By 2130, I was back on board ANTRIM, getting the staff together to prepare all the orders needed for a Short Notice Operational Readiness Check (SNORC) – a standard procedure whereby Flag Officers tested ships’ ability to deal with unusual events in very short order. The scenario given to my staff was for a full operation order by 1st April to cover a five- or six-ship deployment to the Far East via the Cape of Good Hope, sailing on the same day from the Gibraltar areas. The first signal went out at 2300, with this cover story, and requiring all ships to make a full report of their readiness for war. This sort of preparation is typical of the Services. It does not pre-empt the Government, provided it is not publicly released and represents only sensible precautions against a possible call for rapid action. In this case, the distances involved placed a premium on the very earliest possible preparation for deployment. The CinC was landed at Gibraltar early on the morning of 30th March and he flew back to UK. The Springtrain forces got on with their many different exercises over the next two days, SHEFFIELD hitting her air target with SAMs (GWS 30 Surface-toAir Missile System – Sea Dart (SD)) at her first shot, and the political situation reports from the south continued to come in. Our attitudes were still very much in the embryo stage – there was no feeling at all, in the light of what eventually transpired, for the possible scale. Warlike attitudes had not developed. We even had no charts of the Falklands area on board the Flagship. The last comment in the Exercise Narrative for the 1st April read: ‘Political situation reports (sitreps) continue showing unease over South Georgia and Falkland Islands situation’.
However, narrative entries for 2nd April reflected a very considerable change of tempo; amongst other entries:
0227
HERMES, INVINCIBLE, FEARLESS, ALACRITY and RESOURCE (all in UK) ordered to 4 hours’ notice.
0300
CinC’s signal received ordering Operation Corporate.
0310
Political sitrep received.
0745
Political sitrep received.
0850
CinC’s political sitrep received.
1430
Flag intentions (for next 24 hours) issued.
1806
ENDURANCE sitrep received.
1848
Instructions for covert passage to Ascension issued by Flag.
2002
CinC news summary received – including news of Argentinian invasion.
That ended the Exercise Narrative for good! All this was occurring in the welter of stores transfers, planning, organising and reforming the group of ships to go south. It was another unforgettable occasion.
Sadly, I believe, I was either too busy or insufficiently aware of what might lie ahead to keep a proper diary at this time; impressions of those days might have been interesting when memory is so unreliable. It is important to remember that, while we were preparing for war, it had little reality: indeed the main hope was that, by preparing, it might prove unnecessary – as my entries for 8th and 20th April suggest. And even had we been able to accept that war was inevitable, we could not have predicted its nature: we had no substantive reports of enemy strength, competence, dispositions and the like to hand initially; nor had we any finally settled force of our own; we were just hurrying ahead with whatever could be found, sorting ourselves out on the way.
DIARY
2 April
Another day, another place, in April 82. I have been a Flag Officer for ten months and am bored with it. For my taste, too much strutting about, flags flying, ice tinkling, forks flashing and idle chatter. I hate it all, and thought I’d rather have some real action! So the Argentinians obligingly invade the Falklands and I wish I’d never had the thought. Off we go – my good fortune, if good is the word, to be at Gibraltar with the Springtrain forces, i.e. the Flag Officer closest to the front line [still some 6000 miles away], so I’m in charge. This could be a loose phrase for ‘I’m up front, with everyone else behind in charge’. Not too bad though and I must say, the Fleet Staff have finally come good – perhaps all it takes is the prospect of a war. Equipment which would otherwise have taken years to bring out, is being fired in our direction almost faster than we can find somewhere to park it.
3 April
Looking back over the last few days [since leaving Gibraltar], plans have been changing very fast indeed and the staff have been earning their pay, plus a bit. It won’t do much harm but the Springtrain programme suffered two huge changes as submarines and ships were withdrawn before it was finally cancelled in favour of southerly deployment of half the force. Homegoers topped up Southgoers in a day’s frenzy of vertrep [vertical transfer or replenishment by helicopter], RAS(S) [Replenishment At Sea of Solids – transfer by wire/rope jackstays between ships] and RAS(L) [Replenishment At Sea of Liquids – transfer by hoses between ships], really a fantastic job, shells coming across in buckets and the homegoers cheering as they finally turned away inches lighter in the water! (Couldn’t actually see it, but it sounds good.) All done by 0200 and we’re off for the South with stores all over the force in heaps.
4 April
I shifted my flag (transferred my staff and myself) to GLAMORGAN for various reasons, e.g. she had better information collation and communications equipment than ANTRIM. Also at this stage, it was still on the cards that the forward group (GLAMORGAN, ANTRIM, BRILLIANT, SHEFFIELD, COVENTRY, GLASGOW, PLYMOUTH and ARROW) would go straight on south for all we knew and not wait for the carriers – hence the need to select the best flagship available and shift early. ENDURANCE reported on the situation down south and asked for Rules of Engagement (ROE) – which seemed a bit late to me. We asked CinC what the prospects of getting Sea Skuas (a new helicopter air to surface missile) out to us were: one hour and thirty minutes later, we had the message saying the missiles were on their way. We set about all the (minor) war preparations such as painting out bright colours on ships and aircraft, stripping out furniture, linings, considering the landing of ships’ silverware and trophies – much of the detail was left to individual Commanding Officers.
