One Hundred Days

by Sandy Woodward

  In this case, the rock had not been charted, but nonetheless the Board of Enquiry would want to know the full facts of the matter and whether Captain Barrow or his Navigation Officer Lieutenant-Commander Inskip were in any way to blame. Meanwhile I flew home, as planned, feeling rather bad about leaving them in such a state. Glamorgan’s divers cropped and filed her propellers to make the blades even and, as there was no dry dock available locally, she was ordered home for proper repairs. Limited to twelve knots to reduce the chance of damage to her gearbox, she made her slow passage home to arrive shortly before Christmas. But the threat of Court Martial was to hang over Mike’s head for several months before the Commander in Chief finally decided not to proceed.

  While Mike struggled to get my flagship back to Portsmouth, I returned to my office to compile my report on my activities. I noted, with only passing interest, a few days after my return, that General Leopoldo Galtieri had succeeded to the Presidency of Argentina, but the paper I read did not record that he had announced to wild nationalistic applause that 1982 would be ‘The Year of the Malvinas’. Neither did it mention that the zealous and slightly sinister Admiral Jorge Anaya had agreed to support the new regime only if the General committed himself to the recapture of the islands from the British. They intended to execute this military coup de main sometime between July and October of the year, for reasons still unknown to me in detail. It was likely, however, that they had surmised that certain factors would be in their favour by July: Britain’s Fleet would be seriously weakened by then; our lone patrol ship down south HMS Endurance would have finally gone home, at the onset of winter, to scrap; and anyway, the Royal Navy would be most unlikely to tackle the worst of the winter in the South Atlantic with a force large enough to remove Argentina from her ‘rightful’ territories. Above all, there was every indication that, by then, we would probably have no operational aircraft carriers, with Hermes and Invincible both victims of Mr John Nott’s Defence cuts. As far as Galtieri and Anaya were concerned the situation was now simple: no British carriers means no air cover, no air cover means no British surface ships, no surface ships means no British landing force, no landing force means ‘No Contest’. Their reasoning was perfect. Their timing? That was the make or break factor.

  But all of that had nothing to do with me. My operations were conducted at a lower level and as the new year proceeded I was making plans for the major exercise we hold most years, called ‘Springtrain’. This is an opportunity towards the end of winter, in March and April, to get a decent number of ships away, and mostly involves destroyers and frigates, though sometimes submarines (the ‘loyal opposition’) and the occasional aircraft carrier join in. We take them all down to Gibraltar, where the weather is so much better, and we get rid of the ice and gloom of the English and Scottish winter and work them all up once more to full Fleet readiness. Altogether about twenty to twenty-five ships take part in Springtrain and the plan is always to have a week in Gibraltar, play a lot of games between the ships, such as football, stage the Top of the Rock Run and generally have a morale-boosting jolly, culminating in a spectacular concert by the Band of the Royal Marines in the Upper Caves. This is a traditional occasion, and one to which officers and ratings alike greatly look forward.

  We set sail in mid-March and exercised our way down to the Med, testing fairly basic abilities in anti-submarine, anti-air and surface-to-surface warfare over a period of ten days. As usual, this woke everybody up and, as the journey progressed, the gunnery became more accurate, the missile systems more efficient, the computer systems better used, the machinery settled and the people worked more smoothly. It was all designed to prepare us for the more advanced Tactical Exercises in the Atlantic after our week ‘off’.

  For these exercises we carve up the eastern Atlantic into vast boxes and bring large groups of ships together, simulating battle conditions as closely as we can. Every aspect of the mock war has an important role, teaching people to operate as a battle group, training them to work with perhaps ten other ships, with all the complex communications systems which are involved. They must also be trained to work with submarines and aircraft, and it is, by any standards, extremely complicated, requiring a great deal of time and patience. The standards required are high because errors in war are apt to be both unpleasant and expensive, and we prefer to eliminate them by means of exercises.

