As far as I could see, one of our main problems was that of the dreaded ‘Blue-on-Blue’ (shooting your own people by mistake). The Args had already done it to their own aircraft – once to our certain knowledge, and possibly twice. I was quite determined that we should do our very best to avoid making the same mistake despite the all-too-real difficulties, particularly during the very complicated business of an amphibious landing, the time when the most terrible errors are easily made. The lines between opposing forces are anything but clear, and the fog of war rapidly descends even when matters are proceeding more or less as intended. With all three services involved, and plans changing by the hour – not to mention the disruptive attentions of the enemy – it is never easy.
I had thus devised the simplest possible plan, which, if not making a ‘Blue-on-Blue’ an impossibility, would certainly ensure it being a rarity. We initially designated an area which covered the eastern waters of Falkland Sound from North-West Island to Fanning Head and the land all around Carlos Water and Carlos Bay. I knew that inside that area would be virtually all of the British troops, landing craft, warships and transports. I set a ceiling of ten thousand feet above it to form a kind of massive ‘box’ made of fresh air – roughly ten miles across and two miles high. Into this box, I declared, our Harriers must not go. Inside it, our choppers could ferry anything to and from the beaches and ships, but they would ‘duck’ whenever enemy aircraft came in. And into this box, the enemy’s fighter/attack aircraft would have to fly if they were to be any threat to the landings.
It would be far better, I decided, to give our own troops and ships complete freedom to fire at any ‘fixed-wing’ aircraft they saw inside the box because those aircraft must be Args. Meanwhile the Harriers would be waiting high above, knowing that if anything at all flies into or out of the box it must be Argentinian, because our fixed-wing aircraft are not allowed in there and our helicopters are not allowed out. The last thing we needed was for a Mirage to enter the box, with a Harrier in hot pursuit, only to get our own aircraft shot down by one of our own frigates. Bad luck, or even bad timing, I can deal with – bad planning is unforgivable. Remember that, to traverse the box at four hundred knots, an Arg Mirage may have only ninety seconds in there before he’s out the other side, with a Harrier swooping on him like a falcon…I trust.
There might have been better plans, but that was ours. It also might have seemed a bit primitive, but simplicity is the only sensible policy when fast reactions are required in confused situations involving three different services. This was reasonably safe and dead simple; the more likely, therefore, to work. There was a bit of a family discussion, with one commander quoting me the rules under which such matters were normally conducted. I smiled and explained the matter thoughtfully for a bit and ended, not entirely uncharacteristically by saying, ‘I don’t give a damn about your bloody rules, this is how it is going to be done.’ Which, when you think about it, was a lot kinder than ‘Sod off’. Mike Clapp reduced the ‘ceiling’ over the AOA to three thousand, five hundred feet without bothering to tell me. But the pilots knew better and stayed high over the AOA – they had already lost one Sea Harrier to missile fire from the ground at nine thousand five hundred feet over Port Stanley.
By the very early hours of the morning Hermes and Brilliant had led Resource, Fort Toronto, Elk and Atlantic Conveyor to join Invincible and the Battle Group which would now move towards the west, in order to be up-threat of the amphibians should the Args try to put in an air attack. At 0400 this carrier Battle Group began to move slowly south. It comprised the following ships: Hermes, Invincible, Glamorgan, Alacrity, Arrow, Glasgow, Coventry, Olmeda, Resource, Regent, Tidepool, Pearleaf, Elk, Fort Toronto and Atlantic Conveyor.
The Amphibious Group was made up of the following: the command ship Fearless, with Brigadier Julian Thompson and Commodore Alike Clapp on board; her sister ship Intrepid; and the rather smaller landing ships logistic Sir Galahad, Sir Geraint, Sir Lancelot, Sir Percivale and Sir Tristram. They each carried four hundred men and, with a full load, weighed a little over five thousand five hundred tons as compared with the twelve thousand tons of Fearless and Intrepid, with six hundred and fifty men on board each, plus full supplies and four LCUs apiece. In addition there was the big sixteen-thousand-ton stores ship Stromness, now a troopship under the command of Captain J. B. Dickinson; Fort Austin, with a full complement of helicopters; and the big ships taken up from trade, Canberra and two converted roll-on-roll-off ferries, the Europic Ferry and the Norland.
I had detached seven warships as escorts to the convoy: Antrim, the six-thousand-ton County Class guided-missile destroyer, which carried anti-aircraft guns, Seaslug and Seacat missile systems, plus four Exocet launchers. She was a newer but still eleven-year-old sister ship to Glamorgan and she was commanded by the veteran Captain Brian Young, who was due to retire later in the year.
The second escort was Argonaut, a smallish three-thousand-ton Leander Class frigate armed with Bofors 40mm guns, Seacat missile systems, ASW torpedoes and Exocet missiles. She was commanded by the grey-haired, gently spoken but rather stern-mannered Captain Kit Layman, whose ships’ companies I always suspected would be highly efficient if not exactly light-hearted. This forty-four-year-old Scotsman from Argyll, married to Katherine, with a young son, was another captain I had complete confidence in, capable of dealing with whatever came his way. He was the son of Captain Herbert Layman, who commanded the destroyer Hotspur in the first sea battles in the Med during the Second World War, and Kit was also the grandson of a rear admiral. The Navy was in his blood.
Third was Ardent, a Type 21 frigate armed with the 4.5-inch Mark 8 gun, 20mm AA guns, Seacat missiles and Exocet. Her captain was Commander Alan West, of Yeovilton, at thirty-five the youngest frigate captain in the Royal Navy. He was married to an extremely attractive red-haired artist named Rosemary and they had three small children under seven.
Fourth, Plymouth, a 2800-ton Type 12 frigate, nearly twenty years old and commanded by the tall ex-aviator Captain David Pentreath. She carried a twin 4.5-inch Mark 6 gun mounting, 20mm AA guns, Seacat and a Mark 10 anti-submarine mortar. Like all RN frigates, she carried a small helicopter on her stern deck.
Fifth was Yarmouth, sister ship to Plymouth and even older. Her captain was Commander Tony Morton, another ex-aviator but rather new to surface ship command. At first, not unreasonably, he tended to over-react to events – it is sometimes said of such people, ‘If a shrimp farts, he’ll drop a bomb on it.’ But while initially he had a lot to learn, he learned it – fast.
Sixth, Brilliant, Captain John Coward’s Type 22 Sea Wolf frigate, displaced four thousand four hundred tons fully loaded and also carried 40mm AA guns, Exocet missiles and ASW torpedoes. I have already recounted some of this captain’s adventures. Suffice to say he seemed to have lived all of his life to fight this forthcoming battle. For all of his pushy attitudes, though, Coward was pretty sound. An ex-submariner, he had been on my first ‘Perisher’ when I was Teacher. I do not, offhand, recall a more canny submariner among all of those who followed him.
Seventh and finally, Broadsword, sister ship to Brilliant, was commanded by the vastly experienced professional seaman Captain Bill Canning. This smiling, always-cheerful officer from Hampshire was the complete master of his trade and I had a great regard for his steadfastness. Actually I always thought he would go further in the Navy than he did. But he was something of a straight talker and may have trodden upon a few of the wrong toes.
The weather, just as it had been for the cross-decking, was tailor-made: low clouds, with maximum visibility of about three miles. This was very good indeed for us, since it meant that an Argentinian attack aircraft approaching at four hundred knots would have at most only twenty-seven seconds to see the convoy, line himself up on the target and get his bombs away. That’s if he was actually looking in exactly the right spot from the start. If he was looking even slightly ‘off’ – which is very likely when you’re flying low and fa
st in poor visibility – he would be lucky to get more than twelve seconds before he’s over and past…if Sea Wolf didn’t get him first. Under such circumstances, every advantage was ours.
The two groups split up at 1415. The amphibians with their escort of the seven warships leaving me behind to conduct the war as best I could from the Ops Room of Hermes. It was a strange moment for me, because for the first time I was not effectively in charge of the front line of the battle. Mike Clapp would now take over and my own role would slip into that of secondary commander, providing the ships and the troops inshore with all of the back-up and support that I could. I did not particularly like it. I was used to being the man in charge out there. Now I had to allow Commodore Mike Clapp to go ahead and run the Amphibious Operating Area (AOA) as we had planned. All on his own. If, of course, he wished to stray from that which we had agreed, then he must clear it with me. But he had to be able to manage the landings himself, and I would not interfere if I could possibly help it.
In any case I had other things on my mind. As the Amphibious Group headed westward without me, I was still mildly astonished that the Argentinians had not yet come in force to attack Hermes and Invincible. Indeed I was sure that they must soon make an all-out effort to eliminate our two floating airfields – it surely could not have escaped them that the carriers were absolutely critical to our success.
So while I can’t say that I entirely envied the amphibians their task, I felt anything but safe out here and, to make matters worse, I had sent our two ‘goalkeepers’ Brilliant and Broadsword in with the rest of the ‘landers’. For the next few days the carriers would be more vulnerable than ever before.
I wrote home to Char that night, ‘And this morning we are heading for the beaches – not your actual Blackpool. The weather is grey and grim: so are we. The next forty-eight hours are the most critical ones, I suppose, and things can go wrong at any time. My problem is less one of not being able to do the job than that if the Argentinians get a break (like two ’zeros’ running at roulette) then we’ll be done for. Not very likely, but we have all seen it happen.’
Meanwhile the amphibious force steamed on, with the wind building and the sea getting up. As usual, my task was temporarily done: the plans were made, in every tiny detail. My doomwatcher’s job was just to wait – to wait for it to go wrong – and then try to put matters right quickly, with whatever might be required…perhaps more Harriers, more helicopters, more ships, more stores, more support or even more diversions. There could of course also be some major change in the plan consequent upon some disaster – like the loss of the amphibious headquarters ship, which would completely disrupt the whole landing for vital hours. For me, this was ‘hands off’ management, with hands standing by to go right back on if suddenly need be.
Tension was high in the Battle Group as the amphibians went in. We found ourselves speaking almost in whispers, afraid that somehow the Argentinians would hear us, afraid that somehow our own heartbeats would give the game away. I think I did absolutely nothing that long afternoon. Silence and stealth seemed the only requirement that day. As the light faded into welcome darkness, we knew, because we heard nothing, that all was well; that the ships were continuing, undetected, towards the Falkland Sound.
On this night, an important one in terms of the history of the Royal Navy, it was perhaps significant that I wrote only a couple of lines in my diary, as if I were unconsciously trying to reflect the instinctive wish of us all to do the absolute minimum to attract attention to ourselves. My two and a half lines stated simply, ‘Moving towards the AOA. Fingers crossed and hoping not to be noticed. Deliberately no flying, any more than usual. Glamorgan doing her usual deception thing.’ So on this, the single most dangerous day for the whole operation, I had little to do. For the amphibians, however, it was a quite different story.
At 1900 Antrim and Ardent detached from the main group, as we had planned, to make the run-in to Falkland Sound. Each ship had a key mission to undertake, both concerned with the stealthy business of making the Args think the landings were taking place elsewhere, not in Carlos Water. We had already sent Glamorgan on her nightly deception task in the Choiseul Sound, the long bay which divides East Falkland almost in two – it runs west from the open ocean, all the way up to Goose Green and Darwin. Captain Mike Barrow’s orders were to do his best to stage a ‘one-man amphibious landing’, using his guns with star-shell and high explosive to simulate a softening up bombardment, while his helicopter tried to be in twenty places at once – all designed to convince any right-thinking Arg commander that the filthy British were coming in, right here in Choiseul Sound. Later, Ardent, from her position in the Sound – more or less diagonally opposite from Glamorgan – would also open fire in support of an SAS diversionary raid on Darwin. All of this was intended to increase the Args’ confusion factor as much as possible, to buy time for COMAW to get the real landing force on to the beaches of Carlos Water.
The Amphibious Group with its escort force continued on its way towards the northern coast of East Falkland. The weather was still holding out for them, very moderate visibility, with low cloud and the wind getting up to Force Six. We were in the last stages of launching Britain’s first wartime amphibious landing in years. How could the Args not know that all of these ships were coming in to the shores of the Falklands? On this, of all days, the lack of reaction by the Argentinians had to be the biggest stroke of luck we enjoyed throughout the entire war.
