On 1 January 1937, for the first time in over ten years, two battleships for the Royal Navy were laid down by Britain’s premier shipbuilders. At Newcastle upon Tyne, Vickers-Armstrong Ltd laid down HMS King George V. On the west coast, at Birkenhead, Cammell Laird & Co. Ltd laid down HMS Prince of Wales. These two were the first of a class of five battleships. They would be the last battleships Britain would build in the Second World War. King George V was originally intended to be named after the reigning sovereign, but the new King, George VI, insisted that she should be named in honour of his father, King George V. The initial ship’s name determined the name of the class. Hence this class of battleships would always be called King George V class battleships.
By the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 the displacement of HMS King George V and HMS Prince of Wales could not exceed 35,000 tons. The ships’ main armament consisted of ten 14-inch guns arranged in three turrets. Their secondary armament consisted of sixteen 5.25-inch guns that could be used against both surface and aircraft targets. The 14-inch guns were a new model with an effective range greater than the 16-inch guns of the Nelson and Rodney, which were the last battleships to be built before King George V and Prince of Wales.
In May of 1937 Neville Chamberlain succeeded Stanley Baldwin as prime minister. During his three years in office Chamberlain took little interest in the Royal Navy, and was in fact responsible for limiting the naval estimates for 1938. Duff Cooper was First Lord of the Admiralty for most of 1938, and his diary for 23 January reveals the Chamberlain Government’s frugality with the Royal Navy.
I had a discouraging letter from the Chancellor of the Exchequer [Sir John Simon] last week. He wants us to reduce our proposed estimates by £6,000,000 and I don’t see how it can be done. Meanwhile the Chiefs of Staff are preparing a report for the Committee of Imperial Defence to the effect that our rearmament programme is quite inadequate to meet the dangers with which we are faced, and we must either increase the scale of it, or reduce our liabilities by making friends with one of our potential enemies …73
On 2 July 1938 Prime Minister Chamberlain made a major speech on defence and rearmament at a government rally at Kettering:
I am not sure that the public fully realises the gigantic effort we are making in this defence programme. Our shipbuilding yards have a tremendous number of warships to build. Orders for new warships that we have placed since April, 1935, amount to something like half the tonnage of the entire fleet as it existed at that time.
We are beginning to see the results today in those powerful new cruisers and destroyers, along with a lot of smaller craft, which are joining the fleet in a continuous stream. Our enormous programme of battleship construction and reconstruction will ensure our continued supremacy in capital ships.74
His last sentence was at best wishful thinking. The Admiralty could no longer be confident that the Royal Navy maintained supremacy in capital ships. Britain and Germany were then engaged in an arms race to see which country could produce the better battleship; in July 1938 the outcome was far from certain. The German naval architects, ordnance experts and shipbuilders were superb, and two new German battleships, the Bismarck and the Tirpitz, were laid down in 1936. Upon their completion they would prove to be the finest battleships in the world, and the Royal Navy had only two ships that might be able to engage them, though not on equal terms: the King George V and Prince of Wales. The vital question was whether these two battleships would be ready in time; they had to be built, worked up (which took around eight months) and crewed with 1,500 men.
A declaration of war between Great Britain and Germany went into effect at 11am London time on Sunday 3 September 1939 when Germany failed to comply with Britain’s ultimatum to withdraw all of her forces from Polish soil following a massive invasion on 1 September. Shortly after midday Churchill gave his first speech of the Second World War.
In this solemn hour it is a consolation to recall and to dwell upon our repeated efforts for peace. All have been ill-starred, but all have been faithful and sincere. This is the highest moral valve – and not only moral valve, but practical valve – of the present time, because the wholehearted concurrence of scores of millions of men and women, whose co-operation is indispensable and whose comradeship and brotherhood are indispensable, is the only foundation upon which the trial and tribulation of modern war can be endured and surmounted.75
Before his speech Chamberlain had sent him a note asking him to come to his room as soon as the debate died down. When they met, the Prime Minister offered Churchill the Admiralty as well as a seat in the War Cabinet. Realising that time was of the essence Churchill sent word to the Admiralty that he would take charge forthwith and would arrive at Whitehall at 6pm. Immediately upon receipt of Churchill’s message the Admiralty sent out the famous signal to the Fleet. ‘Winston is back.’76
Churchill was as well aware of the urgent need to complete HMS King George V and HMS Prince of Wales. He was incensed by reports from Vickers-Armstrongs and Cammell Laird indicating that neither shipbuilder could comply with its contract dates. On 8 September Churchill minuted the First Sea Lord Sir Dudley Pound.
