HMS Repulse

Famous Navy Ships: The HMS Electra

By Glenn Barnett

War clouds gathered rapidly once Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Allied demands that Hitler withdraw his armies went unheeded. Read more

HMS Repulse

The Fall of Malaya: Japanese Blitzkrieg on Singapore

By David H. Lippman

The moon like a tray was sinking in the western sea and the deep red sun showed its face to the east. Read more

HMS Repulse

Tragic Surrender

By Mark Simmons

On Saturday, December 6, 1941, a Royal Australian Air Force Lockheed Hudson bomber on a reconnaissance mission from Khota Bahru on the west coast of Malaya was flying northwest over the China Sea toward the Gulf of Thailand. Read more

HMS Repulse

Kiwis Over the Pacific: The RNZAF in World War II

By Allyn Vannoy

During early World War II operations in the Pacific, Geoff Fisken would become one of the most outstanding pilots of the RNZAF—the Royal New Zealand Air Force. Read more

HMS Repulse

Miracle at Dunkirk

By Jon Diamond

Following the 76th anniversary of the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from the beaches and harbor of Dunkirk, one is amazed at the number of articles and volumes written about the subject. Read more

HMS Repulse

The Doomed Expansion of Imperial Japan

by Michael E. Haskew

Since 1931, Japan’s army had asserted control over territory on the continent of Asia, brushing aside Chinese resistance, condemnation and political pressure from other nations, and most recently, the Allied military. Read more

HMS Repulse

Royal Navy Ravaged

By Michael D. Hull

History was made in the Mediterranean Sea on the night of Monday, November 11, 1940, when the Italian Navy’s battle fleet was devastated at Taranto, off the Ionian coast of southern Italy. Read more

HMS Repulse

King as Pawn

By Eric Niderost

On May 6, 1939, King George VI of Great Britain and his wife Queen Elizabeth arrived in Portsmouth to board the liner Empress of Australia, which was to take them to Canada and subsequently to the United States. Read more

HMS Repulse

General Arthur Percival: a Convenient Scapegoat?

By Jon Diamond

On February 15, 1942, the island fortress of Singapore surrendered with 130,000 men, thus ending the defense of Malaya as one of the largest military disasters in the history of British arms since Cornwallis’s capitulation to Franco-American forces at Yorktown in 1781 during America’s Revolutionary War. Read more

HMS Repulse

The Repulse and Prince of Wales Battleships: How They Sunk

By Joseph M. Horodyski

During the 1920s and 1930s Great Britain built up its Far East defenses steadily if slowly, centering around Singapore as its primary naval base in the Pacific area. Read more