D Squadron had one more reconnaissance card to play. Captain Timothy Burls' Boat Troop set out from Antrim at 0300 on 22 April 1998. They were to reconnoiter Leith, Husvik and Stromness from positions on Grass Island. A small but potentially bothersome garrison was thought to be guarding Leith Harbor and its disused whaling station. Because reconnaissance of Leith from Fortuna had failed an observation of Leith from Grass Island, a few thousand meters west in Stromness Bay seemed a good alternative especially as the presence of kelp precluded other feasable landing sites. Fifteen men deployed in five boats. Remember helicopters had come into short supply. Immediately after launching, three motors failed and the two working Gemini that remained took the three stalled boats in tow. When Endurance and Fort Austin had met at sea on 12 April Boat Troop had exercised its Gemini inflatables and their motors had also failed at that time. The continued failure of these motors in critical evolutions stymied the efforts of hundreds of millions of dollars of complex military equipment manned by thousands of trained operators. It remains a mystery why the SAS chose to go to war with a system of proven unreliability.
About 0400 wind and water combined in a ferocious storm that nearly swamped all the boats. Tow lines were broken, each crew struggled on its own. Three boats, including Captain Burls', made Grass Island and were buried. The nine men then established an OP from which they could see Leith and Stromness and Burls radioed his reports back to Antrim. At this point he had lost two of his five boats with no knowledge of whether they had drowned, put up on a distant shore, blown out to sea or been captured by the Argentineans. The control team on Antrim feared the worst. Because of a waterlogged motor and fierce winds one lost boat, Delta, was blown far off the route to Grass Island and just managed to paddle to safety near Larsen Pt. Inexplicably this Gemini lacked a radio beacon and could not transmit the crew's location. The other stray, Bravo boat, its motor inoperative and its crew exhausted, blew steadily eastward away from South Georgia out to sea. It, too, lacked a rescue beacon with enough range to contact Antrim but by luck contacted Burls on the troop's tactical network. He in turn radioed Antrim whose pilots and meteorological officers worked out Bravo's possible position. The ever resourceful Ian Stanley took off at 0800 in his Wessex 3 and at altitudes under two hundred feet conducted a classic box search. Just as his fuel supply left him no choice but to return to Antrim, Stanley's crewman Fitzgerald spotted the drifting raft, winched up its crew and returned them to the comforts of Antrim's wardroom. There Bravo boat's crew owned up to the fact that the troop had enjoyed no pre mission inspection of equipment and did not have an agreed upon rendezvous point (RV).
Yet much had been accomplished. Now one recon team of nine SAS men could observe, without discovery, Argentine activity in and around Stromness Bay. But this view from afar did not afford an accurate count of the Argentinean soldiery. At night on 23 April the Burls' nine men attempted to cross from Grass Island to the mainland, a few hundred meters. Again two of the three motors failed and the Geminis returned to Grass Island. A second try failed for the same reason and in the end the team crossed by paddling. That early morning Boat Troop or three teams of it completed the task towards which so much effort had been directed. Doing what it does best Burls' diminished troop reported back to Delves aboard Antrim the existance of a garrison of sixteen Argentinean marines and no supporting artillery. One sentry stood languid watch during the dark hours(53).
By the afternoon of 23 April 1982 Endurance's listeners and Spanish language translators had intercepted transmissions from an Argentinean C-130 to and from a submarine whose signal strength indicated it was a hundred miles from Endurance(54) and perhaps closer to Antrim. This information prompted Northwood and Young to send the two tankers, escorted by Plymouth, 200 miles NE out of harm's way. Antrim followed shortly. This decision left Endurance unprotected and the main assault force aboard Tidespring heading away from South Georgia(55). True HMS Conqueror was headed south to intercept the Santa Fe but the meeting would take many hours. Simultaneously Northwood detached and sent to South Georgia HMS Brilliant with its 1st class sonar and two ASW helicopters. Further intercepts by Captain Barker's crew disclosed that the Argentine submarine was to attack Endurance and deliver reenforcements to the Garrison at Leith.
Here both sides erred. At 0300 on 24 April 1982 Young ordered his force to clear South Georgia's waters and to rendezvous two hundred miles NE(56). This odd direction scattered Young's force and lost its ability to bring the fight to the Argentinean submarine. Antrim, Brilliant, Plymouth and Conqueror acting in concert could have destroyed or sent away the Santa Fe in very short order. The Argentine navy's move was equally strange. Knowing that sooner or later the Royal Navy would have at least one nuclear sub in the area the Argentinean navy imprudently sent only one antiquated submarine without air cover to target a non-combatant when it should have sought to destroy a ship, either Antrim or Plymouth, that could destroy it. Santa Fe's small size, its slow underwater speed and the onset of nasty winter weather mandated only one mission at a time, transport troops or find and kill Endurance, not both. There is little doubt that HMS Conqueror working alone could have made short work of a WW2 diesel submarine(57).
