Operation reclaim: HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Rep

HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse are two of the ultimate wreck dives, but they are also designated as ‘protected places’. This month we focus on two British expeditions to these South China Sea war graves...

When leading British technical diver Gavin Haywood first discovered the bell of HMS Prince of Wales, he made the difficult decision to leave it in place despite his fears that less ethical divers would pounce. For the first time DIVE tells the full story of his dramatic race to secure his historic prize

HMS Prince of Wales

HMS Prince of Wales lies at a depth of 74m, about 60 miles northeast of the picturesque Malaysian island, Pulau Tioman. It is the final resting place of 327 British seamen lost three days after the bombardment of Pearl Harbor. They were part of an ill-fated fleet known as Task Force Z, steaming to head off an attack on Singapore and then hit by Japanese torpedoes. In recent years, it has attracted increasing numbers of technical divers, but was listed as a ‘protected place’ during the recent reclassification of British war graves. This means that under British law divers cannot penetrate the wreck of the Prince of Wales and no artefacts are allowed to be removed from it.

It is still legal for divers to visit the wreck, as long as they dive it respectfully. It was during one such expedition that British diver Gavin Haywood recently chanced on the ship’s bell, which was just protruding from the sand beneath the starboard gunwale at the forward end of the wreck. ‘I found myself facing a moral dilemma,’ Haywood told DIVE. ‘The bell was in a very visible place, and I knew that the wreck would be visited by divers who might not be so bothered by British laws. Nevertheless, our team thought that our priority should be to obey the law, so we left the bell in place and contacted the MoD by satellite telephone.’

Initially, the MoD’s line was that the bell should stay where it was, but it too came to realise that the bell could be in danger of being claimed as a trophy. The case for salvaging the bell was made by lobbyist Lord Clifford and Ken Byrne, founding secretary of the Prince of Wales Survivors Association, who secured the MoD’s permission. Now that the principle had been established, the race was on to relocate and recover the bell before another group of divers found it. The mission, Operation Reclaim, was the first ever to combine the talents of civilian technical divers and British Royal Navy clearance divers.

The joint operation was headed by the Royal Navy’s superintendent of diving, Commander Simon Nicholson and his staff at HMS Excellent. The clearance divers would use modified Carlton Mk16 rebreathers, while the civilian technical divers were to use Buddy Inspirations. Sponsored by the diving manufacturer Divex, Brown Shipley and Singapore Airlines, the team chartered a support vessel, the Izyco Supplier, and set off from Singapore to the wreck site.

As the only one who had ever seen the bell, Haywood was under a great deal of pressure. On the first day of diving, the idea was that he would go down to the wreck, orientate, and mark the area where he had seen the bell. The weather was favourable, but there was a 2.5-knot current at the surface that could make the dive perilous to say the least. ‘I had a complete nightmare on that first dive,’ Haywood said. ‘The shot had been pulled off the wreck and was bouncing along the sea bed, so I clipped a reel on to the shot and then reeled off until I got to the wreck. My underwater navigation is not the best, but I found roughly the area where the bell was and fired a bag off to the surface.’

His problems, however, were only beginning. The lifting bag had collapsed and was hanging at about 40m. Haywood’s only option was to pull himself back down the line, cut it near to the wreck and then do a fast ascent from 60m to 20m, clinging to the line. ‘I screamed all the way up to make sure the trimix was escaping from my lungs, but at least the topside support team now knew where I was. It was definitely a bit hairy, so I added another 30 minutes to the hour of deco I had accrued. I’m used to diving in bad conditions, but not as bad as that.’

A decision was made that from then on all decompression would take place while drifting under a delayed surface marker buoy. Returning to the wreck, Haywood and his fellow divers employed a detailed horizontal search of the wreck, using the gunwale as a point of reference. ‘Eventually, I found the bell just protruding from the sea bed, exactly where I had seen if before,’ he said. ‘It was a great moment. Assisted by my fellow diver George McClure, I secured the bell, bagged it and sent it to the surface. Then I sent up another SMB to mark its position, just in case the lifting bag didn’t make it to the surface. I was determined that bell would make it back to the boat!’

Despite its current-blasted journey to the surface, the bell was safely recovered by the support boat. To ease Haywood’s anxiety during the long decompression, Divex manager Paul Haynes jumped in the water to give the thumbs-up to the decompressing diver. By the time they made it back to the Izyco Supplier, the Navy men had changed into formal uniform for the handing-over of the bell.

‘Initially, we were nervous about diving with the Navy, but we were interested to see how they dived, and they were keen to see how Britain’s technical divers go about their business. We wanted one of the clearance divers to lift the bell, but conditions were so bad that they said we should lift it if we could find it. It was a pleasure to work with them, and hopefully it will set a precedent for cooperation between the Navy and the technical community. The Navy was fantastic in its support and surface cover, and there is no way we could have dived in those conditions without their support.’

As a gesture of respect, divers Dan Stevenson and Gerard Punch (RN) deployed the ensign on the Prince of Wales. The bell of HMS Prince of Wales arrived back in the UK in late summer, and has been sent to the Mary Rose Trust to be professionally restored. On the same trip, the Royal Navy deployed an ensign on HMS Repulse, lost in the same attack as the Prince of Wales which claimed 840 lives in total. A further 2,000 men were rescued thanks to the courageous action of the four destroyers in Task Force Z, which stopped to help the survivors who were swimming for their lives in the South China Sea.

