One Hundred Days

by Sandy Woodward

  My operations staff, aided by our little intelligence cell, was now moving to some tentative conclusions. We had a firm grasp of the speed/time/distance problems involved, huge at first sight, and we had done much thinking about the extra difficulties of the complex movement of ships, aircraft, men, their kit, their weapons and their supplies, 8000 miles from home base. We had devised special defensive formations of ships and aircraft, and debated the intricacies of how to play the two overlapping Exclusion Zones. Being no expert in amphibious matters, though sufficiently well acquainted with their business to realise my own limitations, I knew I could rely on the ‘amphibians’ to give fearless professional advice on their needs and problems, just as I had to rely on so many other experts – the aviators, the communicators, the air, sea and underwater warfare professionals, the logisticians, the engineers, the doctors, the meteorologists, the photographic interpreters, to name but a few – for theirs.

  Of course, the commander brings his own specialist skills, but he must co-ordinate all the many forms of expertise available to him if they are to come together and work with any chance of success. I was lucky enough to have direct professional command experience in submarines and surface ships, and in the management of task groups and their tactics. The Navy’s training made sure I was well briefed, if not operationally experienced, in all the other special skills – I even knew what the photographic interpreter’s main problems were and, at a very basic level I had been the ship’s ‘doctor’ (Heaven help anyone who was seriously ill!) in my first submarine commands.

  Under the general instruction to ‘Hurry south’, the CTF had told me to bear firmly in mind that we might need to set up some kind of ‘enclave’ in the islands, readily defensible in the long term, in case the UN should impose some kind of ‘freeze’ on operations shortly after we had landed. This would obviously have to be well clear of the Port Stanley area where we now believed the Argentinians were concentrating. We studied the maps exhaustively, weighing up the pros and cons of a wide range of local sites, where the troops could land, establish a beach-head and cover both the defensive enclave and the offensive repossession options for subsequent action. That beach-head would have to have the potential of scraping an airstrip out of the unfriendly terrain if our few carriers were not to remain at permanent high risk for an extended period, dangerously close to the Argentinian mainland. It would also have to be capable of development to take CI30 Hercules transport aircraft and eventually Phantom fighters as well as the lighter Harriers and helicopters if the state of ‘enclave’ was inflicted upon us by the UN indefinitely.

  The selection of the landing site caused perhaps the most argument and discussion. ‘Enclave’ and ‘repossession’ were poor bedfellows, quite apart from the often conflicting needs of adequate defence against land, air and sea attacks, and our needing protection from the weather. Reconnaissance was becoming more critical by the day. No final decision on the landing site was possible without it.

  Glamorgan sailed into sight of Ascension Island on Easter Sunday, a poetic and possibly providential event, which I have to admit completely passed me by at the time, busy as I was with less spiritual matters. It is, in any case, not a particularly spiritual sort of place – a large, remote, extinct volcano rising out of the mid-Atlantic Ridge in latitude eight degrees south, usually topped by a vast rain-cloud, visible from about eighty miles away. Its eastern side is green, lush, tropical and wet; its western side is an arid collection of multi-coloured cinder heaps with a luxuriant growth of white satellite dishes and radio masts – in short, a moonscape.

  The labour force was mostly imported from not-so-nearby St Helena, secured on contracts limited to six months if they are not to lose citizenship. The island represents home to only one indigenous creature, a kind of shrimp, I believe. The island has one golf course, where the greens are ‘browns’ of oiled cinders, and your ball will scarcely last a single round before it is so badly abraded as to be useless. It has no harbour – ships anchor off the coast and you can only get ashore by boat or helicopter. But it does have the vital airstrip, and good communications.

  Early on that Easter Sunday morning, the Fleet padre began his rounds of the ships, by boat, conducting each little service with rather larger congregations than usual. For some of his flock, it would be their last Easter Service. I, in well-established and still useful tradition, called a meeting of the captains and commanders in the company. There is a close camaraderie about such gatherings which is quite difficult to explain, but I think perhaps stems from the unspoken trust that usually exists between the commanders of separate units wholly dependent upon each other’s mutual support. In Nelson’s day, ‘Band of Brothers’ was the phrase used – less appropriate today when we spend weeks rather than years at sea – but Band of Brothers we still need to be. Unlike other military commanders, the captain faces battle alongside all of his senior officers, his junior officers, chief petty officers, petty officers and the ship’s company (laundrymen and NAAFI canteen manager included). They face the enemy as a fighting unit, with no one much more exposed than anyone else. Those who command ships in the Royal Navy do not send anyone anywhere. They all go together.

  The captains assembled quietly in the Day Cabin of Glamorgan – John Coward, David Hart-Dyke, Sam Salt, Paul Hoddinott, Paul Bootherstone and Mike Barrow. We all knew that this would most probably be the last chance of such a meeting, for within a few days we would be heading south again, into more dangerous waters, where communication could no longer be face to face but only by encrypted voice radio-telephone or computer. Most of us had known each other for years, and I suppose in a sense we each knew something of what the others were feeling. For that reason alone there was a slightly forced air of good humour, one to another, but it was tempered by the chill realization that there could only be one valid reason why we should be in this room, in this ship, talking not merely as old friends but as trusted senior commanders, preparing to fight a war. Even then, though, there was a tiny hope, a fantasy, that it might yet all go away.

