Ghost Force

by Patrick Robinson

  Captain Reader came down to meet the C-in-C, and together they paced the wide jetty where the Ark Royal was moored. It was already noticeable that new stores were arriving with such regularity that team after team was being seconded to join in the loading process, and the pile of debris was beginning to look like the European grain mountain.

  But the services are expert at priorities. What mattered was loading the ships, not clearing up the rubbish. Only when the piles of empty cartons became a serious detriment to the process was action taken to reduce the problem.

  By now the great arc lights along the waterfront were being switched on. Captain Reader and Admiral Palmer went aboard and took the elevator to the quarters of the commanding officer, while some swift refurbishment took place above them, in readiness for the arrival of Rear Admiral Alan Holbrook, who, as Task Force Commander, would fly his flag from the Ark Royal throughout the operation.

  His ops room, where he and his staff would plan the war, was located right above Captain Reader’s quarters, and of course their duties would be entirely separate. The Captain’s task was to steer the 685-feet-long carrier safely around the South Atlantic, taking overall command of the 550-foot-long flight deck, the 680-man crew and 80 officers.

  Admiral Holbrook would plan the deployment of the ships, the air and sea assault on the Argentinian islands, plus the landing of the military force, in consultation with COMAW, Commander Amphibious Warfare, Commodore Keith Birchell.

  The GR9 ground attack aircraft were due to begin arriving, straight onto the deck of the Ark Royal , from Yeovilton Naval Air Station. Altogether there would be twenty-one of them, the full complement for a small carrier like the Ark Royal , as opposed to the eighty-four that a big U.S. Nimitz-class carrier can accommodate.

  Of course, the nonarrival of the two new Royal Navy carriers, both 60,000-tonners, was widely considered to be a national disgrace. Despite the Prime Minister’s somewhat glib, self-congratulatory remarks about the new ships, the fact remained there had been government delay, delay, and delay, and the earliest they were likely to arrive was sometime in late 2015.

  Every senior officer in the Royal Navy recalled the chilling words of the First Sea Lord, Admiral Alan West, six years earlier when he had stated with quiet certainty that recent defense cuts “have left the Navy with too few ships to sustain even moderate losses in a maritime conflict.”

  With only a dozen destroyers and frigates ready for battle at any one time, the First Sea Lord considered the situation untenable, simply not enough warships. At the time he had suggested, modestly, that after forty years in the Navy he knew something of what he spoke, since his own ship, the Ardent , was sunk in Falkland Sound in 1982.

  One way and another this was a somewhat modest recounting of the events of May 21, 1982, when a formation of Argentine bombers launched nine five-hundred-pounders at the battle-hardened Ardent in which the Seacat missile launcher suddenly jammed. Three of the bombs smashed into the Type-22 frigate, blasting the stern hangar asunder and blowing the Seacat launcher into the air. It crashed down, killing the Supply Officer Richard Banfield, and the helicopter pilot Lt. Commander John Sephton, who was manning a machine gun in company with his observer, Brian Murphy.

  Almost the entire stern section of the ship was on fire, a huge plume of smoke lifting high above the Sound. Minutes later another formation of Argentine Skyhawks came screaming in over West Falkland and instantly spotted the burning furnace of the Ardent . Commander West ordered his helmsmen to turn their just-repaired 4.5-inch gun to face the enemy, and they opened fire with everything they had.

  Commander West had cleared one of the ship’s cooks to man one of the big machine guns, and he had actually downed one of the raiders. But nothing could save the Ardent from this bombardment. Seven bombs slammed into her, almost lifting the ship out of the water.

  The blasts and the fires had killed or wounded one-third of all the ship’s company—the same number as in HMS Victory at this same time in the afternoon at the Battle of Trafalgar. Unlike Admiral Nelson, Commander West survived, and with the fires blazing all around him, he once more ordered his gunners to turn and face the enemy.

  But she could no longer steer, and the fires were roaring toward the missile magazines. Men had been blown overboard, and she was shipping ice-cold seawater by the ton. The Ardent was sinking, and Alan West ordered his crew to abandon ship. Not until the last man was taken off by HMS Yarmouth did Commander West, tears of rage and frustration streaming down his face, finally leave HMS Ardent . She sank early the next morning.

  He knew of what he spoke.

  And when Admiral Holbrook arrived shortly before 1900, he shook hands warmly with the commanding officer and with his Fleet C-in-C, just stating solemnly, “We haven’t got enough, have we?”

  “No, I’m afraid not,” replied Admiral Palmer. “What we have, we take. But the GR9s are blind at night and in bad weather. If we need ship replacements…well…I’m afraid there won’t be any.”

  “Hmmmmm,” replied Admiral Holbrook. “We’d better move pretty sharply if that’s the case. There’s nothing quite so bleak as attrition you can’t afford, eh?”

  He gazed out onto the flight deck, scanning the area. “It’s a clear night,” he said. “Are we expecting the GR9s soon?” he asked.

  “Starting around 2100,” said Captain Reader.

  “Helicopters?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “How about marines? Will we have them on board the Arc Royal ?”

  “Probably around six hundred.”

