Battle of the Java Sea

This is the first full account of what Winston Churchill called "the forlorn battle," the attempt by a desperately small fleet of British, Australian, American and Dutch ships to stem the Japanese advance into Southeast Asia in the days immediately following Pearl Harbor.

The battle was forlorn because the Allies were outnumbered, outclassed, and outfought. Against a navy that was revealing itself as one of the best in the world, they had only a handful of cruisers and destroyers. The great capital ships that were intended to defend Singapore, Prince of Wales and Repulse, were among the first victims, sunk by aircraft in the Gulf of Siam, sacrificed by commanders who still believed the battleship could survive under air attack.

Mr. Thomas has reconstructed an hour-by-hour record of those grim days, days during which the Allied ships battled against confusion, muddle, misinformation, and plain bad luck, and one by one went to the bottom. His lucid analysis of these events is an important contribution to the history of the Second World War.