The Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Sir Henry Leach, returned to his office in Whitehall from a visit to the Admiralty Surface Weapons Establishment at Portsdown Hill. He’d been forced to cancel the trip three times already because of complications arising from a Defence Review that he believed would decimate the Royal Navy. Waiting on his desk was an intelligence report that stated unequivocally that an Argentine invasion of the Falklands was likely to take place before dawn on Friday, 2 April. Accompanying it were a number of briefs counselling that no more should be done. Leach had joined the Navy as a thirteen-year-old cadet in 1937. A sailor of the engage-the-enemy-more-closely Nelsonian tradition, Leach found the contradictory signals baffling and nonsensical. What the hell is the point of having a Navy, he thought, if it was not used for this sort of thing?, and he strode off to find John Nott, his nemesis over the offending defence review. But the Defence Secretary wasn’t in his office. Alarmed by the same intelligence seen by Leach, he was already in the Prime Minister’s room in the House of Commons, briefing her on the situation. Leach was invited in. The Defence Chiefs normally conducted their business in Whitehall in civilian business suits. Uniform was reserved for when a point needed to be made, but, just back from an official visit, Leach was wearing his naval uniform. Coincidentally, he also had a point to make.
‘Admiral, what do you think?’ he was asked.
Leach was unstinting: everything suggested the islands would be invaded in the next few days. Nothing could now be done to deter the Argentinians and nothing could be done to stop them. To recover the islands or not was a political decision, but to do so would require a large naval task force. He went on to outline the ships that could make up the task force. Questions came quickly. How quickly could a task force be assembled? How long would the task force take to get to the Falkland Islands? What about air cover? Then came the one that really mattered.
‘Could we really recapture the islands if they were invaded?’
‘Yes,’ Leach answered deliberately, ‘we could and in my judgement – though it is not my business to say so – we should.’
‘Why do you say that?’ the Prime Minister came back quickly.
Leach finished with a flourish. ‘Because if we do not, or if we pussyfoot in our actions and do not achieve complete success, in another few months we shall be living in a different country whose word counts for little.’
Margaret Thatcher nodded and Leach thought she looked relieved. He left with orders to sail a third attack submarine south and with full authority to prepare a task force he’d said could be ready in forty-eight hours.
The Prime Minister turned to her Defence Secretary. ‘I suppose you realize, John,’ she said, ‘that this is going to be the worst week of our lives.’
‘Well, that may be so,’ Nott responded, ‘but I imagine that each successive week will be worse than the last,’ and felt immediately that his reply was less than helpful.
Back in his office at the MoD, Leach telephoned Sir Michael Beetham. The news of the Admiral’s decisive intervention caught Beetham on the back foot. Ideally, he and Leach would have spoken beforehand, but it was clear Leach’s action had been unplanned – a consequence of events developing a momentum of their own.
With the invasion now inevitable, Endurance was ordered to return from South Georgia to Stanley, leaving behind her force of twenty-two Royal Marines to defend the island should the Argentine mission – still operating under the cover of Davidoff’s scrap dealers – make its intention clear. Captain Barker was mindful of the odds stacked against the meagre contingent of Marines.
‘In three weeks’ time this place is going to be surrounded by tall grey ships, but we’re not going to be able to help you if you’re dead,’ Barker told Lieutenant Mills, the young officer in command of the soldiers. He went on to suggest that about half an hour’s spirited resistance before surrendering to overwhelming Argentine forces might be about right.
‘Fuck half an hour,’ Mills was overheard saying as he disembarked. ‘I’m going to make their eyes water.’
That night, ‘Red Plum’ slipped away from South Georgia to the east, hugging the jagged shoreline to avoid being picked up on Argentine radar.
Chapter 6
A 25lb gold-painted bomb enjoyed pride of place in Flight Lieutenant Mick Cooper’s house. Since he joined the Air Force, bombing had been his obsession. And he was good at it too. Throughout the 1970s Cooper’s reputation as a bomb-aimer had grown steadily. The bomb he now displayed at home had been blagged by his crew, a gift to mark Cooper’s outstanding performance in the RAF’s annual bombing competition against the Americans. Contemporary newspaper reports described Cooper, brought up in Essex, as a ‘cockney bombing ace’. By 1982, the chain-smoking Navigator Radar with the straggly red hair was, perhaps, the best in the business and that was all he ever wanted to be. His Captain on 50 Squadron reckoned the ‘Green Porridge’, the glowing cathode ray tube that displayed Cooper’s radar picture, spoke to him. The RAF may have regarded him as ‘overspecialized’, but so what. His job was to get the bomb on target. End of story. The Vulcan was simply transport, its sole purpose to get him to the right place to drop a nuclear bomb.
Cooper would tell people he regretted never having had the chance to do just that. It wasn’t Armageddon he was after, just the satisfaction of knowing he could do the job he’d been trained to do.
In spring 1982, though, with the Cold War reaching its endgame, the possibility that he’d get his chance felt very real. Brezhnev was still General Secretary of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union’s three-year-old invasion of Afghanistan provided a reminder of how high the stakes were – as if the vast armies, air forces and navies that faced each other, waiting for their opponent to blink, weren’t reminder enough. In Britain, the publication of Raymond Briggs’ graphic novel When the Wind Blows vividly reflected many people’s genuine fear. Just around the corner lay Ronald Reagan’s description of the USSR as the ‘Evil Empire’. And yet despite the ratcheting up of East–West tension, Cooper wasn’t going to get to do his job in a V-bomber. By summer, the last four Vulcan squadrons would be gone and RAF Waddington reduced to care and maintenance. On the far side of the station – an old Second World War bomber base built on fens south of Lincoln – decommissioned Vulcans were already being torn apart for scrap. Sitting unloved with panels missing and wires hanging off them, they were a sorry sight for long-serving crews who regarded the old jets with fondness.
Despite the destruction, morale on the station was still high. For the time being, Cold War notwithstanding, a flying club atmosphere persisted. Waddington had its own golf course and, of course, its own Officer i/c Golf. Work hard, play hard. Many of the men had been on the Vulcan force for years. Squadrons shuffled around and nearly everyone had been on the same squadron as nearly everyone else at some point in his career. With responsibility for Britain’s nuclear deterrent in the hands of the Navy, the crews usually had weekends off, so Friday night’s Happy Hour became a focal point. It usually carried on all night. Formal dining in the evening also provided opportunities to let off steam. And the sight of well-lubricated bomber crews performing ‘carrier landings’, launching themselves off tables through the windows of the Officers’ Mess, would have struck a chord with anyone who’d watched similar scenes of chaos in movies like The Dambusters. Boys will be boys.