The Taking of South Georgia Island 1982 with Alan Bell of the SAS

this is the web transcription service of the Royal Canadian Military Institute on June 17th retired British SAS operator and RC mi member Alan Bell told a packed gathering about his experiences in 1982 retaking the island of South Georgia from Argentine forces under near Antarctic conditions during the Falklands War but evening can everyone hear me so why are you here on Wednesday nights which is somewhere else yo Gary here or is it a quiet night in Toronto I'd like to apologize for my appearance those that know me know why but I've been on a serious Health Canada diet for the last two months so I don't usually look like this but that's the reason why nothing fit anyway I'd like to acknowledge two very good friends of mine in the audience who served in the Falkland Islands at the same time as I did one is David David please David was involved he wasn't involved in operation paraquat he was involved in SF operations on the Falkland Islands themselves and the second person is Neil today and I'm sure to hair Neal was a member of the 2nd battalion of the parachute regiment or commonly known to those of aware of its to power and he was involved in the raid on those green and those of you that historians know about the raid on goes green to power attacked the garrison in daylight across very flat ground and lost 18 killed and out 64 people wounded they also lost their Co page Jones was later awarded the prostitue mas' VC one of the things when I was asked to do this I got thinking and doing some math it was over 30 years ago and the three of us don't look any younger what is it young about 30 years is a long time now I know the war was way way way way back there but when you're thinking an operation or a war like 30 days we call it the shore walk because only lasted about five months so anyway what I'd like to do is take you through piecemeal what happened I'll take questions at the end I'm a 1-over because I have a habit of sort of running off in the mouth but I'll try to keep it succinct as as I can and as I said any questions please save them save them until the end but this classification of this is classified and it's from personal experiences and the RCO mine has no responsibility for anything that comes out of my mouth this evening Special Forces operations during the Falklands Special Forces were employed on three separate operations operation paraquat which would some shorter operations which is what I'm going to be talking about operation corporate which is the Falkland Island operations and Operation Mikado which was Argentine banning Argentinian mainland operations some of the roles that we went out to the Falklands do to compete they speak for themselves one of the things I'd like to make you aware of we were not supposed to go to the Falkland Islands okay we had a very aggressive commanding officer my mic mic rose thank you Mike rose and he invited as to what was potentially a naval war which really rubbed the naval hierarchy the wrong way because the squadron was a standby squadron at the time we had a couple of c-130s on standby to take us to wherever we needed to go so we call on those two c-130s before Margaret Thatcher and invited us to the war so we all flew down to the Ascension Islands and we got there before everybody else which only got there the day after the Argentinians invaded the Falkland Islands proper so we were sort of add-ons to it well the Navy when they found out and the Marines in particular when I'm very happy to find when they started arriving we were already there getting established training zero in our weapons etc etc so anyway so we were invited this wasn't really our war the Navy tried to keep it a sole marine and naval war but unfortunately they couldn't because he growed very quickly so let's move on to Operation paraquat I'd like to take a look at this slide and look at the background when we were told we were leaving to go to South Georgia the first question was where is it not we thought I thought you know the Falklands we know where that is but some Georgia where is South Georgia will be soon found out I'll get you a little bit of history accrued for watching tinnie in scrap workers got the contract to actually dismantle of the old whaling stations in South Georgia each day so Georgia was known for its whaling and it provided an awful lot of the by-product from whaling it was a huge operation thousands of people involved hundreds of ships involved so they saw an opportunity to get the scrap metal and they move down there the unfortunate thing is that the the Argentinians decided to send a group of Argentine Marines with them to protect them now with no idea why they did this why would you need soldiers to protect a civilian work force that was just going to dismantle whaling stations so this called the ire of the British government and they asked them to leave well that went on for a few weeks and obviously they didn't leave the fact is about South Georgia there was no strategic value to sending a task force to South Georgia unfortunately the British government saw a PR opportunity because they lost the Falkland Islands to a certain attack I mean I'm not going to go into the history of what happened but British intelligence was made well aware months before the Argentinians invaded the Falklands that that was going to happen and the government's the Ministry of Defence in the leaf well they did so that's that's the way it goes so what they thought is a