THIS Day, December 10, 1941, one of Birkenhead's most famous warships - and one of Britain's most powerful and modern battleships - was sunk by Japanese aircraft.

Battleship Prince of Wales, with Battlecruiser Repulse, went to the bottom of the South China Sea taking over 800 men with them.

The shock waves were felt in Birkenhead for many years as HMS Prince of Wales, 35,000 tons, was built at Cammell Laird.

Completed in 1941, within six weeks of delivery, she took part in the action which eventually destroyed the German battleship Bismark.

Then Prince of Wales achieved another distinction. Aboard her, in mid-Atlantic Mr Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt signed the Atlantic Charter.

Crew aboard Prince of Wales must have been thinking of home and Christmas on that fateful December 10 day.

Now, exactly 56 years later, author Alan Matthews has published Sailors' Tale, the story of life aboard HMS Repulse.

It promises to be as controversial and thought provoking as the Thetis, The Admiralty Regrets, another new publication chartering the sinking of the Birkenhead- built submarine Thetis.

Mr Matthews puts a new slant, with the Repulse story, on the 'cause of the greatest disaster our navy suffered throughout WWII, possibly the least talked about, too.'

He accuses Winston Churchill of duplicity, interviews survivors, then one of the Japanese pilots. In another chapter, Birkenhead-born Reg Woods, aboard Repulse, recalls how he was one of the first and last people to see the keel of the Prince of Wales.

In a second feature, armed with Sailors' Tale, Smallprint, price £8.99, we go aboard Repulse on its last voyage with Prince of Wales. Do not miss it.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.