One Hundred Days Page 3
On a quite different subject, there was another large area of professional contention which only came to my attention when I read Commander ‘Sharkey’ Ward’s fascinating book Sea Harrier over the Falklands. I have to say that I found his book revelatory on the capability of the Sea Harrier at that time, particularly as to the operational use and value of its radar and navigation systems. As CO of the Sea Harrier Intensive Flying Trials Unit, he had initiated operational night flying from the deck for his aircraft only nine months before the start of the Falklands War and directly contrary to the considered advice of the test pilots at Boscombe Down. By April 1982, he had pioneered so much of the new air combat manoeuvering, air intercept and instrument flying techniques that his aircraft had developed from a very limited ‘day/visual’ fighter to an ‘all-weather’ interceptor. But it was pioneering. By April 1982, there appear to have been only three operational pilots in the entire Sea Harrier force (Ward, Mortimer and to a lesser degree, Curtis) who were actually qualified for night flying of the Sea Harrier off a carrier’s deck. They were all three, naturally enough, in Ward’s 801 squadron of six aircraft, formed in mid-1981. By contrast, at this early stage of the Sea Harrier operational development programme, even the CO of 800 Squadron on board Hermes could only claim one full-night sortie from a carrier’s deck. Within two weeks of sailing for the south, Ward had managed to bring his other squadron pilots up to the night flying standards he had personally set, despite the many other calls on the embarked Sea Harriers for other trials and training tasks, not least providing the newly and very lately (mid-April 1982) formed Battle Group with its first, ‘better-than-nothing’ opportunities to exercise force air defence.
Unfortunately, his efforts and time were so extended in the process of bringing his own squadron up to the newly discovered standards that his knowledge and skills could not be transferred more widely to 800 Squadron much less to the ‘Flag’ – a word he frequently used as his generalized target for anyone who disagreed or appeared not to be listening to him as he hurried on.
I was not aware of much that went on in the naval aviation world, virtually all of it one or two levels below me. I suspect it was deliberately hidden from me, probably on the sensible basis that I should not be troubled about such intraprofessional arguments, not least because I was not an aviator and would be likely to jump to the wrong conclusions. Until I read Sharkey’s book, I had absolutely no idea that there had been any kind of a problem between the Sea Harrier squadrons in Invincible and their senior aviation management in Hermes. Indeed, the only argument I remember having personally with Invincible concerned the relative stationing of the two carriers, recorded in my first edition. In all other respects, I, naively perhaps, believed our relationship to have been entirely amicable and co-operative. How can two such stories coexist, you might well ask?
But I am not the one to explain it in detail, only the then captain of Hermes, Lin Middleton, is in a proper position to do so. In his capacity as my senior naval aviation adviser throughout the campaign, it was his advice I had to listen to first and last. The conflicts were not usually allowed to come up to me. I seriously questioned his professional judgement only four times, and two of those occasions appeared in my book. The other two are best left between us. Of those four occasions, I was once completely right but for the wrong reasons, the second we were both wrong but probably for the right reasons, and the other two, I am not talking about, nor is he. Make of that what you like!
All I wish to say is that Sharkey Ward’s account seems largely correct, except where it occasionally presumes to know what went on in the management’s minds (usually referred to as ‘the Flag’ – a very loose term, actually meaning variously Admiral Reffell, [FOF3], Captain Middleton [CO Hermes], me [from about 17th April], and the professional naval aviation staff officers under delegated powers from all three of us). Nor did he appreciate the limited basis of information such ‘management’ had to make its decisions on, namely the capabilities of the fairly basic aircraft Sharkey had started to work on so intensively only months before. In that process, he virtually created another, very different, much more capable, all-weather fixed-wing jet aircraft for the Navy, but had no time to transfer or apply directly his knowledge beyond his own squadron. No substantial blame attaches here on either ‘side’, the plain fact is that the Royal Navy had to go to war with its only fixed-wing assets in the early stages of a fast-moving development programme. His book essentially tells us about the many frustrations of the few ‘fast-movers’.
However, his appreciation of the value of the airfield in the Falklands is particularly accurate, I believe. Having arrived at almost exactly the same conclusions myself in 1986, I proposed to the then Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral of the Fleet Sir John Fieldhouse, that at the very least we should install disruption munitions under the runways, à la World War II. Thus the airfield would be of no use to either side, should a re-enactment of 1982 threaten, since the airfield could be wrecked even in the face of a coup de main operation from Argentina. CDS told me that if I thought he was about to tell Mrs Thatcher he was planning to blow up her favourite airfield, I had another think coming. I persevered and said we didn’t actually need to do the job, just make it look as though we had, to deter the Argentinians from trying in the first case. As a poor second best option, that was understandably not accepted either.
‘Maverick’ he may have been, I know he enjoys the description, but if I were able to change anything in Sharkey’s book, it would be to say that the short but complimentary quote of his captain, JJ Black, greatly understated Sharkey’s contribution. And if I were to add anything in the way of general comment on Sea Harrier performance in 1982, it would be to say ‘Land forces usually claim that they are the only people who can win wars, but without the Sea Harriers, the land forces wouldn’t have even have been given a chance to win the land battle in 1982’.