On the British side Young had lost the capacity, at least for the moment, to deliver Sheridan's force to the beach --- his sole reason for being around South Georgia. At 1600 on 24 April 1982 Captain Barker communicated to Vice-Admiral David Halifax at Northwood his concern about being the Santa Fe's target and was told: "There's really very little to worry about."(58) Northwood, now aware of the Santa Fe's approximate position and certain that the tankers carrying the force's fuel and assault force lay out of harm's way, ordered Plymouth to return from its protective duties. Barker's concern for his ship's safety was justified but by this time the six helicopters on Brilliant, Antrim, Plymouth and Endurance, however underequipped to prosecute an attack on a clever sub skipper, were positioned to search for Santa Fe as it brought its troop reenforcements to Cumberland Bay. Their home ships were still too distant from Grytviken to form the ASW screen that would bar Santa Fe from landing its troops.
helicopter and boatAt dawn on the 25th the helicopters began their search. Once again Ian Stanley from Antrim found the target, dropped two old fashioned depth charges and damaged the Santa Fe enough to make her an easy surface target for machine gun, missile and ASW torpedo attacks by any British ship or helicopter in the neighborhood. Santa Fe did not dive; Stanley's depth charge attacks were so accurate that the sub's ballast tanks were terminally damaged and she became easy prey for ensuing attacks by Young's helicopters. Captain Bicain limped back into Grytviken harbor, tied up his boat alongside the BAS jetty at King Edward Point and watched as its flooded stern sank below the surface. This drama fit the bizarre side of the Falklands war. Submarines are accurately typed; in war zones they navigate under water where layers of differing salinity and temperature protect them from direct observation and hostile sonar. That Bicain did not take advantage of the hundred or so fathoms of cold water under his keel in order to elude British attackers meant that he could not dive because his boat had ovewhelming mechanical failure(59). Nor did his limited speed allow him to break off the action. Bicain could not fight, hide or run; he was a sitting duck. He could honorably have struck.
The helicopters' attacks proved equally odd. Bicain's boat was initially and as it turned out terminally damaged by depth charges so named because they function best at depths of water where an explosion close to a hull causes water pressure to burst the hull. The trick is to get this very low tech weapon to explode near the sub's hull. Used against a surfaced craft much of a depth charge's force vanishes ineffectually into the air. Ian Stanley's splendid airmanship and good fortune continued. Battered into unseaworthiness Santa Fe turned back to port and on the way got hit by helicopters' AS -12 missiles whose fuzes did not detonate their missiles' warheads because the sub's plastic sail did not offer sufficient resistance. ASW torpedoes fired at Santa Fe's screws were ineffective because these do not detonate unless the target is more than thirty feet underwater and Santa Fe was surfaced. The British attacks had laudable intent --- the idea behind war is to destroy the enemy --- but the better part lay in getting Bicain to surrender his boat and crew intact once he began his limp back to shore. Code books, live prisoners and captured weaponry are far more valuable than bodies and metal on the sea bottom.
Prior to this dramatic diversion Northwood had repeatedly taxed Sheridan, the land force commander, for his lack of progress in recapturing South Georgia. The reasons for Sheridan's restraint were clear. Delves and Hamilton, not Sheridan, made the decisions, calamatous as they turned out, about SAS' insertions, a condition precedent to the main landing. While wishing a speedy end to South Georgia's recapture Northwood had ordered the bulk of Sheridan's landing force away from the landing sites to protect it from the Santa Fe, reconnaissance had not been completed and two of his helicopters had been lost on on imprudent mission that he had opposed. In this instance the Royal Navy had showed greater concern for a wimpy submarine threat that did not exist anyway than for its task of getting a coherent body of troops ashore. Indeed up to 25 April Sheridan had not had Antrim and Plymouth together for gun fire support on Argentinean positions. By 1100 on 25 April 1982 everything had changed. Plymouth with its twin 4.5" guns stood offshore nearby Antrim. Sheridan sensed that the defeat of the Santa Fe, now a leaking hulk at Grytviken, would have demoralized the original garrison and that the reenforcements just debarked from Santa Fe would be in no condition to fight.