PR send a small task force down to the Falklands and then take it back with minimal casualties hopefully no casualties no damage the facilities down there and then that would be sort of a feather in their cap with the main force which was getting prepared and then part of the main force was on its way down to ascension Islands and then on to the to the Fallen islands of sin itself so the fact this was no strategic value really puzzlers because we we usually we always used as strategic troops and when will being used for PR which I'm doing quite a few of us some George is a 150 miles long and 18 miles wide it's got very mountainous terrain I've got quite a few slides and asked me to go through so you'll see what it is but as you can see it's not very big its claim to fame is Shackleton it's buried here and in fact we had a chance to visit his grave because it since it's in there pickin on there I can get the point so as I said it's it's known for its fact whether it's closer to the Antarctica than it is to the Falkland Islands and this was a problem none of us have really thought about so the operational environment who was the enemy when we got on board our ships and we headed south we thought the Argentinians were going to be on enemy unfortunately we were we were sadly wrong they were not the enemy the weather was the weather sorry the enemy were the weather and the environment it was horrific we never ever operated in those types of conditions before we've been to Norway we done the normally deployments we're used to working in the mountains we're used to working in snow and ice we all knew had to scare etc etc none of us had ever been to a place called South Georgia and it was pretty bad even we did not know until we actually physically got there and got off the ships and went ashore just how bad it was 90% of my squadron we went down to South Georgia in jungle boots we had no gore-tex we had normal clothes we would fight a war in northern North East or North West Europe and it believes okay so we didn't have the right equipment when we got down there we did eventually get it from Delta in the US but we didn't have to do this operation so we were named task force three-one-seven oh that's quite a big task force to go down to a non strategic target so we had HMS Antrim to destroy which was the flagship HMS Plymouth which was a frigate HMS endurance ice patrol vessel tie spring which was a fuelling ship for toasting which had ammunition and equipment and everything else and then finally they provided us with a nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror we didn't know at the time what we were going to do with it but it was there we needed it in fact we later found out that Ness BS Section six SBS actually got on the submarine in Scotland and made their way all the way down to the Falkland Islands in the nuclear submarine I'm certainly glad I was no longer in the SBS so ground forces the squadron which was my squadron 22 SAS two special code section row Marine Commando detachment onboard HMS Antrim mm company 42 commando roller raids funnily enough when I was a young marine I was in any company I mean obviously the same guys went in and company but I was in EM company when I was uh when I was a young man so our mission I'm not going to say this twice as most military missions are supposed to be said I'll just save the ones our mission was to provide SF Special Forces support to facilitate the retaking of South Georgia from occupying intelligent Argentinean forces to achieve this mission Special Forces will provide operational support to multiple landings by ro Marine Commandos from four-five command outs I apologize that is a typo it should have been for two commando and a row marine commander detachment from HMS Antrim I added that statements at the very bottom the military guys amongst you it's it will probably be a bit confusing to you as it was to us in the standing order from the Admiral of the fleet up reoccupy South Georgia with the minimum loss of light and the minimum of damage to property we will go into war right and we're being told from a guy you a surgeon and tonics every night we're not supposed to damage the place unless the Argentinian 22 come out and do one of these how are you supposed to get them out of there okay so I find that quite ironic it was reading through a book this morning and I saw that so I hacked it down to the president said oh you might get a lot more about that laser or intelligence requirements obviously before any attack we needed intelligence that was primarily the reason we were on in this task force to go down there go ashore and find out a with the Argentinians where we have no idea where they were we had no idea of their numbers so consequently we were going into the dark we didn't know the Headley support aircraft we had no idea whether there's any Argentinian ships submarines etc in the neighborhood so basically it was a blind let's go down there and find out what was going to happen and the SAS would carry out a series of reconnaissance Cobra reconnaissance is of leaf and strong nests and the SPS would carry out reconnaissance of ripping in and King gave the point as it turned out grid pick in and king at the point with the tool occasions where the Argentineans had the most manpower and it was a combination of argentinian Marines and los primeros which is their equivalent of Special Forces and that was who was manning it because they anticipated that we were try to get it back but they didn't anticipate