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this phrase, plucked Jrom “God have the Queen, Britain7s national anthem, would have had special meaning for the Jack Tars of the Hermes, seen hurrying a Harrier skyward as three helicopters, like circus elephants joined trunk-to-tail, wait to perform. At this point, with the Falklands outcome still in doubt, the Queen and all her subjects must have wished they had saved Victorious (the larger, old conventional carrier of that name), with her Phantom fighters and airborne early warning Gannets.
There is a new mood in Britain. Morale is up. Suddenly, everyone knows once again what the Royal Navy means to an island dependent for its survival on keeping the sea-lanes open. The Falklands campaign—the first national military compaign to be launched from the British Isles without the support of allies since World War I—was a success. The details of how this feat was accomplished merit review.
Command and Control: If ever the men and the event met at the right moment, it was those who found themselves in charge of the Falklands campaign. The unflappable Admiral Sir John Field- house, Commander-in-Chief Fleet and, in other circumstances, CinCEastLant, from whose underground headquarters in suburban Northwood the victory was planned and conducted as “Operation Corporate,” reached his high position after a career of impeccably suitable experience. He was the first Flag Officer Submarines to have commanded a nuclear attack submarine and a squadron of nuclear ballistic missile submarines; he was executive officer of HMS Hermes; he commanded NATO’s showcase Standing Naval Force, Atlantic, followed by a spell at the Ministry of Defence (MoD) as Controller of the Navy responsible for ships and weapons.
During his tour at the MoD, he had reason to understand the humiliation suffered by his service chief. First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Henry Leach, who bore the brunt of political infighting which led to the recent decimation of our surface fleet through budget cuts. In 1981, Navy Minister Keith Speed spoke out publicly against this trend. Not only was he summarily fired, but his office was abolished, along with those of the other two service ministers. They were replaced by tri-service functional junior ministers. The organization thus established was a mismatch with that governing the fighting services. For example, the services do not have one officer responsible for all procurement across the board. On top of that, a few weeks before Task Force-317 sailed for the Falklands, the terms of reference of the Chiefs of Staff Committee were radically altered. The three professional heads of the fighting services were downgraded to nonvoting advisers to the Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS).
By a stroke of luck, the Chief of the Defence Staff happened to be a sailor. Admiral of the Fleet Sir Terence Lewin. He was in New Zealand when General Leopoldo Galtieri marched, so he did not pick up the reins of his high office until some irrevocable decisions had been made. A particularly low-profile, no-nonsense sailor. Admiral Lewin may not have caught the eye of the media or the public, but he used his authority to ensure that Admiral Fieldhouse and his staff were left to run the operation without outside interference. This proved to be entirely beneficial, as did the rapport and mutual respect which developed between Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the C-in-C at Northwood.
Public Opinion: Before the fleet departed, it was
not only the Royal Navy’s morale which was at a low ebb. A significant section of the public—three million of them unemployed—feared that England might not qualify for the final stages of the soccer World Cup, while the Argentines were firm favorites to retain the title they won in 1978. This seems irrelevant, but it was a factor which determined public support for taking such extreme measures to rescue 1,800 “helpers” from driving on the wrong side of the road and having their children taught Spanish. When the task force sailed, it did so with overwhelming public support.
A Close Call: The old Iron Duke rightly described Waterloo as ”... the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life.” But he spoke only of how the dice fell during a few hours of confused cannon fire and bayonet fighting. The C-in-C at Northwood and the Prime Minister walked the high-wire of uncertainty for more than six weeks. Anything might have happened if the Argentine bombs had been properly fused for the low-level attacks which our ships’ missile envelopes forced them into, or if their air forces had not inexplicably allowed our hard-pressed amphibious warfare forces at San Carlos a day's respite after D day, when HMS Ardent was sunk and four other frigates badly damaged. All along, there was the nagging thought that the press-on Argentine pilots with Exocet missiles might disable HMS Invincible, HMS Hermes, or the 44,000-ton cruise liner turned assault ship Canberra. Any of these events could have aborted the operation, reducing it to a humiliating fiasco. The obvious solution of taking out the enemy’s mainland airfields was denied to the on-scene commander. Rear Admiral Sandy Woodward, in deference to world opinion.
The Opposing Forces: Then there was the enemy’s navy, which might be expected to be spurred on by the courage of the Mirage pilots, whose life expectancy soon fell to two-and-one-half sorties.
