by James Jinks
As the Task Force left Portsmouth, the Chiefs of Staff were conscious that when HMS Spartan arrived in the South Atlantic on 11 April, the submarine would need ‘clear rules of engagement or other instructions’.51 The SSNs had sailed with a set of Rules of Engagement that placed specific emphasis on remaining covert while on passage to the South Atlantic. Once they arrived in the vicinity of the Falkland Islands they were to conduct surveillance of Argentinian forces and collect intelligence about naval movements. They were permitted to use minimum force in self-defence, and if Argentinian forces attacked the ice patrol ship, HMS Endurance, they were ‘to return fire to the minimum extent necessary to prevent further attack’.52 On 6 April, the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong, briefed Mrs Thatcher about what should be done during ‘the period when the SSNs are on station ahead of the main force, should they be confined to a reconnaissance role; should they be authorized to attack Argentinian naval forces (and, if so, within an announced area or wherever they may be?)’:
There will be an interval of nearly a fortnight between the arrival (we hope secret) on station of the first SSN and the arrival, inevitably public, of the task force. If early in that period the SSN were to sink an Argentine warship, that could have military advantages, and would be seen as a success by domestic public opinion. On the other hand it could lead to reprisals against the Falkland Islanders; and it could turn international opinion against us, leading to resolutions in the Security Council (which we should have to veto) calling upon us not to use force, and possibly to the withdrawal of logistic support by some of those countries now providing it. These consequences could have implications for the use of the task force even before it arrived on station.53
Leach was worried that the Argentinian Navy was ‘clearly engaged in a rapid resupply operation, and his fear was that, unless prompt action was taken, the Argentine navy might complete their resupply operation and then return to home ports’.54 Nott tabled a memorandum in which he proposed that an SSN should launch an early attack on an Argentinian warship, essentially launching a surprise opening shot in the conflict. This action would be followed by the declaration of an Exclusion Zone in which SSNs could sink Argentinian warships as well as support vessels involved in resupplying the Falkland Islands.
When the War Cabinet, officially called the Oversea and Defence, South Atlantic committee (OD(SA)), consisting of Thatcher, Nott, the Home Secretary, William Whitelaw, the Foreign Secretary, Francis Pym, and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Paymaster General, Cecil Parkinson, met for the first time the next day, 7 April, Nott’s proposal was considered too radical and was dropped.55 Had it been approved the task of finding an Argentinian vessel and sinking it would almost certainly have fallen to Taylor and the crew of HMS Spartan. ‘It was very frustrating,’ recalls Taylor: ‘There were targets there, there were warships and other ships flying Argentinian flags and I think the straightforward removal of one or some of them, which I would have been content to do, that’s the job, I think would have saved a great deal of bloodshed later on, I really do. Had John Nott’s view prevailed then it would have been the same end result, but I think there would have been rather less loss of British life.’56
Instead, a revised proposal was tabled in the form of an announcement of a 200-mile Maritime Exclusion Zone (MEZ) around the Falkland Islands to come into effect from midnight on 11/12 April. The next day Nott stood up in the House of Commons and announced that:
From the time indicated, any Argentine warships and Argentine naval auxiliaries found within this zone will be treated as hostile and are liable to be attacked by British forces. This measure is without prejudice to the right of the United Kingdom to take whatever additional measures may be needed in exercise of its right of self-defence, under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.57
The War Cabinet approved ‘an à la carte menu’ of Rules of Engagement that had been agreed by the Chief of Defence Staff, Admiral Terence Lewin, in consultation with officials of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, including the Legal Adviser, Ministry of Defence and Cabinet Office, from which certain rules could ‘be selected and activated on Ministerial authority as and when the situation requires’.58 The rules, which applied to Spartan and all other Royal Navy submarines as and when they arrived on station, were as follows:
a. Any vessels positively identified inside the Exclusion Zone as being Argentine warships, submarines and naval auxiliaries may be attacked.
b. After the first successful attack, withdraw from scene of action and report. Having reported or, if unable to clear report after 12 hours, continue patrol.
