Glasgow’s Lynx, in which they had been trying to repair a faulty radio, finally got airborne and, twenty miles from her base ship shortly after 0500, detected a second surface contact. This one was unlit and it too suddenly opened fire. The Lynx replied promptly enough with two Sea Skuas, one of which hit the bridge, killing the captain and seven ratings, and reduced the ship to a hulk. She was, it turned out, the 700-ton Argentinian patrol boat Alferez Sobral, a former US Navy ocean-going tug.
Back in Hermes, we transmitted a message on the international distress frequency to tell the Argentinians to get out and look for survivors. We, of course, could not stay. It was far too close to the mainland for my taste, and we would have ended up with the Argentinian air force around us like flies on a cow pat. I did despatch one carefully briefed Sea King to do a last surface search in the area, and in the middle of this we had yet another drama. Yarmouth (in my diary I actually wrote ‘bloody Yarmouth again’) started a panic by reporting that he heard a voice on HF saying: ‘Emergency, emergency, emergency!’
‘Christ!’ we all thought. ‘The Sea King has fallen out of the sky.’ What broke out next was the kind of swift, efficient, all-bases-covered, search-and-rescue operation which always accompanies the news that we may have lost one of our own. In hindsight, however, I would have to describe it as an over-reaction, because at the conclusion of the sortie, the Sea King turned up very cheerfully having suffered no problems whatsoever.
With that, I elected to head to the south-east, from which direction the weather was visibly now worsening. Banks of low cloud and sea mist were rolling in on an increasingly gusting breeze. The sea was getting up and the barometer was falling rapidly. At best visibility was about a mile, and it was bitterly cold. I thought we would be better to remain in the ‘clag’ because I expected a determined Argentinian attack at any moment. We had foiled them yesterday and indeed had sent them into retreat. That was not, however, any guarantee that they would not return to the attack this afternoon, or this evening, or first thing in the morning. We held a south-easterly course through rough seas with the Type 42s Glasgow, Coventry and Sheffield still to the west of us. I wondered where the Argentinian carrier could be: it had not been located by us since we’d had that sniff of her from the Harrier two nights ago, and the SSNs were still depressingly silent on the subject.
As the evening drew in the weather worsened, the sea mist turning into unmistakable fog, and in these miserable conditions we received a hurried call for help from one of the recce parties ashore in the Berkeley Sound area, a big bay due north of Port Stanley. Four Special Forces men were apparently being pinned down by some Argentinian ground patrols. Now they were requesting assistance from the air, possibly a ground-support sortie by a couple of Harriers. I considered the matter carefully and naturally my normal reaction would have been to help immediately, to do whatever was necessary to get them out alive. However, these were not normal circumstances and fate had jammed my Battle Commander’s hat down very firmly upon my head.
I refused their request, on the basis that the probable loss of two Sea Harriers, possibly with their pilots, unable to land back on deck in the fog, represented another big chunk out of my limited air force. How did this weigh in the balance with four members of the SAS? Out of the question. The risks to the four soldiers and the two pilots were, arguably, the same – but the Harriers were irreplaceable. There was only one conclusion open to me. My diary summed it up in seven words: ‘Nasty decision. Getting inured to them. That’s awful.’
That night I wrote home to Char in a way that perhaps reveals how I was having to suppress many ordinary human feelings. ‘The scene is greatly changed,’ I said. ‘We are fully at war, and I am having to harden my heart and alter my ways.’ I explained that there were a couple of personality conflicts which were not helping me much, and I continued, ‘This does little, with a war on my hands and an entire fleet to manage, to help me get through the day…sometimes I have to put on my stone face with the people on board too. I did not enjoy consigning some Argentinians to their graves last night; but it has to be done. No more do I fancy sending SSNs to sink cruisers. However, it has to be faced up to. The Argentinians will do the same to me given the small half of a chance.’
The night for once passed without any incident, given that we were nestled in the deep dark fog and that the Argentinians had shown little inclination, thus far, to conduct any operations after sunset. The morning too passed peacefully enough, until shortly after lunch when they blew Sheffield away, the incident I have described in some detail in the first chapter of this book. When we left that depressing scenario, you will perhaps recall that my old ship was burning fiercely some twenty miles away and the crew were being evacuated. With Captain Sam Salt now safely on board Hermes I shall try to illustrate the effect of the first major missile strike on the British Fleet in forty years.
With twenty men dead and a further twenty-four wounded it would be folly to claim that we, as a team, were not profoundly shocked, although I would consider myself a great deal less shocked than some. I had been expecting this, or something very like it, for several weeks now, and I thought I was quite prepared mentally to face the loss of life and ships. Also I was in no doubt there would be more to come. However, I was not of course inside the cauldron that Sheffield had become and I had not witnessed that unique, numbing trauma that can grip the people on board when a warship takes a major hit. History is clear enough that there is nothing quite like it – the roaring fires below decks, the blistering heat, the billowing, choking smoke, the cries and whispers of the injured, and the awful sight of dead friends. In addition there are terribly interlocked feelings of anger and fear, outrage and helplessness, and the near-manic heroism which invades the minds of some survivors. Beyond it all is the unspoken dread that another such missile may be on its way in.
It is this, all of this, upon which I cannot afford to spend one moment of my time, save to satisfy myself that everything possible is being done for the wounded, and that the rescue operation is now complete. Sheffield herself must burn alone for a while until I am entirely satisfied that her Sea Dart magazine is not about to explode. My new task is to conduct a careful analysis of the events, not to apportion blame, but to find out precisely what happened and to ensure that somehow we all learn from the experience; that somehow tomorrow we will be better, more alert and less vulnerable to that fairly basic French missile we had thought we knew all about, but failed to cope with on this day, 4 May. We do after all operate behind millions of pounds of the most highly sophisticated equipment of war. But this had not sufficed to prevent the Argentinian missile from hitting Sheffield. My logic tells me there were only two possible causes: a) our equipment did not work; b) someone, somewhere, somehow, had failed to operate it correctly. I know much about the equipment, and am thus inclined to option b. And I had, apparently, blurted out this fear to Sam Salt. Nonetheless, as commander of this group, I had to know. My own guess wasn’t good enough. Was there a component that was letting us down, electronically? Or had there just been a human error in our complicated defensive chain?
It would be many months before any of this could be finally settled. As in all sinkings of our ships, a Board of Enquiry would be duly convened for each which would seek to find the causes. It would also recommend whether there was a prima facie case against any person or persons involved. Upon those latter recommendations, the Commander-in-Chief would decide whether to proceed with a court martial or not – the decision lay with him and him only. He eventually decided to hold no courts martial, regardless of the Board of Enquiry findings, to avoid, he told me, the more doubtful cases creating the wrong atmosphere in the Press and souring the general euphoria. He added that he did not expect me to agree with his decision and left it at that.
But this would all take place in the distant future. There ought, however, to be lessons from the incident to be learned here and now. I sent out an immediate signal to all ships requesting them to
shed whatever light they could upon it and to send their observations in soonest. They had no time to draw conclusions from each other and, when their reports reached my Ops Room, the bare bones were roughly to this effect – Glasgow: ‘Detected Handbrake. Saw the missiles on radar. Fired chaff. Told everyone. Tried to shoot the missiles down. Couldn’t.’ Sheffield: ‘Saw and heard nothing until seconds before impact.’ Coventry: ‘Heard Handbrake. Fired chaff. No other contact.’ Invincible: ‘Heard Glasgow’s warnings. And many others before. No contacts. Unconvinced.’ Yarmouth, fourteen miles away: ‘Missile sighted, passing close by. Orange fins.’ Some further detail was added, but not in all cases.
Now I had a fairly simple set of opinions, deductions and facts to draw on. The Argentinians must surely have conducted their attack very much as we would have done in their place. Their Etendards had taken off from their home base at Rio Grande, climbed out, refuelled en route, and then let down to wave-top height to get under the beams of our radars. These, because of the curvature of the earth, miss completely the air down near the water from about twenty miles out. Forty or fifty miles out they had ‘popped up’ to about a hundred and twenty feet, switched on their radars to try to locate us. In those few seconds, their transmission pulses were detected in the Ops Room of Glasgow. Then the pilots switched their radars off and dived below our own radars again. Glasgow alerted the Battle Group. No one believed her. At least the Ops Room in Invincible didn’t. Twenty miles later the Argentinian raiders ‘popped up’ again. Glasgow again detected their radar pulses. The Argentinians activated their missiles’ homing systems and released them at the first target they saw, then went low again to turn away and head for home. Glasgow, looking directly down the correct bearing, spotted the missiles on her own radar and began to yell, metaphorically, at all the British ships, especially Invincible, which continued to dismiss the attack as yet another false alarm. Glasgow and Coventry we now know, were the only British ships to get their chaff up in good time to deflect any missiles aimed at them. But they were safe. The Argentinians had aimed them further to the south, towards Sheffield, which was hit by one of them, shortly after 1400. The second missile was sighted by one or two lookouts, in particular by the every-ready Yarmouth.
As a matter of fact I thought the damage, judging by the French films I had seen – produced by the manufacturer of the Exocet – would be far worse. But the missile had not, apparently, exploded. It had merely ploughed around the engine room flinging fuel all over the place, which then ignited. Basically, I suppose we all knew what had happened, and indeed how it had happened. The question was, what could we now do to stop it from happening again tomorrow? I chose to start my analysis from a point which was at least well defined, definite and likely to be constant: from the moment the incoming Etendards ‘popped up’ for a radar sweep of the sea in front of them. That, I concluded, is the one un-variable aspect of an enemy missile attack. It will be the ensuing series of events from the Ops Rooms which will decide the fate of the targeted British ships.
As far as we could then tell, Glasgow’s Ops Room acted in exemplary manner. They detected the Etendards’ radars at the very first opportunity. They spotted and reported the incoming missiles in the very short time span available. Their AWO and their captain moved with commendable speed and efficiency to keep the Battle Group properly informed. My assessment was that they had the picture on the screens for all ships to see within a minute.
So what had happened in Sheffield, I wondered? Very little, it appeared. They had not detected the raid, they did not fire chaff, the first thing they seemed to know was sighting the missile about five seconds before impact. There was plainly no real sense of threat in her Ops Room at the vital moment. For whatever reason, they did not fire their chaff. (They did not even alert their Captain in his cabin, I found out later). At this early stage, it was impossible for me to establish why, but the clear fact was emerging that Sheffield did not react at all to Glasgow’s report. There should have been a link picture coming in, the means whereby Glasgow’s tactical picture is radioed across to other ships in the force, but they did not react to that either. I could not tell whether this was an electronic fault, or whether some of their people were mentally or physically just not ‘on the job’. Either way, it was a most disturbing set of circumstances – one picket down, two to go and replacements still a long way away.
Our tried and tested drills for a possible air-launched Exocet attack were crystal clear. When the information appears on your screen or over the radio net – either first hand, or second hand from another ship – there are vital seconds only in which to act. The AWO must immediately say and do the things which deal with the worst possible interpretation of the limited facts. This buys time and safety while he sorts out what else to do, like track and maybe destroy the aircraft, and/or their missiles, and report the events in detail for others to take similar defensive measures. Plainly, that did not happen in Sheffield. For whatever reason, Glasgow’s message was not acted upon. We had one further clue in that we knew that Sheffield was using her SCOT terminals – the satellite communications – which interfered with her own ESM, rendering her deaf to any first-hand warning of the Etendards’ radars such as Glasgow had received. But Sheffield might have been able to pick up the aircraft on her own radar – even though Glasgow was calling the bearing from her detection of the Etendards radar pulses. Glasgow’s consistent cry of ‘Two-three-eight’ would have been about ‘Three-zero-zero’ degrees from Sheffield – and that may have caused her to miss those small fleeting blips on her screens. Remember that Glasgow’s radar operators were looking straight down the bearing given them by Able Seaman Rose and his supervisor Leading Seaman Hewitt from their ESM. So they knew exactly where to look, unlike the operators in Sheffield. Of course, I do not know exactly how long it took to get the link picture in Sheffield either. It should have been quick, and it should have been quick enough. Glasgow appeared to have done all that was necessary as swiftly as anyone else could have accomplished.
Our overall conclusion was that the Argentinians had not only done exactly what we would have expected, but that they also knew all about Sea Dart and intended, when attacking, to stay as low to the water as possible from a very long way out. What could we do about that? Without Airborne Early Warning (AEW), not a lot. The Etendards, unless they bore on in towards the carriers and past the pickets, would only be within Sea Dart range for less than a minute – not long enough for the missile to get out there before the Etendards disappear again. And Sea Dart was unlikely to be very effective against the Exocet missile itself. That leaves us with chaff alone, until the incoming missiles fly closer to the carriers. Then the Type 22 frigates, right beside us, should be able to bring their Sea Wolf systems into action effectively. To keep the Etendards at arm’s length from the carriers we had no option but to keep the Type 42 pickets, with their long-range radars, out in front. And if chaff were to prove ineffective, I might have to regard them as expendable, however reluctantly. The problem was my carriers were not expendable, and there was nothing I could do about that either.
The analysis thus confirmed much of what we already knew. The real difficulty was two-fold. How long will morale in the Type 42s hold up? And what do we do when we run out of Type 42s? The Royal Navy had eight of them, five at home, two down here still on duty and one out on the horizon on fire. Replacements were going to be needed. Soon. Preferably tomorrow. And plainly more than one. At the same time, Lin Middleton, Hermes’s captain, is pressing me to consider his top problem. He believes that the continuous pressure on the Sea Harrier pilots, flying sorties day and night, means that we will have to use one of the carriers up front for a five-day stint, with the other one held far back, a hundred miles to the east, in order to rest up the aircrew. Standard operating practice, he informs me.
Lin was himself a ‘fixed wing’ aviator who had twice gone over the edge of a carrier and into the sea while at the controls of fighter aircraft. On one occasion –
in order to avoid coming up into the ship’s propellers – he had gone right underneath the length of the carrier before getting out of the cockpit, perhaps as much as a hundred feet down. As such he was understandably sympathetic to the stresses and strains on the fliers, who, at this time, were on call twenty-four hours a day.
My own view was less so. For a start Sea Harriers fly for only about two hours at a stretch; and, even if a pilot has to do three sorties a day, that is still only six hours actual flying. There is, of course, about six hours of preparation and debriefing to be done as well. But they are all young, tough and fit. And this is war. And it has to be over in less than eight weeks from now. Also I need two decks up front and I only have two decks, just Hermes and Invincible. Finally there are surely going to be days down here when we can’t fly anyway and those will have to suffice for ‘rest’ days. Sorry, Lin, can’t agree.
So the submariner over-ruled the aviator, not without misgivings, and told him to find a way to run it regardless of the difficulties. This did not make for the easiest of relations between us, and was a less than desirable way of starting our partnership in the front line. But circumstances worked in our favour, we slowly discovered. For we did not know, at this stage, of one fundamental factor which was going to dominate the thinking of the Argentinian aviators. This was their high regard for the effectiveness of the British Medium-Range Surface-to-Air Missile System, Sea Dart. And it caused them to decide against using the middle and upper air, to get below Sea Dart at all costs. This left them with only very low-level flying. And that meant air attack at sea would come only during daylight and in clear visibility. Without very special equipment, no pilot can fly that low, that fast, for very long, if he can’t see. It would have been nice to know all this in advance. As it was, it took some while for us to find out. Therefore, even if we did require the pilots to fly three combat air patrols in a day, most of them would usually have a good night’s sleep, and that should keep them sharp. The ‘family discussion’ between Lin and me, before we tuned in to the ‘no night-flying syndrome’, caused some friction for a while. Which was a pity, because we were both doing our best. War, with all of its tensions and ultimate menace, often strains personal relationships.
One Hundred Days Page 25