Prima facie, there was not much to be worried about against the Argentine Navy’s ex-British light aircraft carrier Veinticinco De Mayo with Skyhawk fighter- bombers, the 42-year-old light cruiser General Bel- grano (ex-USS Phoenix ICL-46]), two modern British-designed “Type-42” destroyers, and seven old ex-U. S. destroyers—all built toward the end of World
War II. But they were known to have been updated with Exocet missiles and modern radars. Had they chanced a coordinated air-sea attack on TF-317 in the early days, it might have been a close call, since the Royal Navy surface forces never amounted to more than 18 combatant ships, of which four were sunk and two seriously damaged early in the conflict. Furthermore, the task force had no airborne early warning (AEW) capability, although a few Nimrod missions were flown from Ascension Island along the coast of Argentina, using a makeshift inflight refueling capability put together in a matter of days.
Available satellite surveillance was by no means satisfactory or reliable. It is true that the Sea Harrier vertical or short takeoff and landing (V/STOF) strike aircraft were about to write a new word into the history of air warfare—V1FF (vectoring in forward flight). This tactic involved abruptly dropping out of the sights of a pursuing Mirage and then popping up under the enemy’s tail to shoot a Sidewinder missile straight into his glowing afterburner. The Sea Harriers scored 24 kills out of 27 missiles fired, tearing the heart out of the Argentine air forces. But the Sea Harriers had little to offer as night interceptors or in low visibility, of which there was plenty.
Although the 4,000-foot runway at Port Stanley was hit during a high-level sortie by a lone Vulcan on a 7,000-mile mission and sporadically blasted by naval gunfire, it was never out of action long. How- flying C-130s brought in reinforcements and supplies almost nightly up to the end. The dummy craters which the Argentines bulldozed onto the strip each morning for the benefit of overflying photo-reconnaissance sorties fooled no one who recalled that airfields, like railroad tracks, were seldom put out of action for more than a few hours by air bombardment on a far heavier scale during World War II.
Underwater, it was a different and probably decisive matter. The Royal Navy deployed four nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) with some of the finest sensing equipment in the world, as well as one conventional attack submarine, against two ex-U. S. Guppy-class and two ten-year-old West German-designed diesel submarines. Fittle has been released on the British submarine operations, but it may be presumed that at least one SSN would have been permanently stationed in the vicinity of the two carriers as a sonar picket—a technique first demonstrated to the Royal Navy in 1958 by the USS Nautilus (SSN-571) during “Operation Rum Tub.” Once the hapless Santa Fe (ex-USS Catfish [SS-
I, the undersigned, Coi.iro.nder of all the Ar, entine land, sea and air forces ia the Falkland Islandssurrender to - ajor General J« J. ZiOGRL CB ..2* an representative of “.er drittanic i ajesty's Government.
Under the terms of this surrender all Argentinian personnel in the Falkland Islands are to : uster at assembly points which will be nominated by G.neral Aoore and hand over their arms, ammunition, and all other weapons and warlike equipment as directed by General hoore or appropriate British officers acting on hie behalf.
Following the surrender all personnel of the Argentinian Forces will be treated with lonour in accordance with the conditions set out in the Geneva Convention of 19*9. They will obey any directions concerning movement and in connection with accomodation.
This surrender ia to be effective from 2&SJ hours ZELU on /{^June ^hours local) and includes those Argentine Forces presently deoloyed in and around Port Stanley, those others on bast Falkland, rfest Falkland and all the outlying islands.
.,'^^^^^>^^!omiacder Argentina Forces
a Major General
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.................................................. V»itne3S
/. hours /4 June 19&2
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339]) had been disposed of by a good old-fashioned depth charge dropped from a chopper off South Georgia, there were no confirmed submarine contacts near the task force throughout the campaign.
HMS Conqueror s encounter with the cruiser General Belgrano and her two destroyer escorts turned out to be of crucial importance. The Conqueror first reported the cruiser as she approached from the west, outside the Total Exclusion Zone (TEZ). Northwood knew that two of the Argentine ships were armed with Exocet surface-to-surface missiles and were part of an end-around maneuver
aimed at our carriers, so the SSN was ordered to sink the cruiser, if need be, outside the TEZ. After tracking the General Belgrano for almost a day, the Conqueror let her have it with a salvo of World War Il-vintage Mk-VIII torpedoes from close range. Our submarine was depth charged by the escorts before they disappeared over the horizon, leaving more than 300 of the cruiser’s ship’s company to die of exposure. The submarine was under orders not to interfere with any Argentine rescue operations. The corresponding pincer maneuver around the northern end of the TEZ perimeter by the Veinticinco de Mayo and her escorts was thwarted by her aircraft being grounded by fog and, of course, by the news of the Belgrano sinking.