we would try to get it back before the glue taken the Falklands back so this was a bit of a surprise but obviously we're trying to get win with minimal casualties without causing any damage before the main force got to the Falkland Islands so the initial plan called for a four phase operation insertion of the SF reconnaissance teams new pre-attack reconnaissance assault on grid paper now you see up to grip wicked as bas base that is British Antarctica from the British Antarctica base that was a very large base in Griffin and on King Edward point which were all the people who were doing all this all the silver work throughout South Georgia with the animals and everything else and the weather etc that's where they were well they were in wooden buildings Ed's the reason why don't damage them because after we took the place we have to put Marines in there that were going to garrison it and if we blew everything up someone was going to have to come in and build everything back up again so that was a bit of a teaser before we really got started those four would be the occupation and I put an extra face bike in there as soon as we've been taken Grytviken we were on another ship heading for the Falklands we didn't even have time to enjoy the scenery and had time for nothing it was a case if we did it we got another ship and they moved as as fast as they could to join the main task force which was closing in on the Falkland Islands proper so reconnaissance teams one of the biggest problems we have I showed you all those ships not all those ships have the ability to have air assets helicopters on board the ships and because we have such a big force of Marines SBS and SES guys we were spread right across the whole task force which made communication briefings training very very difficult and what was happening during the initial weeks was we were not getting messages about what was going on and there's nothing worse than having a bunch of board Special Forces guys in ownership not going to clue what's going on and unfortunately messages that should have been passed to us we didn't even have our leaders on the same our command structure was also spread amongst different ships so the first thing we had to do is reorganize to get everyone in the right place well I took quite a bit of getting used to the Navy you've got their way of doing things the Army's got their way of doing things and leadership them to ever meet and this was where the problems lie are more about that later due to the operational environment we encountered was only two possible options when infiltrating his SF reconnaissance teams one was by helicopter and the other was by small boat okay let's do an SES operations first the intention of the SES was to land on Fortuna classier work their way across this Ridgeline and go down into strong nests and Leith and wreak on us carry out reconnaissance to see exactly what enemy were there what their equipment was what was their preparation etc etc now before we left we had intelligence because we taken some of the BASF people so the BAS people off the island and they were given his active intelligence plus the fact was a lot of local knowledge on HMS endurance which was located in that part of the world non-stop for many many years we were advised from day one not one unfortunate Lyceum we did okay we did all the mountain truth did okay I was in a troop we prefer to jump out of a plane to land on glasses on prey parachutes okay so our mounting troop like a landed as soon as they landed that started moving to a lying up position and 100 mile an hour winds came in combat acquits came in the ice particles cut through their clothing cut their faces it was really a bad situation to find themselves in they had to look for cover in the middle of a whiteout they tried to get cover they couldn't get their overhead protection up their tents etc etc and what they had to do they had to dig a hole in the ground in the snow and get into this hole to get away from this combative wind which was just completely tearing him to pieces they lasted like that 15 hours it was obvious that we're not going to be able to move during this weather and what was happening is the weather was so bad that two or three of the guys started to go down with exposure which made it even worse because if they went down an exposure obviously that Patrol is not going to be moving up the glacier so eventually the winds come down a certain bit and they managed to get radio communications established and they said we've got to get out of here we need it we need to be evacuated so three helicopters were sent in to evacuate them not immediately because the winds were absolutely buffering the guys here itself eventually two helicopters got in and they were blown over by the wind and damaged okay so we lost two era sets on the first fly so the Navy were obviously nervous about actually going in with more helicopters because we had a limited amount of helicopters and we haven't done anything yet so anyway it got worse because then you had the aircrew that would be an expert that were experienced in the bad weather and they started to go down with exposure as well so it was quite a mess okay so what do we do a guy came in called a lieutenant commander Ian Stanley he came in in one Wessex helicopter he came in he picked up two our crews on a 15-mile SES patrol into one helicopter unfortunately the SES had to leave all our equipment behind which is something we don't like to do because we don't know what we're