  My Flagship for Springtrain of 1982 was HMS Antrim, a sister guided-missile destroyer to Glamorgan. This change was required by the forthcoming arrival of the Commander-in-Chief, Fleet, Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse, the ex-submariner who did not always share my personal sense of humour. For his visit to the exercise, he would take Glamorgan as his Flagship, while I moved into Captain Brian Young’s Antrim, from where I would conduct the day-to-day running of the major exercises after we left Gibraltar.

  Our last night on the Rock, a Sunday, was quite magical. There in the Upper Caves the pageant scarlet, blue and gold colours of the uniforms, the topical and patriotic music, all combined to produce a traditional and vivid reminder of the old days when Britannia really did rule the waves. I am not much of a one for tradition, but this sort of occasion can be very moving, and perhaps seems unusually so in hindsight, in view of what was so shortly to come. Those few days in Gibraltar seemed to stand for all the good things of naval life in peacetime.

  Monday morning dawned bleakly. The Levanter, that nasty, gusty, easterly wind with its sweeping grey rain, was upon us and we sailed out into short choppy seas to begin the exercises to the east and west of the Rock. It is sometimes surprising how isolated you can become in a ship despite the masses of modern communications at your disposal. For instance, as we concentrated on our daily business I had no idea that Argentina was mobilizing her troops for the invasion of the Falklands, or that two of her frigates Drummond and Granville were heading to South Georgia where Royal Marine Lieutenant Keith Mills was already ‘entrenched’ with twenty-two men. Endurance was standing by, preparing to remove the Argentinian scrap metal dealers who had had the temerity to hoist their country’s flag on British soil. I did know that the situation in the South Atlantic was not good and that, as had occurred so often before, the Argentinians were threatening to land in the Falklands. Indeed, the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship Fort Austin had been ordered south on 26 March. In hindsight at least, this was Britain’s first major move, and the first to affect directly my own command.

  We had a busy time that morning getting all the Springtrain ships away to their appointed tasks in good order, and I received a short blast from my Commander-in-Chief for ’allowing dangerous manoeuvring in the Straits’, meaning that Admiral Fieldhouse thought that my departure plan was roughly on a par with his assessment of my sense of humour. It seemed important at the time. The submarines Spartan and Oracle had been withdrawn from Springtrain, but that afternoon were ordered to return to Gibraltar. Warshot torpedoes were loaded from Oracle to Spartan and the latter made ready to sail. At seven o’clock that evening I flew over to Glamorgan for discussions with my C-in-C. He briefed me on the deteriorating situation in the South Atlantic and we agreed on the best way forward for the present exercise. He touched on the possibility of placing a more experienced ‘Three Star’ vice admiral in command of any task force which might be ordered south. I have since been told, however, that Fieldhouse was quite determined I should stay in command from the very start and his words were merely to keep me on my toes – perhaps to test my sense of humour.

  I returned to Antrim at 2130 and assembled my staff to prepare orders for a Short Notice Operational Readiness Check. This was a standard exercise procedure used by flag officers to test the ability of ships to deal with unusual events, in very short order. I told them we required to prepare five or six ships to go south, fully prepared for war. The cover story was to be that they were headed for the Far East, via the Cape, sailing on 1 April from the Gibraltar areas. The first signal went out at 2300, requiring all Springtrain ships to make a full report of their r
eadiness for war.

  At 0630 the following morning, shortly before first light, Admiral Fieldhouse was landed at Gibraltar and flown immediately back to the UK. We got on with our many exercises and HMS Sheffield, which had joined us from a three-month tour of duty in the Gulf, was particularly sharp, hitting her missile target with a perfectly executed Sea Dart shot first time.

  Reports on the political situation continued to arrive on board Antrim, but they did not betray the urgency that was gripping the House of Commons, the Ministry of Defence and indeed the Prime Minister herself. Back in the Falklands, Endurance was ordered to leave the Royal Marines on South Georgia and make all speed back to Port Stanley where an invasion by the Argentinians now seemed probable. In Whitehall, the Defence Secretary was being briefed – in fact in his room in the House of Commons. The general thrust was that any defence of the Falklands was ‘impossible’ for all of the obvious reasons: we could not get down there in time and anyway, once down there, what then? There would be no place for modern jet aircraft to land, nowhere for them to be refuelled or rearmed, to be maintained or repaired – a situation not in any way helped by the fact that the recipient of this information, John Nott, was in the process of selling the only two operational aircraft carriers we possessed.

