The Falklands Campaign – personal reflections

September 17, 2024

By Jeremy Larken DSO*

Introduction

The canvas for this paper is the Falklands Campaign in 1982, events encompassing some 100 days. My post was Captain of the 12,000 tonne assault ship HMS Fearless. In addition to command of the ship, I was Chief of Staff to the Commodore Amphibious Warfare (COMAW), the maritime commander for the military landings at San Carlos – the pivotal step in the re-possession of the Falkland Islands. As such, I was involved intimately with the planning of the amphibious tasks and the naval inshore operations around the islands, and the Commodore assigned me extensive elements of delegated tactical command authority within the amphibious force.

Drawing upon the sum of my previous command experience, I could scarcely have been better prepared for the challenges; nor could I have gone to this peculiar war either with better people or in a better ship. I was 43.

Scope

The Falklands crisis broke as an almost complete surprise for those who were to fight. Fearless abruptly found herself a major cog in a large and intricate yet flexible military machine that quickly became a crucial instrument of UK national will and government policy. Mine was not the hand that directed the strategic destiny of Fearless, much less the Amphibious Force. But I had everything to do with preparing the old ship for her starring role, a process that you will find stretched back a year. During the campaign itself, you have heard already that many practical decisions concerning the Amphibious Force as well as Fearless fell to my direction and execution. In the context of the narrative, there is a section on practical decision making, and some reflections on the nature and exercise of command. I was moreover responsible for all souls on board my ship, some 1400 for most of the period.

Since the quality of Fearless’s preparedness proved crucial, I shall describe how this was achieved, before covering illustrative elements of the campaign itself. The paper concludes with a summary of principal lessons.

HMS Fearless

Fearless is an amphibious assault ship, now awaiting disposal. Completed in 1963, remarkably she remained active until 2002 as by far the oldest operational ship in the Navy, being passed over for Operation Telec on account of a terminally sick boiler – having been seen as quite an old lady aged nineteen at the time of the Falklands Campaign. A key feature is a stern dock, the size of a substantial swimming pool. Into this fit neatly four large landing craft. At the forward end of the dock is a metal ‘beach’ which accesses various parking decks, similar to a roll-on/roll-off (ro-ro) ferry. These accommodate vehicles up to battle-tank weight. Four smaller landing craft operate from davits. Much of the stern area above the dock is covered by a flight deck which, at a pinch, can operate without hangerage four large Sea King helicopters – and on one notable occasion in San Carlos a fully-armed Sea Harrier jump jet.

The operations areas further forward in the ship are exceptionally extensive. They incorporate three major command and control facilities. In addition to those required to fight the ship, there are headquarters for a maritime amphibious commander and for a land-force commander. These two guest commanders and their staffs act in an orchestrated relationship that does not concern us here beyond flavours of my personal involvement. The facilities themselves were obsolete in 1982, with the exception of the long-haul communications and – surprisingly – a closed circuit television (CCTV) system.

The permanent ship’s company comprises some 600 men, of whom around 90 man a Royal Marines Assault Squadron that operates the landing craft. From the Falklands, six, but only six, to our grief failed to return. We could then accommodate, in reasonable comfort, a further 400 men as an embarked force that could land from Fearless direct. Somehow we expanded our hospitality to some 1,400, many short-term lodgers, throughout the campaign. For 36 hours before the San Carlos landings, we peaked above 1,700.

The bolt from the blue

The day was Thursday 1 April 82. Having returned from her first operational deployment, Fearless was one week into a three-week shut-down period for maintenance. Much equipment had been opened up, nothing reassembled. Dark news of the invasion of the Falkland Island by Argentina distressed an evening meeting with some of my managers. Although this was just the kind of situation the Amphibious Force and Fearless had been designed to redress, we did not imagine that dear old UK Ltd would have the ‘bottle’ for such a seemingly quixotic enterprise.