going to get it replaced they just took their weapons in fact they were told to leave everything but they refused to get in the helicopters they left their weapons behind so everything was left behind and this very brave Magellan commander and then he will maybe Fleet Air Arm I should say actually took off with all two air crews that's pilot copilot and aircrew times two plus fifteen messy-ass operatives into one helicopter I was windy and it was really bad and helicopter was being swept and pushed all over the the big Lyceum eventually they got back of the glass here they come down and they managed to get back to the ship and everybody survived that is the reason why he got his Distinguished Service Order for that and a few other things that he did which I will talk about in the menacing but as I said the first chance to put a patrol on the ground ending up in a major major disaster fortunately for us the Argentinians were totally unaware of what happened so let's have a look at the SPS they were going straight in by boat the intention was to bring by helicopter they're Germany's I'm companies or small boats there was a picture on before to this point here the patrol was coming in and then we're going to patrol across pick up their Germany's and they were going to sail round the corner and insert their patrol here and there is King Edward point this this is with it and this whole area is moving and in fact the SPS had the primary target we didn't realize that at the time but they were they were put into the primary target area unfortunately the SPS didn't get you further than here because the aircraft could not carry the gemenese in the wind mmm consequently we had to abort now they did try to go back and do it again but because once again the combative wings which are is very strong winds with ice particles in it could the engines the pieces it cooked the rubber boats the pieces it could the guys the pieces radio communications was virtually impossible so they had the same problem they could not get to that target area either and this went on for a period of three days and time and the windows we're getting getting closer and closer and closer we will lose an equipment every single day the air assets were the most important thing boats you can get from other sources however the fact the helicopter because two helicopters and the chances of losing more helicopters was getting worse every single day so while the SAS patrol trying to fight its way to stay alive unfortunately glassier the SPS tried to do that in clear is the there is the Germany and you might have been in that when there's a hundred mile an hour winds okay most of the boats were full water within five minutes leaving the show once again all this ice was cutting into their clothing they have dry bags which is diving Zeus with the Navy gave to them to use and they eventually had holes in them all over the place that they start sitting at cold they were sitting in a ship which was full of water and they were trying to move forward and the engines kept breaking down and eventually they tied the five five Germany's together and we're trying to figure out what they're going to do next so they decided we will call Germany's loose and we'll head back to where we started from okay this caused other problems because all the boats got swept away by the wind in different directions so we had a huge problem on art because none of us realized what was happening okay this is all after the fact we didn't know all this was happening we thought the guys get in there moving to their observation post positions they'll start reporting etc laughter two three days you will hear it nothing and we didn't know what was going on so anyway to continue then we end up with a little problem the Navy had heard that there was an Argentinean submarine in the area and obviously the Navy were particularly worried about having an Argentinean submarine with with all these task force we want seven ships there now we had our own conqueror nuclear-powered submarine and that was obviously doing its thing underwater trying to find where the submarine was unconscious went Li the submarine had already landed without our knowledge because remember we didn't have eyes on any of the targets at this stage because we were still trying to get there the SantaFe got in to grip pickin and dropped off twenty-five more Marines slavery they restocked increased reinforce the garrison and consequently they were now sailing out to go looking for the ships because it was sailing on the surface Brian Young who is the force commander on Haiti was the captain of HMS Antrim sent all the ships away from from the South Georgia - approximately 300 kilometres away to keep them out of the way while while they sorted this out that information was never passed to us of QR rap or quick reaction force if we got into trouble with the Marines on board one of the ships which was now 300 kilometers away so a 4.25 we had no QRF okay so if any of our guys went to difficulties with a larger audience in Ian's force they had to fight their way out on their own because our cure rep could not get to them because they were they were pushed out a decision was made by the task force command it was a naval captain is really worried about his ships and everything else was on his way sorry a helicopter it was coming back from a Special Forces reconnaissance and saw the submarine on the surface and they decided to attack it well we had special forces all over the island all trying to