  Admiral Holbrook nodded. He was a slender, rather handsome man with well-combed wavy brown hair. As a Commander he had served a previous Captain of the Arc Royal as Executive Officer, and had subsequently jumped a few slightly more senior officers to make Rear Admiral. The Navy High Command wanted a new flotilla Commander with firsthand experience of the only aircraft carrier likely to be operational for a long-range war.

  Captain Reader told him his quarters would likely be ready right after dinner, and meanwhile perhaps they should have some cocoa, and take a look at the available warships that would accompany the Arc Royal on the long ride down the Atlantic. As with the previous Falklands conflict, the Americans would make Ascension Island available as a halfway house for re-storing and refueling.

  Eight warships from the Fourth Frigate Squadron would form the backbone of the Task Force, all of them Type-23 Duke-class ships built between 1991 and 2002. These are 4,200-ton gas turbines, all based at Portsmouth, and right now undergoing similar storing as their flagship, Arc Royal .

  In fact, HMS Lancaster and HMS Marlborough , both twenty years old, were unlikely to be out of refit to sail with the Task Force, but the Royal Navy was attempting to have every available warship in battle order.

  This left the following six-frigate lineup, all of them carrying a new(ish) upgraded version of the old Seawolf guided-missile system:

  HMS Kent —commissioned in the year 2000, and commanded by Captain Mike Fawkes, a forty-one-year-old ex–Fleet Air Arm pilot who had transferred to surface ships and impressed everyone with his handling of the ship during the second Gulf War. Married, with two boys aged twelve and fourteen, Mike Fawkes would assume command of the naval force, under Admiral Holbrook, if the Ark Royal should be lost.

  HMS Grafton , commissioned in 1997, commanded
by the urbane, smoothly attired Captain John Towner, whose dandyish appearance, complete with knotted white silk cravat, belied his expertise with the Plessey 996 search radar system. At forty-five, he was probably the best guided-missile officer in the Royal Navy. Known locally as Hawkeye.

  HMS St. Albans , commissioned in 2002, was the newest of the class, commanded by Captain Colin Ashby, at forty-nine the former Commander of one of the old Type-42 destroyers, and a veteran of the last Falklands War, where he served as a Sub-Lieutenant on the flight deck of HMS Hermes . Captain Ashby’s father, a World War II battleship gunnery officer, had long had ambitions for his only son to join the Navy. But after the eighteen-year-old Colin managed to slam the family river cruiser into Rochester Bridge, on the Medway River, breaking every cup and plate in the galley…well, after that Ashby Senior insisted. And he lived to see his son become the first Commander of the brand-new HMS St. Albans .

  HMS Iron Duke was now seventeen years old. Her captain was Commander Keith Kemsley, at thirty-seven the youngest of the frigate COs, and tipped by many to make it straight to the top of the Royal Navy ladder. An outstanding exponent of guided-missile warfare and an expert in both ASW and gunnery, Commander Kemsley was by nature an aggressive war fighter and, privately, Admiral Holbrook thought it entirely likely he might end up with a Victoria Cross, or else die in the attempt. A young Fogarty Fegen was Kemsley.

  HMS Westminster , one year younger than Iron Duke , was a very-well-maintained ship under Commander Tom Betts, who ran his ship with considerable discipline and limited laughter. But it was highly efficient, particularly in the field of ASW. Commander Betts was himself a former torpedo officer with an expert’s grasp of the complicated operational procedures with the Marconi Stingray weapons carried by Westminster .

  HMS Richmond was commanded by Captain David Neave, former Executive Officer in the Type-45 destroyer Dauntless . At forty-six, he had always longed for a full command but had not considered the possibility of going to war within three months of his first appointment. Today he stood on the jetty watching stores being loaded into his ship, awaiting the new Westland Lynx helicopter that would arrive on his aft deck within the next hour.

  And that, essentially, was it for the Royal Navy’s guided-missile frigate force, which would face the Argentinian air assault less than five weeks from now.

  Two bigger, 7,350-ton Type-45 destroyers were definitely in the group heading south. HMS Daring would sail from Devonport under the command of Captain Rowdy Yates, from Sussex, a barrel-chested former center-three-quarter for England Schoolboys, and then the Navy.

  The brand-new HMS Dauntless was going, despite still conducting her sea trials. She would sail under the command of Commander Norman Hall, a former able seaman on HMS Broadsword , who had come up through the ranks and was enormously popular with his 187-strong crew.

  The twenty-five-year-old HMS Gloucester , commanded by Captain Colin Day, would also go, and all three of these destroyers were taking on board stores and ammunition on the jetties near the Ark Royal . The shore crews were attempting to have HMS Dragon and HMS Defender ready to join them. Failing that, two of the old Type-42s would go, probably HMS Edinburgh and possibly HMS York , which were smaller, 4,675 tons, and equipped with the old Sea Dart missile system.

  Sea Dart was a medium-range missile, best used against high-level aircraft, but pretty useless against an incoming sea-skimming missile. Also, its radar was suspect when aimed across the water and over the land. It was neither as modern nor as efficient as the new Harpoons on the Type-45s, which also carried the new European PAAMS surface-to-air system as their principal antiair missile defense.