We were wrong. Next morning I was awakened early by a call from my second-in-command, Commander John Kelly. Fearless had been placed on priority for war stores second only to the submarine strategic deterrent; perhaps I should hasten onboard. That Saturday between briefings I heard by radio Michael Foot, left-wing Leader of the Opposition, help Margaret Thatcher call the nation to arms in the House of Commons during what Alan Clark described as “the most electric moment that I have experienced in that place, or it for many years I suspect, perhaps since 8 May 1940”₁. On Tuesday we sailed from Portsmouth for the South Atlantic with the heaviest and most varied load the old ship had ever embarked. The Amphibious Commanders, Commodore Michael Clapp and Brigadier Julian Thompson, joined by helicopter in the Channel. The Amphibious Force gathered around us and we set course for Ascension Island, 4,000 nautical miles away near the equator and some half way to the Falklands. Many more ships, men and equipment were to follow in our wake.

Falklands hospital ship SS Uganda, converted in Gibraltar

The foundations

Looking back to the beginning, a major lesson re-learnt is the enormous importance of operational preparedness for an emergency. I suggest that this involves four vital pillars:

a sound strategy prosecuted consistently;
a robust business plan;
facilities fit for purpose, resourced sufficiently; and
a motivated, trained and integrated management and workforce, united in their believe in what they are being invited to do.

A commander may lack these important ingredients. This will be a grievous handicap, and there will be corresponding limits to what can be accomplished. Even Napoleon ceased to be effective when finally shorn of assets and communications on the island of St Helena. Consider the much more recent collapse of US moral purpose in Vietnam. Superpower became impotent. Huge segments of British industry have disappeared following the erosion of these pillars, to be replaced by more-relevant entrepreneurial endeavours. Any great undertaking that fails to prosper, or which crumbles under pressure, will probably lack at least one pillar.

A year of preparations for the unexpected

Setting the strategy and driving the agenda

I took command of Fearless in May 1981 on relinquishing command of a squadron of nuclear attack submarines, a year to the month before the San Carlos landings. She was a sorry sight, hugely high and dry in a floating dock in which she was undergoing a major overhaul. The lead contractor was a struggling Tyneside ship repair yard, caught in a fixed-price Ministry of Defence contract, the successful completion of which might mean more work and survival.

The Royal Navy possessed two assault ships. Customarily, one had been active whilst the other languished in reserve status – from which she would in due course undergo an overhaul before once again taking the lead role. Thus Fearless was scheduled to take over from her sister ship Intrepid during the 1981/82 Christmas / New Year break. This would entail the transfer of substantial equipment and a number of specialist personnel. Taking stock with my new team on the Tyne, the chances of Fearless meeting this schedule looked frail. Such doubts had percolated to Fleet headquarters. There was ominous talk of deferring the overhaul’s completion and extending Intrepid’s tenure as the active assault ship.

I needed to make early judgements and decisions that were realistic and responsible with an incomplete information base. I held two trump cards. First, to extend Intrepid would be highly unwelcome in manpower management terms – her people were earmarked already for new posts. Second, the shipyard would try desperately to complete Fearless on time, even if engineering standards were threatened – a danger we must circumvent. Having done my utmost to galvanise and focus the admirably pragmatic Tynesiders, I needed to convince my own masters it was safe to plan Intrepid’s timely release to reserve status. I knew that as time passed the Intrepid extension would fade as a practical option, and I would then more readily be assigned ‘tiger-team’ resources to deal with the serious critical-path deficiencies that I had no doubt Fearless would experience.

Establishing the credentials underpinning leadership

The role of an amphibious ship demands close Royal Marine associations; for instance one-sixth of the ship’s company comprised Royal Marines. I knew little of this illustrious corps, but reputedly sailors and marines were not natural kin as colleagues afloat; no more were surface sailors (‘fish-heads’) and commando naval aviators (‘junglies’) intuitive soul mates.

This submariner was determined that Fearless should not become a floating colony of professional ghettos. To promote entente, I set up two weeks’ training at the Royal Marines Training Centre at Lympstone, Devon for the sailors in Fearless’s deployable platoon (diminutive great grandson of the Naval Brigades of WW I) in the rudiments of field-craft and infantry weapons, to be instructed by marines of our land-craft assault squadron, and went along myself. Having taken precautions to get fit, I was better placed than some of my toiling, sweating sailors in route marches, assault courses and other delights, establishing credentials both with them and my marines, and getting to know all concerned.

