And the World Turned Upside Down... 10.00 Hrs, 4th December 1967.
A nice find...
The water boiled under the stern of the ship as the four bronze propellers started to spin round easing it forwards through the water. Deep in the heart of the vessel eight Admiralty 3-drum boilers were working overtime to supply steam to the turbines powering the shafts driving the propellers. Slowly and steadily these now pushed the great forty four thousand ton warship faster and faster until it reached 10 knots, the maximum permitted in the restricted waters around the Royal Navy base at Singapore.
The ship was the aircraft carrier HMS Eagle. One of the largest warships in commission anywhere in the world she possessed unrivalled firepower in the Royal navy with her complement of Buccaneer bombers, Sea Vixen fighters and Gannet airborne radar aircraft. These would be flying later today as the Eagle along with her battlegroup escort began four days of naval exercises in the Malacca Straits and Andaman Sea. The carrier would practise launching air attacks against other Royal Navy warships off Singapore as well as having a go at the RAF bases on the island. In return the RAF would test the fleet's defences with air attacks by Vulcan and Victor strategic bombers and Canberra strike aircraft. All in all it promised to be a busy and exciting few days.
...
All was going well and the night promised to be a quite rather boring affair so beloved of mariners all the world over. All that changed at a quarter to three in the morning. The Type 974 radar suddenly went wild and began to show a massive contact dead ahead of the carrier at a distance of just six thousand yards. At the same time the electrical systems aboard the ship started to play tricks with telephones suddenly ringing and lights flickering on and off at random. . . .
Assuming that they were still somewhere in the Andaman Sea, Captain Fogg instructed the Commander Air Group (CAG) to launch a number of sorties as quickly as possible to find out what was going on beyond the horizon. ...
An immediate conference was called by both Captain Fogg and Admiral Parmenter in the Eagle's wardroom twenty minutes later. As the senior officers sat themselves down around the table Fogg passed round copies of the photographs taken by the Buccaneer bomber of Singapore. They showed the familiar naval base on the northern side of the island but the ships moored up alongside the quaysides made no sense. Instead of modern missile destroyers and anti-submarine frigates the scene was quite different. All eyes were immediately drawn to the two giant forms of the capital warships tied up on the dockside. Even the most ignorant of those officers present recognised them as the battleships HMS Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser HMS Repulse. It was Admiral Phillips' Force 'Z' which historically was lost in action on the 10th of December 1941. Yet, somehow, here it was for all the world to see.
It was Lieutenant Mason-Hill who was first to voice the obvious conclusion. Being the resident naval historian aboard Eagle he pointed out to the assembly that Prince of Wales and Repulse were only docked at Singapore between the 2nd and the 8th of December 1941. ...