The Argentine fleet never put to sea again, much to the chagrin of the other SSNs waiting for them. So the Conqueror is the only submarine to return to base flying the “Jolly Roger” since VJ day.
The Decline of the Royal Navy: To understand the extent of the Royal Navy’s and the nation's comeback from a nadir of low morale to the victorious moment when the Instrument of Surrender was signed on terms dictated by Royal Marine Major General Jeremy Moore, one needs to hark back to the 1956 Suez operation. That painful and humiliating retreat has haunted British military men.
War II. But they were known to have been updated with Exocet missiles and modern radars. Had they chanced a coordinated air-sea attack on TF-317 in the early days, it might have been a close call, since the Royal Navy surface forces never amounted to more than 18 combatant ships, of which four were sunk and two seriously damaged early in the conflict. Furthermore, the task force had no airborne early warning (AEW) capability, although a few Nimrod missions were flown from Ascension Island along the coast of Argentina, using a makeshift inflight refueling capability put together in a matter of days.
Available satellite surveillance was by no means satisfactory or reliable. It is true that the Sea Harrier vertical or short takeoff and landing (V/STOL) strike aircraft were about to write a new word into the history of air warfare—VIFF (vectoring in forward flight). This tactic involved abruptly dropping out of the sights of a pursuing Mirage and then popping up under the enemy’s tail to shoot a Sidewinder missile straight into his glowing afterburner. The Sea Harriers scored 24 kills out of 27 missiles fired, tearing the heart out of the Argentine air forces. But the Sea Harriers had little to offer as night interceptors or in low visibility, of which there was plenty.
Although the 4,000-foot runway at Port Stanley was hit during a high-level sortie by a lone Vulcan on a 7,000-mile mission and sporadically blasted by naval gunfire, it was never out of action long. Low- flying C-130s brought in reinforcements and supplies almost nightly up to the end. The dummy craters which the Argentines bulldozed onto the strip each morning for the benefit of overflying photo-reconnaissance sorties fooled no one who recalled that airfields, like railroad tracks, were seldom put out of action for more than a few hours by air bombardment on a far heavier scale during World War II.
To those who predicted a “comic opera” war, D day of the amphibious landing at San Carlos must have been startling with the loss of HMS Ardent, above, and the severe damaging of four other frigates. But the Royal Marines pushed ashore in a scene reminiscent of World War II, slogged across East Falkland Island to Stanley, and raised the Falklands flag. The instrument of surrender had contained a word describing the terms that the fathers of these bulldog Brits had rallied behind in the 1940s— “unconditionally.” But the word was struck out and initialed by the commander of the Argentine Forces.
J
Underwater, it was a different and probably decisive matter. The Royal Navy deployed four nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) with some of the finest sensing equipment in the world, as well as one conventional attack submarine, against two ex-U. S. Gt/ppy-class and two ten-year-old West German-designed diesel submarines. Little has been released on the British submarine operations, but it may be presumed that at least one SSN would have been permanently stationed in the vicinity of the two carriers as a sonar picket—a technique first demonstrated to the Royal Navy in 1958 by the USS Nautilus (SSN-571) during “Operation Rum Tub.” Once the hapless Santa Fe (ex-USS Catfish [SS-
• eadqu.arl?r.s, Tend -•crc'is Islands
I, the undersigned, do.render of all the Argentine land, sea and air forces in the /airland Islands surrender to ..ajor
General d. d. ..CCBs, Cd G&J .C* ao representative of :-.er irittanic , ajesty's Government.
Under the terms of this surrender all Argentinian personnel in the Falkland Islands are to : uster at assembly points which will be nominated by General Moore and hand over their arms, ammunition, and all other weapons and warlike equipment as directed by General Koore or appropriate Srxtiish officers acting oa hie behalf.
following the surrender all personnel of the Argentinian Forces will be treated with .lonour in accordance with the conditions sst out in the Genera Contention of 19*9. Hwy will obey any directions concerning noeenent and in connection with accocnodntion.
339]) had been disposed of by a good old-fashioned depth charge dropped from a chopper off South Georgia, there were no confirmed submarine contacts near the task force throughout the campaign.
HMS Conqueror's encounter with the cruiser General Belgrano and her two destroyer escorts turned out to be of crucial importance. The Conqueror first reported the cruiser as she approached from the west, outside the Total Exclusion Zone (TEZ). Northwood knew that two of the Argentine ships were armed with Exocet surface-to-surface missiles and were part of an end-around maneuver
aimed at our carriers, so the SSN was ordered to sink the cruiser, if need be, outside the TEZ. After tracking the General Belgrano for almost a day, the Conqueror let her have it with a salvo of World War II-vintage Mk-VIII torpedoes from close range. Our submarine was depth charged by the escorts before they disappeared over the horizon, leaving more than 300 of the cruiser’s ship’s company to die of exposure. The submarine was under orders not to interfere with any Argentine rescue operations. The corresponding pincer maneuver around the northern end of the TEZ perimeter by the Veinticinco de Mayo and her escorts was thwarted by her aircraft being grounded by fog and, of course, by the news of the Belgrano sinking.
