Scapegoat: The Death of Prince of Wales and Repulse by Dr Martin Stephen Page A

actual geographical separation of the command bases, or a situation that leads one to wonder sometimes if the various services did not see each other, and not the Japanese, as the enemy. It had further ramifications:
    ‘In practice, however, the lack of skilled manpower to run two almost identical war rooms and insufficient clarity among field commanders and officers in Malaya meant that many operational calls and signals were still being routed to Fort Canning which then had to be re-routed to Sime Road. As a result, the decentralized war rooms created greater confusion and down time as it took ages for ground intelligence and reports to filter up and be represented on duplicate situation charts…’ 4
    The picture that emerges is one of chaos, and chaos in particular linked to ineffective communication. This becomes historically significant because signals, or the lack of them, are at the heart of the story of the sinking of the two ships. To understand why signals failures may have made a major contribution to the disaster one needs to understand also that Signals Intelligence was a relatively new phenomenon for the Singapore military. The Far East Combined Bureau (FECB) or Centre for Operational Intelligence and Signals (COIS) was housed at the naval base, but intended to serve all three services, and intercepted much Japanese traffic. They were helped by the Japanese tendency to chatter over the radio, and to send messages in ‘clear’ rather than in code. However, FECB and COIS suffered from insufficient manpower, and were not accepted by the top brass: ‘… the military commanders in Southeast Asia had little faith in these new forms of intelligence gathering and disregarded much of the contents of the daily situation reports.’ 5
    In one of the more bizarre episodes in this story, staff at FECB could see Prince of Wales and Repulse out of their office window. Yet the only information they received about the sailing of Force Z was from their own eyes, when they came in to work and saw the empty berths. It was the reports of landings that came from FECB that had caused the ships to be scrambled, yet no-one thought to tell the originators of the mission that it was happening.
    It appears that FECB intercepted Japanese signals stating that British capital ships had been sighted off Kuantan. One can only agree with the historian of military Singapore when he writes:
    ‘Not keeping the FECB informed about ongoing operations meant that the signal intelligence officers were not overly concerned about a Japanese report in P/L (plain language) on 10 December, which said British capital ships were sighted at a specific position off Kuantan. Although Malaya Command and the Admiralty were informed immediately, no one at these headquarters had pieced the two together and realized that Japanese fighters had obviously spotted Force Z and were now planning to destroy it. Had the FECB been kept in the loop, it is highly likely that defensive air cover would have been sent sooner to aid the capital ships, rather than only after receiving distress calls from the floundering vessels.’ 6
    In other words, British High Command in Singapore knew Force Z had been sighted off Kuantan in time for such fighter cover as there was to be sent out to cover the ships but no action was taken. If this is true – and the fact of so many records being lost when Singapore fell means that some issues can never be fully proven to the most exacting historical standards – it was an act of criminal negligence.
    This also relates to the suggestion examined in more detail below that Singapore or the Admiralty actually knew of the existence of Japanese torpedo-bombers, this providing an explanation as to why the First Sea Lord sent a signal to Phillips shortly before Force Z was sunk warning him to be on his guard against a Taranto-like attack on his ships in Singapore.
    Signals procedures at Singapore raise another issue. It is sometimes argued that