And as to this second apparent ‘area of professional contention’, I have to conclude that the differences of view were entirely understandable, reasonable, and excusable at the time. Given another six months, maybe, just maybe, it would have been a different matter – but by then Operation Corporate would probably have been impossible to mount for lack of carriers and amphibious ships, whatever had happened to the Sea Harrier development programme meanwhile.
I can only add that if you do not agree with my conclusions on these two contentious areas, then I must live with that – in one case for being excessively ‘arrogant, insensitive and interfering’ with my amphibious colleagues, and in the other for failing to be sufficiently so with my aviation advisers. But that’s life in a blue suit with rather too many stripes on your arms.
Major Ewen Southby Tailyour, Royal Marines, in his book, Reasons in Writing, tried to find mistakes and errors in my book. I have no problem with that, there were many errors and omissions, now mostly corrected. He eventually managed, for all I know after careful study and determined effort, to find exactly one. He recorded his view that ‘this important historical fact really must get into the history books of the world’. I have corrected it in this edition. Correcting it involved the removal of three words. There is a prize of a pint of beer for the first person, other than Southby Tailyour, to spot it. Either way, I would judge that history is unlikely to be affected greatly. Finally, I have to tell you that the changes in this edition seek to illuminate some of the cross currents more recently revealed to me. I believe that they may now be better understood, and that historians, coming late to the scene, can be more widely informed in their judgements. So, in addition to being a first-hand account of what it felt like to be the Battle Group commander, it now contains a fair amount of ‘hindsight’. None of the issues raised this time affect the outcome of a war that was won together. It remains a huge credit to the British armed forces that a highly complex amphibious operation, on a scale we had not practised since Suez in 1956, was such a success. Think back to Gallipoli! My own conclusion, bearing in mind that
the entire operation was a ‘first’ for all involved, at home and down south, is that the Task Organisation for the Falklands War worked well enough and the Sea Harrier force was a truly critical factor in our success – something plainly completely forgotten by the present government in their decision to take the vastly improved and up-dated AMRAAM Sea Harrier out of service in 2006 without any replacement.
However, the manner in which success was achieved may not be as pleasing to all as they would have liked. Several elements of the fog of war might perhaps have been thinned. As it was, we managed quite adequately, if not without the odd case of frayed edges and misjudgement of each other under difficult circumstances…Plus ca change.
SANDY WOODWARD, 2002
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
As I suggested in the two previous prefaces, it is still too soon to write a formal history even if I so wished. And anyway, I do not so wish. However there are a few things to say in this third edition preface.
Firstly, this edition is intended to be put out as an ebook, mostly to enable a large addition of material at least inconvenience. This new material consists of the diary I kept at the time, with much later comment included as I re-read it. This should give a good feel for how well (or not) the book as a whole kept to the truth as I saw it. At the same time, it should reveal much more about the problems, fears and insecurities of higher front line command. They will inevitably occur – a commander must be mentally prepared for them.
Secondly, I felt I should answer the question, why yet another edition? Apart from the diary addition which might be thought sufficient in itself, I thought it might be worth considering the significance, if any, of that small, short war – then, back in 1982, in the days of the Nato/Warsaw Pact Confrontation now 30 years behind us.
Thirdly, I felt too that its significance to contemporary events in 2012 was worth a visit. It was at this stage that I discovered a record on my old computer of my formal Report of Proceedings to my Commander in Chief of late June 1982. Although written 30 years ago and here paraphrased to avoid security problems, its messages are as relevant today as they were to the day it was written. Consequently it seems to answer the last two questions on that war’s significance quite adequately.
Entirely accepting that politics is not my business, I cannot resist a review of the wherefores of this whole affair. Were I Galtieri, I would have observed the Malvinas negotiations of the last few decades and found little hope of early satisfaction. I would have observed that, over the same long period, there had been a progressive withdrawal of and reduction in British overseas military capability. I would have concluded that, at some time in the not so distant future, British policy on the Falklands issue would be all shadow and no substance. When the cuts in the Royal Navy were announced in Cmd 8288 recently, the way ahead must have seemed clear and only awaited a half reasonable excuse. Scrap dealers, and our reaction to them, provided that excuse. Galtieri’s reasoning was as impeccable as his timing was previous.
If the Argentinian government, or others similarly minded elsewhere, are not to make the same mistake again, we shall need to provide not only the mark of our resolution on the spot but also the obvious wherewithal to reinforce it. We would not again wish to repair our mistakes the hard way. But after the imperatives of strategic nuclear deterrence and defence of the home base had been met, the last review of Defence decided in favour of the short-term, politically expedient, continental European commitment to the detriment of the long-term, long-established maritime world-wide, national interest. So much at least was evident to Galtieri and I doubt he was alone.
