by DAVID HART DYKE

Last updated at 10:42 31 March 2007

His destroyer blown apart by enemy bombs, he watched in horror as his men were devoured by the flames. The devastating story of HMS Coventry, the last warship sunk in the battle for the Falklands - by its captain

During the last few hectic weeks of the Falklands War, every man on HMS Coventry realised that the odds of emerging unscathed were stacked against us. We always knew that we might be hit from the air - it was just a question of where the blow would fall, and of how many casualties we would sustain. After all, three British warships had already been sunk and others grievously damaged.

I frequently thought along these lines and I am sure most of my sailors did, but we never admitted it openly. That would have been demoralising. Conversations were brave and cheerful, full of confidence that we would all get home safely. I was shocked when, a day or two before the end, the first lieutenant, my second-incommand, came into my cabin and with noticeable hesitation said: 'You know, sir, some of us are not going to get back to Portsmouth.'

Although it disturbed me to hear him say this, I thought it was very brave of him to admit to his captain what he really felt, and at least we no longer had to pretend to each other about the risks we were running.

He included himself among those who would not return and in his last letter home he told his wife as much. She was to receive the letter just after she heard the news that he had been killed.

Towards the end of our time, the strains were definitely beginning to tell. Although most people remained outwardly strong and in control of themselves, feelings clearly ran high.

Once, quite unprompted, a young sailor on the bridge showed me photographs of his girlfriend and talked freely about her. He was in need of reassurance and this was his way of showing it. There had already been air raids that day, and we knew the enemy would be among us again very soon.

On a similar occasion, a petty officer produced a prayer, given to him by his mother when he first joined the Navy, which he kept with him all the time and which clearly meant a great deal to him, especially now.

He asked me to read it in our church service on Sunday and then moved quickly out on to the wings of the bridge for fear of showing the tears in his eyes. War can be an emotional business.

I found it depressing to wake each morning to beautiful, clear and sunny weather which favoured the enemy air force and illuminated us sharply against the blue sea.

I would wait on the bridge, heavily clothed for protection against fire, lifejacket and survival suit around my waist, ready for the next air raid warning. When it came, I would go down to the operations room to prepare to counter the threat.

These moments invariably demanded a certain amount of nerve: you had to put on a confident face as men watched you go below and wondered whether we would win the next round and survive unharmed.

Tuesday, May 25, 1982, was another of those days. We had survived two air raids and shot down three aircraft with missiles. Inevitably, there was another warning and I went below feeling more fearful than before.

I paused for a moment at the top of the hatch and talked briefly to Lieutenant Rod Heath, the officer responsible for the missile system. I never saw him again.

At 6pm precisely, I pressed the action-station alarm from the command position in the operations room and within four minutes the ship was closed down, ready and braced for action.

As we listened to the air battle raging, we tried desperately to avoid losing radar contact with the fast and low-flying enemy aircraft and to predict where they were going next.

There was the familiar air of quiet professionalism, the sound of swiftly tapping keyboards as operators tracked targets and of soft but urgent voices exchanging information over the internal lines.

It was like some frantic computer game, and we knew we would lose the battle if we could not keep up with its everquickening pace. As I glanced around at the warfare team, their pale and anxious faces said everything.

I looked at the clock - it was nearly 6.15 - and prayed that time would somehow accelerate, enabling us to see out what would surely be the last air raid of the day. Even now, I knew that outside in the South Atlantic the light was already beginning to fade, the prelude to another brilliant sunset.

As it was, we came up against a very brave and determined attack by four Argentinian aircraft. We opened fire with everything we had, from Sea Dart missiles to machine guns and even rifles, but two aircraft got through, hitting us with three 1,000lb bombs. My world exploded.

I was aware of a flash, of heat and the crackling of the radar set as it literally disintegrated in front of my face. When I came to my senses, I could see nothing through the dense black smoke, only people on fire, but I could sense that the compartment had been totally devastated.

All power and communication had been lost. The ship was flooding and on fire. We had been plunged into a nightmare of chaos and confusion.

Within about 20 minutes, the Coventry would be upside down, her keel horizontally above the sea. Nineteen brave men would be dead.

It still strikes me as remarkable that some 280 of us got out of the ship, whose interior was utterly devastated and filled with thick suffocating smoke. I can only put that down to good training, discipline and high morale. You need all of those - especially the last - in desperate situations.

As for myself, I was two decks down and had a long way to go to reach fresh air. I could see no way out and was suffocating in the smoke. The ladders were gone and doors blocked by fire.

I was calm and not at all frightened. I was feeling quite rational and was prepared to die. There seemed to be no alternative.

We had been on training exercises off Gibraltar in April 1982 when we heard the startling news that South Georgia and the Falkland Islands had been overrun. We were ordered south immediately and at best speed for Ascension Island.

War still seemed unthinkable. I wrote home to my wonderful wife Diana, known as D: 'Here I am steaming south. It's very hot. We're all praying for a political solution and a quick end to the problem - otherwise we could be here for several months. Hardly bears thinking about.'

Ascension brought us up with a start. Weapons training intensified, and we carried out frequent first-aid and damage-control exercises, simulating fire and flooding.

We took on a vast amount of stores and spares and received charts of the Falklands - which was just as well, since for most of us they had been no more than distant dots in the atlas at school.

For some, they were never to have much appeal. Much later, when we got our first actual glimpse of the islands, one of my officers logged in his diary: 'What a dump. Looks like Wales on a wet Sunday after England have beaten them at Cardiff Arms Park and all the pubs have run out of beer.'

From intelligence briefings we learned that the Argentinians had 200 front-line aircraft and two modern submarines armed with very effective homing torpedoes. They would be a nasty threat if properly deployed. We were worried now - and with good reason.

