Ghost Force (20 page)

“Hmmmmm,” replied Admiral Holbrook. “We’d better move pretty sharply if that’s the case. There’s nothing quite so bleak as attrition you can’t afford, eh?”

He gazed out onto the flight deck, scanning the area. “It’s a clear night,” he said. “Are we expecting the GR9s soon?” he asked.

“Starting around 2100,” said Captain Reader.

“Helicopters?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“How about marines? Will we have them on board the
Arc Royal
?”

“Probably around six hundred.”

Admiral Holbrook nodded. He was a slender, rather handsome man with well-combed wavy brown hair. As a Commander he had served a previous Captain of the
Arc Royal
as Executive Officer, and had subsequently jumped a few slightly more senior officers to make Rear Admiral. The Navy High Command wanted a new flotilla Commander with firsthand experience of the only aircraft carrier likely to be operational for a long-range war.

Captain Reader told him his quarters would likely be ready right after dinner, and meanwhile perhaps they should have some cocoa, and take a look at the available warships that would accompany the
Arc Royal
on the long ride down the Atlantic. As with the previous Falklands conflict, the Americans would make Ascension Island available as a halfway house for re-storing and refueling.

Eight warships from the Fourth Frigate Squadron would form the backbone of the Task Force, all of them Type-23 Duke-class ships built between 1991 and 2002. These are 4,200-ton gas turbines, all based at Portsmouth, and right now undergoing similar storing as their flagship,
Arc Royal
.

In fact, HMS
Lancaster
and HMS
Marlborough
, both twenty years old, were unlikely to be out of refit to sail with the Task Force, but the Royal Navy was attempting to have every available warship in battle order.

This left the following six-frigate lineup, all of them carrying a new(ish) upgraded version of the old Seawolf guided-missile system:

HMS
Kent
—commissioned in the year 2000, and commanded by Captain Mike Fawkes, a forty-one-year-old ex–Fleet Air Arm pilot who had transferred to surface ships and impressed everyone with his handling of the ship during the second Gulf War. Married, with two boys aged twelve and fourteen, Mike Fawkes would assume command of the naval force, under Admiral Holbrook, if the
Ark Royal
should be lost.

HMS
Grafton
, commissioned in 1997, commanded by the urbane, smoothly attired Captain John Towner, whose dandyish appearance, complete with knotted white silk cravat, belied his expertise with the Plessey 996 search radar system. At forty-five, he was probably the best guided-missile officer in the Royal Navy. Known locally as Hawkeye.

HMS
St. Albans
, commissioned in 2002, was the newest of the class, commanded by Captain Colin Ashby, at forty-nine the former Commander of one of the old Type-42 destroyers, and a veteran of the last Falklands War, where he served as a Sub-Lieutenant on the flight deck of HMS
Hermes
. Captain Ashby’s father, a World War II battleship gunnery officer, had long had ambitions for his only son to join the Navy. But after the eighteen-year-old Colin managed to slam the family river cruiser into Rochester Bridge, on the Medway River, breaking every cup and plate in the galley…well, after that Ashby Senior insisted. And he lived to see his son become the first Commander of the brand-new HMS
St. Albans
.

HMS
Iron Duke
was now seventeen years old. Her captain was Commander Keith Kemsley, at thirty-seven the youngest of the frig
ate COs, and tipped by many to make it straight to the top of the Royal Navy ladder. An outstanding exponent of guided-missile warfare and an expert in both ASW and gunnery, Commander Kemsley was by nature an aggressive war fighter and, privately, Admiral Holbrook thought it entirely likely he might end up with a Victoria Cross, or else die in the attempt. A young Fogarty Fegen was Kemsley.

HMS
Westminster
, one year younger than
Iron Duke
, was a very-well-maintained ship under Commander Tom Betts, who ran his ship with considerable discipline and limited laughter. But it was highly efficient, particularly in the field of ASW. Commander Betts was himself a former torpedo officer with an expert’s grasp of the complicated operational procedures with the Marconi Stingray weapons carried by
Westminster
.

HMS
Richmond
was commanded by Captain David Neave, former Executive Officer in the Type-45 destroyer
Dauntless
. At forty-six, he had always longed for a full command but had not considered the possibility of going to war within three months of his first appointment. Today he stood on the jetty watching stores being loaded into his ship, awaiting the new Westland Lynx helicopter that would arrive on his aft deck within the next hour.

And that, essentially, was it for the Royal Navy’s guided-missile frigate force, which would face the Argentinian air assault less than five weeks from now.

Two bigger, 7,350-ton Type-45 destroyers were definitely in the group heading south. HMS
Daring
would sail from Devonport under the command of Captain Rowdy Yates, from Sussex, a barrel-chested former center-three-quarter for England Schoolboys, and then the Navy.

The brand-new HMS
Dauntless
was going, despite still conducting her sea trials. She would sail under the command of Commander Norman Hall, a former able seaman on HMS
Broadsword
, who had come up through the ranks and was enormously popular with his 187-strong crew.

The twenty-five-year-old HMS
Gloucester
, commanded by Captain Colin Day, would also go, and all three of these destroyers were taking on board stores and ammunition on the jetties near the
Ark Royal
. The shore crews were attempting to have HMS
Dragon
and HMS
Defender
ready to join them. Failing that, two of the old Type-42s would go, probably HMS
Edinburgh
and possibly HMS
York
, which were smaller, 4,675 tons, and equipped with the old Sea Dart missile system.

Sea Dart was a medium-range missile, best used against high-level aircraft, but pretty useless against an incoming sea-skimming missile. Also, its radar was suspect when aimed across the water and over the land. It was neither as modern nor as efficient as the new Harpoons on the Type-45s, which also carried the new European PAAMS surface-to-air system as their principal antiair missile defense.

HMS
Ocean
, the Royal Navy’s 22,000-ton helicopter carrier and assault ship, was also going. The
Ocean
, under the command of Captain John Farmer, would carry six Apache attack helicopters, a half dozen big Chinooks, plus vehicles, arms, and ammunition for a full Marine Commando Assault. It could transport more than 1,000 troops comfortably, 1,350 at a pinch. For this trip it would take the full 1,350.

A second specialist assault vessel, the 19,000-ton HMS
Albion
, would transport a thousand troops, sixty-seven support vehicles, plus a couple of helicopters. She would sail under the command of Captain Jonathon Jempson, whose legendary Royal Navy lawn tennis partnership with Captain Farmer of the
Ocean
had once seen them reach the second round of the men’s doubles at Wimbledon.

The final significant ship was the almost new 16,000-ton Landing Ship (Logistics)
Largs Bay
, built at the great Swan Hunter Yards on Tyneside, and intended as the lynchpin of a second wave of an amphibious assault. The ship held, if necessary, 36 Challenger tanks, 150 light trucks, 200 tons of ammunitions, and 356 troops. Its reinforced flight deck could cope easily with heavy Chinook helicopters. It would sail under the command of Captain Bill Hywood.

Portsmouth Dockyard now resembled an industrial city, with transporters arriving by the dozen twenty-four hours a day. Of course, the government’s idea of a “rapid deployment force” was a mere euphemism for cutting back on everything. What politicians never understand—among several other things—is you cannot have rapid deployment when you don’t have enough of anything.

For military commanders it is a constant struggle to put together any kind of force when the entire operation is beset with shortages—
not enough artillery, not enough warships, not enough tanks, not enough top-class combat clothing, not enough spare parts, everything scattered thinly, and worst of all, not enough people.

There remains a mind-set in the Parliaments of the United Kingdom, based on hundreds of years of history, that the armed services can pull together a fighting force at the drop of a hat that will beat any other armed force in the world.

It’s been a very long time since that was true, and with each passing year of leftward-inclining governments, it has become less and less feasible. Certainly the British troops and Royal Navy performed heroically well in the two conflicts in the Gulf. And there was much to recommend the operations in Bosnia. But they were all comparatively low-tech campaigns.

But by the year 2011, Great Britain had not gone into battle alone for almost thirty years, when they last fought for the Falkland Islands. And that was a close-run thing. A look at Admiral Woodward’s private diary revealed a somewhat disturbing sentence. “
On the night of June 13, 1982
,” he wrote,
“I do not have one ship without a major operational defect. I am afraid if the Argentinians breathe on us tomorrow, we might be finished.”

As it happened, the Argentinians surrendered the next day, and Britain celebrated a hard-won victory. But it may prove to have been her last, unless Westminster governments began to rectify the problems they have created.

In any event, assailed by problems, the Task Force struggling to take shape in Portsmouth in the freezing winter of 2011 was the antithesis of rapid deployment. The shortages made everything take twice as long.

And two more weeks went by until the troops were able to show up in significant numbers. The first to arrive were members of the Royal Marine Brigade, plus their artillery support, the engineer squadron, their Logistic Support Regiment and the Air Squadron. Altogether 5,000 men from Forty Commando, Forty-two Commando, and Forty-five Commando began to embark the ships.

They were followed by a second 5,000-strong formation, the Sixteenth Air Assault Brigade, including 1 and 2 Para, and a battalion from the Royal Green Jackets. This was part of the Army’s rapid-
response force, equipped with Chinooks and Apache attack helicopters. It was a specialist force, trained specifically for this type of mobile operation.

They personally supervised the loading of their beloved Apache helicopters, which bristled with guns and rockets, and would provide valuable air support against Argentinian armor and ground troops.

The Artillery Regiment had their eighteen light field guns, which hopefully could be deployed all over the combat area…
If
they could make a landing.

On March 4, a declaration signed by the Prime Minister informed Buenos Aires if the Argentinian armed forces had not vacated the Falkland Islands completely in five days, the British Task Force would sail from Portsmouth to the South Atlantic, where they would wage war upon the Republic of Argentina until the islands were cleared of this foreign invasion.

Suitably warned, the Argentinians made no response, despite much urging from the American State Department, which was doing everything in its power to persuade Buenos Aires to back down and then negotiate. The U.S. government even offered to broker the talks, which could be held in Washington, until some satisfactory agreement was reached.

But Argentina was not about to negotiate. And the British Prime Minister was essentially in the hands of his own Navy and military High Command. All the Admirals and Generals were making it clear that once the Task Force sailed, it had either to fight or return home. They simply were not sufficiently strong to reach the South Atlantic and then hang around indefinitely while politicians and diplomats argued.

The problems of food, fuel, and supply lines were colossal, and many of the ships were old and likely to have serious malfunctions. They could fight perhaps once, fiercely, for maybe a month, but they could not waste time. Britain’s naval and military leaders made it clear…
You may not leave us down there in bad weather and high seas, falling apart in the middle of the ocean: once we arrive, we either fight or leave. There’s no halfway ground
.

General Sir Robin Brenchley in person told the Prime Minister an 8,000-mile journey down the Atlantic, and perhaps a four-week battle for the islands, was the maximum stress this Task Force could take.

“Prime Minister,” he said, “to leave us down there for several weeks, fighting the weather, waiting for your clearance for battle, would be suicide for us, and perfect for our land-based opponents. So you’d better get used to it. When we clear Portsmouth Dockyard we’re going to fight, and if you can’t cope with that, you’d better call the whole thing off. Because if we get there and you put us in a holding pattern, we’ll probably lose half of this aging fleet before we even start.