Authors: Patrick Robinson
Meanwhile, the two flights of Skyhawks were clear of the Falkland Islands and headed at wave-top height toward the Battle Group, making in excess of six hundred knots. The frigates
Kent
and
Grafton
were
still about two miles short of the disaster area, with the
St. Albans
and
Iron Duke
farther to the left, and about three miles astern of the other two.
The four lead Skyhawks cleared the horizon and could now see the blazing destroyers, but their targets were two miles back, and all four of the Argentinian fighters unleashed their thousand-pound bombs straight at the
Kent
and
Grafton
.
Both frigates acquired and opened fire with their Seawolf missile systems. They hit the first two Skyhawks, missed the others, and attempted to swing around to the right.
The
Grafton
was not in time and took two bombs hard on her port beam, both of which smashed into the interior of the ship, detonated, and blew apart the ops room, the comms room, and the engine room, killing thirty-two men and wounding forty. The ship was crippled. In fact she would never sail again. Like the
Daring
, like the
Dauntless
, she was on her way to the bottom.
Much luckier was Captain Mike Fawkes’s
Kent.
She swung around fractionally faster, and while two of the bombs sailed right past, two of them came screaming over the top, fifty feet above the upperworks.
The second four Skyhawks now cleared the horizon, and the first ships they saw were the two frigates in the rear, Captain Colin Ashby’s
St. Albans
and Commander Keith Kemsley’s
Iron Duke.
The very sharp, short-range Seawolf systems in both frigates locked on immediately, and both ops rooms had the missiles away in a matter of seconds. But again not before the iron bombs were released. And there was absolutely nothing the Royal Navy Commanders could do. The first two smashed into the
St. Albans
, one through the port-side bow, one amidships. The second two, on the rise, slammed down the communications tower and blasted the radar away from the
Iron Duke.
The carnage in the
St. Albans
was truly shocking. Forty-seven men were killed instantly. Somehow the Captain survived, perhaps protected from the blast by his own high, television-style screen. But the ops room was on fire and three other survivors helped Captain Ashby to get out, leaving behind them a scene from hell as the bodies of the computer and missile operators burned.
The missiles from the two ships knocked down two more Skyhawks.
The trouble was, without a squadron of Harriers, there was no early air defense from a high CAP, and no early warnings from the Harrier pilots. As General Sir Robin Brenchley had warned the Prime Minister not so very long ago in the small hours of a February morning in Downing Street, the loss of the Harrier FA2s represented the loss of the Royal Navy Fleet’s ability to defend itself.
And with a total of six warships ablaze in the south Atlantic—four of them sinking—and at least 250 men killed and even more wounded, many of them badly burned…well, this was a catastrophe that had, perhaps, been very well foreseen by the Navy, but totally ignored by their political masters.
Eight miles astern of the wrecked warships, Captain Vanislav came to PD for his final visual. HMS
Ark Royal
was less than four miles away, moving slowly, her starboard beam exposed to the submarine’s line of sight.
The CO prepared to fire. He would launch his big TEST torpedoes quietly at thirty knots, running in toward the carrier, staying passive all the way.
0725:
“Stand by, one!”
“Last bearing check.”
“Shoot!”
The Russian torpedo came powering out of the tube, seemed to pause for a split-second as her engine fired, and then went whining off into the dark waters.
“Weapon under guidance.”
“Arm the weapon.”
“Weapon armed, sir.”
Ninety seconds to go. “Weapon now one thousand meters from target, sir.”
“Weapon has passive contact.”
At that moment
Viper K-157
fired her second torpedo, and within seconds it too was streaking straight at the massive starboard hull of the carrier.
With the lead weapon only eight hundred yards out,
Viper
’s third torpedo was under way, and at this precise time the sonar men inside the
Ark Royal
picked up the incoming ship-killers. At least they picked up one of them…
Admiral—sonar…Torpedo! Torpedo! Torpedo! Bearing green zero-zero-four…Really close, sir, really close!
That meant about five hundred yards, which put the lead torpedo about thirty seconds from impact, directly off the beam. It was out of the question to fire back—the old 20,000-ton carrier was simply not built for close combat of this type.
Someone bellowed,
“Decoys!”
But that was at least two minutes too late. The Combat Systems Officer alerted all Task Force ships still floating that the flag was under attack, along with everyone else. But he never even had time to yell,
“Unknown submarine!”
before the big TEST-7IME Russian torpedo slammed into the hull amidships and blew up with stupendous force.
The second torpedo struck home farther forward, and the last one almost blew off the entire stern area, fracturing both shafts, rupturing the flight deck, blasting four helicopters over the side. It was a classic submarine attack, conducted with the utmost stealth, and executed with total brutality. When Captain Vanislav came to PD for the last time, what he saw in those seven seconds would remain with him for however long he lived.
Gregor Vanislav could see the aircraft carrier was ripped almost in two, her back broken by the blast of the first torpedo, the entire stern of the ship sagging back into the water. And even as he watched, a huge fire suddenly broke out right below the island, the big chunky superstructure on one side of the flight deck.
The immediate inferno was almost certainly caused by a ruptured aircraft fuel line, and now Captain Vanislav could see British seamen jumping from the flight deck into the ocean, their clothes on fire. It reminded him of the gruesome pictures from the World Trade Center disaster in New York ten years ago. Surely none of the one-thousand-strong crew, save those working high in the tower, could possibly have survived.
The huge warship was swiftly ablaze from end to end, but the fires would not be long lasting, since the ship was also sinking. For the moment, however, the only part not burning was the upper floor of the island, where presumably the Admiral and the Captain were still alive. The
Ark Royal
, now with thousands of gallons of jet fuel blazing, was an inferno, and Captain Vanislav, a very senior Russian career naval officer, almost went into shock at the catastrophe he had caused.
The only thought in his mind was a feeling of profound regret, and a realization that if he could live the last ten minutes over again, he would not have done it. Because, knowing the reality as he now did, he would have been incapable of committing this act upon a British ship that, so far as he knew, wished him no harm. Captain Vanislav ordered his ship deep again, and with a surprisingly heavy heart, accepted that his grotesque mission was accomplished. He turned north for Mother Russia.
Meanwhile, on board the carrier, Admiral Holbrook was still alive, but the heat was becoming too intense. He and Captain Reader were together until the last, knowing, as the flames leapt toward their quarters high above the flight deck, their only chance was to jump, before they were burned to death.
That was like leaping from the George Washington Bridge. But others had done it. There was no other way down, except to walk down the companionway into the flames, and there was no time to wait for helicopter rescue, even if that were possible.
The two senior officers walked outside and climbed to the platform area above the Admiral’s ops room. They were both still wearing their life jackets and antiflash gear, hoods and gloves, and they stood there in the stifling smoke as the great ship, now in her death throes, suddenly lurched violently, thirty degrees to starboard. This reduced the distance down to the water, but confirmed the inevitability that the
Ark Royal
was sinking. The GR9s, mostly in flames, were slewing across the flight deck and falling overboard.
So far as the two officers could tell, there was no enemy in sight. And the rails were growing hot, almost too hot to hold, and they just stood there, until Captain Reader said quietly, “We never had a chance, did we?”
“No, David, we never did. And I’m not sure we’ll ever know what hit us.”
Ten seconds later, as the ship listed even farther, they both jumped, and hit the water, now forty-five feet below, feetfirst. Both men miraculously survived the fall, but not the almost-freezing water. When the destroyers moved in to pick up survivors two hours later, both senior officers were found floating, but no longer alive.
Anyone in water that cold has approximately two minutes to live,
which meant there were no survivors from the crew of the Royal Navy carrier. Historians would in future regard it as the greatest single Royal Naval disaster since the old 41,000-ton battle cruiser HMS
Hood
was sunk by the
Bismarck
in the Denmark Strait seventy years earlier. Fourteen hundred and twenty men were lost that day, but even the
Hood
had three survivors.
It rapidly became apparent to all the British officers the flagship had been hit and almost certainly destroyed. Captain Mike Fawkes, on the bridge of the amazingly lucky frigate HMS
Kent
, now assumed command of the remnants of the fleet.
But there was not much left, and the rescue operation was by now the most colossal task. No one knew what was happening on the landing beaches. It was obvious the Army must now be devoid of any air cover whatsoever, and their situation, exposed on the shores of Lafonia, must be critical.
In fact, during the final moments before
Viper
fired her salvo, two of the GR9s did get off the deck and were making their way toward Lafonia, when the ops room in the frigate
Kent
informed them of the disaster to the carrier. This, of course, left the British pilots stranded with nowhere to land.
They both made a swing around the southeastern coast of East Falkland and came in over the landing beaches, where they ejected, sending their aircraft forward to ditch in the Atlantic. This avoided the possibility of Argentina claiming them as the spoils of war, which would most certainly have happened if the aircrew had requested permission to land at Mount Pleasant.
Both pilots survived the landing, right behind the beach, but they quickly understood this was no place to be. Four minutes after their arrival, two Argentine bombers came in low and hit the assault ship
Albion
, which had mercifully unloaded its Marines.
Then two more fighter attack aircraft came in low and strafed the beach, firing four rockets in among the parked Apache attack helicopters. Then another bomber came in and hit the
Largs Bay
with a thousand-pound bomb. The British Army, like the Navy, was a sitting duck before the onslaught of Argentine bombs. And there was no Harrier CAP to protect them from air attack.
The success of those opening raids on the Lafonia enclave was en
tirely due to the brilliance of Admiral Oscar Moreno and his Army counterpart, General Eduardo Kampf. They had guessed, correctly, that the marine battalions that had landed during the night would immediately set up a missile shield against attack from the Argentine joint force land base at Mount Pleasant, fifteen miles to the north, across Choiseul Sound.
And this they had already accomplished. The big Chinooks, landed from HMS
Ocean
, had been ferrying the Rapier batteries into the rolling hills to the west of Seal Cove. From there they were well placed to down any incoming Argentine jet fighter or attack helicopter flying in low from the north after takeoff from Mount Pleasant. It had taken them several hours to install, and the 2,700 landed troops all felt considerably safer.
But both Admiral Moreno and General Kampf had fought and lost in the 1982 conflict. And both of them clung, in their own minds, to the rare Argentine successes against the invading Brits.
One of these had been conducted by three Skyhawks, bombing the British landing ships
Sir Tristam
and
Sir Galahad
as they lay at anchor in Port Pleasant Bay. The key to this successful attack was that the Skyhawks came in from the open ocean, and then streaked straight up the bay and unleashed their bombs, which killed fifty still embarked soldiers, and decimated the First Battalion Welsh Guards.
Admiral Moreno understood this monstrous chess game, and he knew the answer was to come in from out of the Atlantic from the southeast, away from the British Rapier missile defense. He was accurate in his assessment, and once again the British landing ships, stationary in calm waters, were sitting ducks.