‘Grave robber’ Chinese salvage ship is caught looting British WW2 battleship burial sites for steel: Fury as two vessels sunk by Japan, losing 840 lives, are ripped up near Malaysia in ‘loathsome’ act HMS Prince of Wales

HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse were sunk in December 1941 by Japan
The shipwrecks are designated as war graves for the 840 sailors who perished
But Chinese trawlers are scavenging the wrecks in the region for scrap steel

A Chinese salvage ship has been caught looting the war graves of hundreds of British sailors for scrap metal off the coast of Malaysia in what Britain’s former naval chief described as ‘an absolute disgrace’ and a ‘loathsome’ act.

The battleship HMS Prince of Wales, one of the Royal Navy’s most capable vessels of the Second World War, was sunk by Japanese bombers in 1941 in the South China Sea.

An older battlecruiser, the HMS Repulse, was also sunk just a few miles away.

The destruction of the vessels – just days after the Japanese attack on the US base at Pearl Harbor – came as a major blow to the British in the Far East and claimed the lives of 840 sailors.

The shipwrecks, located in Malaysian waters, are now officially designated as war graves.

But a Chinese vessel – the Chuan 68 – has since been spotted lurking illegally over the site trying to dredge up the high-quality steel used in the manufacture of the warship’s hulls.

British Royal Navy Battleship HMS Prince of Wales was sunk in 1941 by Japanese torpedoes

1939: HMS Repulse, a 26,500-ton British Renown class battlecruiser at Portsmouth

News of the vessel’s plundering has outraged Admiral Lord Alan West, the former head of the Royal Navy – who lost 22 men when his frigate HMS Ardent was sunk during the Falklands War in 1982.

Blasting the scrap metal ‘grave robbers’, the former military chief told MailOnline: ‘This is an absolute disgrace.

‘These are burial sites with all the bodies still there. These Chinese wreckers or scrap metal men don’t give a damn about this.

‘It’s a loathsome thing to do. It’s very distressing for the families and next of kin of those sailors killed on HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales.

‘When I think of my ship sunk in the Falklands, I wouldn’t want people diving on that and taking things away from it. This is a disgusting thing to happen.’

READ FULL ARTICLE:

REFERENCE: