By first light there were, according to our estimates in the Battle Group, five battalions of Marines and Paras dug in on the eastern shores of Carlos Water. There were batteries of Blowpipes and Rapiers ready to open fire on the incoming Argentinian aircraft. The weather was a bit gloomy, which we thought might discourage them from coming at all today, but we were ready for anything. A wandering Arg coast guard/ supply ship found this out when a Harrier swooped down from fifteen thousand feet, strafed it, started fires on board and caused it to run aground in Choiseul Sound.
During the morning, it cleared somewhat around the AOA, but it remained very cloudy over the mainland and I would guess the Args thought it was the same for us. They launched no serious attacks all day and we were very glad of the respite. The busiest spots in all of the South Atlantic must have been the flight decks of Hermes and Invincible, from which we launched a total of sixty combat air patrols, ten more than we did on D-Day. Also that morning we were glad to welcome some important reinforcements: the Exeter, a vital replacement for Sheffield; two Type 21s, HMS Ambuscade and HMS Antelope; and a despatch vessel from Rosyth, HMS Leeds Castle. By the end of the day, the final good news was that both Glasgow and Argonaut were also in much better shape.
During the night the wind swung south, cleared the clag off the Argentinian coast and at first light we sent up four Harriers to bomb one of their airstrips on West Falkland. They found no Args, but with a stroke of fortune they located a second helicopter base, blew up three Arg Pumas and burnt one Augusta 109 close to Shag Cove inlet. That just about cleared half the Args’ serviceable helicopter assets in the Islands by Day 3. We were quite pleased with ourselves, too pleased perhaps. It seems we forgot to tell COMAW, so he thought we weren’t even trying.
Nothing much happened until 1600 when they finally came at us with a formation of Skyhawks, flying very low and very fast off the coast of West Falkland. Antelope, under Commander Nick Tobin, took the brunt of this raid, the first of the enemy bombers hitting the newly arrived frigate with a thousand-pounder six feet above the starboard waterline right below the hangar. The Skyhawk hit Antelope’s mast in passing, but was then blown away by a Sea Wolf from Bill Canning’s Broadsword, recently returned from her stint with Coventry up to the north-west.
The raid pressed on in, the second Skyhawk again hitting the luckless Antelope with another thousand-pounder which smashed into the frigate’s port side, right below the bridge. Like the first, it did not explode, but it devastated the Petty Officers’ Mess. Miraculously there was only one man dead and one wounded, but the fires were pretty nasty and one of the bombs had come to rest in the air-conditioning unit and was thus surrounded by dangerous toxic gas. Also the gyros had failed and the lighting system had gone, but Antelope could still move and she could still shoot.
In the next ninety minutes eight more Skyhawks came in. They attacked Broadsword, Antelope and Yarmouth to no avail. All the Args bombs missed and they came under withering fire from the ships and from the Rapier batteries ashore. I have no doubt that some of the aircraft were damaged but they all escaped.
Half an hour later three more Daggers came in, but a Harrier shot one of them down, which I noted, with some satisfaction, made a total of seven Daggers downed out of the twenty-one launched at us. That’s a one-third casualty rate and I was reasonably sure they could not put up with that for long. We also had reports that they had sent in a couple of Super Etendards which had arrived at a point north of Stanley, strangely saw nothing of the Battle Group, which was up that way too, and went home to Rio Grande.
By the end of the afternoon, Argonaut’s boiler room bomb had been made safe and the two Royal Engineers bomb disposal experts, Warrant Officer Phillips and Staff Sergeant Prescott boarded Antelope to try to deal with the bomb in the air conditioner. It was a dangerous situation and the ship’s company was ordered to gather up on the fo’c’sle and on the flight deck in the now freezing weather, while the work proceeded. At 2015 the two Sappers set and prepared to detonate a small defusing charge, but the whole bomb suddenly exploded, killing the Staff Sergeant and badly injuring Warrant Officer Phillips, who later lost an arm.
At this point Antelope became an inferno, the fire sweeping through all three of her decks, fanned by the near gale-force wind. The fire mains were ruptured, the blaze was totally out of control anyway, and there was still another unexploded bomb lodged in her hull. Commander Tobin and his first lieutenant ordered the ship to be abandoned and ten minutes after the last man left, the main Sea Cat and torpedo magazine blew up, providing one photographer with quite the most spectacular picture of the entire war. Commander Tobin, on board Fearless, watched her burn for much of the night, until finally the second bomb went off, blowing his ship in half. She sank into the icy waters with her bow and stern jutting skywards.
I suppose the day belonged to us – just – with four choppers, one Skyhawk and two Daggers on our score sheet, but I deeply regretted the loss of Antelope. I don’t know quite why – perhaps because they had only just arrived, because somehow they never had a chance to show what they could do – but it upset me and I was feeling a bit low that evening. To cap my day of rain, it now came on to pour. Shortly after 2200 we launched four Sea Harriers to bomb Port Stanley and I stood on my little bridge to watch them go.
One by one they rushed off into the dark and I was still watching for a short while after the last had gone when I saw a ball of fire low down on the horizon. For a moment I thought one of the ships had been hit. I remember thinking, ‘Christ! They’ve got Brilliant.’ Well, they had not done that, but the news was still bad. Lieutenant-Commander Gordon Batt’s Harrier had gone in. He was one of the few Harrier pilots I knew. No trace was ever found of him or his aircraft, though John Coward searched all night for Gordon’s Harrier. We owed him at least that – he had flown thirty missions for us. When the task became hopeless the Ops Room of Brilliant let us know the worst. John did not contact me himself because he did not want his staff or anyone else to see him that upset. He was a good friend of Gordon’s – their children were at the same school back in England, eight thousand miles away from this miserable place.
I sat down to write my diary that night with much on my mind, almost all of it to do with the placement of the warships. We had been attacked by a total of fifteen Argentinian aircraft on this day not including the Super Etendards. Sea Wolf got one, a Harrier splashed another, Rapier hit nothing. Hmmmm. That was not exactly what I had planned for. It was now clear that I had to give the Harriers every possible chance with the carriers as far forward as I dared bring them. It also seemed to me that the missilemen in the Ops Room of Broadsword were critical to the safety of the landing forces and the burgeoning beach-head. And yet I had to provide them with some early warning, which meant putting Coventry out there in the open ocean with her long-range radar open to the south-west, from where the Args would come. But I could not leave her out there alone without a Sea Wolf frigate: Brilliant was still under repair, which left Broadsword badly needed in two places simultaneously. I tried to clarify things in my mind and cast aside the serious worry that Rapier might not work any better tomorrow than it did today – and my sorrow that Gordon Batt was dead.
I wrote my diary carefully:
Feeling a bit hassled. Support of Amphibious Operating Area requires me well forward; long-term maintenance of carriers requires me well back; provision of in/out convoys requires me somewhere in the middle. This week, I guess I have to be up front and hope to get away with it, but I must get clear at the first opportunity. The only solution I can see is to get the AOA’s missile defences on top line and then run the Sea Harriers from a forward base – in the AOA, as best we can. The aviators won’t like it.
Meanwhile another day of split aims faces me. Had to withdraw the missile trap and let COMAW keep Broadsword for another day. But don’t know what to do for forward radar tomorrow, since I don’t feel I can send a Type 42 destroyer up there [alone] with any real hope of avo
iding a very big bang.
I then had a rather rambling gripe about spurious contacts causing a lot of wasted chaff and another about the carefree way certain officers were prepared to treat our aircraft. I finished by recording sadly, for posterity, ‘A Sea Harrier (Lt Cdr Batt) low over water, burned bright orange for three seconds, then snuffed out.’
