Battleship - The Loss of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse

At 11:00 on Wednesday 10 December 1941, the crews of a formation of Japanese Navy Mitsubishi Type 96 aircraft sighted two large warships escorted by three destroyers steaming on an easterly course some fifty miles off the coast of Malaya. One merchant ship could also be seen nearby but there was no sign of any aircraft protecting the warships. The two larger ships were both British; they were the battleship H. M. S. Prince of Wales and the battle cruiser H. M. S. Repulse. Two of the escorting ships were also Royal Navy ships but the third was Australian. It was only the third day of the war that Japan had started in the Far East. The weather was fine and clear. Lieutenant Yoshimi Shirai, the pilot of the leading Mitsubishi, ordered his formation to attack... That night there were great parties at two Japanese-held airfields near Saigon to celebrate a momentous victory against the hated British. Battleship tells for the first time the full story of the Prince of Wales and Repulse disaster...