The Silent Deep
Page 57
‘I found myself,’ recalls Lane-Nott, ‘in a situation where I had in one sweep of the periscope, within 14,000 yards, that’s seven miles, I had two Type 42 frigates, identified as Argentinian, and three A69 frigates. So effectively I had the sum total of the escort forces of the Argentinian Navy, all outside of the twelve-mile limit, all within one sweep of the periscope, all visual. I worked on the principle that if the carrier was going to come out, then this was their escort, there was no other escort, nobody else could do it. They weren’t doing anything in particular They were just wandering around, all within sight of each other, there was nothing structured about it. They weren’t using active sonar, they were doing very little transmitting on radio, there were very few people on deck. It was an extraordinary situation.’107
Lane-Nott was ‘euphoric’, but he was once again hampered by the Rules of Engagement, which did not permit him to sink enemy vessels. ‘The Rules of Engagement had started to become specific, you can sink this but you can’t sink that, you can attack this, but you can’t attack that, which I didn’t really understand. There didn’t seem to be much sense to it to me. If it was an Argentinian ship we should be sinking it. The whole idea was to put the fear of god into them with nuclear submarines, if you get out there, you get sunk and here we were, they were all within sight of the periscope and we didn’t have the [authority under the] Rules of Engagement.’ Lane-Nott was ‘absolutely convinced that if I stayed and shadowed this lot that sooner or later they would lead me to the carrier’.108 Splendid stuck with the three A69s and chased them southwest, and in the process discovered that the destroyers Comodoro Py and Hércules were patrolling nearby.
As Splendid continued to shadow the gathering Argentinian ships, in London the War Cabinet met to discuss a paper on ‘the military threat posed to our forces in the South Atlantic by the Argentinian aircraft carrier “25th of May” ’ and to formulate ‘options for eliminating that threat’. Lewin told the War Cabinet, OD(SA), that ‘Militarily the Argentine aircraft carrier could amount to such a [military] threat from virtually any position on the high seas; it would not always be known where she was, she was capable of covering 500 miles in a day, she could carry aircraft with an operating radius of a further 500 miles and the supply line for British forces was strung out between Ascension Island and the Falklands.’ The paper outlined that action against the carrier could be taken by surface ships, Harriers or submarines, but concluded that:
On balance, a SSN would give the greatest chance of success with the least prejudice to other operations. Following a torpedo attack from an SSN, the ‘25th of May’ should be disabled. It is possible that she might sink quickly, but this is unlikely given good damage control practices … If the carrier did sink, it is possible that a large proportion of her crew numbering 1,000 would have time to abandon ship with life rafts. Her escorting vessels should be able to pick up survivors.109
After considering the legal, military and political issues involved, OD(SA) agreed that ‘British forces should be authorized to attack the Argentinian aircraft carrier as soon as possible wherever she was on the high seas.’ No further warning need be given, but only if the carrier was north of latitude 35°S and west of longitude 48°W.110 ‘On the high seas’ was defined as outside the internationally recognized territorial waters limit of 12 nautical miles. The 200-nautical-mile Maritime Exclusion Zone was now redefined as a Total Exclusion Zone and Argentina was informed that:
Any ship and any aircraft, whether military or civil, which is found within this zone without due authority from the Ministry of Defence in London will be regarded as operating in support of the illegal occupation and will therefore be regarded as hostile.111
