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  One Hundred Days

  Admiral Sandy Woodward

  The Memoirs of the Falklands Battle Group Commander

  With Patrick Robinson

  Copyright

  HarperPress, an imprint of

  HarperCollinsPublishers

  77–85 Fulham Palace Road,

  Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by

  HarperCollinsPublishers 1992

  Copyright© Admiral Sir John Woodward and Patrick Robinson 1992, Diary

  copyright© Admiral Sir John Woodward 2012

  The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Source ISBN: 9780007218677

  Ebook Edition © MARCH 2012 ISBN: 9780007390519

  Version: 2014-12-11

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  FOREWORD TO THE FIRST EDITION

  PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

  PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

  PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

  Maps

  1 The Day They Hit HMS Sheffield

  2 The Submariner

  3 Argentina Invades

  4 South to Ascension

  5 ‘Weapons Tight!’

  6 The Final Approach

  7 1 May – The War Begins

  8 The Bells of Hell

  9 The Silence of HMS Sheffield

  10 The End of the Trail for Narwal

  11 Glasgow’s Bomb

  12 Talking Trees and Etendards

  13 Night Landing

  14 The Battle of ‘Bomb Alley’

  15 Calamity For Coventry

  16 The Marines Will Have To Walk

  17 Port Unpleasant

  18 Welcome Home

  EPILOGUE

  A DIARY OF THE FALKLANDS CAMPAIGN By Admiral Sandy Woodward

  GLOSSARY OF TERMS

  INDEX

  About the Publisher

  FOREWORD TO THE FIRST EDITION

  It is not very easy to take a decision which commits your country to fight a war eight thousand miles from home. At such times it is impossible to clear the mind of the inevitable heartbreak of war – of all wars – and the grief of those families who suffer loss.

  But on Friday, 2 April 1982, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands.

  On the previous Wednesday evening, John Nott, Secretary of State for Defence, had hurried into my study at the House of Commons, anxiety in his face, tenseness in his every movement. He told me that the Argentine Fleet had set sail, whether for another exercise or to invade the Falkland Islands, he knew not.

  As the news hardened, I called several people together, ministers and advisers. If the islands were invaded, I knew exactly what we must do – we must get them back. Their people were our people. Their loyalty and devotion to Queen and Country had never faltered. As so often in politics the question was not, what should we do? But, how could it be done? The Falklands were three weeks’ sailing time away – three weeks’ warning to the enemy – the seas were inhospitable and there would be no British air base on land. The Chief of Defence Staff was in New Zealand on an official visit. Other advisers were not very optimistic about our chances. But appeasement? Britain? Never. Admiral Leach joined us.

  ‘First Sea Lord, if this invasion happens, precisely what can we do?’ I enquired. I shall never forget the quiet, calm, confident answer.

  ‘I can put together a Task Force of destroyers, frigates, landing craft, support vessels,’ he said. ‘It will be led by the aircraft carriers HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible. It can be ready to leave in forty-eight hours.’

  Once again, the hour had produced the man. It was to produce many more throughout the campaign – Admiral Fieldhouse, whose warm humanity and sureness of touch never failed him or us; Admiral Lewin, Chief of Defence Staff, a tower of wisdom and strength; Admiral Woodward himself, who saw the risks, knew and felt every loss, and who raised morale day by day by day. There were many others, some known heroes, others whose valiant deeds are written on the scroll of life. Eventually we sent a hundred ships and twenty-five thousand men, but we were not to know that at the beginning.

  The issue, from the start, was one of purest principle. Foreign governments all over the world waited, some of them anxiously, for our reaction. But British people, everywhere, knew there could be but one answer.

  And, when finally the Royal Navy put the land forces ashore in Carlos Bay in the early hours of 21 May, one island farmer summed up, in a sense, what it is about us which so often sets this nation apart. Asked by an officer of the Parachute Regiment whether he was surprised to find the Task Force anchored in the Bay, the farmer replied, ‘No, not a bit. We knew Maggie would come.’

  He said ‘Maggie’. But he meant Britain. He meant all of us. Because he knew that we, as a people, believe in the Rule of Law, in fair play and decency. We will not accept military hooliganism against us and I am perfectly certain that many small countries felt that much more secure when, in 1982, the British Lion again made his stand against a tyrant and for the rights of the citizens of the tiny, remote Falkland Islands.

  This book, One Hundred Days, is written by a man whom, at the time, I had never met, but who was constantly in my thoughts throughout those dreadful weeks of the spring of 1982. He was then, to all of us, Rear Admiral Sandy Woodward, Commander of the Task Force. Later he became Admiral Sir John Woodward, Commander-in-Chief, Naval Home Command. But he will always be remembered as the senior British commander on the spot who bore the major responsibility for the recapture of the Falkland Islands.

