10 December, 1941 Gulf of Siam; the British battlecruiser HMS REPULSE was steaming south for Singapore at high speed. As expected, Japanese planes came. They flew in a parade-ground formation, defying withering AA fire. The bombs they dropped straddled the battlecruiser from stem to stern.

“They are good, aren’t they?” asked an American correspondent, standing on the signal deck.

“Yes, they are v-e-r-y good, indeed,” concurred the officer next to him. The correspondent was surprised to find a tinge of pride in the officer’s remark.

“Yes, we have taught them very well,” was perhaps what the officer wanted to say. In 1921, in response to the request on I.J.N. the Royal Navy sent a group of twenty-nine naval aviation experts to Japan, with Col. William Francis Sempill in charge, to train the Japanese in all the aspects of naval aviation including bombing, torpedoing, aerial photography, air tactics, maintenance etc.

The teachers were severe and strict with the pupils. One day, Col. Sempill found a Japanese trying to loosen a spark plug with a steel hammer. It was against the colonel’s standing instruction. The Japanese were taught never to use a steel hammer on an aircraft part. Use a wooden mallet always. The colonel bawled at the Japanese, “You swine!” and knocked him to the floor.

There is a two-volume book entitles ‘OLD FRIENDS, NEW ENEMIES’ that describes the relationship between RN and IJN. Indeed, the Royal Navy nurtured the newly emerging Eastern navy with what amounted to brotherly love. It taught Japanese admirals and staff officers naval doctrine and strategy; trained Japanese personnel; and always gave the Japanese the best ships and equipment. For example, the cruiser YOSHINO which the British built for Japan in 1893 was in her day, the fastest cruiser in the world; the battlecruiser KONGO which the British designed and built for Japan in 1913 had the heaviest armament in the world, and she was the envy of every navy - the submarine was no exception.