c. Situation Reports are to be made at your discretion as soon as possible after any subsequent successful attacks and on all Argentine units detected.
d. Additionally, if attacked you are authorized to retaliate as necessary for your self-defence both inside and outside the Exclusion Zone.59
The Prime Minister also added that ‘The commanding officer of a submarine would naturally have the right to exercise his discretion in any matter relating to the safety of his vessel.’60
Nott later admitted that ‘Nearly every decision we had to take on the rules of engagement was difficult.’61 In the opening stages of the conflict, two aspects in particular caused problems. The first concerned the requirement to positively identify Argentinian submarines before carrying out an attack, a requirement that carried very high risks of counter-detection and attack from the small number of submarines in the Argentinian Navy. The Argentinian Navy possessed four conventional diesel submarines, two old former US Navy ‘Guppy’ diesel electric submarines constructed during the Second World War – Santiago del Estero and Santa Fe – and two relatively modern German-built Type 209 diesel electric submarines: Salta and San Luis. While the US ‘Guppy’ submarines were probably too old to be of any use in offensive operations, very little was known about the more modern 209 submarines, which were very quiet and had the potential to pose a serious threat to the Task Force as well as the SSNs operating in the South Atlantic. Lack of intelligence about other nations’ submarines operating in the area, especially Soviet boats, also caused problems.62 What should a Royal Navy submarine do if it encountered a Soviet submarine?
In this context, the incorrect press reports about HMS Superb were relevant. Following the invasion of the Falklands the Argentinian press continued to report that a Royal Navy submarine had been located 250 miles off the coast of the southern Argentinian city of Mar del Plata. At the time, the British Air Attaché in Washington, Air Vice Marshal Ron Dick, was chairing a meeting of the United Nations Military Staff Committee, ‘the most moribund committee ever devised by man’. Before he left for New York, he:
was told that the Buenos Aires newspapers had been headlining a report that a British nuclear submarine had been detected operating off the coast of Argentina. I knew that to be wrong, but it was good news because, if they even thought a nuclear submarine was in the offing it was almost as good as having one there. Back in the UN, we dragged ourselves through the motions of our dreary meeting and I then stopped to speak to my French colleague near the conference room door. The Soviet representative that day happened to be an admiral and he brushed my shoulder on his way out. He did not stop or even look at me. He just kept going through the doorway, but a question floated back over his shoulder: ‘Are our submarines being of any help?’63
It is not clear whether this was a reference to the Soviet ‘Victor’ class SSN that HMS Superb was ordered to intercept prior to the invasion or to additional Soviet submarines operating off the Argentinian coast in the South Atlantic. The latter was very much on the minds of the Chiefs of Staff on 6 April, when a Foreign Office official, Peter Wright, asked Leach ‘to what extent our SSNs would be able to distinguish Argentine from other, including Soviet, submarines’. Leach’s response was not encouraging:
He said that he could give me no watertight assurance unless submarines were to fortuitously give away, by underwater telep
hone conversation, which nationality they were. There might also be indications from the nature of sonar use, and he commented that Soviet submarines were likely to remain passive while the Argentines might have an operational need to transmit. In brief, it is possible, but by no means certain, that reliable identification could be made. I said that this was a point which was likely to be of considerable interest to Ministers.64
The Soviets, as well as other South American states, were eventually warned to keep their submarines away from the Falkland Islands.65