Now it was night, 2200 our time – but, don’t forget, only seven in the evening for the Argentinians. Off Fanning Head, the Wessex helicopters of Antrim began to ferry parties of Marines of the SBS ashore to launch an assault on the Args’ strong outpost which was dug in on the 770-foot peak of the great headland, guarding the entrance to Falkland Sound and to Carlos Water. Plainly they were not guarding anything terribly well, because they apparently did not hear the choppers and neither did they use the special night-viewing equipment we subsequently discovered them to have. They remained completely unaware of our presence, even as Ardent hurried through the entrance to the Sound at just about 2300.
By 0130 Antrim, too, was well into the Sound, steaming slowly, taking up her position six miles from Fanning Head, ready to provide gunfire support to the SBS teams at the appropriate moment. The rest of Mike Clapp’s force now divided into three separate columns scheduled to arrive in the Sound in separate waves, inside a time-frame of five hours. Column One was formed of Fearless and Intrepid, escorted by Tony Morton’s Yarmouth. It was essential to get the two assault ships in first because it would take some time to dock down and float out the eight LCUs ready to take the troops ashore. This must all be going smoothly before David Pentreath, on the darkened bridge of Plymouth, led the big troop transporters Canberra, Norland and Stromness into the Sound forty-five minutes later and began to disembark their contingents into the LCUs. Bringing up the rear of this group would be Fort Austin, loaded with helicopters, and Brilliant for close anti-aircraft protection, her radars and Sea Wolf systems doubtless on top line under the direction of John Coward.
Four hours later the smaller landing ships Sir Galahad, Sir Geraint, Sir Lancelot, Sir Percivale and Sir Tristram, plus the Europic Ferry, were scheduled to follow Bill Canning’s Broadsword and Kit Layman’s Argonaut into what I fervently hoped would still be the quiet undisturbed waters of the entrance to Falkland Sound.
I told myself that it must surely come out all right at least until dawn because the Args would not attack by air at night. Certainly they never had so far. But then again, faced with the desperation that must surely grip their commanders when they see our final irrevocable commitment to the landing, they may just order their attack aircraft to go for us by night as well, on the basis that anything is better than nothing. They should throw everything at us once they have decided we are there for real, and not just another deception. My best hope was that their air force would prove no braver than their navy, which still had not been sighted outside twel
ve miles from the mainland since we removed Belgrano from their Order of Battle.
At 0145 on the morning of 21 May Captain Jeremy Larken, his Ops Room alert as perhaps never before, steamed Fearless into Falkland Sound, one mile ahead of Intrepid. High up on Fanning Head the Argentinians never stirred, never fired, never even noticed, as the twelve-thousand-ton British assault ship, with the whole of 40 Commando on board, slid quietly past Jersey Point a couple of miles out and almost eight hundred feet below their guns. Behind her, Captain Peter Dingemans brought Intrepid through in direct line astern, the men of 3 Para huddled below decks finishing off some Navy stew, in pretty sharp contrast to the haute cuisine to which they had become accustomed on the journey south in Canberra.
Still nothing stirred. The two British captains made their way down the Sound, close to the western shore, before swinging past Antrim with Chancho Point close ahead. A little before 0230 the stern gates of their flooded docks opened and the landing craft, one at a time, pushed out into the sea, now beneath a starry sky, for the weather had cleared, though the moon had not risen to act as a floodlight.
Around this time we received in the Ops Room of Hermes the first signal that the Amphibious Group was in and proceeding smoothly so far – twenty minutes behind time but hoping to catch up in the now calm, clear weather. By now the second wave of ships was through to the Sound, entering in single file. Protected by the guns of Plymouth, one of the most spectacular-looking ocean liners in the world the Canberra steamed through the narrows, ghostly white beneath the southern stars, and took up her position with Stromness and Norland at the gateway to the inlet.
David Pentreath then swung Plymouth into her allotted place, with her guns facing south-east ready to fire straight over Port San Carlos to the east or straight down the more southerly bearing of the much wider San Carlos Water directly in front of her, whichever way an incoming attack showed up. Brilliant, bringing up the rear of Group Two, cleared the narrows just before 0300 (midnight local) and took up position close to the shore of West Falkland, her Sea Wolf missile directors alert to deal with an air attack from any direction.
One Hundred Days Page 35