The Silent Deep

by James Jinks

  OPERATION ‘CORPORATE’21

  The Royal Navy had foreseen the possibility of using submarines in a scenario in which the Argentinians invaded the Falklands. In December 1967, during the Healey-initiated studies to determine the size of the nuclear submarine fleet, one such scenario offered a remarkable glimpse into the future:

  In the later 1970s, after a prolonged diplomatic stalemate, an Argentinian party – which is thought to have covert official backing – lands and occupies the Falkland Islands. Their success forces the hand of the Argentinian Government. The United States vacillates. HMG decides it cannot accept the Argentinian action without protest, partly because of the casualties which occurred during the incident. Argentinian sterling balances are frozen, a diplomatic initiative in the United Nations and Washington is set in train but, in addition, it is decided to reoccupy an island in the group as a gesture before allowing the whole affair to go to arbitration. A force is therefore required which can undertake this duty; and also to provide appropriate reconnaissance.22

  Ten years after this scenario was written, it looked as if it could become a reality.

  The Argentinians were certainly aware of the importance of the Royal Navy’s nuclear submarines. On 26 March 1982, it was widely reported in the UK press that HMS Superb, under the command of James Perowne, had sailed from Gibraltar. The Argentinian press assumed that Superb had sailed for the South Atlantic in response to the events in South Georgia and the MOD was happy to neither confirm nor deny the accuracy of the reports.23 ‘We never disabused them of that idea,’ wrote Sir Henry Leach, the Royal Navy’s First Sea Lord, ‘because it did not profit us to do so.’24 However, in the minds of the Argentinian junta, the perceived deployment of a Royal Navy nuclear submarine to the South Atlantic confirmed the need to press on with the invasion as soon as possible: ‘it did no more than confirm a decision already made’.25 In fact, Superb had sailed north, to pass west of Ireland before proceeding to the Shetland–Faroes Gap to conduct Operation ‘Sardius’, in order to detect and track Soviet submarines northwest of the United Kingdom.26 A ‘Victor II’ submarine had deployed on 15 February and was sighted on the surface by Maritime Patrol Aircraft on 20 March. Superb was tasked with conducting surveillance against the Victor and to establish whether it had interacted with another SOSUS contact, a possible Victor III which arrived in the vicinity of Porcupine Bank, an area off the continental shelf approximately 120 miles west of Ireland, on 22 March and then moved into the Royal Navy’s Northern Fleet Exercise Areas.

  Superb sailed from Gibraltar on 26 March and quickly detected the Victor II. It manoeuvred onto its starboard quarter as it moved slowly north. For five days, Superb remained in contact with the Soviet submarine before handing over responsibility to an RAF Nimrod. Superb moved off to the south, to the Northern Fleet Exercise Areas to search for the Victor III, which was now thought to have penetrated the Clyde Exercise Areas.27 Perowne hoped to intercept the Soviet intruder as it withdrew through the North Channel, between Kintyre and Northern Ireland, but it proved elusive. Superb then detected and trailed a Soviet ‘Delta’ class SSBN that was transiting to either the Mediterranean or the South Atlantic, collecting intelligence, and broadband and narrowband acoustic recordings, before covertly returning to Faslane in the dark on 16 April in order to maintain the fiction that she was in the South Atlantic.

  On 29 March, with Argentinian forces preparing to invade the Falkland Islands, the Secretary of State for Defence, John Nott, informed the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, that he had:

  today instructed that the nuclear submarine (SSN) HMS Spartan should be sailed covertly to the South Atlantic. She has been taken off exercises in the vicinity of Gibraltar and will proceed there to stock up with suitable weapons and provisions. She will sail from Gibraltar early on 31 March and should be in vicinity of the Falklands by 13 April. This is the quickest available means of deploying an SSN suitably equipped to the area. We are planning on the basis that a second SSN will be earmarked.28

  In mid-March HMS Spartan, under Commander James Taylor, had been off Lisbon in Portugal taking part in a naval exercise codenamed ‘Springtrain’ after returning from an intelligence-gathering patrol in which the submarine had come into close contact with a Soviet ‘Alfa’ class SSN. Taylor received an underwater telephone call from John Coward, the CO of HMS Brilliant, a frigate Spartan had been exercising with. Coward told Taylor to go to Gibraltar as quickly as possible. When he asked why, Coward simply told him to ‘Just go, now.’