I also undertook a week of pilot training with the naval commando helicopter squadrons at Yeovilton. Awarded a huge pair of cardboard wings for successfully holding a helicopter in the hover for six seconds, my solid professional attainments were unspectacular. But here again I built partnerships that were to stand me in the utmost stead.

There were many other people to get to know at all levels. Whenever back with Fearless at South Shields, I explored the ship ceaselessly, often at unconventional times of day and night. In the mutual interests of timely completion, the shipyard agreed that sailors could undertake some hands-on work without union censor. Meeting my workforce of sailors engaged in basic engineering, ship husbandry and painting tasks, often boring, provided matchless opportunities to learn, to inform and to build mutual confidence and common purpose.

Achieving intimate personal knowledge of Fearless, as a baseline to establish my command credentials and ‘pour encourager les autres’

In my first command, the diesel submarine, my over-enthusiasm once led to what I judged to be a potentially mutinous situation. I averted the possibility with direct briefing of my people, and learnt richly from the experience. One source of preparation for this volatile situation was the observation of a senior colleague, some years previously, handling stressed sailors with what I reckoned to be a peremptory lack of sensitivity. This truly distinguished officer, who rose to very high rank, never developed a natural touch with his people. In walk-about mode, he was uncomfortable and rather bored, whereas I found the benefits enormous from early days in the Navy.

For me, skills in walkabout management developed partly from instinct and partly from the submarine culture. Whilst not lacking elsewhere in the Navy, submariners tend to have walkabout management forced upon them, even very large submarines imposing sardine conditions by any normal working and living standards. Those of us fortunate enough to spend much time also in surface ships brought our relaxed peripatetic habits with us.

In my experience, this is an invaluable approach, and I consolidated its practice in successive sea-going appointments. Early on, no-one expects the boss to know everything. The licence to ask questions whilst exploring every extremity of the ship is thus unlimited; and people love to talk about their jobs and themselves. The habit of asking questions can then simply continue, with due sensitivity of course, even if people might have suspected my purpose had gradually become reversed! It also stimulates the rest of management. Provided it is clear that the process is constructive and not an invasion of departmental turf, most managers will accept the challenge cheerfully and simply take care to keep ahead of the boss. There was a question of universal basic ship knowledge. Imposing my submarine instincts, and reinforced by John Kelly’s as an aviator, I insisted – against considerable traditional opposition – that everyone must achieve an accredited standard of whole-ship (as opposed to simply departmental) knowledge.

I rounded my own education with a few days at sea in Intrepid under the tutelage of Captain Peter Dingemans.

HMS Sheffield after being hit during the Falklands War

Thus were my personal credentials to command established, and the motivation, competence and integration of the Fearlessworkforce advanced by me and my colleagues, even in the unpromising environment of South Shields with its fantastic density of pubs per square mile and other distractions. These qualities proved vital in extricating Fearless from the valiantly struggling shipyard just about on time, ready to navigate the shifting sandbanks of trials, some failed trials and ever-tauter get-well deadlines. We achieved clearance to move forward to safety and operational ‘work-up’ with the narrowest of scheduled margins, and a number of tolerable compromises – by which time the ready extension of Intrepid was impracticable.

The decision making process

I have been asked to provide some observations on decision making. In doing this, I shall try to relate my own experience to some of the decision-making approaches advanced in this book, allied to some distinguished historical provenance that seems relevant.

So far – a sum of little decisions

Throughout the period described so far, I orchestrated an elaborate decision-making process, consistent with the strategy we had established whilst sensitive to ever changing circumstances.

Analytic decision making

We are all familiar with this systematic approach, generally undertaken without great time pressure. It has a high formal standing in British military practice, in the shape of a process known as ‘Appreciating the situation’. General Montgomery is reported to have ordered several independent appreciations in preparing for the battle of El Alamein before settling his battle plans, although I cannot find a reference for this. Many appreciations were written to support elements of the Falklands Campaign, and in some I had a hand₂. As practised by UK forces, I rate ‘Appreciating of the situation’ as an immensely powerful aid to logical thought under pressure, and I recommend it strongly to clients in business. There is an obverse to the coin: ‘Situating the appreciation’. This quip recognises possible tendencies to decide on the solution and then justify it by any means that time and energy allows, perhaps after the event! This could, I believe, spill over into misuse of the naturalistic approach, even for the best of reasons.

