Haruki Iki flew to the site of the battle, dropping two wreaths of flowers into the sea to honour combatants from both sides who had died in the battle. One was for the fellow members of his Kanoya Air Group, while the other was for the British sailors whose display of bravery in defence of the ships had gained them the utmost admiration from all pilots in his squadron. Effects of the sinking The morning after the battle, Prime Minister Winston Churchill received a phone call at his bedside from Sir Dudley Pound, the First Sea Lord. {{cquote|Pound: Prime Minister, I have to report to you that the Prince of Wales and the Repulse have both been sunk by the Japanese – we think by aircraft. Tom Phillips is drowned.Churchill: Are you sure it's true?Pound: There is no doubt at all.Churchill hangs up In all the war, I never received a more direct shock... As I turned over and twisted in bed the full horror of the news sank in upon me. There were no British or American ships in the Indian Ocean or the Pacific except the American survivors of Pearl Harbor, who were hastening back to California. Across this vast expanse of waters, Japan was supreme, and we everywhere were weak and naked.}} Churchill delivered news of the sinking to the House of Commons before noon on 11 December, which was followed by a full review of the situation in Malaya the next day. Singapore had essentially been reduced to a land base after both capital ships were lost, being turned into a land fortress, something it was never intended to be, rather than a base from which to project naval power. The Eastern Fleet spent the remainder of the invasion withdrawing their vessels to Ceylon and the Dutch East Indies. They were not reinforced by battleships until March 1942, with the arrival of and four s. Although all five battleships survived the Indian Ocean raid, their service in the Pacific was uneventful and they were later withdrawn to East Africa and the Mediterranean. The Prince of Wales and Repulse were the first capital ships actively defending themselves to be sunk solely by air power while steaming in the open sea. Both of them were relatively fast ships compared to the slower US battleships that were caught at anchor at Pearl Harbor. Furthermore, Prince of Wales was a