Amphibious Assault Falklands by Michael Clapp

Author:Michael Clapp [Clapp, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, Naval, Modern, General
ISBN: 9781781596319
Google: v8OIDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Grub Street Publishers
Published: 2012-08-24T00:24:02+00:00

CHAPTFR FIVE

The Game’s On

Their force is wonderful great and strong; and yet we pluck their feathers little by little.

DRAKE

D+1 was a slightly different day, described from memory as:

‘A quiet day of consolidation in the AOA. The Ardent survivors were transferred to the Canberra (last night) and departed the AOA in company with Antrim, Europio Ferry and Norland. Argonaut towed into anchorage by Plymouth and then further into San Carlos Water by the LCUs to enable her to commence repairs/dispose of her second UXB in a less vulnerable position. Brilliant applied first aid and it was decided to sail her pm to Stena Seaspread for repairs. Coventry/Broadsword combo worked to westward but had little luck as most Argentine air activity appeared to end near Weddell Island. One or two A4S made half-hearted bombing runs towards twilight. The weather (cloud base low) is thought to have given them an excuse for going home. Overnight Antelope joined to replace Ardent.’

After the first day virtually nothing was done now ‘according to plan’ and we entered a phase of considerable ‘ad hocary’! One part of my staff, principally led by George Pearson, was looking at naval warfare problems and deciding which ships should enter and leave the anchorage while juggling permutations of loads, quantities and whether or not they could transfer stores out at sea. The overall aim was to fulfil as many of the Land Forces’ logistic requests as we could. They were also looking at the use of the escorts in the evenings and so a routine developed whereby captains and warfare officers would attend my morning brief on board HMS Fearless before the air attacks began after daybreak. These briefs would include orders for night-time NGS and insertion or extraction of the Special Forces patrols, hopefully, giving them the day to plan. All the while we had to organize the communications frequencies in order to avoid confusion and conflic-tion. As always I ordered a close look-out to be kept for enemy ships such as a Type 42 destroyer acting as radar picket and hiding (with its Exocets) among the western islands.

Another part of the staff, the more military side, was tasking the LCUs (and to some extent the helicopters) and fulfilling logistic requests. David Minords took the lead in this in addition to his liaison duties with Headquarters 3rd Commando Brigade ashore. His job was to ascertain what the Commando Brigade had in mind and what their basic concept of operations might be. I was anxious that we kept up with the Brigade’s thinking rather than merely reacted to their requests. This was not easy.

I had been a little surprised with the speed with which Julian moved ashore. He and all his staff went without really discussing their departure with me. I was aware that Julian had effectively two watches of tactical staff officers. This would provide what I would describe as a main and an alternative command post which was obviously a prudent concept and one that I had followed in trying to set up Intrepid.

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