Naturalistic decision making

I am indebted to Dr Garry Klein _3, and Professor Rhona Flin ₄ for my introduction to the modelling of naturalistic decision making in relation to its better-understood analytic complement. For the naturalistic zone, Garry Klein ₅ coined the term Recognition-Primed Decision making, or RPD; Admiral Sandy Woodward calls it ‘picture matching’ – like summoning a picture from your memory and calibrating or adapting it against what you see. With colleagues in Octo, I have thought much about the applications of analytic and naturalistic decision making techniques, and the spectrum of approaches that links them. We have tested these methods in the light both of our past experience and the various situations posed and demonstrated by our clients at many levels.

The proposition of RPD is that it is indeed recognition-primed. This creates the self-evident dilemma in emergency and crisis situations, whereby the decision maker is liable to be operating in a fast-moving and often malign environment which is beyond his or her previous experience, and hence beyond assured ‘recognition’. Under such pressure ‘the first solution that will suffice’ (judged a satisfactory RPD outcome) may all too readily become the (untested) ‘first solution that comes to mind’. The dangers are obvious, and the disaster in which the United States Navy’s cruiser Vincennes erroneously destroyed an innocent Iranian airliner is a dreadful example.

Yet the fact must be faced that the emergency or crisis decision maker needs to be able to make vital decisions beyond previous experience, against an assessed (or perhaps just sensed) time-base which does not provide opportunity for deliberate application of the analytic method. There is no escape here. No panacea of a sure formula is on offer.

There are however some guidelines, and Octo uses these, with the aid of models we have developed ourselves and with Professor John Strutt and colleagues of Cranfield University ₆. First, provided the analytic structural approach is respected, aspects of RPD can be plugged in and some corners cut with a degree of confidence. Second, much can be done by maintaining the strategy, and thinking through contingencies (‘what if-ing’) to be applied on an RPD basis. The first long-proven Principle of War is ‘The selection and maintenance of the aim’ ₇. There is something also to learn from the various aphorisms about luck, of which I find ‘luck favours the prepared mind’ the most telling.

For the Royal Navy there is nothing new in this. These are indeed the famous Nelsonic principles, conveyed to individual commanders as colleagues (the ‘band of brothers’), and cascaded down ₈. The inheritance is the essential understanding that ‘the plan does not survive the first shot’. Commanders, at all levels, should sustain the strategy and overall plan whilst using their initiative to carry the momentum of battle forward. They watch colleagues so far as they can through ‘the fog of war’, and act as they judge best largely without further orders or direction – maybe fragments of top-down steerage if they are lucky. This is nothing more nor less than RPD, at its best coordinated intuitively between colleague commanders who know the master plan and each other well, augmented when necessary by what I understand to be creative decision making (a relative to ‘lateral thinking’?) ‘on the hoof’. It was practised by Wellington, literally on the hoof, in his equally elevated way during the Peninsular War in Portugal and Spain (1808-14). The concept was adopted, directly or indirectly, and formalised by the German General Staff under Bismark, fathering the term Auftragstaktik, and used to spectacular effect by the German army in both World Wars. It had meanwhile largely been lost to sight by the Royal Navy during the Pax Britannica period (1815-c1900), leading to disappointment at the Battle of Jutland before largely being recovered in time for WW II – a process described brilliantly by Andrew Gordon in his recent book The Rules of the Game – Jutland and British Naval Command _9. Happily the free-ranging ethos was alive and well in the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines during the Falkland Campaign, and used to excellent effect.

As this story unfolds, you will see that there were firm strategies in place at various levels, including my own in Fearless, before and during the campaign, and of course in the Amphibious Force. We had the relative luxury of good time to think our way into the various unprecedented situations that were to confront us, even if things then often happened very quickly indeed. We were extremely well trained and, for nearly all the time, extremely well informed. We won the crucial information battle against the Argentines decisively, and at a very early stage. This combination enabled us to apply a high degree of RPD on many occasions, and with success. One very simple illustrative example: you will discover that I had an expectation that gun’s crews might be distracted by wounds to comrades; this enabled me to act briskly when this event, beyond my experience, duly occurred.

