by James Jinks
Warspite’s second ‘Corporate’ patrol in the South Atlantic was far more eventful. The submarine sailed from Faslane on 25 November. She was due to return in February but because of a defect in the submarine designated to take over from her the patrol was extended. Warspite completed what was at that stage the longest submarine patrol in Royal Navy history, 111 days (77 days on station) between 25 November 1982 and 15 March 1983 and 57,085 kilometres (30,804 nautical miles), which remains in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest submarine patrol in history. Warspite sailed from Chatham for the first time without the Mark 8 torpedoes on board as a result of conversion to the Tigerfish Mark 24 Mod 1, along with sixteen RNSHs. The Commanding Officer, Jonathan Cooke, was due to marry his fiancée the weekend before Warspite was now expected to return from sea. The crew even prepared a wedding cake for their CO. But Warspite spent so long in the South Atlantic that by the time she returned to Faslane there was little food remaining on board. ‘We were living on tinned food,’ recalled Cooke, ‘including steak and kidney and tomatoes. If you looked in the deep freezer just now, I think you’d find about three herrings and two lemons. Another week and my cake would have gone. We did not anticipate we would be out so long and I believe it is the longest trip by quite some time. The crew kept going very well. I think what kept them cheerful was thinking about the problems I had with my wedding.’261 ‘We have asked them to make an extraordinary effort and they have responded magnificently,’ said the Secretary of State for Defence, Michael Heseltine, after he was winched on board off Ardrossan in the Clyde approaches on 15 March.262
HMS Valiant deployed for yet another patrol on 1 August 1983 until 29 October, while HMS Warspite conducted another patrol between 5 January and 3 April 1984. South Atlantic patrols involved operations off the Argentinian coast, where teams of specialists would monitor Argentinian radio frequencies. Commanding Officers were also told to occasionally let the Argentinians know that there was still a UK submarine presence in the area by deliberately exposing the submarine’s periscope. This did not always produce immediate results, as one crew member on board HMS Courageous described:
So we were at periscope depth amongst a fishing fleet and steamed up and down waiting for them to sight us, but no radio traffic. So we put up another mast and steamed up and down, still no radio chatter to indicate that we had been noticed, so Rupert [Best, CO of HMS Courageous] kept sticking up more and more masts, but still nothing! In the end getting slightly annoyed with the Argentine fishing fleet he told Ship Control to broach and expose the fin. This duly happened and the ether went mad with radio chatter from the fishing fleet.263
In 1985 Dan Conley took over command of HMS Courageous and conducted the first of three South Atlantic patrols:
The three patrols were aimed at collecting general intelligence of Argentinian air and military activity. Most of the time Courageous conducted her patrols close to the Argentinian coast, mainly cruising at periscope depth just outside the 12 mile territorial limit during daylight hours, which was the only time any military activity was detected. We had embarked two Spanish speaking ‘spooks’ who with their specialist equipment were able to tune into Argentinian radio military circuits, particularly aircraft control frequencies. Our torpedo tubes were loaded with three Tigerfish Mod 1 torpedoes and three anti-ship Sub-Harpoon missiles. The Rules of Engagement directed that we attack and destroy any submarine detected within a 150-mile radius of the Falklands (the Exclusion Zone), but two years after the end of the war I doubt whether our politicians or the British people would have welcomed news of such an engagement. In the event Argentinian military activity was at a very low ebb; the only submarine detected was a German-built 209 Class testing its radar alongside in its base in the city of Mar del Plata. The only Argentinian surface vessel sighted was a coastguard cutter.264
Diesel submarines were also deployed to the South Atlantic. HMS Opportune, for example, conducted a South Atlantic deployment between 14 January 1985 and 28 July 1985, often acting as an ‘enemy’ submarine against British surface forces during exercises.265 HMS Sealion also conducted a South Atlantic patrol in 1987 and returned to the United Kingdom flying a Jolly Roger, with two daggers, suggesting that the submarine was involved in a Special Forces-related operation. But, as HMS Courageous’s CO recalled, ‘as time went on, it became equally clear that Northwood’s priority and interest was now firmly focused back on the USSR even though those in the Falklands were still conscious of a residual threat. The reality was that there was not much left to be done by submarines in the South Atlantic.’266
THE DETERRENT
There is one other aspect of the Falklands crisis that requires clarification. After the conflict there was a widespread belief that in the early stages of the crisis the Government deployed one of the Royal Navy’s Polaris submarines close to Ascension Island. A story later appeared in the New Statesman which alleged that the submarine was sent south in order to provide the option of launching a demonstrative nuclear attack against Córdoba in northern Argentina in the event of the loss of a major Royal Navy capital ship, such as one of the Task Force’s aircraft carriers.267 The details of the deployment were apparently ‘given in a series of highly classified telegrams sent to the British Embassy in Washington’. According to Freedman, who ‘found no such telegrams’, the source for the New Statesman article was Alan Clark.268
The suggestion that a Polaris submarine was involved in the Falklands conflict first appeared in the early days of the crisis. HMS Resolution, under Commander Toby Elliott, was a few days into a standard 72-day patrol in the North Atlantic. At the same time as Elliott learned that the Argentinians had invaded the Falklands, he was somewhat surprised to hear BBC World News report that HMS Resolution was stationed off Buenos Aires. ‘I sent for the Navigating Officer and told him this good news,’ says Elliott.269 He thought no more about it, particularly as Resolution’s crew never heard the report again. However, back in Faslane, the families of the sailors were so taken aback by the report that they sought clarification from Faslane, who quickly reassured them that it was inaccurate.
