Scapegoat: The Death of Prince of Wales and Repulse by Dr Martin Stephen Page B

Bismarck , where the most senior survivor was a relatively junior officer whose vision of what was going on was limited to what could be seen from a gunnery director tower. Unfortunately the deaths of people most closely concerned with this issue has meant that it is likely forever to remain a premise rather than ever be proven a certainty. It would, however, be typical of the dysfunctional organization that was Singapore if vital intelligence had not been passed on to the person for whom it was most vital. The story of Prince of Wales and Repulse is full of ifs and buts – if the weather had not lifted, if Force Z had not lingered off Kuantan, if the Brewster Buffaloes had arrived in time… To this list must be added another topic: if Phillips had known there were torpedo-bombers in range of his force, would he have acted differently? It can never be proven beyond reasonable doubt, but I believe the balance of probability is that a man of Phillips’s proven intelligence would have at the least addressed the return of his ships to Singapore with a degree more urgency. As ever in this most imponderable of disasters, even then Force Z might not have avoided its fate. Was Force Z sunk by the failure to pass on vital intelligence information?
    Operation Matador
    It is frequently said that the military at Singapore were unprepared for war with Japan. This is not true. A disaster had been predicted in the mid-1930s and was reinforced by further reports after the outbreak of European war. The problem was that, with one exception, precious little had been done to bolster the known weakness of Singapore’s defences, particularly as regards a land invasion. This arose not because of an under-estimate of the weakness of Singapore, but more a belief – or perhaps just a hope – that actual war would never happen. One thing that was done was planning for Operation Matador, a pre-emptive invasion of southern Thailand to prevent a Japanese occupation. In the event, the British imposed double jeopardy on themselves with the plan. Planning for Matador took time and resources away from reinforcing the Jitra Line, sometimes described as Singapore’s Maginot Line, time and resources which were not justified when Matador – which had actually been sufficiently viable for the Commander-in-Chief to be given permission on 5 December to launch it on his own initiative in the event of invasion – was called off: ‘… preparations for Operation Matador had been allowed to distract attention from quite basic safeguards at Jitra.’ 6
    No one can know now whether or not Matador might have worked. Its basic concept was sound, and had it succeeded even in part it would have helped keep control of vital airfields in RAF hands, with a subsequent knock-on effect on the RAF’s ability to provide cover for Force Z. It was bedeviled from the outset by an almost obsessive fear on the part of the Government of breaching Thai neutrality before the Japanese had given at least equal cause for complaint to the Thai Government. However, what really killed it was failure to act on and delayed intelligence, which allowed for indecisiveness on the part of the military command. This failure to pass on or make proper use of intelligence could be seen as strengthening the case for arguing that other, vital information was not passed on to Force Z. On 6 December a Hudson bomber spotted the Japanese invasion force of about twenty transports, with naval escort, but Brooke-Popham in Singapore persuaded himself in Singapore that he could not be sure of the convoy’s destination, and even wondered if it was part of a ruse to get Britain to violate Thai neutrality before Japan did. Bad weather closed in, and though the RAF sighted the invasion force again on the afternoon of 7 December, for some reason the information did not reach Singapore HQ until 9.00pm that night, when the convoy had split up to mount various landings. Brooke-Popham postponed a decision on Matador.