5 April
COMAW signalled his intentions. These included his many needs to rehearse, rationalise loads in his ships, conduct practice firings, keep fit and so on; without any suggestions as to how they might be met. It sounded like the sort of wish list we all had in those early days.
HERMES and INVINCIBLE (inter alia) sailed from Portsmouth. My own staff considered possible plans for the longer term future: what we might do when we got there; how to approach the area; what formations might be most appropriate. We also issued yet another revision of the plans for working the ships up to peak readiness despite limited resources for so doing, e.g. no fixed wing aircraft to act as loyal opposition until the carriers caught us up.
6 April
We received Rex Hunt’s debrief; we heard that Ascension was open for business, courtesy of the Americans and Naval Party 1222. I asked to be given a liaison officer from COMAW since my staff Royal Marine was a young subaltern not exactly over-qualified to advise me. We received a public relations directive from home – albeit only an initial attempt to lay down some rules – the main directive on this appeared on 10th April and said basically: ‘Give the Press/media every facility. However [extending over the next page and a half of signal] they should not be told about this, that and just about everything else.’ It became a bit of a joke, or it would have, had it not been so important a matter. We decided to try to cut down on helicopter flying hours to conserve them for later. We were asked by CinC how many troops, for how long, could each ship of the group take on board. My spacious Day Cabin in GLAMORGAN was converted into the Staff Operations Room and I think that I now started my personal ‘transition to war’ process. Various plans and procedures started to come off the staff production line – no doubt they were all things that could have been done months back but only now did the motivation become strong enough. It was about this time that I resolved to ask myself more frequently the question: ‘Wha
t is it today that I will wish tomorrow that I had done yesterday.’
7 April
Took three more days to sort that shambles out – just as well we hurried though because barely had we finished than my tanker (who had acted as the centre stores point for all adjustments), ANTRIM and PLYMOUTH were detached from my group for a special task on their own and we are left on our own (GLAMORGAN (Flag), ARROW, BRILLIANT, SHEFFIELD, COVENTRY, GLASGOW) to continue at economical speed down to Ascension.
This entry is unsurprisingly short – I had been busier than usual, visiting four ships. This was very exhausting. Under some strain yourself, you have nevertheless to reassure/strengthen others – I fear I did not do too good a job, indeed one man came up to me months after it was all over and said: ‘I remember that day; you knew we were going to be sunk, didn’t you?’ So it was not the happiest prediction of the future – his ship was indeed sunk – but it tells something of my sombre mood that day. Strangely, the only question that was asked in every mess in every ship was about special rates of pay: would Local Overseas Allowance be paid? It wasn’t usually paid until after you had granted leave ashore in a port in the area and ships of the Task Force had been arriving from many different parts of the world, thereby drawing different allowances.
At this stage, we began to see plans formulating, though not yet cleared through the Chiefs of Staff or Cabinet: essential preparations were being made in advance (e.g. for a South Georgia operation; for liaison officers in the right places (my Royal Marine Colonel was nominated this day)): a two hundred mile radius exclusion zone was announced around the Falkland Islands effective from the 12th April.
8 April
Russians about today in their Bears [their very long range maritime reconnaissance aircraft] – hope they’re not talking to the Argies.
Getting a lot of SAG (Surface Action Group) exercise work done and people are learning all the time. We can’t do much else as we have no air targets, no submarines. Plan Whippet developing [a special procedure for surface action using helicopters for weapon direction]. The future looks moderate to long haul gloomy. Unless I’m relieved on station, I’ll be here till the autumn at least! Went round more of the ships in company giving my views on the scale of the threat, why we should be doing what we are doing, how it is likely to be done and how long it all might take. Pretty vague stuff, necessarily. One unfortunate wondered whether, as his contract was ending, he would be allowed home. Told ‘no hope, one trained man is worth ten volunteers’. But it’s clear that the minds are beginning to focus a bit more clearly on the point that for some, the future will probably hold no future; general theme for my part was ‘you’ve seen fit to take the Queen’s money to date – now front up and stand by to earn it the hard way’. No good my being soft about this sort of thing whatever I may feel myself.
Of course, there’s no way the Falklands are worth a war, whether we win it or not – equally there’s no way you should allow the Argentinians (or anyone else for that matter) to get away with international robbery – it’s the ‘if not here, then where?’ bit all over again. And anyway, they’re in no condition to go to war either. Thus the message to impart (and we mustn’t lose our cool in the process, particularly when the bullets start to fly) is: ‘We are entirely prepared to fight over this issue – are you, on balance, prepared to fight us?’ If rational, I believe they may well decide they aren’t (though they must be thinking the same about us). Their reply, being in the stronger position on the escalation scale temporarily (possession is nine-tenths of the law) has to be: ‘Prove it.’ We have several ways of convincing or trying to convince them: SSNs/Exclusion Zones, South Georgia, coat trailing near the Falklands, and finally a full landing. It could still be possible to try a local negotiation though the Arg Exclusion Zone doesn’t help and it now looks to be very much an outsider.