At that time intelligence indicated that the carrier was not heading towards Splendid’s position, but was in fact operating to the south. Northwood ordered Lane-Nott and Splendid to leave the escorts and go and search for it. Lane-Nott was furious. ‘There’s an old submarine adage, which I’ve certainly lived by: “attack what you see, not what you think might be there.” If you’ve got something in front of you, you attack what you see.’ He ‘turned a Nelsonian blind eye’ and ignored three or four of the broadcast routines in which the orders were transmitted, hoping that the carrier would appear and meet up with the escorts: ‘I just could not believe that after I’d sent that report and we were still in contact with them, that they were telling me to go somewhere else. I just couldn’t believe it. I refused to believe it effectively. I decided not to get into a slagging match. I decided first of all to ignore it and hope that by staying with them the carrier would suddenly appear over the horizon. It was twenty-odd hours by this stage. The weather was relatively balmy, there was a swell, but it wasn’t much of a sea and we were able to stay at periscope depth perfectly satisfactorily and keep track of these guys, and keep out of their way, and just move around and keep track of everything that was going on. I mean it seemed absolute nonsense to me to be leaving them for some intelligence report.’112
Eventually, Herbert sent Lane-Nott a personal signal that said, ‘I understand. Go now.’ But Lane-Nott was still not convinced. He talked it over with his First Lieutenant, and said: ‘I don’t like this at all. This goes against every principle of submarining, everything we’ve ever been taught about how we deal with the enemy, and deal with an attacking situation. This is totally against my instincts to leave what you see.’ But he had no choice. ‘Eventually I did break off, with great reluctance and a lot of bad grace from me,’ recalls Lane-Nott. But when Splendid arrived at the expected rendezvous point on the morning of 1 May it found nothing. ‘I was not a happy boy,’ he says. ‘And we started chasing shadows again.’113
The Argentinian aircraft carrier was, in fact, far further northeast than expected. At 2307Z on 1 May, the Argentinian Operational Commander, Rear Admiral Jorge Allara, issued orders to prepare for an all-out attack. He ordered the carrier group to deploy to a safe position, locate the British Task Force and launch an air attack at first light. He also ordered his second task group to deploy south of the Exclusion Zone, into a position to attack any British warships that attempted to flee the carrier attack. The third task group, consisting of the Belgrano and two escorting destroyers, was ordered south to Burdwood Bank, in order to deal with any British vessels operating to the south of the Falklands, using the destroyers’ deadly Exocet missiles.114 At 0113Z on 2 May, the Argentinian Chief of Naval Operations, Vice Admiral Juan José Lombardo, sent a further signal to Argentinian units ordering them to close on the Task Force and attack. This information was eventually communicated to Spartan and Splendid, but by the time they received it they were over 100 miles away from the supposed location of the carrier.115 Taylor wrote of an ‘Indication of a lunge to the SE by enemy CV [Carrier] group, which then withdrew to own coastal waters. Sprinted to intercept, but no interaction.’116 Splendid also attempted to intercept, but like Spartan failed to locate the carrier.
With the carrier still eluding the Task Force, Woodward hoped that Conqueror, which was operating in the south, would have more luck locating the Belgrano:
My hope was to keep Conqueror in close touch with the Belgrano group to the south, to shadow the carrier and her escorts to the north with one of the S Boats up there. Upon word from London, I would expect to make our presence felt, preferably by removing the carrier, and almost as important the aircraft she carried, from the Argentinian Order of Battle.117
On 29 April, Chris Wreford-Brown in HMS Conqueror received orders to locate the Belgrano group and was told of its possible location. She began to head towards it. The next day, Woodward was given permission to proceed inside the Total Exclusion Zone and to start the process of recapturing the Falkland Islands. The same day, Conqueror was given permission to attack the Belgrano group, but only if it was within the Total Exclusion Zone. On 1 May, Conqueror located the Belgrano and its escorts. ‘A good day – in contact with the Enemy at last!’ wrote Wreford-Brown.118 But the Belgrano was outside the Exc
lusion Zone. Conqueror could not attack it.
