MM,
You said: "I'd be interested in reading Cdr Ward's views. I regret that I have yet to find anything by him which is unbiased."
Nor will you find it if you invest £3.60 in Warships.
The article which Navaleye praises is a revised reprint of Ward's intro to his book, 'Sea Harrier over the Falklands'.
Of four pages, the first three are solely about Sharkey's single handed victory in the Falklands. It has the usual disparaging guff about Hermes and 800 in particular (who hadn't learned how to get the best of the radar or to align their INSs), and who then f*cked up in spades when it came to positioning CAPs and whose many failures led to all of the big Argentine successes.
Makes one wonder how these air-to-ground obsessed amateurish air defence tyros managed to down more enemy aircraft (13) than Ward's own squadron did...... (8)
The fourth page opens with a generous tribute to the air warfare adviser to the Naval Staff who was largely responsible for the development of the SHar FA2 (Ward). The FA2 was, of course, the only aircraft in the world with a radar 'perfectly harmonised' with AMRAAM, and was the most capable air-to-air fighter/interceptor in Europe. And whatever amateurs like Jock Stirrup say, the Sea Harrier was entirely capable of defeating the threat posed by sea-skimming missiles.
Thanks entirely to Sharkey.......