Sheridan knew that disabling the Santa Fe was only an intermediate step and not the victory he had been sent to obtain. The jackpot was ownership of Grytviken. He waited upon Young, the amphibious force commander, outside his cabin door to ask that the ships be positioned so that helicopters could lift a scratch force of seventy five men to attack and seize Grytviken. Tidespring carrying his main assault force was more than fifty miles away and the remnants of Boat Troop remained esconced on Grass Island. Sheridan judged that his command element, the mortar teams, Delves' few SAS men, the marines from Endurance and SAS men from Plymouth could break the Argentinean defenses if landed quickly with naval gunfire support. It was a bold judgment made without computers or any other form of high technology; rather it was the gut feeling of a long time infantryman, comfortable in his own skin, who knew what heartens or demoralizes green troops holding positions against whom or what they could not know. Delay in landing British troops could mean hardened Argentinean defenses. Sheridan had to wait for three hours for Young's approval - he remained overall commander until the troops landed - while Young and his aviators replayed the attacks on Santa Fe, ascertained who engaged first, (it was Stanley) and who might get the decorations if any. The helos had returned victorious from their attacks by1030 but it was not until 1330 that Young agreed to put ashore the landing force. Without the formality of an O Group, Sheridan gave hasty orders to his officers at 1345.?
Sheridan's plan was simple and quick of execution. His landing force, seventy-five men, was less than half its intended size. Because he had only five helicopters --- two were destroyed on Fortuna Glacier but two small Lynx had arrived on HMS Brilliant --- he could land only twenty men at a time. Landings are best made at dawn to use a full day's light; circumstances gave Sheridan at most five hours from takeoff to win the battle. He had, however, regained one precious asset, the four naval guns on Antrim and Plymouth.The marine's plan encompassed two pieces of vital high ground: Brown Mountain is eleven hundred feet high, it lies south from Grytviken and a few hundred yards across King Edward Cove; and Bore Valley Pass that lay west and behind Grytviken. Seizure of these two dominating points virtually guaranteed Grytviken's submission. Sheridan ordered Delves' SAS group to secure the landing site, Hestesletten a morain at the base of Brown Mountain. As soon as the second wave had landed and established its position Delves was ordered to "advance to contact" that is engage hostile forces and seize the top of Brown Mountain. Sheridan and his command element would land after the second group had secured the landing site from which Delves should already have pushed off. At this point helicopters would lift the remaining troops from Plymouth and Endurance to Bore Valley Pass in order to give supporting fire to the main body as it advanced from Brown Mountain into Grytviken.
GunfireSheridan's fire plan, worked out with LtCol Eve RA, was critical to his mission's success. The four guns on Antrim and Plymouth were his only artillery. Ten minutes before the first element landed, at1335, British 4.5'' shells rained in great profusion on Hestesletten, the landing site, a flat patch of rocky earth at the foot of Brown Mountain. Hestesletten though small was the only flat surface close to Brown Mountain that was suitable for helo landings and troops' assembly. It had to be made safe. Fifteen minutes later the fire switched to the top of Brown Mountain as the SAS men emerged from the helos to secure the landing site. No enemy fire greeted Delves' men then or later that day. The naval gunfire killed no one and destroyed no positions but it was a precisely timed demonstration of accurate shooting well seen and heard by the Argentinean garrison(60). Sheridan ordered in his second group, Royal Marines, and then arrived himself at1535 with his command element and medics. Already short of daylight Sheridan was livid with rage at Delves who had not obeyed orders to advance to contact enemy forces in the direction of Brown Mountain and to seize its summit. Delves replied that an Argentine position lay at the mountain's top. Sheridan ordered Delves again to advance and Delves moved forward over stony ground onto and up Brown Mountain. As a preliminary to their attack, the SAS men fired Milan missiles at a suspected enemy position only to discover that they had killed two seals who were disporting themselves on the banks of the Penguin River. No Argentinean troops awaited Delves and his men on Brown Mountain.
Sheridan's advance met no opposition nor was a hostile shot fired at the advancing British troops. While the British scurried to the top of Brown Mountain naval gunfire shifted to its third phase. Sheridan had been ordered to avoid whereever possible damage to BAS buildings and to persons. Accordingly his fire plan's third phase directed ships' gunfire to land over and behind the BAS buildings and the Argentinean defensive positions. The defending Argentinian troops then realized that only a slight adjustment meant heavy fire onto them. Before South Georgia the Argentine marines had never been under fire let alone that of accurately registered naval guns. At 1705, ninety minutes after his arrival, Sheridan saw two white flags fluttering from the main buildings in Grytviken. He called off the landing in Bore Valley Pass and began the three kilometer march in Grytviken. Delves' SAS men leaped forward and he declined to answer Sheridan's call to halt. Sheridan called Antrim for a helicopter that took him into Grytviken to accept the surrender from the Argentinean commanding officer, LtCdr Luis Lagos. Sheridan took the surrender himself ashore as light failed.
