HMS Sheffield Ship Brief

Loved it. Keep them a comin

There's a book called My Secret Falkland's War. It's written by one of the British intelligence people who served in Chile. Tons of valuable intelligence that heavily contributed to the British during the war was gained from operatives in Chile. You are precisely correct in that if the conflict was declared as a war, then Chile would've had to either expel, or to intern and disallow all communications to all British personnel stationed in Chile. Or, join the war, in which case, as Chile shares a border, the scope of the war would have increased.

Whislt they were built at a "cut down cost" I actually think the T42s were a better design than the T82s, certainly by the time of the Batch 3s they had developed into good warships (albiet with a relatively limited ASW capability). The T22s with their Sea Wolf was the reason the Argentinian airforce had to fly so low and hence the bombs famously didn't detonate. One thing about their propulsion - IIRC they had COGAG but also variable pitch propellors, despite the benefits of the system as you mentioned one thing I do remember about them is that they were incredibly noisy - at least I never manned a sonar system but I remember listening to them going past in Portsmouth and they were loud! The small streak along the top of the freeboard was also a feature of the batch 3s rather than the batch 1s, I'm not sure exactly what it was (probably for a reason). That torpedo tube system is not the Ship torpedo weapon system that was mounted on the T42s, they were conventional 3 torpedo launchers. I think that photo is from an MTWS system on the T23s. The Lynx was the fastest helicopter in the world for a while. As mentioned above P2 Neptunes were US made (preceding the Orions). Variouis other things I have read about this attack. The Entendard's Radar was detected by ESM and reported but as the ESM capability was so secret the Ops room wasn't aware of what the significance was. Glasgow once it detected the entendards radar did execute handbrake, went to action stations and also fired chaff and turned into the axis of threat. Invincible classified it as a supurious detection because Sheffield didn't confirm the Entendards contact. Similarly reportedly the missile was detected by Sheffield however both the Airwarfare officer and the assistant were not present in the OPS room. But you may be in better sources than me. I was also under the impression that the visual detection of the missile was not early enough to execute the handbrake drill whereas HMS Glasgow had. There was a belief that the Exocet had not detonated but it's now considered that it did. The reason for the T42s getting the Phallanx was because Phallanx doesn't require a deck penetration whereas Goalkeepers did so they needed to be designed into the ship originally. No ships in the RN have Goalkeepers anymore. Jingles was definitely on a T42 - HMS Newcastle - I think you misunderstood and that he was in the Sea Dart Magazine not Sea Wolf. The other aspect I've read was that the intelligence briefing was 300 pages long and that the air warfare officer on Sheffield had not understood that the super entendards were capable of air to air refueling and so did not believe it was possible for them to be attacked by exocets at that range. Certainly escort ships were used to take hits in the Falklands in order to protect other ships, but basically that's what their jobs are and it's certainly true that by being where she was and taking the hit Sheffield prevented an exocet strike on the carriers. In 1991 Gloucester would have had the newer radar. The Falklands not being a war is really just to do with the rest of the world and neither country really wanting to escalate it to that, Chile provided lots of support for UK intelligence and special operations because of the political situation at the time, Argentina had nearly invaded them in 1981 (? - Operation Sobreciento) but Chile had mounted sufficient forces to prevent the sudden attack and occupation of land before they could react to disuade the attack. Similarly a potential invasion of the Falklands in 1977 had been deterred by an SSN being deployed. The Falklands were expected to be an easy victory by Argentina which would have generated public support for an invasion of Chile (and certainly early on it did generate lots of support for the government). In terms of a logistics case study yes some things went wrong logistically however mounting an amphibious landing to retake defended islands 5000 miles from your nearest base is actually a case study in successful logistics rather than anything else - there was a huge effort to call up merchant shipping to keep supplies moving. No vehicles were to be used on the Falklands (it's pretty impractical with the terrain), but the helicopters were lost (except for one Chinook BN, which was a few feet off the deck of the Atlantic Conveyor when she was hit). There's quite alot of bow forwards of the magazines on a T42 so I think it's unlikely it would have detonated them, certainly my understanding is that Glasgow executed a turn in after detecting the Entendards as part of the Handbrake procedure (but Sheffield did not).

Thomas Riley

After Sheffield they doubled them up with the T42s to provide point defence for them - hence why broadsword was with Coventry. IIRC It was named the T64 combo (42+22 :-)!) So much for saving money by omiting point defence.

Thomas Riley

Great brief! I appreciate the hard work you put into these videos, I've learned so much from you. I also want to say thank you Aaron for your service to our country, wish I could sit down with you and hear all the crazy stuff you guys did protecting us from whatever was out there. Also a thanks to Paul for his service to his country and being our ally out there. I'm so glad our countries are friends.

The Type 22 Frigates was not on the picket line because they only had two so they where guarding the carriers. The Type 22 was new and not many was in service, they got a Leander class frigate that had been upgraded with Sea Wolf to the Task Force later in the conflict as well as a Type 42 Batch 2 destroyer which had the modern air search radar (which helps).

Adrian Johansson

You need to talk about the Swedish RB04C anti-ship missile. This was a Swedish air force missile that entered service in 1961 and was the worlds first sea skimming missile. It had a 15 mile range (quickly updated to 20 miles with the D version). The missile is equivalent to an Exocet with some differences (Exocet has a longer range and the RB-04 has a better warhead.) This missile entered service the same year as the British Sea Slug missile and a year before Sea Cat. These where the old missile systems a generation before Sea Dart and the system still did not work against sea skimming missiles. It's borderline negligent that it took 20 years for western navies to get good systems against sea skimming missiles.

Adrian Johansson

As an asside to the Type 992Q/993 Radar The CV90 anti-air variant uses a French radar called PS-95 in Swedish service it uses very large radar lobes for the specific purpose of detecting helicopters as they are quite distinct when their rotors are dead on. The downside is that large lobes while being good as detecting helicopters are bad at giving an accurate bearing. Thus two lobes are used that only overlap in a small area which gives you a bearing to target you can aim the gun at. This was all in the Swedish air defence forces "manual" which is a thick pdf on the Web that explains how air defence work.

Adrian Johansson

Neptune is an American MPA, not British, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_P-2_Neptune

Faris Asim Shaikh

Working perfect, thank you!

VaelysAU