@MrNubbz :
Cincy and I have repeatedly pointed out your errors and you have completely and utterly failed to address our points. Now you've gone on a long rant about basically everything Churchill ever did wrong which is completely and utterly irrelevant to the question at hand.
There are many valid criticisms of Winston Churchill but sending Repulse and POW out from Singapore without air cover is NOT one of them for two reasons which have been pointed out to you repeatedly and you have utterly failed to address but I'll post them one more time:
- The decision to send Repulse and POW out of Singapore to impede the landings in Malaya was manifestly obviously NOT the purview of the British Head of State. If Heads of State WERE responsible for every local tactical decision then no one person could possibly fill the role. This assertion of yours is patently absurd on it's face.
- Even if that decision HAD been the Head of State's decision it was only obviously wrong in retrospect because prior to December 10, 1941 no Capital Ships had EVER been sunk on the high seas by air power alone.
Sending Repulse and POW TO Singapore might actually have been Churchill's decision. That was done before Pearl Harbor so your whole argument that he should have known better based on what happened at Pearl Harbor is dismissed.
You didn't bother to get the facts right, but one *COULD* argue that sending the two ships to Singapore was a mistake because they were not enough to stop the Japanese. I'd address that argument by saying that they weren't actually sent there to STOP the Japanese, they were sent to deter the Japanese.
It is abundantly obvious that Repulse and POW were not enough to stop the Japanese. That wasn't the point. The point was to add them to the already existing fleet of the RN, Netherlands, Australia, and the USN. By the way, FDR had been pressing Britain to send heavy units to the Far East because he felt that deterrence had a chance so I suppose he is a moron too.
In 20/20 hindsight it obviously didn't work but at the time sending (and therefore risking) two ships in an effort to avoid a war that ended up killing millions was worth the risk.
Finally I will address one more time your odd assertion that the lessons of Pearl Harbor should have been learned and thus saved Repulse and POW.
First, as
@Cincydawg and I have now repeatedly pointed out, the ships damaged and sunk at Pearl Harbor, just like the ships damaged and sunk at Taranto, were stuck in their harbors lacking freedom of maneuver. At that time that was seen as a big factor. The admirals of the day thought that ships on the high seas would be much better able to defend themselves. In our 20/20 hindsight we know that freedom of maneuver by itself wasn't enough but you are asserting that the decision maker was not merely mistaken but an absolute fool for not realizing that in advance. This is silly.
Second, you have repeatedly pointed out the three days between PH and the loss of Repulse and POW. This argument is obviously not logically sound. The Repulse and POW were known and operating as "Force Z". Force Z was sent out of Singapore on the evening of December 8. Now you might think that was the day after Pearl Harbor but if you do, you are wrong again. Singapore, like Japan, is on the other side of the International Date Line so the Pearl Harbor attack occurred in the early morning hours of December 8 in Singapore. So we are not talking about 72 hours nor even 48, Force Z was sent out of Singapore about 12 hours after the Pearl Harbor attack began.
Do you see the flaw in your understanding here yet? When Force Z left Singapore the smoke hadn't cleared at Pearl Harbor yet. The idea that the commander of a British Naval base thousands of miles away was supposed to have already been informed of exactly what happened and then to figure out the correct lessons to take from that and then to make the appropriate adjustments in fleet tactics and doctrine within well under 12 hours after the attack ended doesn't deserve a response. This notion of yours is absurd on it's face.
@MrNubbz said:
"If you want to be condescending about it, I've backed off of nothing - I should be charging you for this".
I asked if you had learned from
@Cincydawg 's and my patient explanations that Heads of State are NOT responsible for local tactical decisions. It seemed that *MAYBE* you had because you changed from "Churchill was ass" to "Someone should have stopped them".
Look, I don't totally disagree with your attacks on Churchill. He DEFINITELY made a lot of mistakes. Cincy's and my argument here was simply that THIS wasn't one of them. If you have learned that then Cincy and I have taught you something so good for us and we are not even trying to charge you.
Your repeated reference to this "IJF" is another error. The IJN and IJA were the Imperial Japanese Navy and Imperial Japanese Army.