survive and the decision was made to attack the submarine before it submerged so they fired a couple of a s12 missiles at it unfortunately enough they went through the side of the conning tower I know it's difficult to see but they went through here and they went through here going back a Wesley's came over and drop these two barrel bombs okay and it was done sorted by line-of-sight they flew over the Santa Fe and the copilot was looking out the window trying to get these two barrel bombs that they were depth charges I'm being sarcastic I'm sort of yellow hooks about rad bang and they dropped these two one of them actually hit the back of the submarine dropped off into the water exploded and lifted the rid of the submarine out of the water which made it really difficult for them with the two missiles that have gone through the conning tower to submerge so basically the helicopters had achieved their goals they didn't have a problem with an argentinian submarine in the area however the Navy's decision to do this have a lot of consequences for us okay the first one is the garrison now knew we were there okay the fact we haven't carried our reconnaissance on how they were set up with a defensive perimeter and their weapons that they had everything else did really come in to worry about this the initial operations plan envisage a well a classic and a well rehearsed simultaneous row Marine Commando helicopter and amphibious assault on Griffin and supported by Special Forces that was the plan well obviously the Marines were now 300 kilometers away from the island we have our ghost scattered everywhere and there was no one to do anything okay so due to the lack of surprise and immediate requires immediate requirement to launch a helicopter ground attack against a lone reconnaissance target the BSF base at Grytviken those of us that were not out in the water lost drowning those it was enough in the mountains freezing to death we were the volunteers okay it's going to be our game I was laying in bed a week ago and you're the old head of the movie Zulu okay remember the bit when all that all the Brits are all lined up in rows flipped and this thousands of Zul is everywhere and Jack Hawkins goes out drunk and he says you're all going to die and then this young soldier tendrils PPX argument the big mustache Anson Sarge we're gonna die why are we gonna die sergeant said because we're here son because we're here and immediately my mind went back to this I thought that's exactly right okay we were there we were available we run the endurance at the time my true we run the endurance so it was going to be us one problem it was 12 o'clock in the afternoon and we don't attack in the daylight it can be dangerous to your health if you have tried to take out an enemy with X amount of soldiers in the daytime but anyway don't talk that through yet so the requirement to conduct this sudden attack gave us lots of problems the helicopter consult helicopter assault had to be conducted in daylight and direct line aside from the main target there was no way could the helicopter come around and go through all the cracks and crevices and and everything else and get us closer to camp before we got dropped off no they had to go straight in and we had no idea what type of effort what type of machine guns they had what type of anti-aircraft capability they have we had none of this at all because we had to carry that reconnaissance but we had a naval captain sending us in to do it okay which we were looking for as soon as this was over additionally the ground forces us had to be dropped a considerable distance away from the actual enemy location which also caused us quite a lot of concern as it was impossible to him to get closer because the helicopters could should would have been shot down okay so we had a bit of a conundrum but mind you we had 12 minutes to figure out how we were going to do it and I'm not joking and I'm not being sarcastic that was it okay we all got together on the flight deck of the of the endurance okay what are we going to do the boss turn around and said okay empty your packs your bergens as we call them fill them full of ammunition a machine-gun links of ammunition and everything else and we'll just go in like that get as many magazines as you can just completely cover yourself in bullets as we walked to the helicopter we were walking like this because what we've done we overloaded ourselves because we thought once we go ashore no one's going to come and resupply it so we took what we could okay okay while we were figuring out how we were going to do this I kid you not we were given approximately 12 minutes to do this task get enough ammunition to get in this helicopter and right at that time the Navy decided to have a naval bombardment this had not been done further well they have been done since Nelson's day okay and they had all the ships in a row as you can see all your little warmoth and we thought because we could hear it so we thought this isn't that bad but what happens to the fact no destruction of property oh this was great because what they were doing they were firing like half a mile away from the base and all these rounds were falling in into the mountains and into the water nothing else so they were to achieve in nothing so we were hoping that we didn't know this by the way this is all this is in hindsight so as we got on the helicopter as we were Flemish or we were expecting to be shot down we went we landed on the ground then we were told by radio and I kid