Creative decision making

I am indebted also to Rhona Flin for introducing me to Dr Judith Orasanu’s concept of creative decision making _{10 11}. If this means what I think it means, creative decision making had a major innings on the British side of the Falklands Campaign, augmenting both the analytic and recognition-primed elements.

Creative decision making would appear to be an approach needed when the exponent finds him/herself plus team completely outside the envelope of previous experience or anticipated out-turns. It is the operational journey without maps. Let me offer some examples, mainly historical, which may interest readers:

The campaigns of Alexander the Great – surely a sustained demonstration of creative decision making .
The containment strategy of France under Louis XIV master-minded by John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough
The maritime tactics and leadership approach devised and used with overwhelming success by Admiral Nelson, placed elegantly in a modern business context by Stephen Howarth in the Financial Times Inside Track column on the 200^th anniversary (1998) of the Battle of the Nile ₈. The approach, mentioned above in the context of RPD, was a truly original product of Nelson’s, and a mark of his greatness.
The command and control system developed by General Wellesley (later Duke of Wellington) in India and during the Peninsular War .The degree to which there was linkage between the seminal approaches of Nelson at sea and, on land, Wolfe, Napoleon, Wellington and one or two other great generals of that period could itself be an important study. This was a period during which the concept of ‘total war’ moved forward, spawning a deluge of original thinking and practice. The ‘Auftragstaktik’ doctrine adopted by the German General Staff and used so successfully for a century _egdoes appear to be a formal and duly Germanic evolution of these principles to which Clausewitz was certainly indebted.

During WW II, British examples amongst many are:

the circumspect use of the intelligence from Bletchley Park, overseen directly by Winston Churchill and now widely on record in the public domain, and
the less well-known development of Operation Analysis by Professor Patrick Blackett and colleagues ₁₇.
For an American WWII example, consider General Douglas MacArthur’s amphibious island-hopping campaign in the Pacific and, in a completely different field, his contribution to the political reconstruction of Japan following the war.
What about examples from the Falklands Campaign?I would offer:
Admiral Woodward’s handling of the small Carrier Group, keeping it to the east of the Falklands, able to hold the ring whilst more-or-less beyond Argentine reach ₁₉.
His use of the Sea Harriers. Armed with an excellent US missile (the Aim 9L Sidewinder), the very rapid regeneration rates (ie, turnaround on deck and launch for a new sortie) enabled this small number of aircraft to hold and then completely out-class its much more numerous Argentine opponents ₁₉.
The decision by Brigadier Julian Thompson to send the marines and paras on foot across country following the loss of the container ship Atlantic Conveyor with nearly all the reinforcement helicopters ₂₀.
The battle for Mount Harriet by Major Nick Vaux and 42 Commando, achieved by inspired tactics with remarkably few casualties ₂₁.
I would add the use of amphibious shipping on flanking movements, but this harks back to General MacArthur – albeit an art neglected for many intervening years ₂.

These examples come from the analytic end of the scale. During the Falklands Campaign there were many examples of creative decision making at the operational end also. A well-known instance is the controversial intervention of Lieutenant Colonel H Jones when the attack by 2 Para on Goose Green got bogged down, for which he was awarded a posthumous VC. Lieutenant Colonel Michael Rose (now General Sir Michael Rose and much decorated) was a tireless source of creative decision making (see also his book about his contribution to peacekeeping in Bosnia.

This list constitutes the exploits of exceptional commanders, and it seems to me they offer striking examples of creative decision making. Readers will think of others.

All this has every relevance both to business in general at the crisis management level, and to major-hazard plant emergencies in industry. You do not need to look far in commerce to find creative (for which I suspect one means ‘entrepreneurial’) decision making. Jack Welch of General Electric and Bill Gates of Microsoft are obvious exponents.

