On May 25, 1982, Argentina’s National Day, he was in the command position of Coventry’s windowless operations room, staring at radar screens that showed four Argentinian Skyhawk jets, armed with 1,000lb bombs, racing towards her, intent on sending the ship to the bottom of the South Atlantic. Hart Dyke had been able to track the assault from its starting point 200 miles away, through radar and by using Spanish interpreters, who listened to the pilots’ radio chatter. “I knew when they were taking off from the runways in Argentina,” he says, “how many aeroplanes, the type of aeroplanes, the names of the pilots, and I knew who they were going for.”