  The official view of the Chiefs of Staff was based on that document last reviewed in 1974, when I was an Assistant Director in Naval Plans, and recently re-affirmed. All of the above was as true now as it was then – defence against an Argentinian invasion was impossible. And retaking the islands was not possible either: the two dozen or so operational, fixed-wing, carrier-borne aircraft we then had were the Sea Harriers – a very limited capability ‘fighter’, subsonic, single-seat and capable of visual interceptions in daylight only. It was in squadron service with 800 Naval Air Squadron as such and under development by a separate small group called the Intensive Flying Trials Unit (IFTU) under Lieutenant Commander ‘Sharkey’ Ward. Pitted against a land-based air force of some 200 front-line aircraft, they seemed to stand no chance of achieving an acceptable air situation over a landing force for more than a very short period. So ‘live with the accomplished fact’ had to be the conclusion and the working hypothesis. But history tends to be dominated by people, not paper. In the MOD in 1982 we had for a First Sea Lord a man with naval warfare in his blood, who would be the first to see that the Navy was not impotent, that while defence was bound to be too late, the islands could be recovered by an amphibious operation which was not just desirable, but essential. His name, of course, was Sir Henry Leach.

  Late on that Wednesday evening, in uniform, he entered the foyer of the House of Commons in search of his Defence Secretary. The policeman on duty remained unimpressed and asked him to sit and wait. An official from the Whips’ Office finally caught sight of the professional head of the Royal Navy sitting waiting like some tradesman and asked him into his office for a whisky and soda while they sent out to find John Nott. He was eventually found in conference with the Prime Minister.

  As soon as Mrs Thatcher knew Sir Henry Leach was immediately available she had him sent up to her office and there, in a meeting which was to last several hours, the Admiral convinced her that, if necessary, the Royal Navy could mount a large-scale operation to retake the Falkland Islands. He could, he assured her, drive the Argentinian Fleet from the high seas, survive the worst efforts of the two hundred frontline attack aircraft of the Argentinian Air Force, and put a sufficient land force ashore and support it long enough to defeat any Argentinian Army garrison.

  Above them, Big Ben had long since struck midnight when Margaret Thatcher said, with an air of finality: ‘First Sea Lord – what precisely is it that you want?’

  ‘Prime Minister, I would like your authority to form a Task Force, which would, if you so required, be ready to sail for the South Atlantic at a moment’s notice.’

  ‘You have it,’ she replied.

  John Nott, I am reliably informed, went white as Sir Henry thanked her tersely, took his leave and strode out into the night. I have little doubt that the Secretary of State for Defence realized he had lost more than one battle in that room that night. It must have been all too clear to him that Sir Henry had seized the opportunity to expose the folly of the massive cuts in the strength of the Royal Navy.

  But I was far removed from all this. We, off Gibraltar, were hearing little of what was going on. We had no feeling for the possible scale of the operation – and warlike attitudes had not started to develop. We did not even have charts of the Falklands on board the Flagship. Indeed the last comment in the exercise narrative for the 1 April said only ‘…continued unease over South Georgia and Falklands Islands situation’.

  In the small hours of Friday 2 April there was, however, a complete change of tempo. The carriers Hermes and Invincible were ordered to four hours’ notice, as was Fearless the amphibious assault ship, the frigates Alacrity and Antelope, and the RFA Resource. At 0300 I received the signal ordering Operation ‘Corporate’, the code name for everything that was to follow, from the Commander-in-Chief. This was the official starting point for us all and I was appointed commander of all the task groups heading south.