  The meeting was attended by my operations staff among whom was Colonel Richard Preston of the Royal Marines, who had been appointed as Land Force Adviser. Like many naval officers, I have a preconceived concern, based on a cursory knowledge of history, that amphibious operations tend to suffer from two main problems. There is a tendency for political indecision in committing to the actual landing and there is always a subsequent risk of misunderstanding between the land and the sea/air forces. The classic disaster being brought about primarily by political delay being, of course, Gallipoli. More recently there was Suez…delay, delay, delay. Its spectre always haunts combined operations, but this time there could be no delay, with winter coming on and the stresses on the ships so far from base support. Fortunately the political management had taken this firmly on board. But nor could we risk misunderstanding between the land and sea/air commanders. The land campaign had to complete on time. And I think the Colonel was very aware of my genuine worries on the subject. Early on in our conversations, as he outlined the requirements for seemingly endless reconnaissance, Colonel Richard turned to me and said: ‘Remember, Admiral, time spent in reconnaissance is never wasted.’

  I looked at him and replied, ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Surely it should be that time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted,’ I corrected him.

  He smiled cheerfully at the revelation that this naval officer knew the old military axiom better than he did and from that moment we became close and harmonious colleagues. His help and advice became absolutely invaluable and with immense skill did he walk the tight-rope of reconciliation between the overall naval and the amphibious force requirements. It is a complex task which requires deep professional knowledge, great tact, endless patience, good humour and a firm grasp of the evolving situation. Colonel Richard made the job seem easy enough. He was there to ensure that relationships with the Amphibious Group never went far astray,
and to surmount the real difficulties of our different responsibilities: our geographic separation, poor communications and our conflicting pressures, fears and concerns.

  Sadly what he, I, and the amphibious commanders did not realise until years after the end of the war was that we had all been planning to substantially different directives during the first six weeks of the operation. This led to some serious problems for the amphibians, who often felt I was rushing off on some wildcat scheme of my own and had not got their interests truly at heart. But the Task Force Commander appears not to have troubled the amphibious commanders with all the many political ‘options’ which fell short of full repossession of the islands, or if he did, they were too busy for such matters to seem relevant to their tasks. The CTF may have thought that issues such as an early freeze on operations before landing, an extended period of sea/air blockade, the need for long-term support of a military enclave ashore if a landing was actually to be made, were not yet their concern, and that they should be left to concentrate on their most difficult task – the full repossession of the islands. However, all such options would be my business, should political pressures supervene. I can’t say that I liked any of them, but the questions had to be thought through and answered, if only to inform the politicians that such ‘options’ did not really exist – as practical proposals for a successful operation to recover the islands.

  Whatever the problems at the higher command levels, the detailed business had to continue. That afternoon, a fleet of helicopters began transferring more stores, food, ammunition, missiles, spare parts and all the paraphernalia of war from Ascension Island out to the ships. It was a tremendous piece of improvisation in very short order. Ascension had been transformed from a US communications and satellite tracking station into a forward fleet and air base in a matter of days. Everything had been flown out from the UK and stock-piled while we were making our way down from Gibraltar. None of this could have happened without tacit and active support from the Americans, which was not at all easy for them at any stage, much less this early, with political negotiations still very much in process. I met the US Air Force colonel who was in charge of their airstrip, the day after we arrived. He told me he had been instructed ‘to give the Brits every possible assistance, but not, under any circumstances, to get caught doing so’. Not an easy task for him, either.

  Free use of the facilities on Ascension was critical. But perhaps the single item of equipment most useful to us was America’s new AIM 9L Sidewinder air-to-air missile, for which we were but one of a line of anxiously waiting customers. President Reagan’s Defence Secretary Casper Weinberger himself moved us to the head of the queue and it is now perfectly clear to me that without those AIM 9L the Sea Harriers would not have been good enough. The ‘special relationship’ was alive and well.

  If the world was watching the political scene, the Russians were watching the military scene, at least locally. Several times we were visited by Soviet ‘Bears’ (Long Range Maritime Patrol Aircraft). They were free to look, but I hoped they were not talking to the Argentinians. I was in fact a bit surprised to see them at all, because everybody else in the Western world had been warned off by London, being told in clear terms that this was a military group setting off to a theatre of operations. It seemed to me that the implications of that should be plain enough to anyone: British fingers would be light on the trigger against any ship, submarine or aircraft that approached without warning or identification. Sensibly, the Bears did not follow us south; but meanwhile, they had much to watch. A constant stream of advisers and specialists flew out to help. The transfer of supplies seemed to go on night and day, and the ships not at anchor for maintenance were conducting exercises out of sight of Ascension, in gunnery and weapons training. All the time the ships were arriving to take their places in the Task Force.