  As Taylor withdrew HMS Spartan from the exercise and made for Gibraltar, the Royal Navy’s newest SSN, HMS Splendid, under the command of Roger Lane-Nott, was in the North Western Approaches, trailing a Soviet SSN. As Splendid came up to periscope depth to receive a broadcast and the latest intelligence update, one of its radio operators came into the Control Room and told Lane-Nott that ‘There’s a Blue Key message for you, sir.’ Blue Key messages were heavily encrypted and could only be deciphered by the Captain. Lane-Nott retired to his cabin, where he used the special crypto keys held in a secure safe to decode and read his orders. They instructed him to ‘Proceed with all dispatch’ back to Faslane and store for war. ‘I’d waited my entire career for one of those,’ recalls Lane-Nott. ‘It was wonderful.’29

  As Splendid left the Victor and returned to Faslane, Taylor’s HMS Spartan arrived in Gibraltar to take on stores for a 75-day war patrol as well as seven old Second World War vintage Mark 8 torpedoes, which were offloaded from the diesel electric submarine HMS Oracle. Spartan’s crew ransacked Royal Navy ships docked in Gibraltar for spare crypto, spare old-fashioned decoders and spare hoist wires for Spartan’s wireless communications mast. Taylor was given a limited briefing on events in the South Atlantic and was ordered to sail for South Georgia as soon as possible. After recalling the small number of Spartan’s crew that had remained in Lisbon on leave, the submarine sailed on 1 April and set course for the South Atlantic. ‘We were doing 28, 29 knots solid,’ remembers Taylor, ‘completely deaf, completely blind, just a bullet.’30

  In London, Mrs Thatcher was briefed by the Ministry of Defence on further military measures. She was told that:

  The great advantage of using these SSNs is that their passage can remain covert until we wish to reveal it. Even if media speculation focuses on SSNs the Argentinians themselves will be left guessing. It will, of course, be necessary to draw up precise rules of engagement for the submarine Commanding Officers. While on patrol they would carry out covert surveillance and would be available to afford protection to HMS ENDURANCE. If need be, their presence could be declared in order to deter the Argentinians from any precipitate military action. In the worst case they could carry out formidable retaliation against the Argentine Navy.31

  The section of the text that says ‘The great advantage of using these SSNs is that their passage can remain covert until we wish to reveal it’ was underlined by Thatcher, who scribbled in the margin that ‘It was on the news this morning.’32 Indeed, news of Spartan’s departure from Gibraltar made headlines after Richard Luce, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, who later resigned following the invasion of the Falklands, implied that the Government had dispatched a nuclear submarine after he was baited by backbenchers during a Conservative Party meeting in the House of Commons about why the Government was not doing more about South Georgia. Thatcher was ‘not too displeased’ about the leak. ‘The submarine would take two weeks to get to the South Atlantic,’ she wrote, ‘but it could begin to influence events straight away. My instinct was that the time had come to show the Argentines that we meant business.’33

  The possibility of sailing a third nuclear submarine to the South Atlantic was also discussed and, while it was identified, it was not given orders to sail because, as the Minister of Armed Forces explained to the Prime Minister, ‘There would be significant operational penalties which would, among other things, adversely affect joint operations with the Americans.’34 The Flag Officer Submarines, Vic
e Admiral Peter Herbert, was already deeply unhappy with how events in the South Atlantic were disrupting his regular submarine operations. He wrote in his war diary that ‘with twelve scrap iron merchants creating a stir in South Georgia it is difficult to believe that it is necessary to disrupt Spartan’s exercises with FOF1 [Flag Officer 1st Flotilla, at that time Rear Admiral Sandy Woodward] in SPRINGTRAIN and send her to the South Atlantic as MOD requires’.35 With only six or seven operational SSNs available at any one time, Herbert had to ensure that the crisis did not detract from the Royal Navy’s prime Cold War commitments, of intelligence-gathering operations and the safeguarding of the UK strategic deterrent.36 ‘We must accept certain operational penalties as a result of the deployment of 2 SSNs to the South Atlantic,’ noted an MOD brief for Nott. ‘SSNs have a crucial role both in the conduct of anti-Soviet intelligence-gathering tasks, which are important for our intelligence relationship with the United States, and in safeguarding the deployment of our strategic deterrent. The deployment of a third SSN would considerably exacerbate the operational penalties.’37 Indeed, the Navy was already complaining about the disruption caused to ‘an important counter-intruder operation’ – the trail of the Soviet Victor – by the allocation of HMS Splendid.38