The Argentine fleet never put to sea again, much to the chagrin of the other SSNs waiting for them. So the Conqueror is the only submarine to return to base flying the “Jolly Roger” since VJ day.
The Decline of the Royal Navy: To understand the extent of the Royal Navy’s and the nation's comeback from a nadir of low morale to the victorious moment when the Instrument of Surrender was signed on terms dictated by Royal Marine Major General Jeremy Moore, one needs to hark back to the 1956 Suez operation. That painful and humiliating retreat has haunted British military men.
Opposed by our closest ally, isolated by world opinion, and undermined by political bets being hedged within the Cabinet, the forces on the spot had victory snatched from under their noses by their political masters.
Following the Suez operation, Britain’s naval forces declined steadily. Henceforth, East of Suez was to be off limits, except, of course, when circumstances or political expediency dictated otherwise. For years, there was the thankless Beira Patrol in the Mozambique Channel. Today, we ensure the safe passage of oil to the West from Iran and Iraq. Strike carriers were allowed to run on for a decade, but eventually were no longer assigned a significant wartime role. One by one, they were towed away to the breakers’ yards. The Royal Navy’s political and military chiefs resigned on the issue, but no one seemed to care or even remember their sacrifice.
But a new breed of naval aviators emerged: antisubmarine warfare (ASW) helicopter crews of exceptional skill and bravery, backed by a handful of Sea Harrier pilots operating from carriers which have ski-jumps instead of catapults—the angled deck became a chopper park.
By March 1982, we had only one of these new ships in commission, the Invincible, and she already had a “sold” sticker on her island. She was booked for the Royal Australian Navy in a half-price deal as part of Minister of Defence John Nott’s “Defence Review.”[1] Underlying it all was the decision to pay for the whole U. K. Trident nuclear-powered ballistic submarine (SSBN) program out of current navy funds, ensuring a further steady reduction in the surface fleet over the next ten years. This led to a growing, but unspoken, opposition to the SSBN among the members of the Naval Staff.
The depth and seriousness of the cuts in the “Defence Review” are starkly apparent when one compares the inventory of ships in commission in the December 1981 issue of Broadsheet—the annual report from the First Sea Lord—against the preceding year, excluding ships in reserve. (See table.) In addition, mid-life overhauls for about half the frigates were to be cancelled.
The NATO Role: Apart from a Mickey Mouse Fishery Protection Squadron and a few other minor inshore forces, Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic (SACLant), sees the Royal Navy as a small ASW force destined to protect the first European resupply convoy between Madeira and the English Channel. The Royal Navy’s ability to do so is already in question. Britain’s remaining overseas dependencies in the Caribbean, South Atlantic, and Indian Ocean lie outside NATO boundaries, and their protection has
| September 1980 | December 1981 |
Carriers | 3 | 2* |
LPDs | 2 | 2* |
DLGs | 14 | 11+3* |
FFGs | 48 | 36 + 12* |
SSBNs | 4 | 4 |
SSNs | 11 | 12 |
SSKs | 16 | 16 |
*Earmarked for disposal within two years.
been left by the planners to such ad hoc support as can be cobbled together from time to time. The 30 surface ships usually available in service were organized into three flotillas, each of which, in turn, went on worldwide training and flag-showing deployment to serve notice that the Royal Navy could still come up with a few ships in front-line service. In 1981, one such visit was planned to the Falkland Islands when some members of Parliament insisted that Galtieri meant business. As for the lack of naval strike aircraft, that was no concern of the admirals, since the Air Staff had affirmed its ability to take over the carriers’ strike role anywhere in the world, although it is unlikely that the Falklands ever entered their contingency planning.