you not we're not to engage in house-to-house fighting anyone who is sitting out here please tell me how we take a camp away from an enemy without having house-to-house fighting can't do it Kenny so what we said we're going to us we're gonna assault quietly twelve o'clock in the afternoon this was okay it'd have been in the night could have done other things but we wasn't in the night during the day okay and obviously you can't find any of the bus buildings okay some of the other problems already told you the wrong marine salt group was located 400 kilometers away aboard the tide spring and was unable to respond so they were out of the game we couldn't do anything and we couldn't wait for them to come back in to go back to this classic her soul with usually wore Marine Commandos because it would have been night by the time they got back and then the whole night to prepare etc etc so we had to go in and do it the majority of our SF assets was still spread all over the place okay and we couldn't get them back as quickly as we could we have a lot of our assets already on the ground in harm's way say trying to save their lives and that's another story on some of those things that actually occurred but the button bottom bottom line was we have a helicopter we had a row marine detachment from HMS Antrim which was still on the Antrim we had all these things going for us but one of the biggest problem is we never work together we couldn't communicate with each other how are we going to take a bunch of wrong Marines of a ship and expect them to work with us because we do things differently than most of the people so consequently it was getting to be a cluster of all times okay no immediate action plan had been developed in case this happened now we mean the SAS when we're planning to do something we have two or three plans already backed up before we even get out of bed because we've always got to know if we can't do this we don't stand there going what are we going to do now we know what we're going to do now because it's already been planned and basically we all know what our jobs are in it involved in the communication was a major problem it was a beautifully sunny day similar to the day we had this afternoon here in Toronto Commons was good only seven people couldn't hear what we were saying which caused even bigger okay here is the bass fill link this is where the enemy where we got dropped these are the whaling stations that the Argentineans were dismantling so we came in from this direction we landed we set up we took a single mortar 81 millimeter and we all carried two rounds of page here 81-millimeter mortar and smoke onto the plane onto the helicopter when we landed we set up a single more to chew let me through all our mortar bombs down and then we worked our way through these buildings to this location here now this here is a 15-foot track this is a glass here this is the water okay so we had to go from here to here virtually with no cover we had nothing we couldn't do anything when we got to the end then we saw what it was like leaf remember there was no reconnaissance completely we had no idea we were finding things out as we started to advance what we did know we had to get from here to here pretty damn quick before we got killed because that was about a thousand fourteen hundred meters so when we go to this area here during my days in the Marines we have a say on the powers as well we used to say if there's a difficult thing like this we fire lots of smoke we just assaults read of the mill no such luck this was to be a or bust assault in daylight there's no way polite way of putting all there is no there isn't I've been thinking about it for a while we had to go straight we had no choice we had one of our famous 15-second briefings what do you want to do what do you want to do what do you want to do what do you want to do we had no choice we said we've got to get along that track as soon as we can and as fast as we can or we couldn't do it with all this ammunition so what did we do we promptly took all this ammunition off we then sprinted for just over a thousand meters normal paced it's almost certain exactly what it was and we started to run all the way down here and there's the track as well it's in betterment defined I have to admit once we land it we expect it to come under fire we didn't soon as we moved out and moved into this area here there was dead ground here so they haven't seen us but once we got to the end of the track here there was nothing but this 15 foot wide track and nothing else all the Argentineans were here deploying with a number of weapons they had we knew 20 odd guys had just been reinforced so how many were already there to start with so it was a case of let's go do it and we did it so we went down the track as fast as we could expecting to be open firearm we didn't because if we had I would be standing in here now talking to my name would be on a monument somewhere okay so we managed to get to the end when we got there at the time we an are anal sphincter the powered is down that 1000 meters we couldn't believe none of us have got shot at and no one had been killed or injured so when we got to the end when we go to the end here there was a bank and then there was a football field goal posts so by the time we got our breath back we sort of had a look at the ground guess what we saw when we looked over that Bank anybody there playing football but he lost no all the Argentinian garrison was lined up in three ranks with all our