  On Friday, 2 April, eighteen hours after arriving in Faslane, Lane-Nott’s HMS Splendid sailed for the South Atlantic. As the submarine cleared the Clyde and dived off the Isle of Arran the crew tuned into Radio 4’s The World at One and learned that Argentina had invaded the Falkland Islands. Margaret Thatcher later said that news of the impending invasion was ‘the worst … moment of my life’.39 Two days earlier, on Wednesday, 31 March 1982, the general consensus in Whitehall had been that if they were taken, recapture of the Islands was all but impossible. ‘You’ll have to take them back,’ said Thatcher to the Defence Secretary, John Nott. ‘We can’t,’ he replied, giving the MOD view that the Falklands could not be retaken once they were seized. The First Sea Lord, Sir Henry Leach, hurried to the House of Commons but the ushers in Central Lobby were reluctant to let him in. After waiting for quarter of an hour Leach was eventually rescued by a whip and taken into the Prime Minister’s office. Leach believed that the Royal Navy should do everything it could to respond to the invasion and that meant assembling a Task Force and sailing it with orders to recapture the Falkland Islands. All he needed was political clearance. ‘Can we do it?’ Thatcher asked. ‘We can, Prime Minister,’ Leach said, ‘and, though it is not my place to say this, we must.’ ‘Why do you say that?’ asked Thatcher. ‘Because if we don’t do it, if we pussyfoot … we’ll be living in a totally different country whose word will count for little.’ This was what the Prime Minister needed to hear. ‘Before this, I had been outraged and determined,’ wrote Thatcher in her memoirs. ‘Now my outrage and determination were matched by a sense of relief and confidence. Henry Leach had shown me that if it came to a fight the courage and professionalism of Britain’s armed forces would win through. It was my job as Prime Minister to see that they got the political support they needed.’40 As Thatcher’s official biographer has written, ‘Her instincts told her to fight, but she could not do so in defiance of all expert advice. Leach gave her the necessary countervailing expertise’ and he left the House of Commons with the authority to assemble a naval Task Force.41

  With two Royal Navy submarines already sailing towards the South Atlantic, the third nuclear submarine that had earlier been identified, HMS Conqueror, under the command of Commander Chris Wreford-Brown, was now earmarked for South Atlantic operations. In the early hours of 1 April, Wreford-Brown, who had only taken command of Conqueror three weeks earlier, received a signal from Flag Officer Submarines ordering him to store for war. As Conqueror’s crew prepared the submarine for departure, a bus marked Royal Marines Sky Diving Team containing an SBS team arrived alongside at Faslane. ‘These SBS guys came in two sizes,’ recalled one of Conqueror’s crew, ‘five foot six and scrawny, or six foot seven and size twenty-five-inch neck, or no neck. They were a tough bloody crew.’42 Their presence was so secret that they were not allowed on Conqueror’s casing unless it was dark and as they were so unsure of what exactly they would be called on to do in the South Atlantic, they brought all their equipment, including limpet mines, knives, handguns, rifles, heavy machine guns, plastic explosives, hand grenades, Gemini inflatables, outboard motors and skis, all of which amounted to over nine tons of equipment to be stowed in Conqueror’s torpedo compartment alongside the torpedoes.

  Nott was ‘firmly of the view that SAS/SBS deployed from SSNs will be the answer to winning back the Falklands’.43 When the Chiefs of Staff met on the morning of 4 April, Leach informed them that preparations were under way to embark Special Forces, both the SBS and the SAS, on board SSNs sailing south.44 However, the Navy argued that using submarines for Special Forces operations would detract them from their primary role of preventing Argentina reinforcing the Falklands. Instead a list of diesel electric submarines was drawn up for possible deployment and the use of SSNs was restricted to transporting SBS teams to the South Atlantic. A second SBS Squadron had already flown into Ascension Island and the possibility of diverting HMS Spartan to pick them up was briefly considered but later disregarded, as it would have delayed Spartan’s arrival off the Falklands by twenty-four hours.