The second aspect that caused difficulties was highlighted on 10 April, when concerns were raised that HMS Spartan, operating under the new Rules of Engagement and thus with authorization to attack Argentinian vessels, would arrive in the MEZ just as the US Secretary of State, Al Haig, was beginning various diplomatic initiatives. Any attack by a Royal Navy submarine could have damaging political repercussions and jeopardize any diplomatic breakthrough. Haig urged the British Government to suspend enforcement of the MEZ, and as a precaution ministers instructed Spartan and the other three SSNs to ‘Remain covert. Carry out surveillance of area allocated. If detected evade. If unable to evade, prosecuting units may be attacked in self defence.’66 For Lane-Nott and the crew of HMS Splendid, these alterations were extremely frustrating. ‘We had national rules of engagement and they decided to change those,’ he later said. ‘I had some difficulty with that. We had a set of national Rules of Engagement and at the moment we were supposed to use them somebody decided to ditch them and produce some new ones, which I found extraordinary, because all our training had been on the other ones.’67
Aside from the normal recognition publications, such as Jane’s Fighting Ships and Aircraft as well as NATO publications, the submarine crews knew little about the capabilities of Argentinian forces. ‘There was virtually nothing coming out of Northwood or the Ministry of Defence as to what these people had,’ remembered Taylor.68 ‘The lack of detailed information on Argentinian forces at the start of Operation CORPORATE was disappointing,’ wrote Lane-Nott.69 ‘It was a very strange feeling to go out not knowing what you were going to do. I mean, we were used to that, we were flexible, that’s part of submarining, getting out there and changing role three or four times, we’re capable of doing that. But the information on Argentina was so small, there was precious little on the intelligence side apart from Jane’s, I mean it got better, but at the beginning there was nothing. Which I found astonishing really.’70 Other than HMS Dreadnought’s Operation ‘Journeyman’ December 1977 patrol report, very little was known about the waters surrounding the Falklands. Extracts from the report were studied in detail, alongside other oceanographic and navigational publications that were communicated to the SSNs as they sped south. But with so little information on the nature of the threat from Argentinian forces, the crews of the SSNs were anxious. ‘It was the first time that I began to feel the burden of responsibility,’ recalled Lane-Nott on Splendid. ‘I’d never felt it before. I’d done all sorts of dangerous things, I was the Captain of a nuclear submarine and suddenly I was going to war. If I’d been going against the Russians I wouldn’t have minded at all, because I knew what the enemy’s capability was. I had no idea what the capability of these people was, at all.’71
On 12 April, HMS Spartan arrived in the Exclusion Zone and set course for the Falkland Islands. ‘There was a sense of being on the far side of the world,’ says Taylor, ‘the assurance of once we got close to the Falklands that if you did get a contact it was probably the enemy. It was rather like being under the ice, if there’s a noise there, it’s probably theirs.’ Spartan’s crew were good-humoured, but the possibility of a shooting war weighed heavily on those with families back home. ‘It didn’t really dawn on people until we heard on the media broadcast of John Fieldhouse saying: “This will be a sad and bloody business,” ’ recalls Taylor. ‘I said to the ship’s company that this is what we’re trained for, it’s not a big deal, except hopefully there will be a bang at the end of it. We’re just going to do what we’ve always done. This is the job, this is who we are, this is what we do.’ Attendance at the on board Sunday church service improved, and although Spartan had never been a drinking submarine, alcohol was restricted. Taylor’s biggest challenge was to ensure that his crew, many of whom had been at sea since January, did not get ‘stale’.72
Taylor positioned Spartan off Port Stanley and then moved three nautical miles off Cape Pembroke lighthouse to conduct visual reconnaissance of Argentinian movements, taking photographs through the periscope of Argentinian aircraft taking off and landing on the nearby airstrip. Spartan’s crew quickly obtained a vital piece of intelligence that fed into the Task Force’s plan to reoccupy the Islands. According to Northwood, the Argentinians did not possess any minelaying capabilities. However, on 15 April Spartan observed two Argentinian vessels, one the landing-ship Cabo San Antonio, laying two minefields near the entrance to Port Stanley Harbour. Taylor wanted to attack both vessels, but he was unable to sink them due to the restrictive Rules of Engagement. All he could do was watch. Spartan remained in the area until 21 April, providing regular updates on Argentinian activity in and around Port Stanley.73
HMS Splendid arrived in the Exclusion Zone on 15 April, and took up a position in the northwest, between the main Argentinian ports and the Falkland Islands. The Royal Navy’s nuclear-powered submarines had allowed the British Government to establish a 200-mile Maritime Exclusion Zone around the Falkland Islands just ten days after they had been invaded. Argentinian naval operations in and around the immediate Falklands area virtually ceased. The Argentinians knew, as one submariner later put it, that ‘the only way to know for sure that there is a submarine is when one starts losing ships – and that’s a very expensive way to find out’.74 Lane-Nott and James Taylor remained concerned about the Argentinian Navy’s submarines. Although intelligence assessments suggested that at least one of Argentina’s ‘Guppy’ class submarines had been stuck in harbour for some time and was probably non-operational, other assessments indicated that by 18 April Argentina’s three remaining submarines had already been at sea for about a week, and although there were indications that both Type 209 submarines had problems with their periscopes and torpedo tubes, at least one was suspected of operating inside the MEZ, while there was some evidence that the Santa Fe had been dispatched to South Georgia.75
Lane-Nott started to prepare his crew for a possible engagement with either the San Luis or the Santa Fe as soon as Splendid arrived in the MEZ. He ordered two Tigerfish Mark 24 torpedoes loaded into Splendid’s nos. 3 and 4 tubes, which were then equalized and the bow caps opened. He also trained his crew hard. ‘So we trained and we trained and we trained and we trained attack teams, we trained different types of scenarios, it was constant,’ recounted Lane-Nott. ‘We had intelligence, we had recognition tests, we got the blokes to make models of the masts so that people knew what they could expect so see when on the periscope.’76 That training was put to the test almost immediately when Splendid’s Active Intercept sonar alarmed on precisely the frequency that a US-built ‘Guppy’ class submarine would use when transmitting on active sonar.
‘The immediate reaction was that we’ve got an Argentinean [sic] “Guppy” diesel submarine transmitting on active sonar on us, to get a range before he fires,’ said Lane-Nott. ‘We got a sort of bearing, but it wasn’t very good and we had pre-transmissions and it was exactly what you’d get in that situation. We went to action stations and the quiet state that was required, but I didn’t really have a bearing so I didn’t know where the hell the problem was coming from. Really I was waiting for the torpedo … I was just waiting for the torpedo. We were looking at all the things, we were shutting off for counter-attack, we were looking at what the best depth we should be at, where were we now, have the water conditions changed, all those things we were thinking about all the time, what’s your evasion depth, where do you go to? It was a very, very tense time, because we just didn’t know. So I change
d direction and changed depth a little bit, but I basically stayed where I was and tried to keep as quiet and alert as possible and damn me if it didn’t happen again. But we still didn’t have a bearing. This was a very crude system as it was then, as unless you get a very strong transmission it won’t give you a bearing, but the frequency was absolutely spot on. It was quite clear to me that we were in an attack situation and the ship’s company got the message as well.’77
Splendid’s crew spent the next fifteen minutes attempting to locate the source of the contact until someone realized that one of the submarine’s ballast pump hull valves was making exactly the same frequency as the Argentinian submarine and triggering the alarm. ‘Suddenly it became deadly serious,’ Lane-Nott went on. ‘They knew it before but it hadn’t been crystallized in their minds, “Bloody hell, we’re at war here” … everybody took it seriously.’78 Splendid’s crew had started to split into Hawks and Doves. ‘There were more Hawks than there were Doves,’ said Lane-Nott, ‘but there were certainly Doves and the Doves were very much the older Senior Rates, who didn’t like what all this was about, they hadn’t spent all their time in the Navy to be killed in the last five minutes.’79
As HMS Conqueror’s crew sailed towards South Georgia, they too reflected on the implications of what was to come. ‘I thought about it on the way down there,’ said Conqueror’s Chief Engine Room Artificer, Edward Hogben, ‘I mean, when you do patrols up north the Russians would deter you from staying there by dropping various bits of armament at you. That was to get you to go away. I thought, this time, these buggers want to kill us. But, if I go, I shall be going in good company and we’ll all go down together. Once you’ve got over that bit, I found it relatively simple to just get on with life. There’s no point screaming and making a fool of yourself. That would be embarrassing. So, you know, life was normal, as normal as it can be.’80
