Thread by @EngageStrategy1

Seeing as the UK NSA's comments about a sovereign task group has drawn some attention and the usual Falklands Task Force comparisons have come up, let's take a moment to look at the Royal Navy of 1982.

The Royal Navy on the eve of the Falklands war appears formidable, it had 3 aircraft carriers, 2 Landing Platform Docks, 12 destroyers, 48 frigates, 11 SSNs, 17 SSKs and a multitude of smaller support, Mine countermeasures & Patrol ships.

Pictured below is the 1977 fleet review.

Basically, the RN had (compared with today anyway) loads of ships. But as soon as you begin to dig down into it you soon see those impressive figures disguising serious weaknesses.

Outside slightly spotterish Naval and military history spheres people don't really ask what those warships that made up the RN of 1982 actually were. So here are a few.

This is HMS Berwick, a Type 12I Rothesay class frigate of the 8th frigate squadron (insert "ooh we had whole squadrons of frigates back then!" comment here). She displaced 2,500t and was armed with a twin barreled 4.5" gun, Sea Cat missile launcher and an anti Submarine mortar.

To say these ships were small and lightly armed is an exaggeration. They were small and barely armed at all. The Limbo Anti submarine mortar & manual dual 4.5" guns would have been recognisable by those who'd served in WW2 40yrs earlier.

Limbo and the WW2 "squid" ASW mortar:

Even then three of the Rothesay class and the remaining 2 older Type 12 Whitby class were in use in non-combat roles for trials and harbour training or in mothballs.

In effect 11 of those 46 Frigates were slightly modernised and barely armed variations of the Whitby, a convoy escort designed in the 1950s, comprehensively unsuitable for modern war at sea by the 1980s.

All they could do was effectively drive around, look brave and get bombed.

This was the fate suffered by HMS Plymouth (A Rothesay class frigate) on the 8th of June 1982.

The four 1000lb bombs that hit her and wrecked her funnel and Limbo mortar thankfully failed to explode.

Next, I will touch on a subject guaranteed to ruffle feathers. The Type 12M Leander class. By a long way the Royal Navy's most famous and "successful" post war frigate design, with 26 built for the RN and 20 licence built by foreign navies.

These were the mainstay of the RN's frigates in 1982, built over ten years between 1963 and 1973 in three batches of 10-6-10. The final batch being an improved "broad-beamed" version.

Despite the modest enlargement they were, like the Rothesays, relatively small ships.

By the 1970s the RN began extensively modernising the Leanders into three groups with new equipment fits: a group with the Ikara ASW rocket launcher, one with the Exocet anti ship missile and additional Sea Cat launchers and a final group of 5 with Exocet & a Sea Wolf launcher.

The issue was that in order to fit the new systems to the small Leanders other systems had to be removed to free up space and top weight.

For example, the Ikara Leanders lost their Type 965 long range search radars to accommodate the ADAWS combat management system.

No Leander was a well rounded surface unit by the 1980s, all were specialists with either an effective Anti-submarine or anti-surface capability.

Only 5 ever received the modern Sea Wolf point defence missile & even they were still limited by having a single fire control radar.

Although undoubtedly handsome and successful in the export arena, the Leanders were still badly compromised as fighting ships by the 1980s.

They do not compare well with contemporary frigates being produced by peer navies, like the USN's 5,400t Brooke class (below).

This leaves the remaining eleven, more modern, frigates of the Type 21 Amazon and Type 22 Batch 1 Broadsword classes.

The Type 21s are remembered for a few things. Amongst them, an erroneous story about their aluminium superstructures burning.

Two, Ardent and Antelope, were sunk by Argentine aircraft in the Falklands War.

Type 21 shared many of the same limitations as Leander, unsurprising as they were intended to be a cheaper and more modern Leander substitute (in the end, they weren't cheaper).

Type 21 had more limited growth margins than Leander, unable to even retrofit a Sea Wolf launcher.