A supreme effort must be made to finish King George V and Prince of Wales by their contract dates. The peace-time habit of contractors in booking orders and executing them when they please cannot be allowed to continue in time of war. Advise me of the penalties that may be enforced, in order that a case may be stated, if necessary, to the Law Officers of the Crown. Advise me also of the limiting factors. I suppose, as usual, to gun-mountings. It must be considered a marked failure by all concerned if these ships are not finished by their contract dates … It is no use the contractors saying it cannot be done. I have seen it done when full pressure is applied and every resource and contrivance utilised. In short, we must have K.G.V. by July 1940 and P. of W. three months later. The ships we need to win the war with must be in commission in 1940.77
The First Lord of the Admiralty was asking the impossible. Nevertheless King George V was commissioned on 1 October 1940 only three months after her contract date. The Prince of Wales was not officially accepted by the Royal Navy until 31 March 1941. Some of the delays were due to the complexities inherent in her turret design ‘with its attendant ammunition supply arrangements … In all, there were about 3,000 intricate working parts in the quadruple turrets.’78 In the case of Prince of Wales, delay was due in part to enemy action. In August 1940 the Luftwaffe’s strategic plan was to destroy the Royal Air Force and gain total daylight air supremacy over the British Isles. Their attacks, therefore, were directed primarily at airfields, sector stations, radar installations and aircraft factories. Through aerial photographs the Germans learned that the Prince of Wales was being built at the Cammell Laird shipyards at Birkenhead near Liverpool within range of German bombers. It is unclear whether Admiral Erich Raeder, Commander-in-Chief of German Naval Forces, requested the Luftwaffe to bomb and, if possible, destroy Prince of Wales. In any event in August 1940 the Germans raided Liverpool and Birkenhead. A heavy bomb ‘exploded underwater about six feet from the port side of the bilge keel below the vicinity of the after 5.25-inch guns.’79 The damage to the hull was serious enough to result in Prince of Wales being towed into a dry-dock where the damaged hull plates were replaced.
On 28 January 1941 the Prince of Wales steamed to Rosyth on the east coast of Scotland with two of her four propellers lashed down on the upper deck. It was there that her completion and final fitting out took place. She was then under the command of Captain L.K. ‘Turtle’ Hamilton, who was about to be promoted to Rear Admiral.
It was a proud day in the life of John Catterall Leach when he relieved Captain Hamilton as Prince of Wales’ commanding officer. He was taking command of the newest and most modern battleship in the Royal Navy; yet it was a ship that did not even have her full company of officers and ratings, had not been fitted out with her ammunition and thousands of tons of supplies and had not yet started the eight-month breaking-in and work-up process that was essential to make certain she was ready to engage the enemy.
When Captain Leach assumed command, neither the shipbuilder nor the Admiralty fully appreciated the deficiencies that existed in the Prince of Wales. At least two of these deficiencies were extraordinarily serious: the main armament was prone to malfunction because of failures in the intricate loading system and the ship’s ventilation system was utterly inadequate to give relief from temperatures that far exceeded 100°F in seas anywhere near the equator.
