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The Falklands War was the first time the Royal Navy had faced an opponent with modern aircraft and weaponry since the end of the Second World War, and was notable for the loss of one Argentinian and seven major British ships during the short duration of the conflict.
One theme of the first two losses is that neither ship’s crew was entirely ready for wartime conditions. On both the Belgrano and the Sheffield the crews were altogether too relaxed for a combat situation. The Belgrano wasn’t zig-zagging when attacked, making her a far too easy target for a submarine. On the Sheffield the crew weren’t at action stations, several members of staff had left the operations room at the time of the attack and no chaff was fired. However some of the blame belongs further up the chain – when a raid had been reported by Glasgow the responsible officer on Invincible refused to pass it on because he believed it was false.
A second lesson that emerges is the danger of assuming what type of war you might have to fight in the future. In the years before the Falksland War the British military had assumed that it wouldn’t have to carry out opposed amphibious landings. This had several dangerous consequences. First, the training for amphibious operations that did occur assumed that British forces would be landing on a friendly shore, so officers had little training in opposed landings. This stands out most in the loss of Sir Galahad, which was sent to carry out a landing at a vulnerable location, without significant air cover and with no naval cover. She was stationary for several hours before the Argentinian attack, plenty of time to get the Welsh Guards off the ship if the proper levels of urgency had been applied. Second was that British anti-aircraft weapons and radar weren’t really suitable for operations close to land, where enemy aircraft could take advantage of the terrain to approach close to the fleet without being detected. In the Navy’s defence the Falklands War was only the second major naval conflict since the Second World War (first being the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971), and the demands of the Cold War had been dominant since the 1950s.
It is clear in other areas that the shock of active combat had a big impact on both sides. No British warship had suffered large scale damage in a military action since the Second World War, and the Navy hadn’t been involved in a significant conflict since the Korean War. As a result even the most senior officers had no wartime command experience, and the vast majority of the crews will only have known peacetime conditions, with their regular round of well regulated exercises. We see this in the loss of control that happened on several ships after they were damaged, with HMS Ardent probably being lost only because she was abandoned too quickly. It is telling that only the Belgrano and Coventry chapters are entitled the ‘Sinking of’, while the others are the ‘Loss of’, indicating that the ships had stayed afloat for some time after being damaged. Damage control efforts were pretty variable, with plenty of examples of individual bravery, but the post-loss inquiries often conclude that shock led to a reduction in the quality of decision making, and in some cases to the near total loss of control over damage control. It is also noteworthy that many of these criticisms came from official Royal Navy inquiries held soon after the event, and in some cases lessons were learnt quickly enough to be implemented during the conflict.
It is also worth noting that the determination and skill of the Argentinian pilots played a big part in many of the losses, with pilots pressing home attacks into well defended waters, even after seeing other aircraft shot down. Another noteworthy point is that the Argentinian naval officers associated with the Belgrano were all aware she was an entire valid target for British attack, and considered her loss to be an entirely valid wartime incident – they were armed and ready to fight, and expected their opponents to be the same. It is also worth noting that Argentinia had been warned before the sinking that all of their warships, even outside the exclusion zone, were considered valid targets.
This is an excellent look at the loss of these warships, helping to explain why the Falklands War was so costly for the Royal Navy, with modern weapons being used against targets that were often in vulnerable positions. Also shows the amount of damage even a single bomb could do to, even to some very modern warships for the period.
Chapters
1 – Going to War
2 – The Sinking of ARA General Belgrano
3 – The Loss of HMS Sheffield
4 – The Loss of HMS Ardent
5 – The Loss of HMS Antelope
6 – The Sinking of HMS Coventry
7 – The Loss of SS Atlantic Conveyor
8 – The Loss of RFA Sir Galahad
9 – Lessons from the Conflict
Author: Paul Brown
Edition: Hardcover
Pages: 320
Publisher: Osprey
Year: 2021