There was absolutely no reason for PoW to begin destroying records after the night battle. She had power and was retiring at a good speed. Even after the 0845 attack she was still not in a sinking condition and was retiring at 12 kts. It was the attack at 1300 that is the issue. She was torpedoed and sunk in 21 minutes with a huge loss of life. There is no way in 21 minutes to destroy any of that material. In fact after being locked up when battle stations was called, to try to open the admiralty filing cabinets to begin destroying material in a sinking ship is, imo, next to impossible to do. The only papers that would have been lossed would have been those not filed in the last 24 hours or any files removed for study, which would have normally been returned when battlestations were first called the day before.

Russ / Roller007