  Shortly after midday on 14 April, Glamorgan headed north to rendezvous with the carrier Hermes which was now approaching the area. It was time to move my Flag again, to the ship with the most room and the best command facilities. She happened also to be the largest, most capable surface ship in the Task Force. Simultaneously, I had to release the three Type 42 destroyers, Sheffield, Coventry and Glasgow to proceed south ‘with all despatch’, accompanied by the frigates Brilliant and Arrow. They were to move off at twenty-five knots, trailed by a tanker, and keep going until they were down to thirty per cent fuel. The rough distance was 1160 miles and the idea was to ‘plant’ the strongest force as far south as soon as possible, just in case the diplomats negotiated a ‘freeze’ on any further movements by our forces, pending some other, larger settlement of the dispute.

  At the time, the political sense of it was easy enough to see, not least as a mark of our resolution, but nonetheless, I was beginning to get a bit frustrated. It seemed that no sooner did I begin to get some semblance of a battle group together, much less an entire Task Force, than some new need caused it to be split up again. It says much for the Navy’s peacetime training that this was possible, without total chaos. We like to think of ourselves as properly drilled, adequately organized, ready to go almost anywhere and have a go at almost anything – provided it’s on or near the sea. And I imagine it was pretty much what Sir Henry Leach must have promised the Prime Minister.

  Practically the entire morning of 15 April was taken up with preparing for the shift to Hermes. As we sailed north in Glamorgan, my staff was working flat-out to pack up all the papers, charts, maps and books in wicker-work ‘hampers’ and move us into the carrier. I boarded a Sea King 4 helicopter and flew the final two hundred miles ahead of my staff, through brilliant blue skies. We landed on the flight deck of Hermes to be greeted by the Captain, my old sparring partner from our Ministry of Defence days, Linley Middleton. My tropical whites were covered by the green flying-suit overalls we call ’baby-grows’ because the trouser legs stop short to accommodate flying boots. I have always felt fairly daft wearing this kit, which is completely strange to a submariner, and my worst fears were realized when I later saw the picture of my arrival in a national newspaper. That ridiculous figure prancing about on Hermes’s flight deck can’t be me, can it? ‘Afraid so, Woodward.’ But it is our working rig for flying, practical if not fashionable.

  Here then was another big step in my process of going to war. I had finally left the familiar surroundings of Glamorgan, and my own Flotilla. Indeed I had left entirely the smaller world of destroyers and frigates, with which I had become well-acquainted. Instead, I was aboard a 29,000-ton aircraft carrier, which was almost completely strange to me – in all my time to date, I had spent only one week at sea in carriers, some ten years before. Just the same as my amphibious background, I knew well enough what carriers and their aircraft could and could not do in strategic and tactical terms. But I did not know the geography, the hierarchy, the people or their habits, the detailed technicalities, not even their language really. They too would have to be relied on to give fearless, expert advice whenever needed. And now I had to change fast. It was a sort of end to innocence. I was leaving the Glamorgan days of sunshine, relatively simple exercises, visits and that open, fairly carefree peacetime life, for the narrow confines of a carrier in which everything was going to be very different. For a start, there is surprisingly little open air, unless you work on the Flight Deck, which, of course, I would not. And it is certainly no place for idlers, since everything is concentrated on aviation with all of its complications, mechanical awareness and sudden bursts of activity. Basically we are operating a small air force out of a large tin box – actually a ship built to Second World War standards for battle-robustness – stark, gloomy and functional. It made lovely, shiny, roomy Glamorgan seem like a millionaire’s yacht.

  My personal quarters did absolutely nothing to alleviate the general atmosphere of no-frills travel. It was situated up in the ‘Island’, well above the Flight Deck, it was a nine-foot-square cabin, with a five-foot-square shower and ‘heads’ off it. The decor was cream-painted steel-orn
amented with electrical cables and exposed pipes, a masterpiece, in its way, of neoclassical, early twentieth century, functionalism. A three-foot-wide desk, a table at which three could eat, one bunk, a wardrobe, some drawers and an upright chair completed the inventory. Barring my own staff, I was also with a completely new team, some of whom I knew, but many I did not.

  An aircraft carrier is nothing less than a mobile airfield and I’m not really used to airfields. Hermes represented an acutely comprehensive change from peace to war. She felt more warlike, she looked more warlike, and the trappings of peacetime in the Navy were no longer apparent. Upon reflection her Spartan qualities were no bad thing. Concentrated the mind.

  My Flag Operations Room was a few steps along a narrow corridor from my cabin. There was an ‘Admirals Bridge’, a sort of ‘Goofers Gallery’ one deck below, with a splendid view of the whole Flight Deck. These became the physical confines of my world for the next two and a half months, and their simplicity did much to protect me against any possible distractions from the job I had been charged to complete. But it was a curious existence. For recreation, I would have the choice of occasionally watching the ship’s internal television, or reading. The rest of the time would be work, eat, sleep and wait. The waiting time would not be difficult to fill – I would need to use it to think and rethink what we were doing, had done and were about to do. My diary would become a part of that process. I gazed around my new quarters, and I knew there would be times when I would be very lonely up there. But, of course, that would have to be so – the real-time management of battle cannot be done by co-equals in committee.