War is a bitch and sadly hindsight is only available AFTER the event. Horrible mistakes were made and yes lives were lost, but show me Mr Perfect and I will show you an office bound 9am - 5pm armchair critic.
I am in the corner that feels Sheffield could have carried out her picket duties in a manner that would have comfortably detected that incoming threat, she never and paid a very high price for that failure. Regarding this so called arrogance of the Royal Navy in believing it could deal with any incoming air threat, then I simply ask the question that apart from Sheffield was any other warship lost in deep water?
Mistakes were made and mistakes will continue to be made, but whilst we train and rehearse for scenarios we have fought and never allowing planners to think outside the box, then will the lives of our brace service personnel be lost unnecessarily ... Where are the forward thinkers that have the ability to plan major war games and plan them in ways that will stretch the abilities of our armed forces?
How many times do we carry out exercises where we are familiar with the area, the targets, the rules of the 'game' and are fully conversant with the type of scenario we will be involved in?
Every conflict that takes place, we hear the same excuses of.... 'This has never happened before' How unfair for our enemies to engage our warships from the close proximity of land..
I thought the RAF could guarantee air cover anywhere in the World and there would be no need for the Royal Navy to have its own air power.
Instead of pointing fingers at those at the sharp end, let's think how we would have managed with the old Hermes, or perish the thought the recently retired Ark Royal (R09) Conventional AWAC with both Phantoms and Buccaneers would have won the day at a canter and whilst we want to play big boy games then we need big boy toys. Put up, or shut up..... Project power or be a coastal defence force.
If we are looking at blame games then lets start looking at the farcical decisions made on the day the Sir Galahad got attacked. Not a young, inexperienced junior ranking sailor, but an experienced, highly qualified Royal Marine officer talking to a more senior Army officer. 48 deaths, most of which were avoidable but war is a bitch and mistakes are made.
I feel sorry for any PWO who has the unenviable task of dismissing reported contacts as being false but every day during that conflict there were dozens of false contacts both above the surface and below it. Before we start pointing the finger, we need to accept these men were working an absolute minimum of twenty hours per day, seven days a week and any sleep they could grab would usually be interrupted and quite often for false alarms. I dread to think how many whales were killed and the ribbing those sailors would get for detecting these 'hunter killers'. How nice it would be if our sailors could only work a maximum of 120 hours per MONTH!!! It is never going to happen, fatigue will always see bad decisions and bad decisions in war will cost lives.
Mistakes were made, lives were lost but the cause was just and I just hope that all those decisions were made after due diligence. Right or wrong, they were made in good faith and providing lessons were learned we should all move on and simply,
'Remember them'