 was the new role aircraft, particularly those armed with torpedoes, could have against capital ships, the vital importance of an air screen for fleet defence, and the necessity of fleets being built around aircraft carriers rather than big gun ships, but these factors were insufficiently appreciated by Royal Navy planners when Force Z sailed into Singapore Harbour on 2 December 1941, a failure which was to result in the disaster Hough vividly retells.
What Hough clearly shows is that the loss of Prince of Wales and Repulse was an avoidable tragedy, while exposing where the responsibility lies. Primarily, the destruction of Force Z was a consequence of a twenty-year failure of policy makers to provide for the defence of Malaya and to plan how, when, and in what strength a fleet could and should be despatched to eastern waters, and what role it should then play. Politicians before 1941 had failed both to assess the vulnerability of Malaya and Singapore and to provide an effective defence, the main reason why British defeat was so total by February 1942.
However, the tactical and operational decisions which ensued from this strategic neglect were equally seriously flawed. In the first place, the sending of a battle fleet to Singapore as a bluff to warn off the Japanese was a total failure, having no impact upon the decision to invade Malsya. Churchill, supported by Eden, sought to use Force Z as a deterrent, but then insured its deterrent force was insufficient - two capital ships and four destroyers on their own posed no real threat to the Japanese battle plan. Secondly, and here Churchill bears ultimate responsibility, the decision to deploy Force Z without an aircraft carrier, as originally intended, once HMS Indefatigable ran aground in the Caribbean, was highly reckless, particularly when ground air cover in theatre was so poor, a result of government decisions to favour the Middle East and Mediterranean over the Far East - a reversal of previous contingency planning where the defence of the Far East came second only to the home front - while ordering the fleet to proceed to Singapore and within range of enemy aircraft in Indochina made no sense if the object was, as was said, to operate as a raiding force and a means of maintaining British control of the Indian Ocean. The use of an eastern fleet to defend Singapore was never properly planned, and once the bluff had failed and Malaya had been invaded, Prince of Wales and Repulse should have been withdrawn to safer waters, either off Ceylon or Australia, and maintained as a fleet in being as a theat to Japanese operations and their planning.
Hough argues with much sense that once Force Z had arrived in Singapore, its withdrawal in the face of the Japanese attack would have been disheartening and demoralising, while the offensive spirit of the Royal Navy conditioned officers to aggrrsive action in the face of attack, but nonetheless the politicians should have made the decision to withdraw as the tactical situation had changed and the reasoning for advanced deployment as a deterrent no longer applied. Again, responsibility lies with Churchill, and with First Sea Lord Dudley Pound, who had originally opposed the sending of the fleet and had only complied on the basis it would not proceed beyond Columbo without review, but did not resist its further dispatch to Singapore. In effect, Churchill had overridden Admiralty concerns in order to make a futile political gesture that had no strategic or operational good sense, and which Pound felt he could not reverse, later taking full responsibility for a decision that was not his.
However, once the basic error had been made in Whitehall, the die was cast, and it was now up to Admiral Sir Tom Phillips to make the best operational choices within a worsening strategic situation he could. Hough is relatively sympathetic to Phillips, but it remains the case that it was Phillips' conviction of the superiority of his big ships and underestimation of the threat posed by Japanese torpedo bombers that led him to make a series of questionable decisions, the most important of which was his continuing to proceed northwards after he had been informed an hour after sailing that the fighter screen he was expecting would not be available. At this point Phillips should have reconsidered his plans, but he chose not so to do. Similarly, once his fleet had been sighted by enemy reconnaissance planes and he had decided to return to port, he should not have diverted to try to intercept a supposed secondary Japanese invasion force on the basis of a single intelligence report. Phillips' decision to reverse course was the correct one and was based upon the knowledge that the Japanese now knew that he was at sea, and that situation remained the same regardless of the new report. His primary responsibility should have been the security of his fleet, which was exposed in open waters under clearing daytime skies.
Hough suggests that once Phillips had changed course again after the report of a more southerly Japanese assault, his chief of staff, Palliser, knowing he would be operating under radio silence, should have sent a fighter force towards where Force Z was heading, but this assumes too much. As the Japanese Imperial Army advanced south, and British forces, including those from forward air bases, retreated, all available fighter planes were needed to support the army, so there was no deep reserve available, while Palliser would rightly have assumed that his commanding flag officer would under the threat of air attack have broken silence to request a fighter screen. It is probably the case that Phillips did ask for air support, but far too late and only once Prince of Wales had lost radio communication in the first attack. Once, Phillips knew that there would not be a fighter screen available to him on 10 December, he should have turned back, but when he decided to proceed he should have ensured there was a proper procedure for requesting air support if required and he should have broken radio silence when he re-altered course from south to south-west after receiving the erroneous invasion report. But, Phillips had excessive faith in his big guns to shield his two capital ships, at least long enough for him either to escape from attack or call upon fighter cover, which from where he was engaged by the Japanese planes was around one hour away. Instead, in an hour's bombing and torpedo attacks around noon, HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse were sunk, events chillingly and movingly recounted by Hough in his final chapter, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of men, including those of the Admiral and John Leach, commending Prince of Wales, the humiliation of Britain and the beginning of its end as an Imperial power, and the final defeat of the battleship as an effective fighting force.
September 2, 2015
The sinking of the "Prince of Wales" and the "Renown" fifty miles off the eastern coast of Malaya on December 10, 1941, three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, definitively reinforced the fact that air power would win out against aerially-unsupported capital ships. Billy Mitchell had made the point forcibly in the 1920s (and was court-martialled for publicly arguing the point in the press), but the major powers continued to put money into the construction of big ships throughout the 1920s and 30s rather than naval aviation. The "Prince of Wales" had survived an encounter with the "Bismark," but not with air power. It is worth noting that the "Prince of Wales, "Renown," and their destroyer screen were able to maneuver, unlike the vessels at Pearl Harbor. But maneuver couldn't avail against air power in the absence of air cover.
NOTE: Martin Middlebrook and Patrick Mahoney's "Battleship: The Loss of the Prince of Wales and Renown" (New York: Charles Scribner's, 1979) is an even more powerful description of the battle, drawing even more on eyewitness testimony from the three-hundred plus survivors.
NOTE: Martin Middlebrook and Patrick Mahoney's "Battleship: The Loss of the Prince of Wales and Renown" (New York: Charles Scribner's, 1979) is an even more powerful description of the battle, drawing even more on eyewitness testimony from the three-hundred plus survivors.
October 31, 2020
Absolutely superb historical book that filled in the details behind the tragic sinking of the Prince of Wales and Repulse off of Singapore at the outbreak of the war with Japan. More importantly, it was the story of the misguided faith in weapons of the past against the threat of new technology and systems, namely land based aircraft with torpedoes. It made me think of our reliance today on aircraft carriers. Are they the battleships of the past? Eminently readable and thrilling. Sadly , we know how it ends.
July 19, 2022
Most of the book is a preamble to the actual events and while parts of that are interesting some seemed unnecessary. The description of the engagement itself is good but sadly seems to be over so quickly. Worth readibg for the history but not an amazing read.
July 1, 2015
A great read
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews