In my Ops Room, of course, we were not in much doubt that the decision to land would be given and, based on her track record to date, that it would be given in adequate time. Meanwhile we could only continue to go forward with our final plans. What pre-occupied my thoughts were the dispositions of the entire Task Force when the amphibians began to make their way inshore, perhaps only forty-eight hours from now. I had to provide enough air defence for the amphibious group, yet I had to protect the carriers, otherwise there might be no air cover for anyone.
Captain John Coward was inclined to station the two Type 42s Glasgow and Coventry well forward (west of West Falkland!) with the combat air patrols flying forward of them in order to hit the incoming Arg bombers and fighter aircraft at the earliest possible opportunity. He then felt the amphibious group should steam in accompanied by the Type 22s Brilliant and Broadsword with their half-proven Sea Wolf missile systems. He considered the carriers Hermes and Invincible should bring up the rear some fifty miles back – though they would be virtually undefended in terms of close-in air defence. I recorded all this in my diary, which then continued with,
Jeremy Black [Captain of Invincible] obviously feels the same way about the Type 42s forward, but he wants the carriers well up too. This also smacks of ‘all or nothing’, and I like it even less [than Coward’s plan]. Yet I can’t help feeling I ought to do it – and I just might, if it weren’t that the [Args’ likely] submarine area is exactly where we would need to be to do the job.
My own plan preferred the Amphibious Group with the 22s and a combat air patrol, and the Type 42s well back with the carriers. I recognized the various merits of Captain Coward’s thoughts, and I was very much torn between the two. I tried to sort the matter out further, in the process pin-pointing the critical part the weather could play. I wrote my notes thus:
My problem is really, that if the weather is good for the opposition (i.e. good for low [flying] ship attack), then Coward could be right, because I am into a high-risk situation anyway. A bold move (which effectively assumes the enemy will concentrate, to the exclusion of all else, on the amphibious group) might be the only thing to carry the day.
The other thought, that I ought not to make it too easy for the Args to remove half of our air defence force at a stroke, also convinces [me] against. [I] Hope I’m right.
But if I get the weather right, then the safer [second] course will be best. Hence of course it all falls out [simply enough]. We are trying to judge the weather right and must at least trust their [the meteorologists’] judgment. Unlike the enemy, the weather is not malevolent, though it may be no more predictable.
We had already seen the ability of Argentinian bombers to fly straight through our defences…two Etendards on 4 May and five Skyhawks (against Brilliant/Glasgow) on 12 May. What might happen if they launched twenty or even thirty attack aircraft against us with Hermes and Invincible out on their own, prime targets? The land forces would be left with no air cover, that’s what. And they would quite reasonably refuse to land. And we would have to go home. I was simply not prepared, deliberately, to run that kind of risk. I realized the plan depended on our weather forecasting, but on that I was prepared to gamble. The vagaries of the weather have always bedevilled military commanders and I too must accept that element of uncertainty even though I already have nearly three weeks experience of weather forecasting in this area now.
The luck of the Woodwards seemed to be holding. By the evening of the 19 May there was a front scheduled to arrive, bringing with it the welcome low cloud and poor visibility we needed. It should last through that night and possibly until after sunset the following day. This might let the amphibians in unobserved. Our longer-range forecast gave Friday 21 May as likely to be once more clear and calm, conditions which would remain for another two days, until the twenty-third or even the twenty-fourth of the month. You will remember that our last possible date for the landings, the day when we must either go or abandon the entire operation, was 25 May. This made my task dead simple, really: the Amphibious Group goes in under cover of poor visibility and starts the landing as soon after midnight as possible on Thursday night 20/21 May. The Battle Group remains concentrated to the east providing support as required. No risky expeditions out to the west. No undefended carriers.
How extraordinary that the single most important decision COMAW and I should ever be called upon to make in our entire lives should finally have made itself. Just as well, I suppose, otherwise we might have got it wrong. Every course of action involves guesswork and hope. But here we had a reasonably firm prediction for precisely the weather we needed. I’ll sign up for that. No heroics, just stealth – that’s the way in.
13
Night Landing
In the early hours of 19 May we were steaming slowly south-west, some two hundred and fifty miles from Port Stanley. We were making our way towards the perimeter of the TEZ, approaching the now well-established Battle Group patrol area from its easterly border. The wind was gusting up and causing an awkward sea, the long Atlantic swells splitting quite high up on the bow of Hermes. The moon and the stars were obscured by cloud, and one way or another you could not see much. Only the very dim deck lights on the two carriers betrayed our presence whenever they operated aircraft, and we were near enough invisible to an enemy eye.
Our aim was of course to proceed in the covert manner of the night prowler, but we all knew how thoroughly impossible this was. Our considerable presence could never really be disguised for several inevitable reasons – not least the endless hubbub of our radio circuits which were sweet music to the electronic ears which sought us. Our many radars probing the sea and sky around us were also an unavoidable signal to distant Arg operators. Even the hulls of our little fleet of ships were perfect to reflect incoming Argentinian radar. And no matter how carefully we regulated our turbines, the sound of our propellers driving the ships through the sea was audible, underwater, for many miles.
In addition to the tell-tale signs of our whereabouts, we faced a further difficult conundrum in that we had, at this moment, almost all of our eggs in one basket. Actually all of these eggs were soldiers, more than fifteen hundred of them and every one in the big white-painted basket of the liner Canberra. Northwood believed this ought to be corrected before sending the P&O flagship inshore. I thought so too, although it looked rather more tricky from where I stood than from where they sat.
There are three basic ways to undertake such a huge ‘cross-decking’ programme. The first method is by boat. This requires either small landing craft or some other much smaller boats to come alongside, load the men on board and ferry them away. But in a sizeable sea this is too dangerous because the little ‘ferries’ will rise and fall perhaps fifteen feet against the hull with every wave, while the soldiers, with all of their kit, are trying to jump aboard or clamber out at the other end of the trip. The second way is by helicopter. This is all right for smallish numbers, but for us the sheer scale of the operation would make it a very long drawn out affair, very expensive on engines, aircraft, pilots and mechanics. The third cross-decking option is by jackstay. This tried and tested naval process requires rigging steel hawsers between the ships and winching each man over in a special harness. This is not without its obvious hazards and anyway, for an operation as prolonged as this was going to be, it would be desperately slow, even by comparison with helicopters.
I did not really have to make up my mind how to proceed until daylight, when we could have another look at the weather, but it was beginning to look very much as though we would have no alternative but to do the whole thing with helicopters. This would entail hundreds of flights, with all of the inevitable delays, but at least it would be better than having men breaking their necks and legs, and falling into the sea, which is what tends to happen when you undertake ship-to-ship transfers by boat in bad weather. Some of Mike Clapp’s staff believed the only way to get the job done was by going all the way to South Georgia, seven hundred miles away
and completing the operation in the shelter of the harbour. But time was against that. Helicopters it would have to be.
However, we stuck to the traditional position that executive decisions should never be made until they absolutely have to be, particularly if circumstances could change in the meantime. So we elected to delay decision until dawn, when the weather might make it for us. Happily, when I stepped out on my little bridge in the half-light of that cold Atlantic morning, to my considerable surprise, I saw that the Atlantic had calmed down into a gentle swell and the wind had dropped. I walked quickly to the Ops Room to learn that Fearless and Intrepid would be able to launch their landing craft. These were the 75-ton Landing Craft Utilities which were powered by two diesel engines and would hold one hundred tons of cargo or a hundred and forty men. We also decided to use the helicopters as well and the staffs immediately put this massive cross-decking operation into action before the calm could give way once more to the prevailing rough conditions.
And so began the most extraordinary day’s work: repositioning, in the middle of the Atlantic, almost two thousand men, removing the majority of them from the single basket of Canberra and thereby spreading the risk of the damage the Args could do us, should they manage to hit her. It all went on until late afternoon, the LCUs banging their way across the one thousand yards of ocean to Fearless and Intrepid, with the weather worsening by the minute, the wind gusting at twenty-five knots and the spray soaking the men huddled on board.
The job was completed just in time and with everyone rehoused we swung on to a more westerly course in the early evening. I was beginning to think the majority of our problems for this day were over. But I am afraid they were not.
At 2144 a Sea King 4, loaded with men of the SAS and SBS, crashed into the sea for reasons unknown, but seemingly a mechanical failure. John Coward had Brilliant on the scene extremely quickly and Captain Peter Dingemans was equally swift with Intrepid, but the chopper sank too soon and only eight were rescued. Twenty-two men were lost, including twenty from the SAS, some of them veterans of the helicopter crashes on the glacier at South Georgia, some of them veterans of the Pebble Island raid. It was, I thought, one of the saddest occurrences of the whole war and I had some difficulty metaphorically pulling my battle commander’s hat down hard and acting as if nothing had happened. Knowing that I, as usual, could not afford to dwell upon such dreadful human tragedy.
I said nothing. What could you say? But I did need to walk along to my cabin and isolate myself before I could wrench my mind away from the thought of those brave men drowning, uselessly, unnecessarily, in that cold, dark ocean out there.
Around midnight I left the Ops Room and wrote my diary thus.
Further massive cross-decking Canberra/Fearless/ Intrepid/Hermes. Shifting over 1500 blokes around (out of Canberra) and hundreds of helicopter loads, at same time keeping some six Sea Harriers/GR3s airborne for Combat Air Patrol and familiarization.
While the decision to move fifteen hundred soldiers from Canberra is, I am sure, right, the time at which it was taken could have been a lot more felicitous! Canberra, with her totally inadequate damage-control and fire-fighting arrangements, is a floating bonfire awaiting a light.
Decision to go ahead still not received – if Cabinet stall tomorrow landing area could well be compromised, and ships lost/hazarded unnecessarily. Intention for tomorrow is basically to press on (unless told to stop) and try to maintain a low profile. The Amphibious Group might just get in unnoticed.