Their air defence armament consisted of the 4.5" gun, a single quad Sea Cat missile launcher and two 20mm Oerlikon cannon.

This would probably be an opportune moment to talk briefly about Sea Cat.

Sea Cat was a first generation missile system which was the main air defence armament of almost all RN frigates in 1982. It was also about as much use as throwing rocks at the enemy. The missile was slow, manually guided, inaccurate and struggled with low flying targets.

In the 1982 it was initially credited with 8 kills, later analysis indicated that it in fact *might* have downed one aircraft. One. This was the system 40/48 of the RN's frigates depended on for air defence and it fundamentally didn't work.

But at least Type 21 was fast.

The remaining 3 frigates were the brand new Batch 1 Type 22s. Large, modern, better but still riddled with problems. Designed as anti-submarine frigates they were incapable of fitting a towed array, lacked a main gun and remained technically temperamental throughout the 1982 war.

Of the total of 48 frigates around a quarter were antiquated and incapable of surviving in modern combat, over half were small, compromised specialists and the remaining eleven were a mixture of small/racy/badly armed and compromised/unreliable.

The twelve air warfare destroyers were, as a rule, more modern. Comprising eight Type 42s in two batches of 6 and 2 (by 1982, more were built later) the single Type 82 Bristol and the remaining three Batch 2 County class destroyers.

These ships were variously equipped but fundamentally relied on the 20 year old Type 965 radar. The intended replacement, the anglo-dutch Type 988 "Broomstick" 3D radar was cancelled in the late 60s, along with any further Type 82s after Bristol.

The Type 965 performed well enough in open waters, but had serious issues detecting low flying contacts and clutter effectively blinded it to aircraft approaching over land.

This was what happened to HMS Coventry. Aircraft approached over land, her radars were unable to acquire them and her escorting Type 22 (Yes the Type 42, an air warfare destroyer, required a close escort to survive air attack) lost her target lock with Sea Wolf.

The early Type 42s were also small ships with limited growth margins. Post-war studies indicated that retrofitting Sea Wolf was impossible.

In order to save money the ships of the first 2 batches were shortened, badly effecting their seakeeping and missile magazine size.

The 3 County class were effectively useless in their designed anti aircraft role by 1982. Their Sea Slug missile was huge, scary and incapable of engaging modern or low flying aircraft. In the end the RN resorted to firing them at ground targets. With some success.

The singleton Bristol suffered from many of the same problems with her radars as the early Type 42s. After the class was cancelled she was essentially built as a tech demonstrator for the new Sea Dart missile system, amongst other things. She did not participate in the 1982 war.

Of the carriers Hermes was an antique, laid down in WW2 and completed in 1953. The other (the third, HMS Illustrious was barely out of the shipyard in 1982) Invincible was tiny and carried a single squadron of Sea Harrier Jets and some Sea King helicopters.

As for their air groups, between them they sailed with just 20 Sea Harrier FRS.1 (SHAR) Jets. The RN only possessed 31 SHAR in total in 1982. Of which 28 (and 10 RAF ground attack Harrier GR.3s) saw service in the Falklands War.

On average SHAR at maximum output was generating ~1.4 combat sorties per aircraft per day and GR.3 ~0.9. For carriers operating at their absolute maximum output this is lacklustre at best.

Sailors and airmen could only do so much with small carrier decks jammed with aircraft.

The one area of real strength was in Submarines, particularly nuclear Submarines. 5 of the 11 available saw service in 1982. But even they were far from perfect.

The new Tigerfish wire guided torpedo was notoriously unreliable.

The Belgrano was sunk by HMS Conqueror with WW2-era Mk.48 straight running Torpedoes.

That the RN did as well as it did was down essentially to one reason: Jack and the people in charge of him were a bunch of determined bastards who "engaged the enemy more closely" in the finest traditions of the service.

The modern navy learned those hard lessons. It's part of the reason why it's smaller.

Engaging Strategy. Out.