  As they have done so many times in past conflicts, the Royal Navy once more chose the right man to accomplish an extremely hazardous task. The tall, rather stern, former nuclear submarine commander sailed to the south with the highest academic and practical qualifications – in naval strategy and operations, nuclear engineering, anti-aircraft missile defence systems, computer technology, and senior naval planning and management techniques. There were those who considered him the cleverest man in the Navy. French newspapers called him ‘Nelson’. He was precisely the right man to fight the world’s first computer war.

  In this book he tells, finally, his own story as seen from the Admiral’s Bridge of the 29,000-ton carrier HMS Hermes. As a narrative, it is historically important because the Admiral allows us to follow his thoughts, his plans, his fears and, as a life-long career officer, his expectations of those who would fight with such high courage under his command – sometimes against a near-suicidal enemy. He takes us into the heart of fierce actions fought by the Royal Navy both in Falkland Sound and on the high seas. When the British Fleet steamed through the night and passed silently below the Argentinian gun positions on Fanning Head as they made for the landing beaches, the tension must have been unbearable for the commander. In Chapter Thirteen he takes us with them, behind the guns of HMS Antrim.

  In the end, Sandy Woodward shows himself to be not only a very great patriot and a superb sea-going admiral, he demonstrates to us who were not there the inevitability of his actions, how so many hard, critical decisions ultimately made themselves.

  But I do believe his
book, perhaps unknowingly, reveals the massive sense of justice that was ever-present in the minds of the men who fought in the South Atlantic. Some of them never came home. To them and their families, we owe an enormous debt of gratitude which we can never repay. I doubt if either the Admiral or I will ever be entirely free of that private, lonely responsibility.

  I believe that all who read this very personal account of the war, will feel some pride in the kind of people we are, and in the country which gave us birth. We have a long heritage of freedom and in 1982 it was most nobly upheld by all of our armed forces who took part in the battle for the Falkland Islands.

  MARGARET THATCHER, 1992

  PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

  I have tried to write this book as if I were telling my story to a close friend. And to help me in this task I selected Patrick Robinson, who was thus obliged to sit very quietly, very patiently and do a great deal of listening – none of which are his strong suits. I chose him because he is not a serving officer in the Royal Navy; indeed has never been in the Royal Navy, and so far as I know does not intend to sign on now. He is what you might describe as a layman – an author who has written bestsellers about yacht racing and, in calmer waters, the University Boat Race.

  But, in his own words, battleships had thus far eluded him. Which in one sense clarified my task (to him I would have to explain just about everything). But in another sense it made the entire project more onerous, in that I would be permitted to take nothing for granted on behalf of my readers. If there is one sentence I shall remember from Patrick for all of my days it will be the first time he felt he had to say: ‘I have not the slightest idea what you are talking about – and neither I suspect will anyone else!’ This occurred on Day One.

  Why, you may wonder, did I not dispense with all of that heartache and self-inflicted grief by hiring a proper naval historian to assist me? Because, I suspected, it would be the kiss of death for a book such as this, for four principal reasons:

  a) just about every historian I know has already written a book about the conflict in the South Atlantic;

  b) historians are inclined to write for each other, and for other ‘experts’, other specialists;

  c) they would, in their entirely proper search for ‘the truth’, have found the temptation to argue with me quite irresistible – perhaps the only thing we would have agreed upon was that no one would ever have heard of me but for the events of 1982;

  d) I did not, in any event, want to write a formal history. It is too soon for that. I sought only to document the thoughts and opinions of the senior naval Forward Commander, from first to last. And for that I needed a professional writer with an entirely open mind.

  As it was I ended up with this extraordinary man to help me. Putting it as kindly as I can, he has a keenly developed sense of drama. This led him to badger me mercilessly into describing things I considered both boring and commonplace. He practically had apoplexy when I attempted to dismiss the first sinking of a Royal Naval warship for forty years with the short phrase from my diary: ‘They blew my old ship Sheffield away last night…’

  But together we somehow sailed the course. And we have tried to restrict ourselves to revealing, as plainly and honestly as possible, what went on in my mind throughout those weeks, how I planned things, how I saw things, and how events affected me. This entailed careful adherence to the essentials of my diary and letters of the time, with the addition of much extra material to put it in proper context.

  You must judge for yourself whether or not I am capable of such honesty. By definition this book has to be uncomfortably self-revealing, but I am fairly well prepared for any consequential discomfort. For I have been variously accused by the media: not least, of cowardice – indeed it was the highly reputable one-time editor of the Daily Telegraph Max Hastings who repeated the charge, made of course by others, that I should have been awarded the South Africa Star, because I positioned HMS Hermes so far back to the east of the action.

