Admiral Sir Tom Spencer Vaughan Phillips, (19 February 1888 – 10 December 1941) was a Royal Navy officer who served during the First and Second World Wars. He was nicknamed "Tom Thumb", due to his short stature. He is best known for his command of Force Z during the Japanese invasion of Malaya, where he went down with his flagship, the battleship HMS Prince of Wales. Phillips was one of the highest ranking Allied officers killed in battle during the Second World War.
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Early and private life
Phillips was the son of Colonel Thomas Vaughan Wynn Phillips, Royal Artillery and Louisa Mary Adeline de Horsey Phillips, daughter of Admiral Algernon de Horsey. Phillips was married to Lady Phillips, of Bude, Cornwall.
Phillips was 5 ft 4 in (163 cm) tall. At the time of his death at the age of 53, he was one of the youngest admirals in the Royal Navy and one of the youngest commanders-in-chief.
Navy career
Phillips joined the Royal Navy in 1903 as a naval cadet following education at Stubbington House School. He became a midshipman in 1904 and trained aboard HMS Britannia. He was promoted to sub-lieutenant on 9 April 1908, and to lieutenant on 20 July 1909.
In the First World War, Phillips served on destroyers in the Mediterranean and in the Far East. He was promoted to lieutenant commander on 15 July 1916.
Phillips attended the Royal Navy Staff College from June 1919 to May 1920. He was a military adviser on the Permanent Advisory Commission for Naval, Military, and Air Questions Board at the League of Nations from 1920 to 1922.
Phillips was promoted to commander in June 1921, and to captain in June 1927. On 4 September 1928, he assumed command of the destroyer HMS Campbell, a position he held until August 1929.
Between 24 April 1930 and September 1932, Phillips served as assistant director of the Plans Division in the Admiralty. He then served for three years in the Far East as the flag captain of a cruiser. In 1935, he returned to the Admiralty to head the Plans Division.
In 1938, Phillips was promoted to commodore, commanding the destroyer flotillas of the Home Fleet.
On 10 January 1939, Phillips became a rear admiral after serving as an aide-de-camp to King George VI. From 1 June 1939 until 21 October 1941, Phillips was Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff and then Vice Chief of the Naval Staff.
Phillips gained the confidence of Winston Churchill, who had him appointed acting vice admiral in February 1940.
Force Z
Phillips was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the China Station in late 1941, an action which raised some controversy in the higher echelons of the Royal Navy, where he was considered a "desk admiral". He was appointed acting admiral, and he took to sea on 25 October 1941 en route to his headquarters in Singapore. He travelled with a naval detachment then designated as Force G, consisting of his flagship, the new battleship HMS Prince of Wales, together with the veteran Great War-era battlecruiser HMS Repulse, and the four destroyers HMS Electra, HMS Express, HMS Encounter, and HMS Jupiter.
The deployment of the ships was a decision made by Winston Churchill. He was firmly warned against it by the First Sea Lord, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound, and later by his friend, Field Marshal Jan Smuts, Prime Minister of South Africa, who prophesied the fate of the capital ships, when he addressed the crew of HMS Repulse just before she left Durban for Singapore.
It was intended that the new aircraft carrier HMS Indomitable would also travel out to Singapore, but she ran aground on her maiden voyage in the West Indies, and was not ready to sail from England with the other ships. Phillips and the vessels arrived in Singapore on 2 December 1941, where they were re-designated Force Z. Without a formal declaration of war, the Japanese landed in Malaya on 8 December 1941, on the same day as the attack on Pearl Harbor (on the other side of the International Date Line). The Japanese, by striking at three points almost simultaneously, hoped to attract all available land-based fighters of the Royal Air Force and leave Phillips without air cover when they were ready for him; and he steamed right into this trap.
The earlier grounding of the carrier HMS Indomitable left the capital ships without naval air cover. Phillips had long held the opinion that aircraft were no threat to surface ships, and so he took Force Z, consisting of HMS Prince of Wales, HMS Repulse, and four destroyers (HMS Electra, HMS Express, HMAS Vampire and HMS Tenedos) to intercept the Japanese without air cover. That decision has been discussed ever since. Force Z sailed from Singapore at 17:35 on 8 December. Admiral Phillips left his chief of staff, Rear Admiral Arthur Palliser, at the command post ashore. Phillips used HMS Prince of Wales as his flagship.
Phillips hoped to intercept any further Japanese convoys to prevent the landing of more troops. He signalled his fleet upon departure, "We are out looking for trouble, and no doubt we shall find it. We hope to surprise the enemy transports tomorrow and we expect to meet the Japanese battleship Kongō."
Aftermath of the sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse
After the destruction of the British fleet, the Japanese continued to advance in Malaya. British Lieutenant General Arthur Percival ordered a retreat from Malaya to Singapore on 27 January 1942. On 15 February, Percival surrendered his remaining army of 85,000 British, Indian, and Australian troops to the Japanese, the largest capitulation in British history.
Regarding Phillips's decision to proceed without air cover, Naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison wrote:Those who make the decisions in war are constantly weighing certain risks against possible gains. At the outset of hostilities [U.S.] Admiral Hart thought of sending his small striking force north of Luzon to challenge Japanese communications, but decided that the risk to his ships outweighed the possible gain because the enemy had won control of the air. Admiral Phillips had precisely the same problem in Malaya. Should he steam into the Gulf of Siam and expose his ships to air attack from Indochina in the hope of breaking enemy communications with their landing force? He decided to take the chance. With the Royal Air Force and the British Army fighting for their lives, the Royal Navy could not be true to its tradition by remaining idly at anchor.
Morison wrote, that as a result of the sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse:
...[T]he half-truth "Capital ships cannot withstand land-based air power" became elevated to the dignity of a tactical principle that none dared take the risk to disprove. And the Japanese had disposed of the only Allied battleship and battle cruiser in the Pacific Ocean west of Hawaii. The Allies lost face throughout the Orient and began to lose confidence in themselves.
U.S. Admiral Thomas Hart, Phillips's American counterpart, was critical of the air support to Force Z. He was unaware of Phillips's change of plan and preference for radio silence at the time. Hart told Time magazine in 1942:
The only thing that would have saved Singapore would have been the success of Admiral Sir Tom Phillips's attempt to place his heavy ships where they could sink the Japanese transports at sea. We have never heard why the R.A.F. fighters, which were half an hour away, gave Admiral Phillips no help whatever.