Tag Archives: Argentina
Clear evidence of French culpability in Argentine Exocet attacks on HMS Sheffield and Atlantic Conveyor
A “must listen” BBC documentary uncovering clear culpability of the French government and (state-owned) defence contractor Dassault in Argentine Exocet attacks on HMS Sheffield and Atlantic Conveyor.
Document – French Involvement in the Falklands War
Mike Thomson returns with Radio 4’s investigative history series, examining documents which shed new light on past events.
In the first programme of the new series, Mike investigates the role played by the French Government and defence industry during the Falklands War.
30 years on, it’s well documented that French President Francois Mitterrand was supportive of the British war effort – not least in the memoirs of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Yet Mike discovers papers which suggest there was a deep split within the French government.
BBC Radio 4
Producer: Laurence Grissell
Original broadcast date: 05/03/2012
28-minutes
PANAMAX 2013 multinational exercise begins
France? Where does France fit into the Monroe Doctrine? An exception made for le centre spatial guyanais, no doubt.
Britain (cricketers from Guyana notwithstanding) was apparently not invited. Argentine shirtiness, no doubt.
US, Partner Nations Kick Off PANAMAX 2013
US, Partner Nations Kick Off PANAMAX 2013
Approximately 160 military personnel, including Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command/U.S. 4th Fleet, Rear Adm. Sinclair Harris, and personnel from 19 nations arrived at U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) headquarters Aug. 12 to begin exercise PANAMAX 2013.
U.S. and partner nations train in the execution of stability operations under the support of United Nations Security Council Resolutions; provide interoperability training for the participating multinational staffs; and build participating nation capability to plan and execute complex multinational operations.
This year’s annual PANAMAX exercise develops and sustains relationships that improve the capacity of the nation’s emerging and enduring partners’ security forces to achieve common desired goals, while fostering friendly cooperation and understanding among participating forces.
During the exercise, Harris will act as the commander of Multinational Forces South.
”The governments of the countries participating in PANAMAX share common interests and this exercise enhances those links by fostering friendly, mutual cooperation and understanding between participating militaries,” Harris said. “This multinational exercise also contributes to interoperability, and builds the capabilities of the participating nations to plan and execute complex multinational operations.”
PANAMAX 2013 is a U.S.-sponsored, multinational annual exercise that, this year, includes participants from Argentina, Belize, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and the United States.
The exercise will conclude Aug. 16.
http://navaltoday.com/2013/08/13/us-partner-nations-kick-off-panamax-2013/
Moving HMS Plymouth to the Devonport Museum
Granted, you can’t save every old warship as a museum. That would be impractical, expensive, wasteful and undesirable. However, there are certain vessels that simply must be preserved – those that took part in great historic events, particularly vessels that are “the last of their kind,” and those that would serve as a lasting tribute to the men and women who served in the nation’s conflicts. HMS Plymouth is one of those ships.
HMS Plymouth ‘should return to dockyard’
THE veteran warship HMS Plymouth should return to her birthplace at Devonport Dockyard, a campaigner believes.
HMS Plymouth is the last surviving warship from the 1982 Falklands War.
HMS Plymouth moored on Merseyside
She was launched in Devonport in 1959 and decommissioned in 1988.
The ship is moored at Vittoria Dock in Birkenhead, after the collapse of the Warship Preservation Trust, which ran her as a floating museum until 2006.
Laurence Sharpe-Stevens, the director of the HMS Plymouth Trust, announced last year that he had found a berth for HMS Plymouth in the North East of England.
But this week he said that his preferred choice was Plymouth, where she could be turned into a museum and a training ship.
Mr Sharpe-Stevens said he believed the Ministry of Defence would release three docks at Devonport’s South Yard to Plymouth City Council in the next three years.
He is exploring the possibility of co-locating HMS Plymouth with the existing Devonport Museum, and bringing in visitors by water.
The trust was told last year by Peel Ports, the Birkenhead dock operator, that they had sold the ship to a Turkish ship breaker, and asked the trust to raise £400,000 to buy her back.
But Mr Sharpe-Stevens said he had discovered that this was untrue.
Mr Sharpe-Stevens said he had been given evidence by the Treasury Solicitor that ownership of HMS Plymouth had never been passed on after the failure of the Warship Preservation Trust. The Environment Agency had not received an application for the licence that would be required to send the ship abroad, he said.
And the Marine and Coastguard Agency had not been asked to carry out a survey which would be required before the ship could be towed to Turkey.
He said he had contacted all the scrap dealers in Turkey and none of them admitted to having obtained HMS Plymouth.
Peel Ports has not responded to The Herald’s requests for comments.
Mr Sharpe-Stevens said he was not seeking any cash from Plymouth City Council.
“Also, we are not raising money to purchase the ship because she is ownerless as the Crown Treasury has never gifted or granted the ship to anybody. Peel Ports do not own the ship by default as there is no such thing in law.”
He said the ship was in good condition, in spite of her rusty appearance in recent photographs. “This is mostly surface paint rust streaks. We think Peel Ports is not discouraging the spread of the ‘rusty hulk’ untrue rumour because it gives them justification (and no protests) to scrap her for cash.”
http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/HMS-Plymouth-return-dockyard/story-19608668-detail/story.html
Obituary: Admiral Sir Sandy Woodward, 1932 – 2013
For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
Admiral Sir John (‘Sandy’) Woodward
Admiral Sir John (‘Sandy’) Woodward, who has died aged 81, commanded the carrier battle group Task Force 317.8 during the Falklands conflict.
Admiral Sir John (‘Sandy’) Woodward Photo: REX
In March 1982, shortly before the outbreak of hostilities, Woodward was serving as a rear-admiral and as Flag Officer, First Flotilla, commanding a group of ships on their spring exercise off Gibraltar.
As the news from the South Atlantic worsened, on March 29 Woodward received a routine visit by helicopter from the Commander-in-Chief Fleet to his flagship, the destroyer Antrim. That evening, along with Captain Mike Clapp, the captain of Antrim, they discussed their options if the Falkland Islands were to be invaded and they were asked to re-take them.
Argentina had long claimed the islands, and on April 2 1982, impatient at the progress of diplomatic talks, and wishing to distract their people from domestic woes, the Argentine junta ordered their forces to invade.
During the passage south Woodward visited as many ships as he could, though his message to the various ships’ companies of the destroyers and frigates, was uncompromising: “You’ve taken the Queen’s shilling. Now you’re going to have to bloody earn it. And your best way of getting back alive is to do your absolute utmost. So go and do it.”
The conflict was a maritime campaign from beginning to end, characterised by a struggle for air superiority between Woodward’s ships and the Argentine Air Force, and in its later phases by a series of amphibious landings.
On April 25 British forces recaptured South Georgia after sinking the Argentine submarine Santa Fe. Five days later Woodward’s ships got within gun range of the Falklands to begin a bombardment, and Sea Harriers from the carriers Hermes and Invincible attacked several targets, while an aerial battle continued over the islands; three Argentine aircraft were shot down.
On May 1 the submarine Conqueror, on patrol south of the islands, sighted the light cruiser General Belgrano. Woodward sought a change to the rules of engagement which would allow Conqueror to open fire, as General Belgrano was considered a threat to the Task Force. Conqueror, controversially, sank the Argentine warship, but as a result the Argentine fleet remained in port for the rest of the war.
Two days later, an anti-ship missile, launched from the air, struck the destroyer Sheffield, one of Woodward’s previous commands, setting her ablaze.
British troops landed at San Carlos Water on May 21, and by June 14 the Argentines had surrendered. Woodward was seen by many as the architect of victory, although there were some who, from the outset, had thought that the Flag Officer Third Flotilla (in charge of carriers and amphibious shipping) should have commanded the the Task Force, and made some criticism of Woodward’s tactics.
Woodward was appointed KCB in 1982.
John Forster Woodward was born on May 1 1932 in Penzance, the son of a bank clerk, and educated at Stubbington House school, once known as “the cradle of the Navy”, and the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth.
As a junior officer Woodward spent time in the Home Fleet, before specialising as a submariner in 1954. He served in three generations of submarines: the Second World War vintage submarine Sanguine; the post-war, diesel-powered Porpoise; and Valiant, the second of Britain’s nuclear-powered submarines.
In 1960 he passed the Navy’s rigorous submarine command course, the “perisher”, and given charge of the diesel-powered submarines Tireless and Grampus.
Subsequently he was second-in-command of Valiant, before promotion to commander when he became the officer-in-charge (or “teacher”) on the “pePrrisher”.
In December 1969 Woodward took command of Warspite, which was newly repaired after an underwater collision in the Barents Sea with (according to official sources) an “iceberg”. Several members of the crew were still shaken by the incident, and Woodward did much to restore their confidence in the safety of the boat and its manoeuvrability.
In submarines he was nicknamed “Spock”. “I was quite pleased,” he said, “because Spock does everything by logic.”
Promoted to captain in 1972, Woodward attended the Royal College of Defence Studies, where he disliked all the paperwork, and in 1974 he became Captain of Submarine Training. In 1976 he returned to general service, for the first time in more than 20 years, to command the Type 42 guided missile destroyer Sheffield.
As Director of Naval Plans from 1978 to 1981, during the Strategic Defence Review (also known as the Nott Review) in the first term of Margaret Thatcher’s administration, Woodward unsuccessfully opposed John Nott’s determination to make severe and “disproportionate” cuts in the Navy. The cuts included one-fifth of its destroyers and frigates, one aircraft carrier, two amphibious ships, and the ice patrol ship Endurance, whose declared withdrawal from the Antarctic encouraged the Argentine invasion of the Falklands in April 1982. Woodward felt keenly the irony that as Flag Officer, First Flotilla, from 1981 to 1983 he should have to clear up the mess created by politicians.
After the Falklands conflict Woodward was Flag Officer Submarines and Commander Submarines Eastern Atlantic in 1983–84.
Although Woodward had made prolific use of the radio-telephone during the Falklands conflict, talking to some of his subordinate commanders and to the Task Group Commander at Northwood, he had never spoken to Margaret Thatcher. Indeed, he did not come to know her until he was Deputy Chief of Defence Staff (Commitments) during the period 1985–88, when he attended several Cabinet meetings.
At his first meeting, the Prime Minister’s advisers had not even sat down when she announced that she had read all the papers and explained what the government should do. Woodward realised that she had missed a point of detail and raised a hand to attract her attention. “If looks could kill, I was done for,” he would recall. “But I persisted, gave her the information she had missed and bought time for the other officials to gather their wits before further decisions were made.”
Later, when a senior civil servant told him: “You were very lucky today. You interrupted the PM – most don’t survive that,” Woodward replied: “She was talking – and needed some fearless advice, which she got.”
Woodward respected Mrs Thatcher, but had little time for most politicians, believing that they did not “have a clue about defence”. He was a stern critic of the Coalition government’s Strategic Defence and Security Review in 2010.
While his detractors thought him somewhat cold and arrogant, those who knew him better insisted that he was modest, sensitive, humorous, clever and self-critical. He had been a gifted mathematician at school and was an avid bridge player from his school days.
Woodward’s memoirs, One Hundred Days: the memoirs of the Falklands Battle Group Commander (co-written with Patrick Robinson), are a frank account of the pressures experienced by a commander fighting a war, and is told with self-deprecating humour.
His last appointment in the service was as Commander-in-Chief Naval Home Command (1987–89). He was appointed GBE in 1989.
Woodward left the Navy at the age of 57, and in retirement was chairman of the Falkland Islands Memorial Chapel Trust, which raised £2.3 million. The chapel, at Pangbourne College, was opened by the Queen in 2000.
He settled at Bosham, near Chichester, West Sussex, where he could indulge his life-long passion for sailing in small boats.
Sandy Woodward married, in 1960, Charlotte McMurtrie, with whom he had a son and a daughter. They later separated, and since 1993 his companion had been Winifred “Prim” Hoult.
Admiral Sir Sandy Woodward, born May 1 1932, died August 4 2013
Falklands War: The Untold Story (1987)
The continuing financial woes of the Argentine Navy
You have to feel sorry for the Argentine Navy. They have a bankrupt government, its training ship is seized by creditors and only freed after legal wrangling, and its surface fleet sinks due to lack of maintenance, and now there’s no money (again!) for the ARA Libertad, its training schedule has been cancelled, and we’re to believe that this was what was planned all along. Sure. Perhaps we could pass around the hat and see if we could collect the $2m/£1.35m needed.
Argentine training frigate ARA Libertad at last moment suspends annual trip
Argentina’s flagship the tall mast frigate ARA Libertad which last year was retained in Ghana for 77 days, unexpectedly suspended until 2014 the beginning of its annual instruction trip which was scheduled to leave Buenos Aires this weekend.
ARA Libertad with sails fully displayed before arriving to a great reception in Mar del Plata.
In a brief release the Argentine Navy said that the suspension of the 44th instruction trip was because ARA Libertad will be participating in February next year in a Latinamerican tall-mast vessels display to take place along the coast of Brazil and Uruguay which will be followed by a trip calling at Pacific and Caribbean ports and finally Veracruz in the Gulf of Mexico.
The motive for such an event and show of Latinamerican integration is the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Montevideo, several sea-combats along the River Plate that finished Spanish naval dominance in the area and the fall of the last bastion, Montevideo, which was Spain’s main naval. The United Provinces fleet was commanded by Irish born Guillermo Brown, who is considered the father of the Argentine navy.
The suspension is so that “the crew can better prepare for the tall vessels event next year, that will be visiting Argentina and later tour Latinamerica in a display of regional integration and friendship, precisely because of the Battle of Montevideo anniversary”, said Fernando Morales, vice-president of the Argentine Naval League.
“The celebration begins in February in the River Plate and then moves on to Mar del Plata and Ushuaia, following along the Pacific calling at Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. In the Caribbean they will call at Venezuela, Dominican Republic and ending in July in Mexico”, according to Morales.
ARA Libertad will be accompanied by the ocean research sail vessel “Dr. Bernardo Houssay” and the catamaran “Ice Lady Patagonia II” from the Austral Scientific Research Association.
Thus the final instruction trip for Argentine Navy cadets promotions 142 and 143 will begin January 2014 with a mid trip replacement, so that all members can accomplish with the needed days of sailing and high seas professional training.
However despite the celebration announcement Argentine naval and diplomatic sources were quoted in the Buenos Aires media saying that the true reason for the delay of the five month instruction trip is the lack of needed funds: two million dollars.
ARA Libertad last year was retained in Ghana 77 days, following a dispute with an investment fund that holds defaulted Argentine bonds. Finally the UN Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg ordered its immediate release after voting unanimously that war ships are immune to impounds based on the Law of the Sea and the Vienna convention.
Naval Matters 