The South Georgia operation received its official name Operation Paraquet, which gave us all much difficulty with pronunciation ranging from parrots to weed-killer. This was also the day that the UK Exclusion Zone, 200 miles radius round a central point in Falkland Sound, and the Argentinian Exclusion Zone, 200 miles out from the islands’ coasts, were brought into force. Personally, I finished my rounds of the ships in company and was glad to have that behind me.
9 April
We formed a full time Staff Intelligence Cell to cope with the information now beginning to pour in. The rest of the staff got down to thinking through force disposition plans to include the aircraft carriers. We had our first stress case (he was left behind at Ascension later). We became heavily embroiled in the questions of special pay for South Atlantic Service, insurance cover for individuals, particularly civilians on board warships (Chinese laundry men, NAAFI Staff, RFA crews), civilians’ legal status in war, indemnities and whether they could choose to go home. I believe it was also on this day that I actually started writing my diary, indicating that it wasn’t until about now that I began to realise we might be doing something worth recording personally. I imagine that this may have been helped by the receipt of a signal from the CinC, formally identifying three separate groups of the force: the Battle Group (BG) (my own), the Amphibious Group (under COMAW) and the Paraquet Group (under the Captain of ANTRIM, Brian Young). Perhaps also study of the SSN’s ROE in the EZ helped.
10 April
The main staff preoccupation was to think through as many possible military options for action in response to whatever Government policy might transpire! Not a simple task in view of the many unknowns at this stage, not least Government policy itself, beyond sailing a task force southwards in a hurry. The overall directive at this stage was ‘Prepare to land with a view to repossessing the Falklands’. A good deal less than specific. However, much background work was possible on such things as speed/time/distance calculations, logistics, tactical dispositions, the tactics of exclusion zones etc. At this stage, the feeling at home (fear would be a better word) was that we might well be forced by UN resolution forbidding further hostilities, to set up a British ‘enclave’ with its own airstrip in the islands. This would need to be well clear of the Port Stanley area where the Argentinians were believed to be concentrated. Such a requirement led to a careful search through the available information, maps, charts, local knowledge etc., for possible airstrip sites and also to consideration of a wide range of possible landing places optimised for long-term defence rather than for providing a beachhead from which to mount an attack on the Argentinian land forces. The whole subject of selection of the landing place gave considerable difficulty between the Task Group Commanders for some considerable while. There were substantial differences between the briefs given by headquarters to each of us, mainly on the basic aim of landing at all, i.e. whether to repossess as soon as possible or to form a long-term defensive enclave. This fundamental difference had major consequences for the choice of landing area, the often conflicting needs of its defence against air, land and sea attack, and its protection from wind and weather. At this stage, however, the options had to remain open; reconnaissance was an essential prerequisite to decisions whether the basic aim was to form an enclave or to provide a jumping off point for an immediate advance on Port Stanley. The essence of good staff work was to have all the facts available against the day policy solidified and reconnaissance confirmed its feasibility – or denied it, of course.
Intelligence coming in was already suggesting that Argentinian force levels in the islands were on the increase, and that the West Falklands were being invested too.
11 April
Easter Day and we reached Ascension Island – the Russians attended us in the Bear maritime patrol aircraft. I called all Commanding Officers and their Operations Officers to the Flagship to bring them up to date on events, to brief on intelligence available and to discuss the staff’s work so far. This was a valuable day for me and a last opportunity to see and talk to my Captains (even then by no means all of them) in comparative peace. Colonel Richard Preston Royal Marines joined m
y staff as Land Force adviser and from this time on I could start to make better appreciations of the needs of the land battle and our views probably started to move towards those of the experts in the Amphibious Group. I learnt the phrase ‘time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted’ from frequent repetition by Colonel Preston despite my unworthy thought that this might only be an excuse for prevarication and delay. His help was absolutely invaluable – reconciliation between naval and land force requirements is never simple or easy – but he made it much less difficult than it might have been.
12 April
While awaiting the arrival of HERMES and INVINCIBLE, the ships in company made good use of the opportunity for local exercises and to catch up on maintenance of systems and machinery before the long haul ahead. Ascension Island provided the essential stores air head for us all and a last opportunity to obtain things direct from the UK by air for some time to come. The single airstrip, intended only to support the facilities ashore, suddenly had to supply a fleet as well as learn to act as a forward operating base for large military aircraft on a considerable scale.
On top of the minute-to-minute detail of group management, the staff were still trying to plan ahead on all the details as the scene constantly shifted. It must have been a most frustrating time for them all, now about to be further confused by another change of Flagship from GLAMORGAN to HERMES.
One Hundred Days Page 49