Tom Spencer Vaughan Phillips

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Tom Phillips, 1940

Sir Tom Spencer Vaughan Phillips KCB (born February 19, 1888 in Pendennis Castle, Falmouth , † December 10, 1941 in Kuantan , Malaysia , South China Sea ) was a British admiral .

Life

Tom Phillips was a son of Artillery Captain (later Colonel) Thomas Vaughan Wynn Phillips and his wife Louisa Mary Adeline de Horsey Phillips, a daughter of Admiral Sir Algernon de Horsey (1827-1922). He joined the Royal Navy in 1903 as a midshipman , became a midshipman in 1904 , a sub-lieutenant in 1907, after passing all exams with top marks, and a lieutenant-captain in July 1908. After serving as a navigator on various cruisers in the Mediterranean (Gallipoli) and in the Far East during the First World War , he attended the staff college from June 1919, where he graduated a year later. From 1920 to 1922 he was a member of the permanent advisory staff for military questions at the League of Nations in Geneva and was promoted to Commander in June 1921. In the early 1930s, Phillips, who had been a captain since June 1927, served with the Admiralty .

Tom Phillips came to Asia in 1932 as Chief of Staff of the Commander in Chief of the British East India Squadron . After three years as a planning director at the Admiralty Phillips 1938, first as a Commodore, in January 1939 as a Rear Admiral, commander of the destroyer - flotillas of the British Home Fleet .

At the beginning of World War II , he was appointed Deputy Chief of the Admiralty's Staff (VCNS) and Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty as the deputy of the First Sea Lord Dudley Pound . Phillips was considered the 'brain' of the Admiralty. He quickly won the trust of his staff colleagues and also that of Churchill , who had become First Lord of the Admiralty after the outbreak of war , although he had many controversies with him, which finally led to his break with Churchill in March 1941. At Churchill's suggestion, he was appointed temporary vice admiral on February 7, 1940.

In May 1941 he received the high command of the Eastern Fleet , which was just vacant at the time , the establishment of which he himself had emphatically endorsed. His appointment as fleet commander pushed v. a. with senior admirals for disapproval, because Phillips lacked seafaring experience as a 'desk admiral'. Phillips initially stayed as VCNS in London , where he was knighted as Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath on July 1, 1941 , and in October 1941 - promoted to temporary admiral - with his flagship , the HMS Prince of Wales , to follow Singapore, where he arrived on December 2nd.

Phillips, the "pocket Napoleon" (Adm. James Somerville ), was a victim of his own conviction, repeatedly vehemently put forward, that "bombers are not serious opponents for a battleship". Although its small fleet was upgraded by the brand new capital ship Prince of Wales and the modernized battle cruiser HMS Repulse , it lacked the much-needed air support. The aircraft carrier HMS Indomitable intended to reinforce the Eastern Fleet had not yet joined the association due to an accident and the availability of the small land-based aircraft squadron on Malaya was uncertain. On December 8th - the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor ( December 7th there because of the dateline ) - the Japanese began an amphibious assault on Malaya without a formal declaration of war and Phillips faced the dilemma of either waiting for air support and doing nothing watch the Japanese attack British territory 400 nautical miles away, or attack without air support. He chose the same evening for the latter, partly because he did not expect Japanese aerial reconnaissance because of the overcast sky, and stabbed with a small Eingreifflotte, the Force Z , consisting of four destroyers, the Prince of Wales and the Repulse , in lake to cut off the supply lines of the Japanese fleet . When the sky cleared the next day, the Force Z was spotted by a Japanese submarine and planes. Phillips then broke off the company because the surprise effect no longer existed.

On the way back to Singapore he received what later turned out to be false news that the Japanese would land 140 nautical miles north of Singapore at Kuantan ; Phillips immediately changed course there. However, after no ships were discovered there, the association ran back towards Singapore. On the morning of December 10, 1941, the bombers and torpedo planes of a Japanese air squadron made a perfectly coordinated attack in seven waves. The Repulse sank at 12:33 pm and the Prince of Wales at 13:20 . After the withdrawal of the Japanese, the destroyers were able to save 2,081 of the 2,921 crew members. The Prince of Wales' 327 dead included her captain, John Catterall Leach, and Admiral Sir Tom Phillips.

A plaque for Phillips and other crew members who died is located in St. Andrew's Cathedral in Singapore.

literature

  • Mark M. Boatner: The Biographical Dictionary of World War II. - Presidio Press, Novato CA, 1996. - ISBN 0-89141-548-3
  • HG Thursfield: Phillips, Sir Tom Spencer Vaughan (1888-1941). In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. - Oxford and New York, 1959
  • Horodyski, Joseph M .: British gamble in Asian waters . Military Heritage, 3: 3 (2001), 68-77.
  • Hall, David Ian: Looking skyward from below the waves: Admiral Tom Phillips and the loss of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse . In: Kennedy, Gregory C. (ed.), British naval strategy east of Suez, 1900-2000: influences and actions (Naval Policy and History) (London: Cass, 2005), 118-27.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Knights and Dames: SOT-RAY at Leigh Rayment's Peerage