  They said I had no idea how to treat the media. That I was over-confident in April, over-cautious in May. That I failed to understand amphibious warfare, or air warfare. That I was in fact ‘out of my depth’ (Sunday Telegraph). As for personal descriptions, the too-aptly named Times Insight Team, reported my ‘flaming red hair’ as matching my character. They may or may not have got the character right, but their lack of a capless colour photo led them well astray on the colour of my hair in their search for catchy phrases.

  If, after reading this book, you happen to agree with the most critical of the commentators, that I am a coward, an incompetent, and arrogant to boot, then so be it. In any case, a leader has to have an element of all those things in him, and I am only trying to give you a glimpse into the mind of a bloke who found himself in charge, in the front line of the war.

  I think the aspect of the book which most surprised my editors and publishers, and indeed Patrick, was the inescapable conclusion that, one way and another, it was a bit of a close call.

  There have been those who went as far as to describe Britain’s battle to recover the Falkland Islands as ‘A damned close run thing’, as the Duke of Wellington was moved to do after Waterloo. I don’t quite go that far – but, like the late but timely arrival of Blucher’s army, there were several critical turning points which could have gone either way. Most of them, I was glad to note at the time, turned in our favour.

  It should also be recalled that there were several entirely competent organizations which initially suspected the whole operation was doomed. In no particular order they were:

  a) the United States Navy, which considered the re-capture of the Falkland Islands by British forces alone to be a military impossibility;

  b) the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall, which assessed that a tolerable air situation could not be achieved and that therefore the battle could not be won;

  c) the Army, which considered it to be ill-advised, for lack of a ‘proper’ advantage ratio in land force numbers;

  d) the Royal Air Force, which, seeing little role for themselves on account of the vast distances, and no chance of a navy surviving in the face of an air force, was inclined to agree;

  e) the Secretary of State for Defence, Mr (now Sir) John Nott, who firstly represented the views of his ministry and possibly also since success in it would probably overturn his 1981 Defence Review.

  There were certainly very many more people calling ‘BACK!’ than there were calling ‘FORWARD!’, and most of the ones calling ‘BACK!’ sat in high places. But the principal voice calling ‘FORWARD!’ was that of the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Henry Leach, the professional head of the Royal Navy, my ultimate boss. And he was the man whose voice had to be listened to, whatever his innermost thoughts. If he said the Navy could do it, that was essentially that. Not least because that was what Mrs Thatcher and the majority of British people wanted to hear.

  In addition he had an extremely powerful supporter across the Atlantic Ocean in the person of Mr (now Sir) Caspar Weinberger, America’s Defence Secretary, who took a solid stand in Britain’s favour in the face of every kind of local opposition. Cap Weinberger cast aside the hitherto pro-Argentina stance of the Reagan Administration – arguing his President and the Pentagon into giving much support to America’s staunchest military ally. In his own excellent book, Fighting for Peace, Sir Caspar outlines his firm and inviolate instructions to his military subordinates that ‘Britain be given every possible assistance in terms of hardware and intelligence’.

  All of us have reason to be extraordinarily grateful to a very good friend for offering assistance in times of need; perhaps I owe a debt greater than most. For the newest version of the American Sidewinder air-to-air missile was one of the decisive weapons in the combat above the ground, and over the ocean. Also, without US co-operation in allowing us access to Ascension, we would not have had that vital forward base for our forces in the south. Never mind the other ways that help was provided, lack of these two alone would pr
obably have reversed the outcome. I am thus doubly grateful for Cap Weinberger’s generous assertion, that ‘The War in the South Atlantic was won by the indomitable will of the British armed forces’.

  In general terms the British victory would have to be judged anyway as a fairly close run thing in matters of timing, land forces and air forces. There was also the inescapable truth that the Argentinian commanders failed inexplicably to realize that if they had hit either of our aircraft carriers, the British would have been finished. They never really came after the targets that would surely have given them the best chance of victory.

  As it was, we fought our way along a knife-edge, I realising perhaps more than most (and certainly more than Max Hastings’s informant), that one major mishap, a mine, an explosion, a fire, whatever, in either of our two aircraft carriers, would almost certainly have proved fatal to the whole operation. We lost Sheffield, Coventry, Ardent, Antelope, Atlantic Conveyor, and Sir Galahad. If the Args’ bombs had been properly fused for low-level air raids we would surely have lost Antrim, Plymouth, Argonaut, Broadsword and Glasgow. And we were very lucky indeed that Glamorgan and Brilliant were still floating in mid-June.

  Basically it was all a bit tight, and I hope this book will illuminate what a searching test the Royal Navy underwent.

  I have tried to be graphic, where necessary, and I have tried to convey something of the professionalism required in sea warfare. I have also quoted shamelessly from personal letters home to my wife, and also from the diary I kept each night – a diary which displays not only my frequent ill-temper and occasional insecurities, but also my impatience, my tensions, my lack of tact and understanding, and most of the other failings of the human race. That diary, like many others, was more a safety valve and confessional, than any attempt to record facts.