HMS Prince of Wales
had a short but eventful career. It was completed 31
March 1941, by Cammell Laird. It was one of the King
George V Class of British battleships designed to the
constraints of the London Treaty.
On 24 May 1941 Prince
of Wales and the battleship HMS
Hood engaged the German battleship DMK
Bismarck in an historic naval
engagement in which Hood
was sunk and Prince of Wales
was damaged, but not before Prince of
Wales struck Bismarck
with three of her 14" shells.
Prince of Wales
was repaired and subsequently transported British
Prime Minister Winston Churchill to Ship
Harbor, Placentia Bay, Newfoundland to meet
with President Roosevelt for the Altantic
Conference from 9-12 August
1941.
Prince of Wales
was subsequently sunk while in defense of Malaya on
10 December 1941 by Japanese aircraft in the South
China Sea.
Churchill was to sadly note in his
memoirs that half the crew of Prince of
Wales that attended the rendezvous with
USS
Augusta for
the Atlantic
Conference would die within
the year.