weapons power up in front of them so we live to fight another day okay because they decided because of the gunfire which we were ridiculing they thought they're going to move closer closer closer closer closer so we better go out and hand pocket and they did so the whole Argentinian garrison does about just under forty people all lined up in three ranks like they're stunning to attention captain Astor's it was it was the base commander it was a UN war criminal but that's another story we're standing in front of them and they're all looking like lemmings looking over this Ridge and there they all were with no guns in Sandy's rear ends the SPS to SPS commander was a young guy called Armstrong and he was about this big he had white blond hair big blue eyes I was like five four three Estes was six foot five so he said boss get your backside out there and take the surrender well you guys should do it nothing I think think of the picture op little ornery officer this big muscular guy Argentinean anyway I'm strong went out and took the surrender he said okay stay where you are we're going to surround you we're going to bring in helicopters and you know then it became was not job anymore we done up it and that was it we were going to go home and get drunk so so he came back and he said guys the commander just told me that 200 meters of this track in this track have been mined we'd ran through a minefield to get there I know one detonated a mine okay so once again there is anybody up there they took care of us because by all means we should have died that afternoon there's no two ways about it will be didn't so anyway that's that's basically the assault itself these are some of the pictures that were drawn by the bus people this is another one to give you a closer look about how it is unfortunately we don't have any really your pictures we went there sightseeing we have to get in and get out so post assault actions and company for to command they'll assume command the South Georgia they flew in and great gusto first thing they did was take the 22 SES flag down off the flagpole and put a em company for two commando flagpole however they didn't steal a flight they gave it to us because he says you might need this on the Falkland Islands and we did because we put that flag up over Government House in Stanley when they surrendered so anyway Marines came in the Argentinian formally surrendered this is him here as you can see he's quite a big guy okay this is a case is Nick bark at the captain of the of the insurance and that's the insurance the red plum as it was cool then some very senior highly intelligent naval officers that would be a very good idea if we put all these Marines and SF guys on the endurance and put them in the chain Locker at the front of the ship those who knows who you know what a chain Locker looks like it's full of every single weapon known to man from spikes the chains everything all the garbage goes in there working on the ship so all these guys forced into this this area and we were told to God so anyway we looked at them on what these guys did we knew you spoke English as to this was the only one that declared he could speak English but every time there was a tunneling pipe on the ship they don't stop talking and listen so we thought okay we have to take care of this so what we did we drew a red line halfway across the chain Locker and we said to them any of you pass this red line we will shoot you so they knew it was serious because we brought the weapons now that silence is on those of you unable know that 90 about things called rounds when the naval officer of the day walks around and make sure you clean your washroom all the stuffs stored away and everything else but in the middle of a war here with that tradition carried on so the duty officer came down big red line the bad guys standing there with our silenced weapons and he said what's that red line so he was told he says where were those things on the end of your guns and he said silences so he says what are they for he said well if they go away with that red line we shoot them he turned around went up to see the captain Nick Barca Nick Barker the captain came down and called those murderers criminals and we're looking at I'm thinking are you stupid I just took all us on a chain lock of an Argentinean ship we would probably find a way to take that ship over in ten minutes but they expected us to sit there we sort of you know a little wouldn't stains is naughty boy ninety four years okay and he said disarmed well we refused and he says I am ordering you we said I'm sorry it's our lives and the lives of every member of the ship and he still couldn't figure it out about an hour later he wanted to invite us his to dinner in his cabin right this guy was responsible for murder in five minutes in bombers Aras okay and he wants it in for dinner the wine came out and everything else and one of our guys went in with a silenced weapon and he said I don't want you in here and he says I have to be in here I've got to keep my eye on this guy blah blah blah and he kicked him out so we had a TEDTalk tent for an hour and a half with the enemy because that's the thing to do with British in you know so anyway whatever suddenly became the bad guys which was very disconcerting now I want you to imagine this whole ship is full of grenades rocket launchers rifles pistols everything because we taking all the ammunition and all the weapons back and if we just threw almost on the deck of the ship we had that time to do