Woodward now had a problem, as Freedman has explained. ‘To the north he had permission to attack the carrier but no contact, while to the south he had a contact with no permission.’119 Woodward was convinced that his carriers were about to become victims of a classic pincer movement. With both ‘S’ boats struggling to find the carrier, Woodward launched his Sea Harriers to investigate reports that the radar of an Argentinian S-2E Tracker (ASW carrier-launched aircraft, used by the Argentinian Navy) coming from the northwest had been detected by the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible and the destroyer HMS Coventry. At 0330 on 2 May, one of the Harrier pilots reported that he had found several radar contacts, indicating a group of four or five ships, including what could have been the carrier, 200 miles to the northwest. Woodward concluded that ‘We could expect a swift thirty-bomber attack on Hermes and Invincible at first light … he might also have Exocet-armed Super Etendards to add to our problems.’ Once the Belgrano was factored into the equation, Woodward quickly reached ‘the worst possible case … Belgrano and her escorts could now set off towards us and, steaming through the dark, launch an Exocet attack on us from one direction just as we were preparing to receive a missile and bomb strike from the other.’120 Woodward knew that the Belgrano was approaching the Burdwood Bank, an area of shallow water that would have made it difficult for Conqueror to continue to shadow her:
Deep down, I believe she would continue to creep along the back of the Bank, and then when she is informed that the carrier is ready to launch her air strike, she will angle in, on a north-easterly course, and make straight for us, the Exocets on her destroyers trained on us as soon as they are within striking range. I badly need Conqueror to sink her before she turns away from her present course, because if we wait for her to enter the Zone, we may well lose her, very quickly.121
Withdrawal was out of the question; such action was, Woodward said, ‘scarcely in the traditions of the Royal Navy’. There was only one option remaining. ‘I cannot let that cruiser even stay where she is, regardless of her present course or speed. Whether she is inside or outside the TEZ is irrelevant. She will have to go.’122
SINK THE BELGRANO
Without a change in the Rules of Engagement, Woodward could not order Conqueror to sink the Belgrano. In order to provoke the Government into a quick decision Woodward exceeded his designated authority and directly ordered Conqueror to sink the cruiser. On board HMS Hermes, Jeff Tall was responsible for communicating the order to Conqueror: ‘I said to him, “Well, you haven’t got the ROE, Admiral.” And he [Woodward] said, “Are you disobeying an order?” It was getting serious. I said, “No.” ’ Tall sent Conqueror, ‘From CTG 317.8 to Conqueror, text priority flash – attack Belgrano group’ but he delayed sending the signal by four minutes so that Conqueror would not receive it on the scheduled 0600 broadcast to submarines.123 Woodward was confident that Herbert, his former Commander in HMS Valiant, would intercept the signal and ‘would know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that I must be deadly serious.’ Woodward hoped that the signal would get as far as the Commander-in-Chief, Sir John Fieldhouse, and that ‘he would personally recommend that it should be left to run, given the urgency of my message, while he negotiated with the MOD and the Cabinet’. I had quite clearly exceeded my authority by altering the ROE of a British submarine to allow it to attack an Argentinian ship well outside the TEZ,’ wrote Woodward.
Such a breach of Naval discipline can imply only two things – either Woodward has gone off his head, or Woodward knows exactly what he is doing and is in a very great hurry. I rather hoped they would trust my sanity, particularly because there is always another aspect to such a set of circumstances – that is, should the politicians consider it impossible for the international community to approve the sinking of a big cruiser, with possible subsequent great loss of life, I had given them the opportunity to let it run and then blame me, should that prove convenient.124
As soon as Herbert saw Woodward’s signal appear on the SSIXS satellite he immediately removed it in order to stop Conqueror downloading it. ‘I was in the Ops Room in Northwood,’ recalls Herbert, ‘and was very, very cross. I took it off the broadcast, obviously it had to go right up to the Prime Minister.’125 Herbert passed Woodward’s intercepted order to Lewin, who at 1045 assembled a meeting of the Chiefs of Staff, who quickly agreed to ask the War Cabinet to extend the altered Rules of Engagement permitting attack of the carrier to all Argentinian warships (not auxiliaries) operating outside the TEZ.126 An ad hoc meeting of the War Cabinet then convened at 1245 at the Prime Minister’s country retreat, Chequers. There, Mrs Thatcher, Whitelaw, Nott, Parkinson, Havers, Admiral Lewin and the Force Commander and the Permanent Under-Secretary, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, were all briefed on the latest developments. Mrs Thatcher’s memoirs offer the most vivid account of the meeting:
Admiral Fieldhouse told us that one of our submarines, HMS Conqueror, had been shadowing the Argentine cruiser, General Belgrano. The Belgrano was escorted by two destroyers. The cruiser itself had substantial fire power provided by 6 inch guns with a range of 13 miles and anti-aircraft missiles. We were advised that she might have been fitted with Exocet anti-ship missiles, and her two destroyer escorts were known to be carrying them. The whole group was sailing on the edge of the Exclusion Zone. We had received intelligence about the aggressive intentions of the Argentine fleet. There had been extensive air attacks on our ships the previous day and Admiral Woodward, in command of the Task Force, had every reason to believe that a full scale attack was developing. The Argentinian aircraft carrier, the 25 de Mayo, had been sighted some time earlier and we had agreed to change the rules of engagement to deal with the threat she posed. However, our submarine had lost contact with the carrier, which had slipped past it to the North. There was a strong possibility that Conqueror might also lose contact with the Belgrano group. Admiral Woodward had to come to a judgment about what to do with the Belgrano in the light of these circumstances. From all the information available, he concluded that the carrier and the Belgrano group were engaged in a classic pincer movement against the Task Force. It was clear to me what must be done to protect our forces, in the light of Admiral Woodward’s concern and Admiral Fieldhouse’s advice. We therefore decided that British forces should be able to attack any Argentine naval vessel on the same basis as agreed previously for the carrier.127
For the War Cabinet, it was a straightforward decision. As Nott later wrote, ‘The military decisions on the rules of engagement were easy and the Belgrano was the easiest of the lot.’128
As soon as the decision had been taken, one of the officials in the meeting, Robert Wade-Gery, immediately rang up Northwood and said: ‘Sink it.’ When he asked: ‘Do you want that confirmed in writing?’ The answer was ‘No. There won’t be time. They’ll have sunk it by the time it arrives.’129 The MOD signalled CINCFLEET with the change in ROE at 1207Z and within half an hour Herbert was transmitting the new orders to his SSNs.
Back in the South Atlantic, Conqueror was still trailing the Belgrano. Wreford-Brown had at least some idea of what was going on back in London:
During quiet moments, as I lay on my bunk in my cabin, I considered the next moves. We were the first submarine to maintain contact with enemy units and although the rules of engagement in force did not allow me to attack, I was in no doubt that those back in the UK would realise the tactical implications of what we were doing and form the conclusion that it would be militarily sensible to engage these enemy units before they threatened our task force.130
Conqueror was carrying two different types of torpedoes. The first was the Mark 8, which dated from the Second World War (see here). It was accurate at close ranges, was reliable and had a sizeable warhead more than powerful enough to penetrate the hull of the Second World War vintage Belgrano. Conqueror also carried the more modern wire-guided Mark 24 Tigerfish torpedo, but, as we have seen, the torpedo had many weaknesses and its unreliability, p
articularly its repeated control wire breaks, were a cause for concern. Indeed, Lane-Nott on Splendid had received a number of signals from Northwood about ‘several problems’ with the Tigerfish torpedoes, one of which was later diagnosed as a propulsion battery defect.131 He had little ‘Faith in the Weapons’.132 After consulting his officers, Wreford-Brown decided that if he received orders to sink the Belgrano, he would do it with the old Mark 8 torpedoes. ‘It was not a long debate,’ recalled Powis.133
The order to sink the Belgrano arrived late in the afternoon on 2 May. In order to maintain radio contact with the UK, Conqueror’s radio mast had to be raised while travelling at slow speed at periscope depth. This was incompatible with maintaining a relative position and trail of the Belgrano. Conqueror’s communications also continued to cause problems and although it quickly became apparent that the ROE had changed, how exactly they had changed remained unclear. Conqueror’s second-in-command, Tim McClement, was forced to piece together message fragments from seven different copies of the signal. ‘I got it all together and said: “I can prove that you have got it” because there’s overlap here and there’s overlap there and I’ve typed it out for you here,’ recalls McClement. ‘It took me about an hour, but there it was.’134 Conqueror had permission to sink the Belgrano. McClement was relieved. ‘It felt like a logical thing to do,’ he said.135 Wreford-Brown checked himself and then got the Navigator to recheck. By 1710Z he was satisfied that he had authority to attack. ‘Traffic now received. COR [Coded Order] 177 gives me permission to Attack,’ he wrote in Conqueror’s log. ‘Delay due to confusion in that COR 174 cancelled an instruction (not received) from CTG 317.8 to attack the Cruiser. DTG of COR 177 not initially received and so awaited reruns to be absolutely certain.’136 ‘I have ROE to attack,’ he continued. ‘Aim now is to close TG 79.3 and then work into a firing position. Preferred weapon MK 8 Mod 4. If a good attacking position cannot be achieved because of the Escorts, then I shall use MK 24.’137