I am fairly confident that we should bring this off, but zero can come up twice running and that would break this bank.
You will note that I did not even mention the crash of the Sea King 4, almost as if I was trying to strike the incident from my mind. Months later, back in England, I re-read this part of the diary and can only assume that I did not write down anything about the crash because I could not bear to think about it…any more than I could really think about the Sheffield or the Belgrano and the sad deaths that accompanied those two sinkings.
Every death carries a heart-rending story of sadness and grief which lives for years with families and friends. I will always remember the words of one wife and mother whose husband, a veteran seaman, had perished in the South Atlantic. ‘I know that it was necessary to go and fight for our sense of honour and duty,’ she said, ‘But this family paid the most terrible price.’ But no battle commander should allow himself to dwell upon such humanitarian matters or the entire job becomes impossible, clouding your judgement dangerously when there is still everyone else to think of. Too much pondering the moral issues involved, while bearing the ultimate responsibility for your men, is a likely path to mental breakdown.
For myself I have thought about the mental process long and often. For years I always considered that in the face of truth too awful to cope with, I would say to myself, ‘Woodward, forget it. Turn away. Get on with your job. Waste no time grieving. Your job is to stop it happening again.’ But I do not really think that completely describes the process any more. I have come to believe that to a large extent the mind does it for you, that it builds some kind of a wall, in self-protection. The process is automatic. Of course it does not always work, but it will probably work if you let it. And your training and experience should do the rest.
My own thirty-six years in the Royal Navy probably compelled me to act as I did. Only thus was I able to turn away, to ignore the horror and the terrible sadness. That perhaps is why I didn’t even mention in my own diary the death of the SAS men and why even several months later I was still trying to rationalize it all on the grounds that I was too busy with more important things. My mind had simply locked it all out, and I had unconsciously but willingly allowed it to do so. Such self-analysis may be tedious, but I believe it important for all of us to try to understand how we get through the inevitable bad days of our lives.
Later that night I received my orders personally from the Commander-in-Chief, Fleet, Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse. As expected they were succinct. He gave me permission to proceed with the landing, using my own local judgment as to the day chosen. I learned years later that he said almost exactly the same thing quite separately to Mike Clapp, with the consequence that we each thought at the time that we had the sole responsibility for the final decision.
Fortunately for us both, the weather could scarcely have suited better at this very moment. My forecasters in Hermes, the nearest any of us came to ‘local experts’, were still predicting poor visibility during the daylight of tomorrow, 20 May, and an indefinite clearance thereafter. This might very well be the only opportunity to make the final approach, unobserved, for some time. The C-in-C seemed to have left the decision on timing to me alone. And I decided to go. Tomorrow. Sharing the same information, not something either of us could always rely on, Mike Clapp inevitably came to the same conclusion.
With the cross-decking providentially complete, we moved slowly through the night into the old Battle Group area out on the eastern edge of the TEZ. The landing group would travel at about twelve and a half knots which meant they would leave around midday, with a journey of some one hundred and eighty-five miles or fifteen hours before them, most of it to be covered in mist and low cloud, with the last part also under cover of darkness. In the past twenty-four hours this natural camouflage from the heavens had become even more important to me because our cover had been blown by the Ministry of Defence, who had released the information that the Battle Group and the Amphibious Group had now joined up, and the BBC, who had broadcast this on the World Service. Probably some clown in the MOD had told them, sharing the impenetrable stupidity engendered by 8,000 miles distance from the front line.
I had hoped that this particular rendezvous at least could have remained a military secret until after the actual landing, but as ever the British media were more interested in the truth than in the consequences for our own people. We were infuriated. The information could not be kept from the correspondents among the Task Force, but w
e did hope that someone, somewhere, would have the common sense to put a censoring delay on release of this kind of information. There were those who said that if we got hit on the way in and lost a lot of men, the Director General of the BBC should be charged with treason. This does sound rather extravagant, though maybe less so if you consequently happened to find yourself swimming in the South Atlantic as a result of your ship having been blown in half. On the same theme, it ought to be recorded, perhaps, that the commanding officer of 2 Para, Lieutenant Colonel H. Jones, also wanted to sue John Nott, the Prime Minister, the Defence Ministry, the BBC and many others, charging them with manslaughter. Colonel Jones was killed leading his men towards Goose Green shortly after telling reporters that he wished to undertake the legal proceedings himself, after the BBC broadcast the fact that an attack on Goose Green was imminent – that 2 Para was within five miles of Darwin. There are still some who believe that BBC report was directly responsible for the Argentinian ‘ambush’ in which Colonel Jones and many others died.
Standing in the Ops Room of Hermes on the day the BBC effectively informed the Args of our position and bearing, I am sure we all felt very much the same. We just had to hope the Args were too slow, too frightened or, most likely, too confused to act on the information of their assistants in the UK. Either way, we just got on with our overwhelming amount of work. The air warfare plan was, of course, now finalized, but since it was slightly unusual, it encountered some opposition when first suggested.
One Hundred Days Page 34