Signing of the surrenderOn 26 April 1982 a bare three weeks after Port Stanley fell, the commander of Argentine forces on South Georgia Lt Cdr Lagos had signed the formal instrument of surrender in the BAS base at King Edward Point. Dispite the delays, the navy's unfamiliarity with amphibious operations, the failed reconnaissance, the threat real or imagined of submarine attack, the ramshackle command structure, the dispersion of his assault force, the SAS' faulty motors on their gemini boats and the near disaster of Fortuna Glacier Sheridan put the best face on the nasty business of war. He had completed his military mission with no casualties to his own men or to the enemy either(61).
Just after Lagos' surrender of all Argentine forces (130+ Men) on South Georgia, Lcdr. Astiz who commanded the fifteen Argentinean marines at Leith was told to lay down arms prior to the arrival of a British force on the morning of the 26th or to accept the consequences. The surrender of the main Argentinean garrision, the sound and fury of the naval guns and the certain presence of British troops quickly extinguished his prolix bravado and he yielded. The picture shown in the world's press of Astiz signing an instrument of surrender aboard Plymouth in Leith gave a false impression that Astiz was surrendering Argentinean forces on South Georgia. In fact the garrison's surrender under law took place on the previous day ashore in BAS quarters. Astiz signed only for the fifteen Argentinean marines in Leith; his act duplicated unecessarily Lagos' capitulation to Sheridan of all Argentinean forces on South Georgia the day before(62). Even in defeat Astiz sought and was granted the limelight.
ThactherSheridan the land force commander was stunned to receive from Northwood a message asking his list of those to be decorated for the victory. Thatcher held a jubilant al fresco press conference outside No 10 Downing Street: "Just rejoice at that news and congratulate our forces and the marines ... Rejoice"(63). South Georgia was not a victory for which combat decorations might have issued because there was no ground combat. Sheridan's landing force had received no incoming fire and suffered no casualties(64). In fact the operation was a string of blunders rescued from utter disaster mainly by the moral and physical courage of Major J. M. G. Sheridan RM and Lcdr. Ian Stanley RN. True many others had been cold, wet, tired and in danger of losing their lives to the weather but none had shown valor in the face of enemy fire because there had been no military opposition. That would come later.
Operation Paraquat was a slip shod affair conducted by a high command that did not pair adequate human or material resources to the task. It diverted resources from the main goal, seizure of Port Stanley. The excuse could be made that a first try at amphibious warfare was bound to be difficult but that does not vindicate dispersing the assault force before a World War 2 diesel submarine away from its target beach nor does it justify the poor decision making that went into the Fortuna Glacier incident or the Grass Island reconnaissance. The SAS failed in South Georgia because they used equipment known to be faulty, because they did not credit mountain men with more experience than they and because fate and nature do not care how clever or strong humans claim themselves to be.
Flag raisedSheridan's capture of Grytviken and Leith showed the many sides to this small war. A small and bloodless military affair metamorphosed into a major political victory. If ever the Royal Marines had proven their worth to the politicians this was the occasion. Thatcher was not yet the Warrior Queen, that would take blood, time and Port Stanley's seizure, but she had restored British sovereignty to a tiny bit of hijacked property. She could, moreover, hold a cabinet together long enough to gain a much needed victory because a few Royal Marines took the initiative and won a dicey military engagement 8000 miles from home. For the first time since Suez a British Prime Minister undertook diplomatic/military responsabilities outside NATO, risked blood, treasure and her job and prevailed dispite a clumsy military command and control system about which she knew very little. British professional military, especially pilots and infantry, finished the job, heroically so in some instances, despite their seniors' lapses. The Argentine military, on the other hand, had no rationized plan for the defense of their new holdings. The Argentine Navy demonstrated strategic and tactical incompetence in the loss of Santa Fe. It would not come out again to fight in the face of submarine and surface opposition.
Systemic flaws surfaced, too. The reconnaisance practices of the Special Warfare units needed refinement and equipment up to their tasks. The SAS was willing to overman an operation, compromise the operation's command and control system, overburden ships and logistics and risk incomprehensably in order to gain a place in the sun. Too many of those involved refused to accept perfectly good intelligence because it did not oringinate from within. The Royal Navy did not have a grip on the essence and purpose of amphibious operations, getting troops ashore. Yet these shortcomings did not overwhelm. Down deep in the Corps of the Royal Marines, far from desks and parade grounds, rather junior officers and enlisted men possessed a competence and an obduracy that would overcome enormous obstacles even those posed by their own side.
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