what are we going to do with it so that was it and as I said the captain said to a group of us why are you being like this this is supposed to be a friendly war has anyone here ever been in a friendly war on 40 they thought we could now before I finish I just want to talk about some of the command and control problems the SS were totally unfamiliar with the Royal Navy on will unroll marine hierarchy or their command structure now being an ex-marine I knew these things so I was giving our guy's lectures on the way down an example we were in ascension islands and the SBS would try out there driving equipment that we sharks everywhere so one of the guys went to the to the cook house the galley whatever you want to call it got some meat and we were throwing the food in between all the divers the SBS divers and sharks we came in and grabbing the food recently it's funny at the time lunch United on we never seen an SPS guy with a shark man it's like I just want to take people so this naval officer was a commander which is fairly senior it's only the equipment on the lieutenant colonel somebody pushing the guys out of the way because we're all leaning over the side of the ship and I went to one of our Irish members and he says you push me again pal and you're going over the side this horrified disabled commander who was used to being obeyed in heart beats right so he runs away and he goes and gets the boss so Cedric comes back attempt attended Tim he did it what happened and told him he says did you push it he said yes he said when I say make way for a naval officer everyone gets out of my way he says well we don't know what that means because we're in the army and place topics no shoes I want this guy arrested there's no one going to be arrested go away so there was other little things I have so anyway what made it worse is naval hierarchy have no idea how to use this there are no idea who we were what our capabilities were what our responsibilities were for them to dream this plan out there you're going to send to us with myth with some of the people who came along with us I'm not run down that track there's probably 17 was all together the fact is you don't waste Special Forces on a job like that because it takes years of training and there was a water fight after South Georgia been taken so if it had been a night attack it have been totally everyone would have been in our element but to risk our lives like that was was asinine but and unfortunately about to reach later we lost 22 guys in a helicopter crash so you had those 15 guys those 22 guys the SAS would have been non-functional for the whole of the world most of the guys would have been dead and they hadn't figured that once were the majority of our missions were executed with minimum amounts of intelligence information there was rarely time any time to carry out realistic assessments and every time we flew on a mission we didn't know what to expect when we got off the helicopter so this was sort of what this is then South Georgia this carried on when we eventually got to for them and this is a critical flaw because special forces depend on stealth guile and surprise for success we come in at night we do what we do I'm a gone before everyone wakes up that's what we're trying to do we're not trying to do full frontal assaults in daylight along a track which is mined against an on reconnaissance position but they thought they lived beside those if you want to go get a drink or fall asleep television after the compromise with the military oh there was no other options left to the force commander what to like watching a daylight helicopter and ground assault if the Argentinians are decided to fight I use different terminology when I was doing this presentation of the same president for a simple presentation years ago there's a few people from the audience in the embassy in the audience they took exception when I got the bar it was the old finger in the chest and if the Argentinians have decided to fight and defend the bass building we were the lost an awful lot of guys that the afternoon okay so we were looking we were really really looking and as I said it was an elements of good luck to all the results of good military planning we would never ever ever attack anything unless we done a reconnaissance we just wouldn't do it we go away and come back later when it was dark and it was on our terms but the Navy didn't understand that and that wasn't their fault but didn't help situation so join the falklands we lost 21 operators this was the greatest single loss to the Union since World War two the SDS lost one operator this guy who we shot accidentally was a very good friend of mine TB hunt are you shocked because the sps were working in the same area we were they were challenged kiwi who was the sergeant did what I supposed to do when he was challenged and the four members his patrol ran away so everyone opened fire on them and he was cut some pieces from Mission okay it was really bad this caused serious bad blood but when we had a big SF party on the Canberra it wasn't a party it was a punch-up and when the punch-up finished two piers another punch oh it really destroyed the relationships between the SBS and the SAS okay holy-o's

Channel: RCMI Toronto

Views: 57,390

Rating: 4.6290727 out of 5

Keywords: RCMI, Toronto, Military, History, Falklands War (Military Conflict), Special Air Service (Military Unit)

Id: Hj8Hkbb0-0Q

Length: 51min 25sec (3085 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 30 2015