TASK FORCE Z
The wrecks of Task Force Z rank among some of the world’s most demanding dives as
Guy Wallis’ logbook of a British expedition to document their condition reveals. Photographs by Dan Burton and Guy Wallis

Day 1
Arrival at Tioman Island, Malaysia. The sea was flat-calm and as we prepared our kit and headed off for Admiral Sir Tom Philips’ flagship, The Prince of Wales. there was a growing sense of anticipation. Sgt Dave Taylor, the diving officer for the trip, briefed the divers. The first dive was planned for 25 minutes of bottom time using 17/40 trimix, 36 per cent nitrox as a travel gas and 50 per cent nitrox as a decompression gas. Rod Macdonald (author of Dive Scapa Flow) carried out a wreck orientation and went over where the torpedo damage from the Japanese Betties (torpedo planes) should be. The Prince of Wales sits at 68m and is almost completely upturned.

Day 3
The first two pairs of divers (all using Aquazepp scooters) kitted up and headed for the shot. The Zepps made slow progress into the strong current, but the first pair soon disappeared under the water. Expedition leader Guy Wallis and cameraman Dan Burton followed. Wallis and Burton soon ran into trouble: Wallis’s Zepp had packed up at 30m and had to be clipped off on the shot-line. Determined to place the ensign on one of the propeller shafts, they pressed on, Wallis swimming along the top of the upturned hull while Burton scootered along, filming the whole affair. After 200m the propellers loomed into view. Wallis moved down to the lower one on the starboard and positioned the ensign. As the current caught, the flag waved gently back and forth – a testament to those who had perished almost 60 years ago.

Day 4
The day started badly with the belief that buoys, left marking the dive site, had been stolen. As the tide slackened off, though, they popped to the surface and a decompression station was deployed. Later in the day Macdonald, Taylor and Wallis, with Burton filming, went in to position the brass memorial plaque, in memory of those who had died in 1941.

Day 5
With the decompression station still in place and the current on slack, diving resumed on the Prince of Wales. Burton was desperate to film the big 14in guns, and a foursome, headed by Macdonald, sped off into the blue on scooters. As they descended, just under the bilge keel on the starboard side, they came across an 8m-wide hole, one of the starboard torpedo strikes. The plating was bent inwards at the edges, the impact having straddled the bottom of the armoured belt blowing a large rectangular section inward. The main impact had hit the vulnerable hull section between the armoured belt and the bottom of the keel.

Day 6
Time had been marching on and the priority was to get divers in the water. A shot was dropped right on top of the Prince of Wales and team members Macfarlane and Carvel scootered down to double-check it was on the wreck. Hot on their heels were Macdonald and Burton trying to piece together the ship’s final moments.
As they approached the stern, the sweep of the hull revealed the thick armoured belt projecting from the hull. Looking at the damage in this area, it was easy to visualise what had happened during this catastrophic first attack. A lucky strike at the port side outboard propeller had blown the hull open and caused all sorts of internal problems as the 80m long shaft was bent and then, as it continued to turn, vibrated and shook itself loose.

Day 7
Back to Tioman Island for a well-deserved rest.

Day 8
With dawn breaking we reached the dive site for HMS Repulse. Another dive boat was on site and when its divers started kitting up at 0730hrs we should have cottoned on that there were some strong currents. The first wave of divers battled against the current, but the second wave decided to wait and see if the current would drop. With no sign of the current dropping at 2pm, we decided to go! Burton managed to scooter forward, riding a more powerful Zepp, but everyone else had to haul themselves along the rope to the anchor chain, the smaller Zepps proving unable to cope with the raging current.
Wallis and Macdonald headed forward, taking in the magnificent foredeck main guns. B Turret’s massive twin 15in guns still pointed majestically out to sea, from beneath the upturned hull.

Day 9
With O2 starting to run low it was decided that the team would switch to Heli-air 15/28 as a bottom gas. The equivalent narcotic depth was 38m (slightly deeper than before) and the length of the decompression stops would increase slightly. It was also agreed that diving needed to start earlier to catch what little period of slack there was. Heading towards the stern, more superstructure was clearly visible. Both funnels were gone, the thin metal having rotted away long befor

Day 10
With the continual northward oceanic current showing no sign of slackening, the teams went in. Today the dive was to be devoted to getting some good stills, and Wallis and Macdonald headed up to the inverted twin 15in guns of A and B turrets. Macdonald hung motionless beside the massive twin barrels of B turret lighting sections with his Zepp, while Wallis moved around to get the best angle and lighting conditions.

Day 11
Early in the day, we realised that there seemed to be little current The few people who were about looked over the side and suddenly rushed off to find their dive partners. There was a frenetic period as one pair after another disappeared over the side. Those without scooters, effortlessly pulled themselves down, while Wallis and Macdonald Zepped off into the blue. Reluctantly the divers headed back to the up-line. There was just time for one last look back. There lay the wreck of HMS Repulse, its vastness and once great might lying motionless on the sea bed like a sleeping giant.

There has been much debate on whether war graves such as these should be dived or whether some form of regulation is needed. Some consider diving these sights to be the same as opening someone’s coffin, I would prefer to compare it with visiting a military graveyard to pay your last respects.