One Hundred Days by Sandy Woodward

Author:Sandy Woodward [Woodward, Sandy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007218677
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-04-19T05:00:00+00:00

And so Captain Paul Hoddinott and his men narrowly cheated disaster on that rough and windy afternoon. I was absolutely delighted of course to learn in the early part of that evening that they had all survived. Their only casualty was in fact one man who went into shock, a reaction for which he could scarcely be blamed. I spoke in some detail to both captains, not only about the damage, but about re-programming the systems to cope with this kind of air attack. The problem with the gun was also trying, but I was used to the fact that the Mark 8 4.5-inch gun had a tendency to shake itself to bits, until it jammed. It had happened all too often when I had been captain of Sheffield five years before.

Meanwhile Glasgow, in company with Brilliant, limped back slowly towards to the Task Force – battered and leaking – and I ordered her to remain sixty miles inshore of us, out of the worst of the big seas, while she effected her repairs. Her fighting spirit was perhaps best illustrated by the words of her captain. ‘Don’t worry, sir,’ said Paul Hoddinott. ‘We’ll be patched up in a couple of days, and back out there.’ He was too.

The verdict on the 42/22 defensive combination? Well, you would have to say that if Sea Dart had not failed, it was likely that Glasgow would have splashed at least one, possibly two, of the Argentinian attack aircraft. I am assuming they would have launched two salvos in the short time available. That would have meant, I suppose, that none of the A4s would have made it through to drop their bombs. If they had repeated the process in dealing with the next four, I imagine the third group would have lost their nerve even quicker than they did with just three of their colleagues dead. Thus in principle the 42/22 combo would have to be given the green light, as would the advice to remain beam on. Although the implications of the fact that the one bomb that actually hit Glasgow hadn’t gone off were not conclusive – it began to look as if their bomb fusing might be seriously wrong. The problem remained Sea Dart and its reliability, and the hiccup on Sea Wolf’s homing system. We immediately got talking to the manufacturers’ representatives on board Brilliant to try to iron out both faults. But I still fear there is a Sod’s Law involved here: today it was a salt-encrusted switch; tomorrow it will be something else; and the day afterwards something else again.

I wrote in my diary that night a rather cold assessment of the day’s activities.

Weather finally cleared so started high bombing Port Stanley airfield. Probably very inaccurate. By late pm the Args (midday their time) had obviously decided to ‘do’ Brilliant and Glasgow with three lots of A4s. First lot, two taken by Sea Wolf, one spun in, one escaped. Second lot, Sea Wolf went to reset

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