Ships Taken Up From Trade (STUFT): The incredible speed with which 54 merchant ships were requisitioned for conversion to military use over one weekend was not the fruit of years of carefully laid plans. Arapaho—the concept of basing fleet aircraft on board merchant ships—had been advocated by farsighted planners on the Naval Staff in the late 1960s, but got nowhere because it would divert funds from ships flying the White Ensign. The STUFT operation was, like much else in “Operation Corporate,” brilliant improvisation at relatively low levels in the Admiralty. Freed from financial constraints and the bureaucracy of the Procurement Executive, a captain in the Division of Naval Operations and Trade put most of the force together by a series of telephone calls to shipowners, many of whom were delighted to have their loss-makers or idle tonnage chartered at better than market terms. The Admiralty put together a fleet of more than half a million tons, not counting the 21 Royal Fleet Auxiliaries and other ships wearing the Blue Ensign. Many of them were on the “for sale” list. One left on her moorings was the Royal Yacht Britannia, originally built on the pretext of being available as a hospital ship in times of crisis, but found wanting when her moment came.
The civilian crews who manned this fleet did not confine their rewards to warm feelings of patriotism and the gratitude of the public. The Canberra's departure with her cargo of Royal Marine Commandos
and paratroopers was delayed while the unions hammered out a better pay deal for their members for every day spent south of Ascension Island. A junior deckhand flashed his paycheck in front of a naval petty officer the day before they got back to Southampton after three months at sea. After all deductions it was for £7,400 (approximately $14,800).
Nevertheless, there is plenty of evidence that the merchant seamen exposed to the real dangers of “bomb alley” off San Carlos stood their ground as resolutely as their forebears did on Malta or Murmansk convoys. The logistics were awe-inspiring. More than 9,500 troops and 100,000 tons of supplies were put ashore before the end of the operation. Although merchantmen, other than the Canberra, were not primary targets, they did not escape the attention of Argentine pilots. The 15,000-ton con- tainership Atlantic Conveyor was sunk by an Exocet which had been decoyed by chaff from HMS Active. Besides 11 of her crew, some vital stores went down with her, including three of the four heavy-lift Chinook helicopters, 2,000 feet of prefabricated metal runway destined to extend the Port Stanley strip, and 5,000 Arctic tents. Luckily, the Harriers had been flown off just before the missile hit, but all their spares went down with the ship.
The 5,500-ton Elk, normally a roll-on/roll-off (RO- RO) truck ferry, carried 2,500 tons of ammunition into San Carlos Bay, but was unable to offload during daylight hours because of constant air attacks. She was ordered to put to sea every dawn and hole up in the fog offshore, returning to the beach at dusk to unload more of her unstable cargo. On completion of her task some days later, the senior officer on the scene released her with the neat signal: “Maneuver well executed. Arise, Sir Elk.”
In the middle of a particularly fierce air attack, the 13,000-ton North Sea ferry Norland received a signal from the company’s catering manager in Harwich demanding that the inventory of wines and spirits held in the after saloon bar be reported forthwith. “Three dozen gin, two dozen Scotch, six bottles of rum, and one Skyhawk” went the reply as an enemy aircraft exploded right on top of her.
The Good News and the Bad News: Inevitably, there were things which went wrong in an unrehearsed campaign of this nature. Most have been widely publicized. No matter how spiritedly their crews fought, our warships were ill-equipped and constructed for defense against wave-top attacks by aircraft or missiles. HMS Sheffield was sunk by an Exocet which failed to detonate, but sparked off an uncontrollable fire using in the first moments the rocket’s unexploded fuel, before the ship’s own fuel, plastic piping cable insulation, and furniture triggered off a holocaust.
The disaster at Bluff Cove, where 50 lives were lost in HMS Sir Galahad, need never have happened. If only the troops had been put ashore upon the ship’s arrival, instead of being kept on board at anchor for several hours in broad daylight in full view of known Argentine observation posts, the air strike which got in under the Harrier combat air patrol would have hit too late.
But there was so much that went better than could ever have been expected. Within the serious limitations of weather and visibility, our 171 aircraft and choppers provided strong air support. The 32 Harriers flew more than 2,000 operational sorties, while the helicopters tripled as gunships, troop transports, and search-and-rescue units. One squadron, No. 802 (Sea Kings), flew 1,560 hours in May, the equivalent of having two choppers airborne around the clock throughout the month. More than 90% operational availability was achieved with all aircraft from start to finish.
For almost all the sailors involved, it was their first experience of combat; but our spearhead troops had been tuned up in Ulster and other theaters, where the Special Air Service (SAS), Royal Marine commandos, and paratroopers contrive to find almost continuous action in peacetime. The full story of our Special Forces may never be told, but everyone
How proud she must have been as she waved to the ship that bore not only her name but thousands of her fighting men home from the Falklands. And how touched she must have been to see the survivors of HMS Coventry assembled on the foredeck in their last muster, a living reminder of the cost of being victorious.
[1]The Naval Institute published a detailed analysis of the “Defence Review" in John E. Woods's “The Royal Navy Since World War II,” Proceedings, March 1982, pp. 82-90.