V.E. Tarrant in his book King George V Class Battleships has managed to bring to life each of the five ships and their captains. He wrote of Captain John C. Leach:
Forty-six at the time he took command of the battleship, Leach, whose fate was inexorably bound to that of Prince of Wales, was a gunnery specialist who was also thoroughly competent in all branches of his profession, including ship handling, slightly deaf, in the best Whale Island (gunnery school) tradition, he was nonetheless athletic, being an ace squash, racquets and tennis player. A tall, broad shouldered, bony-featured man with blue eyes, thinning reddish hair, he was completely devoid of any vestige of pomposity and was easily approachable. In an era when the relationship between officer and rating was sometimes austere, ‘Jack’ Leach – or ‘Trunky’ as he was affectionately referred to amongst the lower deck (on account of his large nose) – was able to inspire in the ship’s company a devotion and willingness to serve that was outstanding. Despite being a firm disciplinarian when wrongs were committed, he was fair and transparently decent and was content to jolly people along rather than drive them.80
Leach eschewed playing favourites among his ship’s officers, but there were clearly some that he liked more than others. Acting Lieutenant Commander George Ferguson RNVR was almost certainly one of them. Ferguson’s action station was high in the superstructure where he was in charge of the air defence position. In August of that year the prominent newspaperman, H.V. Morton, boarded Prince of Wales to write an account of Churchill’s meeting with Roosevelt at Placentia Bay off the coast of Newfoundland. Morton struck up an easy friendship with Ferguson. In his book Atlantic Meeting, Morton introduces Ferguson to his readers by informing them that over the mantelpiece in the wardroom Lieutenant Commander George Ferguson, in a moment of characteristic generosity, had hung an irreverent caricature of the Prince Regent by Gilroy. Morton went on to describe Ferguson as follows:
He was probably forty but he looked no more than twenty-five. He might have appeared as he was, and at any moment, upon any stage, but preferably a musical comedy stage, and have played the part of a typical British naval officer. He was almost too good to be true. He had a pink face and a pair of pale blue eyes; and I never knew him to descend from the high eyrie on which he spent his hours of duty without some amusing happening to relate or some preposterous story he had just remembered. Life was full of rich flavours for George Ferguson, and his vitality was remarkable … As he entered the wardroom, or rather as he quite unconsciously, made an entrance spinning his cap on a peg or a table, he brought with him an improbable air of fox-hunting … Quinn [the Surgeon Commander] told me that Ferguson had been badly smashed up in an air raid on Portsmouth. He had a fractured spine, a fractured pelvis and a collapsed lung, and no one thought it possible that he could recover. But in a remarkable short time he emerged from hospital, as bright as a pint of quicksilver, and rejoined his ship.81
Captain Leach had not seen the King since 1927 when the Duke and Duchess of York had made their royal tour of New Zealand and Australia. On 6 March ‘King George VI toured the battleship and inspected the ship’s company drawn up in divisions on the quarterdeck.’82 It marked the first occasion King George VI had inspected one of his King George V class battleships. There is no record of the conversation between the King and Prince of Wales’ captain. One can well imagine their pleasure in enjoying a whisky together in the wardroom.
Captain Leach and King George VI saw one another again in April at Pitreavie Castle near Rosyth. The King was making an official visit to the Commander-in-Chief for the East coast of Scotland, Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsey, who had done such magnificent work in organising the evacuation of the BEF from Dunkirk. At least one photograph of this royal visit survives. The King is shown standing in the middle of a group of thirteen Royal Navy and Army officers. Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsey is on the King’s right and Captain Leach stands in the second row just behind them. It would be their final meeting.
On 31 March Leach formally accepted the handing over certificate for HMS Prince of Wales from John Harvey, the authorised representative of Cammell Laird & Co., Ltd. The certificate is revealing in three particulars. It was signed and delivered to Captain Leach at sea at 11.50pm on 31 March, and was accepted by him without prejudice to outstanding liabilities. That this was done at sea just before midnight suggests that Cammell Laird’s personnel were working overtime on the ship up to the last moment. The phrase in the document ‘without prejudice to outstanding liabilities’ meant that no rights or privileges of the Royal Navy were considered as thereby waived or lost except in so far as may be expressly conceded or decided. Cammell Laird’s legal obligations were to complete the Prince of Wales in accordance with plans, specifications and other contractual obligations. Since it was soon necessary to bring specialists from another company, Vickers-Armstrongs Ltd, on board to correct malfunctions with the loading and reloading of the main guns, Cammell Laird never fully complied with its obligations.
Scapa Flow at the end of the Second World War. (Courtesy of G. Gordon Nicol)
Only seven weeks elapsed between the handing over from Cammell Laird and the date that Prince of Wales steamed out of Scapa Flow on her first operational mission. Seven weeks was far too short a time for her to achieve the full benefit from her working-up process; nevertheless, Leach used every available day to make Prince of Wales ready to join the Home Fleet. There were concentrated gunnery trials with the heavy guns and the secondary batteries firing all day and towards the end of the working-up period they continued into the night. All the while civilian technicians from Vickers-Armstrongs were in each turret correcting malfunctions; when Prince of Wales steamed into Scapa Flow around 19 May, they were still on board.
Leach’s field was gunnery and he well knew that the best way of sinking an enemy battleship was to overwhelm her with broadsides from heavy guns. The challenge that confronted him throughout May was whether his heavy guns would malfunction during a surface engagement as the gunnery trials had not been totally reassuring. Nevertheless, on the morning of 21 May Leach informed Admiral Sir John Tovey, the Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet, that he considered Prince of Wales ready to take her place. Later that day Tovey ordered Prince of Wales – together with her flagship HMS Hood and escorted by six destroyers – out to sea to intercept the Bismarck. Captain Leach’s first operational mission would develop into the most dramatic surface engagement of the entire war.