Ghost Force (19 page)

“But, like another Prime Minister, a lady from the opposite benches, who stood in this very place twenty-eight years ago, I say again to the House, we in government cannot tolerate a brutish, unprovoked attack on our islands. We cannot and will not put up with it.

“As in 1982, the Royal Navy will sail to the South Atlantic. The Admirals have told me personally of their total optimism. And they will bear with them a mighty Task Force. And either the Argentinians will surrender, or we will blast them asunder on the land, in the air, and on the waters that surround the islands. But they will not get away with this…”

At this point, the entire House erupted with a roar that must have been heard outside in Parliament Square. Members stood up, waving their order papers, cheering lustily, in perfect imitation of the football crowd, baying for revenge, as described by Peter Caulfield in Downing Street on Sunday night.

There was absolutely no political advantage for any Member to stand up and challenge the validity of the Prime Minister’s words. No one wished to hear them. This was an afternoon of the highest emotion, the hours of doubt were long gone. Britain’s naval and military commanders had told the government they would go and win back the Falkland Islands.
Rule Britannia
.

So far as the MPs were concerned, this was Super Bowl II in the South Atlantic. Older Members could somehow recall only the triumph, as Admiral Woodward’s flagship
Hermes
came steaming home to Portsmouth. There was the memory of the big Argentinian cruiser
General Belgrano
listing, sinking, in her death throes.

There were the pictures of the Argentinian surrender, thousands of troops lining up, laying down their arms. And of course the timeless vision of the men of Britain’s 2 Para, marching behind their bloodstained banner, into Port Stanley, their commanding officer, Colonel Jones, slain, but their victory complete.

Who could forget those distant days of pride and conquest? And who could resist a faint tremor of anticipation as once more the sprawling, historic Portsmouth Dockyard revved up for another conflict?

Not the veteran MPs of the House of Commons. Because the onset of battle seemed somehow to give them stature, to add to their sense of self-importance, if that was possible. But they left the great chamber that afternoon with their heads high, chins jutting defiantly, upper lips already stiffening. They were men involved with a war, a real war. They were men involved in life-or-death decisions.

But if the military were to be believed, it would be mostly death. After all, none of the MPs had sailed with Admiral Woodward into a gusting, squally Levanter off the Gibraltar Straits in the spring of 1982. None of them saw the entire ship’s company of a home-going British warship lining the port-side rails to salute the warriors heading south. None of them heard the singing, as Woodward’s armada sailed by…the achingly prophetic notes of the hymn that morning, “Abide With Me.”

None of them witnessed the paras, raked by machine-gun fire, fighting and dying on the flat plain of Goose Green. They never heard the cries and whispers of the injured and dying in shattered, burning warships. And they surely never saw the shocked faces of the doctors and
nurses in the hospital on board
Hermes
as the horribly burned seamen and officers were carried in.

They didn’t. But Admiral Mark Palmer did, and the memory of lost friends stood stark before him as he stared at the television, listening to the hollow words of the Prime Minister. The Admiral winced at the sight of the ludicrous, complacent grins on the faces of the government ministers, nodding earnestly as their leader spun and distorted the naval and military picture to the House of Commons.

Admiral Palmer was sixty years old. He had served in the first Falklands War as a twenty-two-year-old Sub-Lieutenant in HMS
Coventry
before she was hit and sunk just north of the islands in the late afternoon of May 25, 1982. He recalled the helplessness, the desperation, as they tried to maneuver the ship, with its long-range radar on the blink, not knowing from which way the Argentinian bombers would come.

Twenty-eight years later, he still awakened in the night, trembling, his heart pounding when he heard again, in his dreams, the blasts of the bombs smashing into his ship, the screams of the injured. And he felt again the searing pain in his own burned face as the bomb blast hit him while he tried to supervise the 20mm gun on the upper deck.

Admiral Palmer was not afraid. His grandfather had fought at the Battle of Jutland in World War I. In truth Mark Palmer was a modern-day Roope VC. He’d have rammed an opponent when all was lost; he would most certainly have died for his convoy; and if required, he would have died to save this benighted British government, which, like all of his colleagues, he secretly loathed.

It was not a lack of courage, skill, or daring that in his mind doomed this new operation in the South Atlantic. It was the hideous truth that his men had been denied the correct resources to fight a new war by their own government. And Admiral Palmer turned his back on the television, and walked, coatless, out into the chill of the dockyard, appalled that somehow the very best of British people were being led by some of the very worst. The brave and the honorable, sent to the plate by a group of self-seeking opportunists with their limousines, chauffeurs, and bloated expense accounts.

“Christ,” he muttered, alone in the cold dockyard, “what a tragedy.”

He signaled for a driver, but first ran inside to collect his greatcoat.
Five minutes later he was on the jetty where HMS
Arc Royal
had suddenly become the center of the universe. At least, the 20,000-ton light aircraft carrier was now the center of his own particular universe, twenty-six years old or not.

A team of engineers was still at work deep inside the propulsion area, checking and servicing those four hardworking Olympus gas turbines, and examining the two massive driveshafts that transfer more than 97,000 horsepower to the huge propellers.

The good news was neither shaft needed replacing. The bad news was the spare part to replace a cracked mounting had to be flown from Scotland, but not until tomorrow. And that meant the repair crew, and the servicing engineers, were still operational while the gigantic task of storing the ship took place.

There was already an old-fashioned “humping party” passing boxes hand over hand up the starboard forward gangway. Alongside them was a mobile conveyer belt, with another crew loading enormous boxes of food—frozen, canned, dried, and fresh. And already the debris was mounting as the seamen ripped stuff out of the big outside containers, all of which were superfluous to the journey south.

In the middle of all this, the Fleet Maintenance Group and the carrier’s own staff were at work all over the starboard hull rectifying any defects, removing rust, repainting, checking every inch of the Battle Group’s flagship, which, within days, would be heading to a theater of war.

From all over the country, thousands and thousands of stores were arriving from various depots, by train, by the Ministry of Defense’s own transportation, and by commercial vehicles. And they were not just there for the
Arc Royal
. All over the dockyard there were ships lining up for the journey south. And all of them needed food, clothes, ordnance, ammunition, shells, and missiles.

Massive amounts of fuel were arriving, diesel for the gas turbines, Avcat for the aircraft. And it was not only the warships being fueled, it was also the huge replenishment ships of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary oilers, which would keep them topped up on the journey south and in the battle zone itself.

Personnel from every branch of the Navy were being drafted into Portsmouth, every available section of manpower was heading for the
jetties, trying to clear the debris, helping with the loading, assisting the Supply Officers who paced the loading areas, checking off their “shopping lists” on big clipboards, calling out commands and instructions to the toiling, twenty-four-hours-a-day workforce.

Captain Reader came down to meet the C-in-C, and together they paced the wide jetty where the
Ark Royal
was moored. It was already noticeable that new stores were arriving with such regularity that team after team was being seconded to join in the loading process, and the pile of debris was beginning to look like the European grain mountain.

But the services are expert at priorities. What mattered was loading the ships, not clearing up the rubbish. Only when the piles of empty cartons became a serious detriment to the process was action taken to reduce the problem.

By now the great arc lights along the waterfront were being switched on. Captain Reader and Admiral Palmer went aboard and took the elevator to the quarters of the commanding officer, while some swift refurbishment took place above them, in readiness for the arrival of Rear Admiral Alan Holbrook, who, as Task Force Commander, would fly his flag from the
Ark Royal
throughout the operation.

His ops room, where he and his staff would plan the war, was located right above Captain Reader’s quarters, and of course their duties would be entirely separate. The Captain’s task was to steer the 685-feet-long carrier safely around the South Atlantic, taking overall command of the 550-foot-long flight deck, the 680-man crew and 80 officers.

Admiral Holbrook would plan the deployment of the ships, the air and sea assault on the Argentinian islands, plus the landing of the military force, in consultation with COMAW, Commander Amphibious Warfare, Commodore Keith Birchell.

The GR9 ground attack aircraft were due to begin arriving, straight onto the deck of the
Ark Royal
, from Yeovilton Naval Air Station. Altogether there would be twenty-one of them, the full complement for a small carrier like the
Ark Royal
, as opposed to the eighty-four that a big U.S. Nimitz-class carrier can accommodate.

Of course, the nonarrival of the two new Royal Navy carriers, both 60,000-tonners, was widely considered to be a national disgrace. Despite the Prime Minister’s somewhat glib, self-congratulatory remarks
about the new ships, the fact remained there had been government delay, delay, and delay, and the earliest they were likely to arrive was sometime in late 2015.

Every senior officer in the Royal Navy recalled the chilling words of the First Sea Lord, Admiral Alan West, six years earlier when he had stated with quiet certainty that recent defense cuts “have left the Navy with too few ships to sustain even moderate losses in a maritime conflict.”

With only a dozen destroyers and frigates ready for battle at any one time, the First Sea Lord considered the situation untenable, simply not enough warships. At the time he had suggested, modestly, that after forty years in the Navy he knew something of what he spoke, since his own ship, the
Ardent
, was sunk in Falkland Sound in 1982.

One way and another this was a somewhat modest recounting of the events of May 21, 1982, when a formation of Argentine bombers launched nine five-hundred-pounders at the battle-hardened
Ardent
in which the Seacat missile launcher suddenly jammed. Three of the bombs smashed into the Type-22 frigate, blasting the stern hangar asunder and blowing the Seacat launcher into the air. It crashed down, killing the Supply Officer Richard Banfield, and the helicopter pilot Lt. Commander John Sephton, who was manning a machine gun in company with his observer, Brian Murphy.

Almost the entire stern section of the ship was on fire, a huge plume of smoke lifting high above the Sound. Minutes later another formation of Argentine Skyhawks came screaming in over West Falkland and instantly spotted the burning furnace of the
Ardent
. Commander West ordered his helmsmen to turn their just-repaired 4.5-inch gun to face the enemy, and they opened fire with everything they had.

Commander West had cleared one of the ship’s cooks to man one of the big machine guns, and he had actually downed one of the raiders. But nothing could save the
Ardent
from this bombardment. Seven bombs slammed into her, almost lifting the ship out of the water.

The blasts and the fires had killed or wounded one-third of all the ship’s company—the same number as in HMS
Victory
at this same time in the afternoon at the Battle of Trafalgar. Unlike Admiral Nelson, Commander West survived, and with the fires blazing all around him, he once more ordered his gunners to turn and face the enemy.

But she could no longer steer, and the fires were roaring toward the missile magazines. Men had been blown overboard, and she was shipping ice-cold seawater by the ton. The
Ardent
was sinking, and Alan West ordered his crew to abandon ship. Not until the last man was taken off by HMS
Yarmouth
did Commander West, tears of rage and frustration streaming down his face, finally leave HMS
Ardent
. She sank early the next morning.

He knew of what he spoke.

And when Admiral Holbrook arrived shortly before 1900, he shook hands warmly with the commanding officer and with his Fleet C-in-C, just stating solemnly, “We haven’t got enough, have we?”

“No, I’m afraid not,” replied Admiral Palmer. “What we have, we take. But the GR9s are blind at night and in bad weather. If we need ship replacements…well…I’m afraid there won’t be any.”