FROM SINGAPORE TO THE FALKLANDS: ONE SAILOR'S JOURNEY

 Actually, our story begins in the North Atlantic, just over the horizon from the Virginia coastline. On July 20-21, 1921, there was an amazing demonstration pitting the Army against the Navy. This demonstration was not about football, but whether battleships could be sunk by aerial bombing.

The Army team was commanded by General Billy Mitchell of the Army Air Service and his 1^st Provisional Air Brigade and the Navy’s contribution was two captured German battleships from World War l. Mitchell’s bombers did indeed sink the two battleships over the two-day demonstration of air power, yet the Navy was satisfied that the event was not held under combat conditions, so their big ships were still safe from air attack.

For over 20 years the Navy assumed so until December 7, 1941. The Japanese air assault against the United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor either destroyed our battleships or put them out of action for a long time. Naval leaders perhaps thought since the big ships were in harbor at anchor the air threat could be neutralized with sea maneuver. If they thought so, their thoughts crashed three days later on December 10.

Singapore was the British equivalent of Pearl Harbor. Earlier in the year the Royal Navy has assembled Force Z to fight an expected battle(s) against Japan’s Imperial Navy. Force Z was formidable with the battleship HMS Prince of Wales, which had assisted with the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck; the battlecruiser HMS Repulse; and several smaller escort vessels. Force Z was ordered into the Gulf of Thailand to prevent Japanese amphibious landings in Malaysia. And on December 10, Japanese naval bombers destroyed both the Prince of Wales and the Repulse in a matter of several hours. The death knell of the battleship as the capital ship of the fleet had been rung.

[The new queen of the fleet was the aircraft carrier. And they too were aerially vulnerable as witnessed by the sinking of 4 Japanese carriers during the Battle of Midway in early June 1942 by avenging American naval dive bombers. But now we are sidetracked.]

Captain John Leach was commanding HMS Prince of Wales. Before departing Singapore on his fatal voyage, he lunched with his son Henry, an eighteen-year-old midshipman. Father and son never saw each other again. John Leach ended up with a broken neck face down in the Pacific. Henry made the Navy his career and by 1982, he was an admiral and First Sea Lord, the professional head of the Royal Navy. At least, what was left of the Royal Navy after budget cuts and widespread decommissioning of ships.

So, in April 1982 when Argentina invaded and captured the British overseas possession of the Falkland Islands, the Royal Navy had become so impotent that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her defense advisors did not envision “The First Service” of British power to be a solution to their problem. Finally, Admiral Leach was invited into the war room and after several hours Thatcher looked at Leach and asked, “First Sea Lord, what do you want?”  “Prime Minister,”  Leach responded, “if you so order, I will have a task force setting sail in 72 hours to recapture those islands.” Thatcher so ordered and Leach kept his promise.  (Dialogue is my own paraphrase.)

Leach, in fact, cobbled together three task forces, the first which indeed sailed in 72 hours. Altogether, the Royal fleet consisted of 44 warships (including 2 aircraft carriers being readied for decommissioning and 3 nuclear submarines), 12 auxiliary vessels, and 45 other ships (including a civilian container ship and two ocean liners refitted as troop ships). The ships sailed 8,000 miles from Britain to the Falklands and delivered the troops and their supplies to retake the islands.

So, what are we to make of Admiral Leach’s leadership? I propose several take-aways:

1.     Leach was an “inside-the-box” thinker. He made do with what he had and nothing more.

2.     Leach was optimistic. He believed in the Navy and its sailors to do their jobs.

3.     Leach was persistent. Not invited to the war room, he found a way to get in.

4.     Leach was ready. He came to the war room with a solution, not a list of complaints.

First Sea Lord Admiral Henry Leach indeed made  a journey from Singapore to the Falklands. His father would be proud!