  HMS Ocean , the Royal Navy’s 22,000-ton helicopter carrier and assault ship, was also going. The Ocean , under the command of Captain John Farmer, would carry six Apache attack helicopters, a half dozen big Chinooks, plus vehicles, arms, and ammunition for a full Marine Commando Assault. It could transport more than 1,000 troops comfortably, 1,350 at a pinch. For this trip it would take the full 1,350.

  A second specialist assault vessel, the 19,000-ton HMS Albion , would transport a thousand troops, sixty-seven support vehicles, plus a couple of helicopters. She would sail under the command of Captain Jonathon Jempson, whose legendary Royal Navy lawn tennis partnership with Captain Farmer of the Ocean had once seen them reach the second round of the men’s doubles at Wimbledon.

  The final significant ship was the almost new 16,000-ton Landing Ship (Logistics) Largs Bay , built at the great Swan Hunter Yards on Tyneside, and intended as the lynchpin of a second wave of an amphibious assault. The ship held, if necessary, 36 Challenger tanks, 150 light trucks, 200 tons of ammunitions, and 356 troops. Its reinforced flight deck could cope easily with heavy Chinook helicopters. It would sail under the command of Captain Bill Hywood.

  Portsmouth Dockyard now resembled an industrial city, with transporters arriving by the dozen twenty-four hours a day. Of course, the government’s idea of a “rapid deployment force” was a mere euphemism for cutting back on everything. What politicians never understand—among several other things—is you cannot have rapid deployment when you don’t have enough of anything.

  For military commanders it is a constant struggle to put together any kind of force when the entire operation is beset with shortages—not enough artillery, not enough warships, not enough tanks, not enough top-class combat clothing, not enough spare parts, everything scattered thinly, and worst of all, not enough people.

  There remains a mind-set in the Parliaments of the United Kingdom, based on hundreds of years of history, that the armed services can pull together a fighting force at the drop of a hat that will beat any other armed force in the world.

  It’s been a very long time since that was true, and with each passing year of leftward-inclining governments, it has become less and less feasible. Certainly the British troops and Royal Navy performed heroically well in the two conflicts in the Gulf. And there was much to recommend the operations in Bosnia. But they were all comparatively low-tech campaigns.

  But by the year 2011, Great Britain had not gone into battle alone for almost thirty years, when they last fought for the Falkland Islands. And that was a close-run thing. A look at Admiral Woodward’s private diary revealed a somewhat disturbing sentence. “ On the night of June 13, 1982 ,” he wrote, “I do not have one ship without a major operational defect. I am afraid if the Argentinians breathe on us tomorrow, we might be finished.”

  As it happened, the Argentinians surrendered the next day, and Britain celebrated a hard-won victory. But it may prove to have been her last, unless Westminster governments began to rectify the problems they have created.

  In any event, assailed by problems, the Task Force struggling to take shape in Portsmouth in the freezing winter of 2011 was the antithesis of rapid deployment. The shortages made everything take twice as long.

  And two more weeks went by until the troops were able to show up in significant numbers. The first to arrive were members of the Royal Marine Brigade, plus their artillery support, the engineer squadron, their Logistic Support Regiment and the Air Squadron. Altogether 5,000 men from Forty Commando, Forty-two Commando, and Forty-five Commando began to embark the ships.

  They were followed by a second 5,000-strong formation, the Sixteenth Air Assault Brigade, including 1 and 2 Para, and a battalion from the Royal Green Jackets. This was part of the Army’s rapid-response force,
equipped with Chinooks and Apache attack helicopters. It was a specialist force, trained specifically for this type of mobile operation.

  They personally supervised the loading of their beloved Apache helicopters, which bristled with guns and rockets, and would provide valuable air support against Argentinian armor and ground troops.

  The Artillery Regiment had their eighteen light field guns, which hopefully could be deployed all over the combat area… If they could make a landing.

  On March 4, a declaration signed by the Prime Minister informed Buenos Aires if the Argentinian armed forces had not vacated the Falkland Islands completely in five days, the British Task Force would sail from Portsmouth to the South Atlantic, where they would wage war upon the Republic of Argentina until the islands were cleared of this foreign invasion.

  Suitably warned, the Argentinians made no response, despite much urging from the American State Department, which was doing everything in its power to persuade Buenos Aires to back down and then negotiate. The U.S. government even offered to broker the talks, which could be held in Washington, until some satisfactory agreement was reached.

  But Argentina was not about to negotiate. And the British Prime Minister was essentially in the hands of his own Navy and military High Command. All the Admirals and Generals were making it clear that once the Task Force sailed, it had either to fight or return home. They simply were not sufficiently strong to reach the South Atlantic and then hang around indefinitely while politicians and diplomats argued.

  The problems of food, fuel, and supply lines were colossal, and many of the ships were old and likely to have serious malfunctions. They could fight perhaps once, fiercely, for maybe a month, but they could not waste time. Britain’s naval and military leaders made it clear… You may not leave us down there in bad weather and high seas, falling apart in the middle of the ocean: once we arrive, we either fight or leave. There’s no halfway ground .