  HMS Conqueror sailed from Faslane on the afternoon of 4 April, dived in the Irish Sea and proceeded south at full power. With three submarines now speeding towards the South Atlantic, the Flag Officer Submarines, Vice Admiral Peter Herbert, known officially as Commander Task Group (CTG) 324.3, devised a policy for submarine operations in the South Atlantic. ‘There were two things that drove it,’ recalls Herbert. ‘The first was to have barriers, north and south of the Falklands, so that the Argentineans [sic], particularly the 25 May [the Argentinian aircraft carrier] and the Belgrano [Argentinian cruiser], and their forces would be detected on their way towards the Task Group. The second one was to react to intelligence.’45 Herbert’s plan involved deploying three SSNs to cover a possible breakout by the Argentinian Navy from its bases on the Argentinian mainland, with a fourth SSN operating behind, acting as a sweeper and providing defence in depth.

  For this Herbert considered two additional SSNs: HMS Courageous and HMS Valiant. He had intended to sail HMS Courageous in advance of HMS Valiant but Courageous was confined to the Admiralty’s large floating dock in Faslane, receiving a much needed hull preservation and essential maintenance programme, following a 26,000 mile, 302-day deployment. Despite the best efforts of the Courageous crew, the maintenance programme took far longer than expected and Herbert was forced to send HMS Valiant instead. HMS Valiant, under the command of Commander Tom Le Marchand, was on a deep and fast passage across the Atlantic when the ‘Prepare for War’ signals arrived. At first Le Marchand thought he ‘could go straight down’ to the South Atlantic, but his submarine had been at sea for two months. There was not enough food on board. ‘As ever the human machine is the limiting factor in a nuclear submarine,’ he later wrote. ‘So the plan evolved: get home fast, top up with stores and torpedoes, and deploy for a long trip, which in the end was to last exactly 98 days under water.’46

  With Valiant on its way back to Faslane, Herbert identified an additional SSN for South Atlantic operations. There was some discussion about sending HMS Sceptre, under the command of Commander Doug Littlejohns, to the South Atlantic. The submarine had been en route to northern waters to conduct an intelligence-gathering patrol, but at the time of the invasion had been forced to divert to Faslane to repair a small defect. ‘I went into Faslane and there was Conqueror and Splendid loading torpedoes and I went ashore and saw the Captain of the Squadron,’ recounts Littlejohns. ‘I said: “I’m ready, I’ll go.” I was stored for war, but I was told to get back in my box. Apparently there had been some discussion about sending me but [Caspar] Weinberger [US Defense Secretary] said: “Absolutely not because I don’t have an American boat to fill that gap” … I just said: “I wan
t to go to war” and was told: “Get in your box.” ’47 Sceptre went north. The only other available SSN was HMS Warspite, which was in the final stages of a three-year refit in Chatham. The refit work was accelerated and Warspite sailed on 21 April for an emergency workup and the incorporation of the new Royal Navy Sub Harpoon missile.

  On 5 April, with three submarines already en route to the South Atlantic, the aircraft carriers HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible, the first ships of a Royal Navy Task Force that would ultimately consist of 115 ships, set sail from Portsmouth on Operation ‘Corporate’. Submariners were intimately involved in many aspects of the operation. The overall commander of Operation ‘Corporate’ was the Commander-in-Chief Fleet (CINCFLEET), Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse, a submariner by profession. His command headquarters were located in Northwood, where he worked alongside the Flag Officer Submarines, Vice Admiral Peter Herbert, who commanded Task Force 324, the SSNs deployed to the south. At the operational level, the senior officer with and in command of the Task Force was Rear Admiral Sandy Woodward, another submariner.48 One naval historian has suggested that the ‘generally successful working relationship which obtained between Fieldhouse and Woodward in 1982 owed much to their earlier acquaintance as submariners’.49 Indeed, Commodore Michael Clapp, commander of the Royal Navy’s Amphibious Task Force, concluded that Woodward’s experience as a submariner made him ideal to lead the Task Force: ‘Sandy was clever, mathematical, analytical and decisive,’ he wrote. ‘The surface Navy used to call his a “periscope mentality” – as, unlike on a ship, the submarine captain is the only one to know what is going on on the surface and in the air around … he was an excellent fighter, and in many ways in the right place at just the right time.’50