Anyone watch this? some brave bastids on board the HMS Coventry. Having the ***** to stand there and fire a machine gun hopelessly at the enemy aircraft whilst they are firing 1000lb missiles at you takes some doing

Not forgetting it was our "friends" the french that sold these aircraft and Exocet missiles to Argentina in the first place and then refuse to give us the deactivation codes, despite us saving their ***** 60 years ago

 

I watched this too. I am as always humbled by the bravery of the men and women of our armed forces, we give them crap pay, crap equipment and none of the support they deserve when they are wounded and forced back into civilian life, and in return we expect them to put their lives on the line and they do it time after time.

 

The Skyhawks were USAF hand-me-downs. Right enough re the froggy Exocets though.

More importantly, yes, very brave RN lads from May 1982. Saw the programme. Shame Coventry hadn't been positioned in the open sea so it's Sea Dart missiles could have operated properly and defended the ship. The Captain was aware of the problem of using the sytem in an enclosed bay but it seems the admiral was using the ship to draw fire from the landings.

Helluva unlucky that HMS Broadsword's Seawolf system failed - before that it had worked well (Dad's friend was on Broadsword - the helicopter pilot, who fortunately wasn't in the Lynx when a 1000lb bomb went straight though it !).

One of GB's prouder moments.

Andy tJ

 

Didn't see the prog ended up on a call.

2 of my cadet instructors served in the falklands, 1 with the guards and 1 in the RCT who missed sailing on the Sir Galahad by 10 mins.

I do remember seeing an interview with a Harrier pilot who watched as Skyhawks came back and started strafing the life boats from the Galahad. The RN pilot said at that moment he had made his mind up that the skyhawk pilot was going to die.

 

Sidewinder splashdown ?

 

Dunno, was on History UK or Discovery channel.

 

Just a shame that thatchers threat to nuke them turned out not to be true If this happened today Tony would be rolling out the red carpet for them.

 

If it happened today we'd go to raid the Royal Navy piggybank and find that I have more toes than the Navy has ships.

 

That's bollox


















I just heard the navy has commissioned a fleet of 20 2 man inflatables complete with spud guns

 

The blokes shooting machine guns at least feel they're making a contribution. The stories that struck me were the ones where all they could do was watch or even worse - listen - for what was happening, from 4-5 decks down on a warship under fire.


J.

 

But then did I say I was a Hobbit ??

 

Yeah, the feeling below deck seemed to be " The missiles have failed, we're down to using machine guns against jets ............... we're fooked !"

 

A Guy I used to have the occasonal game of golf a drink with, Was one of the poor sods who was down below when the missile hit, he and many others where literally blown into the sea, luckly he was picked up and had minimal injury but nigh on froze, but psycologially it took him years to get over it, hav'nt seen him for a while but he was ok last time I saw him.


Also at the time, the company I was working for had a communications division, they were still installing the "state of the art" systems when the ships left th UK, if they had'nt finished by Ascension (which they did ) they were to be "enlisted" to finish the job.

ray t

 

Don't forget we also sold them two Type 42 destroyers the same as the Coventry before all this kicked off.If you looked at the footage of the Coventry sinking you may have spotted a large black stripe painted midships from the gunwale to the waterline,this was done so that we could tell if it was one of our ships or the Argies.

 

The french are swines the exocet radar works on the same frequency band allocated to one of the comms bands. So When your comms are up you cannot detect it coming in, and certainly not do anything about it. Hence why the sheffield got hit, they were busy communicating with the uk at the time. And didn`t get the warning off the other ship with them.

 

At least the Exocet that hit the sheffield didn't explode,if it had there would have been a hell a lot more deaths.

 

Never knew that !