It had certainly become a stupid situation when, during an air attack men armed themselves and went on upper desk to shoot at the A/C in preference to being down below, where they could only wait, not fire back and might well suffer shrapnel damage from the cone of the blast on detonation.
I hasten to say I do not feel in any way guilty or cowardly in recommending this - I do feel that the Group must complement each others systems and not have the first threat to the Argentinean Air force to be close range weapons systems - this to me is a singular admission of failure and total lack of grip of the Aim to provide adequate air defence to the Amphibious Forces. Coventry today by simply turning her fire control radar on the Mirage raids made them turn away and indeed go home for they do not have much fuel to manoeuvre so far from home.
Despite the appalling and unnecessary losses and damage to our frigates we have made a major inroad into the Argentinean Air force capability. They still have a lot of Skyhawk A/C and so there is certainly a need for us to do more yet but, with the logic of "taking the war to the Enemy" we can easily do this. It does require T42's and the Cap A/C to be more up threat however.
There is one major advantage to the separation of Captain Black (Invincible) and the Admiral (Hermes) for they have to talk on covered voice communications and we can all "listen in". Black is a most sensible man and I have agreed with everything he has said and proposed. In my view, it is a pity he is not commanding the forces here. One can certainly sense his frustration as he repeatedly tries to get his v. good ideas through to this "submarine idiot" whose prize remarks about, "Were learning all the time" is certainly getting though to me - He should already have known - I attribute the loss of Sheffield to him for stupid and unnecessary stationing and force positioning within known Etendard / Exocet range.
The frigate losses are also his by his paranoia of defending the Carriers with T42's which should be up-threat defending the AOA! He really can't have it both ways, he either keeps the Carriers well out of range or brings them closer to better use his A/C with good defence in depth by T42 escorts - he can't (with conviction!?) be both out of range and keep all the T42's!!
Written on the 24th May 1982 by Laon Holme - XO HMS Brilliant