All the trappings and comforts of peacetime were removed as we secured the ship for action. Wind-surfing boards and a sailing dinghy were among items thrown over the side.

We mounted machine guns in the ship's Lynx helicopter, improvising rotating platforms for the guns from swivel chairs. Such ingenuity would see us out of many tight spots in the days ahead. On one occasion, we would somehow repair our defective long-range radar in the middle of an air raid by using the heating elements from a mess deck toaster.

I sent a letter off to D: 'We are moving closer to fighting. The loneliness of command, especially in difficult times, is quite a strain - though I know I shall cope all right. I am in very good health and remain outwardly cheerful, but inwardly anxious.

'PS: There are two envelopes in the drawers of my desk addressed to you. They tell you how much money you get if I fail to return from the war. Thought I had better mention it! At least you won't be short of cash.'

After we left Ascension and headed further south, Admiral Sandy Woodward-the Battle Group commander, came on board and addressed the crew. It was the first time we heard someone actually say that war was possible and that we could expect ship losses and casualties on our side.

This came as a shock to many on board, but it helped us to concentrate even more on preparing for what was clearly going to be a tough fight.

As we left the tropics, the weather began to change: grey skies, biting winds and crashing waves. We could cope with the worsening weather but for me this period before the conflict started was the most testing, and the most frightening.

It was a time of both selfexamination and adjustment. I had to remove from my mind all thoughts of a safe, familiar peacetime world and come to terms with danger and violence.

This was far from easy. I remember a terrible hollow feeling in my stomach as the full realisation of what was happening dawned on me. I felt I was being swept helplessly along in a fastflowing river to an uncertain end, and that I was unable to strike out for the banks and safety.

I could scarcely believe we were going to be asked to resolve the issue by force when we were so heavily outnumbered on the ground and in the air. I reckoned the Argentinian Air Force alone could win the war and that just those two submarines could bring us to our knees by picking off the aircraft carriers or the troop ships as they approached the landing area.

I feared for both the reputation and the future of the Royal Navy should we fail. But I noticed that the men were now watching me more closely and listening to every word I uttered. Any chink in my armour would increase their anxiety and perhaps reduce their will to fight.

I had to remain outwardly unafraid and cheerful, whatever my inner turmoil. Their lives were in my hands and I could sense that they felt it. It was soon time for wills to be completed and last letters home written. Morphine was issued, along with lifejackets, survival suits and identity discs.

I scribbled a letter to D: 'All is well as I lead my ship's company into war. What a thing to be doing! But, although I hate it all, I am ready for it.

'I have terrible thoughts about leaving you and the girls to continue life without me. I hope if it comes to it you will be very, very brave. Life must go on and you three must be happy.

'But I will be back, so don't worry about me. I am in good health and the ship is ready for anything.'

Our readiness was soon to be tested, as by now the diplomatic negotiations had failed. Britain declared a 200-mile exclusion zone around the Falklands. Come inside it, the enemy was warned, and we will attack.

As the Navy force neared the zone, we in Coventry, plus HMS Sheffield and HMS Glasgow, were sent 20 miles ahead of the carrier group. We were on picket duty, out there to detect and deal with any threat to the highly valuable ships of the main force by taking them on with our own missiles or calling in help from the Harrier jets on the aircraft carriers.

The task of the picket ship is a lonely one: you are intentionally placed in harm's way. You are likely to be sunk first in any attack on the main force, and you are always a tempting target to a submarine.

Such was my lot, but I wasn't complaining as, in the early hours of May 1, the Carrier Battle Group entered the exclusion zone and we were at war. After three long weeks, the worry and uncertainty were over. The fainthearted became strong. And I no longer feared that I was being swept helplessly down a river: I was simply following its course wherever it might take me, and I was in full control.

As well as being on picket duty, another of Coventry's tasks was to creep inshore and bombard military installations near the Falklands' capital Port Stanley. SAS patrols operating behind enemy lines provided us with the coordinates of the artillery, radar and ammunition dumps we should hit.

The SAS were already up to their usual tricks - setting off a random explosion here, leaving a discarded British cigarette packet there, and perhaps even adding something nasty to the water supplies.

Some of them took passage in Coventry before being dropped for their missions. Afterwards, word went around that they had liberated the odd carving knife from the ship's galley, either to discard near their vacated campfires as an overt sign of their presence - or to use more directly on the enemy.

Four days into the fighting, we were having trouble with our long-range radar, so we moved to a safer sector to carry out repairs. Sheffield took our place. Then we and Glasgow got wind of a possible Exocet missile attack.

It was hard for warfare officers to make these calls as they scanned their radars and listened to their electronic sensors.

The weather and atmospheric conditions often played tricks and any number of spurious contacts would appear on our screens: once, we engaged and destroyed what we thought were Argentine patrol boats, only to discover they had been a group of albatrosses.

Glasgow seemed sure about the Exocet attack but Sheffield was uncertain. We three screening ships kept talking to each other to try to work out exactly what was happening.

Suddenly there was silence from Sheffield. Complete silence. Had she suffered a communications failure? No such luck. An Exocet had found her, skimming the sea at hundreds of miles per hour and slamming into her starboard side, creating an inferno of fire and smoke.

The Argentinian pilot had come in very low, underneath Sheffield's main radar beams, seen an echo on his own radar, and just fired. Then he skedaddled home, not even aware of what he had done.

Twenty members of Sheffield's crew were dead, and when the fire got out of control, the ship had to be abandoned. The effect of her loss on my ship's company was devastating. Hardly a word was spoken for several hours and people had to struggle to overcome their feelings and fears.

But although we had all been shocked, we were becoming battlehardened ourselves, and the next day our confidence returned and we became even more determined to hit back at the enemy.

• Read part two here