Elliott and Resolution’s crew were far too occupied with maintaining the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent. Three to four weeks into the Falklands conflict the Soviet Northern Fleet decided to take advantage of the fact that a significant portion of the Royal Navy’s submarine fleet was occupied in the South Atlantic. Seven SSNs from the Soviet Northern Fleet deployed into the Norwegian Sea, through the Iceland–Faroes Gap and into the North Atlantic. Some went down into the Bay of Biscay while the others continued to hunt for HMS Resolution. US and Canadian Maritime Patrol Aircraft, as well as the RAF’s Nimrods were deployed to keep track of the Soviet SSN breakout and at one point an RAF Nimrod thought it had detected Resolution in an area that was less than two miles away from a Soviet SSN. Northwood was immediately alerted.270
Despite the best efforts of the Soviet Northern Fleet, HMS Resolution remained undetected throughout its 72-day patrol, although Elliott was forced to carry out a number of evasive manoeuvres in order to avoid a Soviet ‘November’ class submarine during the initial stages of the SSN breakout. ‘The one thing which I knew we were so keen to preserve was the very straightforward claim that no SSBN had been detected,’ he said.271 The Soviets continued to search for Resolution for the remainder of its 72-day deterrent patrol.
Both Elliott and Herbert are clear that there was ‘absolutely no thought of redirecting an SSBN down to the South’. The reports, says Herbert, are ‘Rubbish. Absolute rubbish … I think I would have known … A crazy idea … Not on my watch.’272 ‘I have to say,’ said Elliott, ‘that at no time did I ever get the feeling that we were going to be needed. We remained well out of maximum strike range. We did not even feel the urge to break out the charts which would have been required for the long voyage south.’273 However, speculation that a Polaris submarine was sent to the South Atlantic was given further credence with the publication in November 2005 of the dia
ry of François Mitterrand’s psychiatrist, Ali Magoudi. According to Magoudi, on 7 May 1982, a few days after an Exocet missile fired from a Super Etendard aircraft had struck HMS Sheffield, Mitterrand, who was late for a meeting, said:
Excuse me. I had a difference to settle with the Iron Lady. That Thatcher, what an impossible woman! With her four nuclear submarines in the South Atlantic, she’s threatening to unleash an atomic weapon against Argentina if I don’t provide her with the secret codes that will make the missiles we sold the Argentinians deaf and blind.
The Prime Minister was apparently so livid that she blamed Mitterrand ‘personally for this new Trafalgar’ and he was ‘obliged to give in. She’s got them now, the codes’:
One cannot win against the insular syndrome of an unbridled Englishwoman. Provoke a nuclear war for a few islands inhabited by three sheep as hairy as they are freezing! But it’s a good job I gave way. Otherwise, I assure you, the Lady’s metallic finger would have hit the button.274
Exactly what ‘codes’ Magoudi is referring to is unclear. What is clear, as the official historian of the Falklands campaign, Sir Lawrence Freedman, has noted, is that ‘the nuclear option was never seriously discussed in the War Cabinet and nor were preparations made for its implementation by the Royal Navy’.275 However, we do now know that Margaret Thatcher does appear to have considered the use of nuclear weapons against Argentina under certain extreme circumstances. ‘She certainly took it very seriously, to the point certainly where she would have been willing to face up to the real eventuality of use,’ recalled the former Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence, the late Sir Michael Quinlan:
I do recall an occasion after the Falklands War when she said something to me which suggested that she would have been prepared actually to consider nuclear weapons had the Falklands gone sour on her. I found that a terrifying suggestion, but she undoubtedly made it … The very fact that she could say it raised my eyebrows and my hair slightly.276
Submarines played an important role in the Falklands conflict, maintaining a successful blockade of the Falkland Islands and forcing the Argentinian Navy to remain within its own territorial limits from the time the Maritime Exclusion Zone was established until the end of the conflict and sinking one of the Argentinian capital ships. But, as Rear Admiral Frank Grenier, Flag Officer Submarines between 1987 and 1989, later noted:
Submarines did not win the Falklands War. Their contribution was a combination of achievement and threat. Performance, as ever, came from the inheritance of fine breeding, sound experience and a wonderful response from our people. The machines were a tribute to the technicians, both on the spot and in support. We were fortunate that the political resolve and backing were in place.277
But could the Submarine Service have prevented the conflict? During a conference on the Falklands conflict at the Centre for Contemporary British History in 2005, John Nott and Admiral Woodward clashed when attempting to answer that very question:
John Nott: ‘The big “what if” of history is what would have happened if we had one or two nuclear submarines there. Is anybody seriously suggesting that that would have deterred the Argentinians?’
