Sink the Belgrano by Mike Rossiter

Author:Mike Rossiter [Rossiter, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781407034119
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2009-11-10T05:00:00+00:00

9

CONQUEROR ON STATION

CONQUEROR REMAINED ON the surface near Cumberland Bay throughout 27 April and into the next morning. Her officers visited Antrim and talked to the communications experts on the other ships to request advice, and also to get messages sent to Northwood.

The prospect that Conqueror might not be able to take any further part in Operation Corporate ignited once again the simmering conflict between Admiral Woodward and the commander of the task force, Admiral Fieldhouse, about the best way of controlling the submarine forces in the South Atlantic. Naturally, as the task group approached the Falklands and the 200-mile total exclusion zone, this question became increasingly pressing.

Woodward believed that he had the staff on board his flagship HMS Hermes to have a local submarine force coordinator. Hermes had all the necessary communications facilities and, perhaps most importantly, it made more sense to Woodward that there should be local control to deal with a quickly changing set of circumstances with early and prompt action. Woodward also wanted to change the submarines’ operating method. In the NATO area, in the North Atlantic and the Arctic, the main task of Britain’s submarines was anti-submarine warfare against the Soviet navy, with large numbers of ships and submarines engaged in close proximity to the enemy and to each other. In order to control the submarines and prevent them attacking each other (known as blue on blue), each submarine was allocated a specific part of the ocean, and they were not allowed to trespass in other submarines’ allocated areas. When submarines wish to move, or return to port, or are instructed to go to a specific location, they are allowed to do so only on a course that is specified or agreed to by the submarine controller at Northwood, in a signal known as a ‘Subnote’. In this way the controller can keep track of all the submarines, including the nuclear-tipped missile-carrying ‘bombers’, and avoid any conflicts between submarines, or between submarines and surface warships and aircraft.

Woodward thought that this was unnecessary in the South Atlantic. Argentina possessed only four conventional submarines, one of which, the Santa Fe, had already been captured in South Georgia. As long as the nuclear submarines were prevented from attacking submerged targets until they were confirmed as conventional, they could be released from their patch and directed by Woodward to any group of Argentinian surface ships that was most threatening.

By 28 April the area around the Falklands had been divided up into three large areas and Splendid was patrolling in the north-west, closest to the threat from the Argentine navy; Spartan was patrolling to the north-east; and Conqueror was allocated to an area to the south of the islands, but was still, of course, in the area of South Georgia. Commander Jeff Tall on Hermes thought that Admiral Woodward’s determination to gain control of the submarines was absolutely right. Moreover, he thought that the large area of water space that the submarines were being allocated was wrong:

We were subdividing the South Atlantic into just three areas.

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