大象传媒

My father was part of the above destroyer Flotilla that took part in the last Naval battle of the second world war May 15/16th 1945 off the coast of Penang Malaysia when a Flotilla of six british navey ships sank the Japanese destroyer 'Haguro'. The british ships involved were the Saumarez, Venus, Virago, Veralum, Vigilant,Volage all under Captain Powers.
I have taken over organising the flotilla re-unions and recently took a party of the Vets back to Singapore and Penang under the lottery funding called 'Heroes return' last Sept 04. Since then we have with the help of the FCO and military attaches in Malaysia and Japan been able to locate the Cruiser Haguro on the sea bed off Penang, both getting pictures and video of the cruiser, and have now also located the remaining japanese survivors from Haguro and Kamakazi which were in the battle on the 15th/16th May 1945.
This battle was written about by John Winton called 'Sink the Haguro' and can also be located by looking at one of the flotilla members web site detailing his own personal account of this battle in diary form.We now also hope to return back to the Far East to lay a wreath with the Japanese survivors in September 2005 this year,again financed by lottery. Please see www.stanhough.com then click on Vigilant to see an account of the action.
Any person who was in this action can please contact me on peter.vant@tiscali.co.uk, as they are welcome to join the rest of their comrades on this historic visit back to the battle site. I have the names of 66 of the surviving members of the flotilla and hope to find more.
This is one of the 'forgotten battles of the second world war when everyone was celebrating the end of the war in Europe our guys were still fighting away against the Japanese and also fighting to avenge the sinking of our ships such as the Prince of Wales, Repulse, and Exeter all sunk with great loss of life earlier in the war, these are just a few of our ships lost during that time in the Far east.