I went to bed and managed to sleep the sleep which descends mercifully upon a troubled mind. As I did so Coventry set off once more to rendezvous with Broadsword and to take up their highly dangerous position to the north of Pebble Island. It was a position which pleased no one. Captain David Hart-Dyke was another of my officers from a family with dark blue naval blood. His father Commander Eric Hart-Dyke fought the U-Boats in the Second World War destroyer Gallant – his personal telescope lived now in his son’s locker in the Captain’s cabin in Coventry. David’s wife Diana bore the well-known naval name of Luce, both her grandfathers being admirals, one of whom in 1914 commanded the light cruiser HMS Glasgow, the only British ship to escape the German Far East Squadron under Vice-Admiral Graf von Spee at the disastrous Battle of Coronel. They fought him again at the Battle of the Falkland Islands a few weeks later, but this time with a far superior force which included our battle-cruisers Invincible and Inflexible. All but one – Dresden – of von Spee’s entire squadron were sunk, with awful loss of life, including the German Admiral and his two sons. Diana’s other grandfather Admiral Napier was the first Captain of Dartmouth, her uncle was Admiral Sir David Luce, and her brother Richard Luce, Minister of State of the Foreign Office, had resigned over the Falklands, with Lord Carrington, a few months before. And now Diana, with their two very young daughters Alice and Miranda, waited at home in Hampshire while David took Coventry out to what he believed was a ‘suicidal’ position in the turbulent waters to the north of West Falkland.
The trouble was, Coventry and Broadsword were trying to accomplish two distinct, and different tasks: firstly, to warn the inshore warships of approaching Argentinian attack aircraft and to guide the British Harriers on to them; and secondly, to take out the raiders with Sea Dart at long-range over the open ocean between the Argentinian mainland and the Falklands. Broadsword’s Sea Wolf was there to provide close-in cover for Coventry.
David Hart-Dyke would have preferred to stay well out where they had the best chance of hitting any Args that came at them, but then they would have been too far out for good radio contact with the inshore ships, which was one of their prime jobs and, worse, Sea Dart would not have been able to reach the Args on their way to and from the AOA. Bill Canning felt they should patrol about twelve miles off the coast, where they would be in good radio contact, but David’s radar and Sea Dart systems would be far less effective in self defence. Bill was, however, confident that his Sea Wolf would do all that was needed to protect the two ships, leaving Sea Dart to shoot at ‘passers by’.
This was no easy decision. My instincts were that if they were to be effective in defence of the AOA, as opposed to just bystanders awaiting attack at the enemy’s leisure, Coventry and Broadsword must operate as best they could fairly close to the north coast, despite the very real risks. As I slept, that’s where they were headed.
Dawn brought with it clear weather over Carlos Water and, unknown to us, the Argentinian High Command was planning a major blitz upon the landing area, still crowded with ships busily unloading. Coventry and Broadsword were on their dangerous station with lines already opened up to the Harriers which circled above. The radar operators in David Hart-Dyke’s Ops Room were glued to their screens. Lieutenant-Commander Mike O’Connell, his senior Air Warfare Officer, was in near-perpetual conference with the Principal Warfare Officer Lieutenant Clive Gwilliam. Sub-Lieutenant Andy Moll, the Fighter Controller, was murmuring on his direct link to the British pilots above.
Altogether the Arg commanders were planning to hit us with seventeen fighter-attack bombers: two waves of Skyhawks, one of six, one of three, plus two waves of four Daggers apiece. Also they planned to change direction, sending the majority in from the south-east, over the land and straight down the narrow bay to the British anchorage. That of course is strictly hindsight, gathered from years of study by many people, but it will make it much easier for you to follow these air-sea actions if you understand precisely what was on the enemy’s mind, as we most certainly did not.
The first formation of five Skyhawks (I am uncertain where the planned sixth was) came spearing across the Lafonia flatlands in the south-east at 1245. The Paras up on the Sussex Mountains saw them first and sounded a warning, but there were only seconds left and the Args came tearing in, bombing Sir Galahad with a thousand-pounder, hitting Sir Lancelot with another, and putting a third straight through the upperworks of Sir Bedivere. None of those bombs went off; bad fusing again, fortunately.