Whatever I may have thought before, the Falklands experience has given me a new insight into the immorality and dishonesty of non-democratic governments altogether too common in this turbulent world. I am convinced that such influence as we can bring to bear for our defence money would be better placed where it can affect both European and world affairs than where it can affect, and in a very limited way at that, the policies of our European neighbours only. That such a policy best suits our geographic, economic and political interests is a matter of history; that it also suits our professional military capability, air, sea and land, is now again demonstrated. For consistency’s sake alone, we cannot now turn back.
How relevant to contemporary events is that? What was or should be learned from this small war?
1.At the time, the Warsaw Pact (and the USA) learned that Britain was no decadent pushover.
2.We learned that the ability to project power abroad in defence of our national interests was relevant to the modern world of 30 years ago.
3.The Argentinians learned that democracy was better than government by military Junta.
4.It is in the nature of history that all these things will have to be learned and re-learned, time after time.
So let us not forget the lessons of 1982, even today in 2012 or 2042.
SANDY WOODWARD, 2012
Maps
1
The Day They Hit HMS Sheffield
They flew in radio silence, climbing to five thousand feet above the white banks of cloud and fog which covered, partially, the rocky, almost treeless coastline they were leaving behind. The jet engines of the two single-seat naval attack aircraft were throttled back to a speed of around 400 knots to conserve fuel. They flew in close formation, heading due east, with radar switched on but not transmitting.
Disappearing swiftly with the slipstream was their last contact with their Argentinian homeland, the air control officer at the Rio Grande Air Base on the island of Tierra del Fuego, the legendary ‘Land of Fire’ which sits south of the Magellan Straits. Home of Commander Jorge Colombo’s 2nd Naval Fighter and Attack Squadron.
The two pilots, Lieutenant-Commander Augusto Bedacarratz and Lieutenant Armando Mayora, were members of a group of senior naval aviators specially selected to undertake these critically important missions, using the Etendard/ Exocet system, a system regarded as the most serious and immediate threat to my aircraft carriers. Now, after a succession of technical problems, they were airborne, and on their way.
The planes they flew were French-built Dassault Super Etendards, and beneath the port wing were fixed extra tanks of fuel, every litre of which they would require if they were to complete their 860-mile round trip. Beneath the starboard wing of each aircraft was slung the similarly French-built, radar-homing, sea-skimming, anti-ship missile Exocet, weighing half a ton, with a 364-pound warhead. Its 650-knot impact velocity could cause very major, possibly terminal damage to any ship.
It was ten o’clock in the morning, on Tuesday, 4 May 1982. Britain was at war in the South Atlantic.
The hour of day, however, was different on either side of the battle lines: it was ten o’clock in the morning for Bedacarratz and Mayora, but for us, in the British Battle Group, it was officially one o’clock in the afternoon. Which may seem odd, but wars can be won and lost on matters of timing: British Battle Group time was deliberately set to coincide with the ’Zulu time’ of our military High Command back in the UK.
‘Zulu time’ is the time code normally used to identify British military communications messages. It ensured that we were all in the same time slot wherever we were working – Britain, Ascension, or the Falklands. What on earth for, you may ask? Who wants to get up at four in the morning or go to bed at seven at night. It was simply intended to minimize the errors of programming which can so easily be caused by conversations between planners far apart and in different domestic time zones. It may not have been all that good an idea, but it turned out to have one major advantage: it meant that we had completed three hours of battle preparations before the start of the Argentinian day. Thus when Bedacarratz and Mayora lifted through the fog from Rio Grande early that morning, it was 1000 local time for them, but 1300Z for us, and several thousand British sailors, temporarily in residence 400 miles off the shores of South America, had already had their lunch.
Our ships were ranged in fairly standar
d formation to deal with air attack. Our objectives for the day were relatively simple. I wanted us well inside the south-eastern sector of the Total Exclusion Zone. I was in no particular hurry since we did not need to be in position until last light for the evening’s main activities – inserting reconnaissance teams of SAS and SBS by helicopter into the islands. For this we needed the cover of darkness and the ships to be as close in as possible to minimize the choppers’ time in transit. We were ‘probing’ forward, feeling our way towards the enemy.
So we continued on course, largely unaware of the position of the enemy surface fleet – which had been curiously elusive since the tumultuous events of the previous Sunday afternoon and the sinking of the General Belgrano. We were particularly watchful of the western skies which might, at only four minutes’ notice, reveal the precise effectiveness of the Args’ Etendard/Exocet combination. Privately we still hoped that they did not yet have this complicated weapons system ready for front-line service.
But even to gain a critical, perhaps life-saving, four minutes, we needed all the radars and the inter-ship communications active, to provide us with the best possible picture of what was going on in the skies, and on the sea surrounding us. While the enemy did not have particularly good direction-finding equipment, there was a serious gap in our air defence. We lacked Airborne Early Warning. I therefore assessed the balance of advantage lay with comprehensive communications between the British ships and aircraft, despite the risk of the Argentinians charting our whereabouts from them.