Ghost Force

ocean.

A clear and moonlit night followed the temporary departure of the fog, and at 1950 the assault force steamed away from the warships that would ultimately fight the battle. Captain John Farmer, on the bridge of the Ocean, had the Albion and the Largs Bay line astern as they moved north through the dark, making twenty knots in a long rising sea, a cold southwesterly gusting in off their port quarter.

The guided-missile frigate Richmond, under the command of Captain David Neave, accompanied them, acting as goalkeeper out to the left, just in case they were spotted at first light and needed missile cover against incoming Argentinian Super-Etendards.

The voyage itself was uneventful. The ships traveled with very few lights, and within four hours were within reach of the landing beaches, where Lt. Jim Perry and his men awaited them. The Ocean's comms room had been in contact for the previous half hour and details of the landing area were now with the amphibious commanders.

By midnight the three ships were in position to unload their cargoes, while Captain Neave stood guard, facing westward in the ops room of the Richmond. The frigate, its missile radar on high alert, was steaming at only three knots in approximately six fathoms of water, in the middle of Low Bay, which is fourteen miles wide at its seaward end.

At five minutes past midnight, the huge stern doors of the Largs Bay were lowered and the first of the landing craft, packed with Marines, began to float out. And one by one they made their way to the bay on the south shore of the desolate Lafonia Peninsula, where Jim Perry's SBS men were waiting to signal them in through the shallows.

Back on the Burdwood Bank, at precisely this time, the picket ships were lining up to leave on their four-hour journey to their lonely outpost. And none of their commanding officers were especially looking forward to the experience. They were, they knew, the chosen few, because in the Royal Navy, you're not really grown-up until you have commanded a picket ship, out there on your own, not really covered by the weapons system of the rest of the force.

In fact, with a Battle Group stretched as tightly as this one, you were principally covered by your fellow picket ships.

By definition, the picket ship operates in solitary waters, and it's always quiet, and it seems peaceful. But no one really enjoys it because, historically, the picket ships are the very first to get sunk by the enemy. The simple truth is, they are deliberately placed in harm's way, a strategy of which the opposition is well aware.

For the attacking force, the idea is to take one of the pickets out, thus punching a gaping hole in the defenses through which to drive a main attack.

Both British Type-45 commanding officers knew this perfectly well. And it was an extremely thoughtful Captain Rowdy Yates who had HMS Daring under way first on that moonlit night, in the somber hours that would almost certainly herald the dawn of the second Battle for the Falkland Islands.

He would continue to position his ship way out to the right, more than twenty miles up-threat from the aircraft carrier. HMS Gloucester, commanded by Captain Colin Day, would occupy waters a similar distance but far out to the left. Commander Norman Hall's Dauntless would occupy the center.

They made their way off the bank line astern, all three commanding officers on the bridge, staying busy, trying to fight to the back of their minds any fears inspired by the brutal reality of this particular Friday night. In all three of the ships, the long-range air-warning radars were already on high alert.

Three decks below in the ops room, everyone was already at battle stations, dressed in full antiflash gear, the yellowish cotton head masks and gloves designed to prevent skin from instant burning from the sudden flash- fire explosion caused by an incoming bomb, shell, or missile.

In grim contrast to the bright starlit night outside on the water, the ops room was a sinister place, a half-lit scene from a sci-fi movie, the amber lights from the computer consoles casting an eerie glow, the quiet watch keepers making terse comments into pencil-slim microphones, the keyboards chattering in the background.

The Principal Warfare Officers, so highly trained, so utterly certain of their tasks, were always standing, moving, quietly watching everything and everyone. The supervisors were walking softly behind the young operators, checking, double-checking, ready with a word of encouragement.

And every time the ship hit a wave, with that dull, majestic thump it always makes on the hull of a warship, many, many hearts beat just that fraction faster.

No sooner had the three destroyers cleared the Burdwood Bank than Admiral Holbrook's second line of defense was also under way. Two newer Type-42 destroyers, the Batch Threes, York and Edinburgh, had arrived in the middle of the foggy night on Thursday. And now they would continue their long-held defensive formation in the center of the second line, flanked by the frigates from the Fourth Duke-class squadron, Kent, Grafton, St. Albans, and Iron Duke, some five miles up-threat from the Ark Royal.

Between the carrier and the frigates, Admiral Holbrook placed three ships from the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, principally to add confusion to the enemy radar. The Ark Royal would be positioned astern of these, accompanied by her goalkeeper, Westminster, the no-nonsense missile frigate commanded by the austere and able Commander Tom Betts.

By some miracle, the Navy had completed the work on both the Lancaster and Marlborough in Portsmouth, and both of them arrived in one piece on Friday afternoon. They would operate around the coast to the north, specifically trying to get rid of any Argentine warships in the area and launch naval missile and shell attacks on any new Argentinian positions at that end of the island.

The most impressive arrival of all, however, was that of P and O's huge ocean cruise liner the Adelaide, which had been ordered to abandon her next journey to the Caribbean and get to Portsmouth for instant conversion into a troop carrier. She had arrived on Thursday, from out of the eastern Atlantic, bearing 7,000 troops, her decks shored up to stand the enormous weight of men, equipment, and ordnance. Her galleys were now filled with rather more basic fare than the rich gourmet de luxe to which her cooks and steward were accustomed.

As colossally useful as she was, the Adelaide was a bit of a problem. She had totally inadequate damage-control and firefighting arrangements, and she was essentially, just as her sister ship the Canberra had been in 1982, in the words of Admiral Woodward, 'a bloody great bonfire awaiting a light.'

Admiral Holbrook intended to unload her massive cargo of men and materiel, hopefully into other ships, as soon as it was humanly possible to undertake such a formidable cross-decking operation.

Meanwhile, the warships were on their way to the Admiral's designated position four hundred miles east of Burdwood, well out of Argentinian air range. The Ark Royal brought up the rear with her goalkeeper, Westminster. Both ships were largely dependent on the accuracy of the new improved Seawolf missile system carried by the frigate. Commander Betts described it as 'amply competent to knock any Argentine fighter-bomber clean out of the sky, just so long as the chaps are paying proper attention.' That was Betts. No nonsense.

0300, SATURDAY, APRIL 16

RIO GRAND AIR BASE

TIERRA DEL FUEGO

Argentina's Aviation Force Two, the Second Naval Air Wing, in concert with the Second Naval Attack Squadron, had virtually evacuated from Bahia Blanca, the sprawling air station that sits at the head of a deep bay 350 miles southwest of Buenos Aires, sharing its geographic prominence with Puerto Belgrano, the largest naval base in the country.

These two bastions of Argentina's air and sea power are situated exactly where the South American coastline swings inward, and begins to narrow down, running south-southwest, 1,200 miles all the way to the great hook of its granite southerly point of Cape Horn.

The fighter aircraft from Bahia Blanca had been flown a thousand miles south to Rio Grande, the mainland base from which Argentina would conduct its defense of its newest territory, Islas Malvinas, which lay 440 miles to the east.