  Well before dawn, Antrim’s group set course to join up with Glamorgan’s. By first light, I had issued a directive on the transfer of stores from the ships that were going home, to those which were now under orders to go south. The home-goers ‘topped-up’ the south-goers in enthusiastic frenzy, delivering their stores by helicopter, by boat, by jackstay and by hose-line. It was a fantastic job, with high-explosive shells coming across in bags and buckets safely enough, but definitely not in accordance with strict peacetime safety regulations. Everyone was responding with a new sense of urgency. Fleet Staff back in Northwood suddenly found an overdrive no one ever dreamed it possessed: equipment which would otherwise have taken weeks to appear, was now being fired in our direction almost faster than we could find somewhere to park it. By 0935 Plymouth had been ordered to close the Rock to pick up the charts of the Falklands which seemed to have arrived by some kind of miracle. The work continued furiously.

  At 2130 that evening, we received a signal from the Commander-in-Chief: ‘Argentina has invaded the Falkland Islands.’ My own mood was equivocal and, though obviously busy, I found time to write in my diary:

  Another day, another place, in April ‘82. I have been a Flag Officer for ten months and am bored with it. Too much strutting about, flags flying, ice tinkling, forks flashing and idle chatter. I hate it all, and thought I’d rather have some real action. So the Argentinians obligingly invade the Falklands, and I wish I’d never had the thought…Off we go – my good fortune, if good is the word, to be at Gibraltar with the Springtrain forces – the Flag Officer closest to the front line (still some 6000 miles away), so I’m in charge. This could be a loose phrase for ‘I’m up front, with everyone else behind in charge’. Not too bad though, and I must say the Fleet Staff have finally come good.

  While all this went on, I was more conscious of our need for accurate intelligence concerning Argentinian naval and air strength. What I did know was that they had surface, underwater and air capability and that their fleet was substantial. Quite apart from their aircraft carrier and her strike aircraft, there was the cruiser General Belgrano, there were two Type 42 destroyers, six ships fitted with Exocet sea-skimming missiles, and four submarines, two of which were quiet and small enough to be difficult to catch with our sonars. For our part, we had three nuclear-powered submarines on their way south, Spartan from Gibraltar, and Conqueror and Splendid now having cleared Faslane.

  As the day wore on, the home-going ships turned north one by one – Engadine, Blue Rover, Euryalus, Aurora and Dido. As they went, their crews stood on deck, waving and cheering us on our way. I found it very touching and noticed our decks were silent and still for a few moments after they had gone, leaving us, perhaps to fight a war, without them. It was 0200 before the last ship turned north for home, but there was no time to was
te and the mad scramble to stow everything away properly began again as we set off down the Atlantic. We had been told to make passage south covertly, to the tiny island of Ascension, which was to be our forward base for Operation Corporate. So we split up and made our separate, rather furtive ways past Madeira – Glamorgan commanded by Captain Mike Barrow, Antrim Captain Brian Young, Brilliant Captain John Coward, Glasgow Captain Paul Hoddinott, Plymouth Captain David Pentreath, Arrow Commander Paul Bootherstone, and of course the Type 42 guided-missile destroyers of Captain Sam Salt and Captain David Hart-Dyke, Sheffield and Coventry, neither of which would ever dock in Britain again.

  4

  South to Ascension

  We pushed out into the deep waters off the north-west coast of Africa, beyond the Canary Islands. The weather brightened up and the squally clouds gave way to the azure skies which can make the Atlantic seem so deceptively harmless. With the Western Sahara two hundred miles away to port, we kept heading south, all the ships in my little group frantically busy, still sorting out the piles of stores, putting them into some kind of order. Beyond our narrow horizons it was clear from the occasional political reports that the situation between Buenos Aires and London was not improving and that, despite the intense efforts of the world’s diplomats, General Galtieri had no immediate plans to evacuate ‘his’ Malvinas.

  The general impression given from Headquarters was that we would gather the entire force at Ascension and then proceed south together as soon as possible to do whatever might seem necessary – a good deal less than specific and simply summed up in the phrase ‘Hurry south with everything you’ve got.’ I assumed a firmer plan would emerge as a result of our pending meeting at Ascension. Meanwhile, we should work on this basis as the rough guide and in normal practice, it followed that the combined groups would remain under my tactical command for that stage. None of us had anything much more specific except for the Amphibious Group who would have to prepare themselves for a landing, somewhere, sometime.