Within fifteen minutes four Daggers came in the same way. The Paras again sounded the alert and the British ships met them with an onslaught of fire from every available gun in the fleet. Seacat and Rapier missiles streaked into the sky, but they could not stop the raiders. The Args strafed Fearless and Sir Galahad, in which fires had broken out under the vehicle deck. They again bombed Sir Lancelot where the damage-control teams were trying to fight the fires in the thankfully empty troop-accommodation area. Fort Austin, Norland, and Stromness were all near-missed by bombs which exploded in the water. All the Args aircraft were hit, three of them virtual write-offs, but despite the many subsequent claims by the British missile operators – Blowpipe, Rapier, Sea Wolf and Seacat – the Args all made it home and we were none the wiser.
The last formation of Argentinian Daggers, however, made a fatal mistake, swinging round and coming in from the north-west. Coventry’s Ops Room caught them on their radar, vectored the Harriers on to them and Lieutenant-Commander Andy Auld blew two of them out of the sky with his Sidewinders, as Lieutenant Smith wiped out another with his. Three more Daggers gone – that’s ten out of twenty-seven. The empty places round the Argentinian mess table that night must have devastated morale.
The final Argentinian wave of three Skyhawks ran into another furious barrage of gun and missile fire from the British ships and land forces in the anchorage of San Carlos Water. Norland, from whose upper deck one thousand two hundred rounds of rifle fire were aimed, was certain a Rapier had struck home and the volume of fire from Fearless, under Captain Jeremy Larken, was as hot as usual. The three Arg pilots, however, did get away, which presented a rather confusing picture, given the certainty with which the British defenders reported their hits. As it turned out, one of the Skyhawks later crashed into St George’s Bay and the other two were complete write-offs. But we of course did not know that. Neither did we know that as night fell over San Carlos Water the Royal Navy had already defeated the Air Forces of Argentina. The damage inflicted upon those sixteen aircraft which had pressed home their attacks was really unacceptable by any standards and their High Command would in the next few hours arrive at much the same conclusions that their naval colleagues had reached twenty-two days ago – that an out-and-out battle with the Royal Navy is not a particularly appealing idea…that the price of the Malvinas is becoming too high. I subsequently learned that what we had called ‘Bomb Alley’ was now rechristened ‘Death Valley’ by the Argentinians. They would of course return to the attack, but never in great numbers, never as an air-armada as they had done today and yesterday and on 21 May.
We, in Hermes, were entirely ignorant of all this. Indeed we expected them back in full force tomorrow and the day after, and next week. But I think my diary gives some indication of my personal state of mind and my own doubts as to the wisdom of the Arg tactics. It also shows precisely what we thought they were doing at that time. These are extracts from the page which recorded the events of Monday 24 May:
Argentinian Air Force has to be in a bad way. They put up 46-odd aircraft on Saturday. Virtually nothing on Sunday, and some 23 or so (only 17 came into the AOA) today. They lost 15 or so on Saturday and nine
today. I find it hard to believe they have many aircraft or pilots left. COMAW reported today’s aircraft as real kamikazes – so they are probably young braves who don’t know any better. Truly, a terrible business and I can only hope the Args stop soon.
It is increasingly apparent how easy it is to lose control. I was fairly desperate on the 21st, but yesterday’s events were not quite so bad…the basic facts are that the Arg Air Force has to be depleted by attrition. And the only force we have, which can afford it, is the destroyers and frigates.
The Args have got it wrong with their anti-escort (if that is what it is – as opposed to a [simple] hit-what-you-see) policy.
By 1530 it begins to emerge that the Args have noticed they have got it wrong and they are now concentrating on the amphibious ships. Somehow they got a dozen aircraft together and sent them in. One empty LSL badly hit. The ammo LSL has an unexploded bomb on her stern – three Mirage and four Skyhawks splashed in the process [based on earliest reports].
One Hundred Days Page 39