HMS Prince of Wales (1939)
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| Career
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| Ordered:
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| Laid down:
| 2 January 1937 at Birkenhead, England
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| Launched:
| 2 May 1939
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| Commissioned:
| 31 March 1941
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| Decommissioned:
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| Fate:
| sunk
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| Struck:
| 10 December 1941
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| General Characteristics
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HMS Prince of Wales was a British battleship of the King George V class, built at Birkenhead, England.
Shortly after her commissioning, Prince of Wales joined HMS Hood in stalking and attacking the German battleship Bismarck and the accompanying cruiser Prinz Eugen. Following the sinking of Hood and the disabling of much of her weaponry, Prince of Wales fled the scene under a smokescreen, but not before scoring several hits on Bismarck. She played no further role in the sinking of Bismarck.
Later that summer, Prince of Wales carried Winston Churchill across the Atlantic to Argentia, Newfoundland where he secretly met with Franklin D. Roosevelt for several days in a secure anchorage, beginning on August 10, 1941. This meeting resulted in the signing of the Atlantic Charter on August 12, 1941.
In December 1941, Prince of Wales arrived in Singapore, along with the battlecruiser HMS Repulse, to serve as a deterrent to Japanese aggression. They failed miserably at this, as they were sunk by Japanese bombers on December 10, 1941. They were the first capital ships to be sunk solely by airpower on the open sea, a harbinger of the diminishing role this class of ships was to play in warfare. A possible reason was a delay by the British Admirality. They were unsure if they should order Prince of Wales to reinforce the American fleet, which had been decimated at Pearl Harbor.
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