Admiral Woodward: ‘I am damn sure of it.’
John Nott: ‘Right, okay, well that’s a big “what if” of history.’
Admiral Woodward: ‘I’m a submariner.’
John Nott: ‘You are a submariner. I have no doubt that if Margaret Thatcher had immediately agreed rules of engagement to allow us to sink Argentine merchant ships approaching the Falkland Islands, then a nuclear submarine could have sunk them. But what I am saying is – if we had got together and tried to decide whether we would give rules of engagement for the sinking of approaching Argentine merchant ships, it seems to me extremely doubtful whether we would have agreed them before a landing had even happened. Admiral, you have to live in the real world!’
Admiral Woodward: ‘They are not privy to our rules of engagement. They are deterred by our being there, they didn’t know that our politicians were saying “keep your hands tied behind your backs”. As far as they are concerned we have got two SSNs who will sink their ships, by which means nearly all their Falklands forces had to travel to go. It is quite clear from the interview with Admiral Anaya that was exactly so. That is what made him do it earlier.’
John Nott: ‘I see. So we would have had SSNs going backwards and forwards to the Falkland Islands?’
Admiral Woodward: ‘If we had done that it wouldn’t have happened.’278
Ultimately, the Falklands was a war nobody expected to have to fight. It was an unusual, old-fashioned contest in which the Royal Navy’s submarines displayed remarkable professionalism, flexibility and endurance, deploying a mixture of old tried-and-tested skills acquired in the First and Second World Wars alongside those newly developed in the Cold War. ‘I remain very proud of the fact that we were able to store for war and get cracking very, very quickly with really very little fuss,’ says Herbert. ‘I told them what to do and they did it. They were a super bunch of COs at that time.’279
The Falklands conflict was only a temporary respite from the main confrontation between East and West, but it helped the West win the Cold War. Years after the conflict, a Soviet General told Mrs Thatcher that ‘the Soviets had been firmly convinced that we would not fight for the Falklands, and that if we did we would lose. We proved them wrong on both counts and they did not forget the fact.’280 Indeed, John Lehman, President Reagan’s Navy Secretary, has argued that:
Britain’s actions in the South Atlantic, with support from the United States, made a major contribution to breaking the will of the Soviet Union. Prior to the Falklands episode, Moscow had considered Europe a paper tiger. In the event of a Cold War conflict, the Soviets had assumed the Europeans would have neither the will nor the stomach to fight. Much of their contingency planning proceeded from that assumption. Moscow watched developments in the South Atlantic with great interest. And I can say, based on highly classified documents that came across my desk, that Margaret Thatcher’s decision to fight for the Falklands came as a real shock to the Soviet leadership. It forced them to rethink their assumptions for Western Europe and begin to take NATO forces far more seriously.281
‘Normality returned swiftly’ after the conflict, recalled HMS Conqueror’s Navigator, Jonty Powis. Conqueror’s crew had been promised a long maintenance period and some much-needed rest. ‘However,’ recalled Powis, ‘5 weeks later we were at 75 North chasing shadows on SOSUS.’282 It was back to business as usual against the Soviet adversary in the cold northern waters.
8
Maintaining the Deterrent: From Polaris to Trident
He [President Carter] was lying on his bed in his swimming trunks when I walked in – we all had grass huts or something equivalent – and I just walked across ten yards of grass, with the blue sea shimmering almost beneath our feet and woke him up and said, ‘Jimmy, before we resume tonight, on our next session, I want to have a word with you about the possible replacement of Polaris.’
Jim Callaghan recalling the Guadeloupe summit of January 1979 in conversation with Peter Hennessy in 1988.1
When it came to choosing the modernisation of Polaris, we went into everything very carefully, including Cruise as a possible alternative. Not on! You need far more submarines, far more weapons. They do not get through … they have not the range … We went into it very thoroughly.
Margaret Thatcher, 17 November 1986.2
The spendthrift and bellicose Nott
Is involved in a nuclear plot;
He’s impaled on the fork
Of his Tridential talk
And Howe has to finance the lot.
A limerick scribbled by Lord Carrington, Foreign Secretary.3
IMPROVING POLARIS
In August 1982, two months after victory in the Falklands, the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, boarded HMS Resolution as it was returning to Faslane. The submarine, under the command of Paul Branscombe, di
ved, while the Prime Minister lunched on board, met most of the crew and was photographed, sensibly trouser-suited, working the periscope.4 The Prime Minister also sat in the Missile Control Centre, directly in front of the trigger that was used to launch the Polaris missiles and, with headphones on, witnessed Resolution’s crew go through a practice missile launch. Branscombe also debriefed Thatcher about Resolution’s patrol, which had started in the final weeks of the Falklands conflict. ‘She was concerned with the bigger picture, that we were maintaining the bigger picture because that is what it was all about,’ recalls Branscombe. ‘I think she realized that if indeed difficult decisions were going to have to be taken, they would be taken, subject to what she had written, by people who were not only ordinary, but stable.’5 This is evident in a letter Thatcher wrote to John Fieldhouse a few days after the visit: