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The Greatest Post-War Naval Battle

The new Official History sheds significant new light on a conflict of particular importance in post-1945 naval history as the only occasion when sea control was seriously contested. This comprehensively researched and well-written study by a leading defence academic, who has been given remarkably free access to official documents, must now be the starting point for any further work on the conflict. There are, however, some significant gaps and deficiencies from the naval perspective. In the first volume on the origins of the war, the story of the naval deployments made in the post-1945 decade to defend British sovereignty claims over the Falkland Islands Dependencies is far from complete. The Argentine activity in the Melchior archipelago in 1947 is mentioned, but not the subsequent activities to counter it of the frigate Snipe, backed up by the cruiser Nigeria. Neither is the use shortly afterwards of the station flagship, the cruiser Glasgow, to take the Falklands Governor to South Georgia to add weight to British claims. The Hope Bay Incident is mentioned in part, as is the deployment of Royal Marines to the Falklands in 1952. The impression is given, however, that all then was quiet. In fact, early in 1953, backed up by another cruiser, Superb, the Marines were used aggressively with the frigate Snipe to eject the Argentines from Deception Island and destroy their huts. There was a confrontation between Snipe and an Argentine naval auxiliary. The matter came to the attention of the Chiefs of Staff who, with some prescience, made clear their fears that Britain was trying to maintain its interests in the region without proper forces to sustain them. The question of reinforcing the patrol ship HMS Endurance, Britain’s deployed ‘intention to resist’ by the 1970s, came to a head in 1977 as the Argentines became aggressive. Lawrence Freedman gives us an authoritative account of the sending at the end of that year of the nuclear-powered submarine HMS Dreadnought supported by two frigates and two Royal Fleet Auxiliaries. He is a little lukewarm and dismissive in his approach to what was a subtle move which gave the Callaghan government options to be unveiled as necessary. This was part of a general willingness by the Labour government to use limited naval force to back up British interests in the South Atlantic. The year before, in 1976, the West Indies frigate HMS Eskimo had been alerted for movement south and, earlier in 1977, the movement to the region of the RN’s annual ‘out of area’ deployment, Task Group 317.5, had been discussed. There was also consideration of more naval moves in 1978. It is interesting to see that Jim Callaghan’s famous request for a regular plot of the RN’s global deployments originated from Falklands concerns. One cannot help but feel that this prime minister would have been significantly more prepared to take meaningful precautionary action in 1982.