Procedural ‘decision making’

Procedures are very useful things, extensively used by the Armed Forces as well as industry. Evolution of procedures is also an invaluable way of exploring the many vital second-order effects of the issues in question. With my colleagues, however, I have doubts on the place of procedures in the spectrum of true crisis and emergency decision making. In my experience, serious decision-making starts when procedures run out; and they will, in my experience, run out very soon during an incident with ‘fire in its belly’. In short, often procedures do not long ‘survive the first shot’.

Command in preparation for war – as it turned out

Working up to full operational effectiveness

Back to our story. Decision making within the framework of a sustained strategy attended the ship’s work-up period at and around Portland in the English Channel during the autumn of 1981. We were becoming an operational team. Hard-driven, even if there was much to entertain as well as to test and exasperate, Fearless developed a tempered operational proficiency, with resilience to match. During the early days, under the tireless eyes of regulatory inquisitors, ancient Bofors anti-aircraft guns on the bridge wing platforms would respond to the early morning mock attacks by fast jets with sporadic blank fire before jamming. Bang, Bang…….. Bang, Bang……..silence…… Woosh (went the jet close overhead)! (Six months later in San Carlos they would fire on and on with relentless efficiency.) Missiles hung-up on launchers. Inexperienced manoeuvring caused dents to landing craft. Internal damage control exercises were a spaghetti of hoses, baulks of timber, bruised elbows, lurid make-up wounds and colourful language. More and more decisions could be left to my departmental heads, with onward downward delegation. More and more was I free to pursue high-level issues.

On completion of a compressed programme, we were declared operational, with some formal credit and warm private endorsement. Fearless had achieved her first objectives. Intrepid adjusted to standby status, from which she was to be re-activated abruptly three months later for the Falklands Campaign with much of her old ship’s company.

New Year 1982 saw Fearless deploy with a small squadron to the West Indies by the northern great-circle route. This was my decision and a poor one, based on inadequate research. We encountered hurricane conditions mid-Atlantic, not unusual for the time of year, and damaged two helicopters lashed to the flight deck, one terminally and thus not available for the Falklands aircraft inventory.

After some colourful tribulations, the deployment took Fearless to the Netherlands island territory of Curacao. The port incorporated an army encampment, Camp Allegro, converted to a recreation centre which proved enormously popular with my sailors and marines, the true nature of which became clear to me subsequently. The padre conceded wanly that it had taken the Camp Allegro to really put the ship’s company into foremost fettle! I did not complain. We embarked for a short visit the Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse. He enjoyed a traditional ship’s company concert held on the vehicle (ro-ro) decks, in which five hundred voices nearly lifted the flight deck heavenwards with ‘Hearts of Oak’ and ‘Rule Britannia’. The Admiral turned to me and said, without conceivable premonition, “What if we were to go to war tomorrow?”

We re-crossed the Atlantic, embarked a major contingent of Royal Marines at Plymouth together with the amphibious maritime and land-force commanders, Michael Clapp and Julian Thompson, and proceeded to north Norway around the Lofoten Islands for major exercises. With the Commodore’s encouragement, again without premonition, I experimented in manoeuvring Fearless to use huge fjordal land features as protection against line-of-sight attack by fast-jet aircraft. Driven simply by sound strategy, a succession of such decisions, both planned and opportune, advanced the ship’s operational readiness and our ability to apply her capabilities in a war theatre.

Meanwhile we were learning to integrate with and support our amphibious staff guests and colleagues. My walkabout habits of leadership and second-level information management continued; a cup of coffee for the Captain in a machinery control room at 0430 continued to reward all parties.

Reflections on command; and avoiding the hubris and corruption of power, on the whole

Command at sea is by its nature a lonely business. It places heavy leadership demands and, if discharged effectively, has a key positive influence on the ship and her company as a whole. In principle, this reads across to the direction of any comparable unit – industrial or military. A warship however happens to be unusually self-contained, and warship command provides thereby an exceptionally pure methodology template. It provides also a very personal one. Multiple naval or military units, just like complex businesses or joint ventures, are more complex. They constitute coalitions. There will be more about these below.

In time-honoured naval tradition, a warship Captain lives and mainly works in isolated quarters. Socially, he only enters other living areas (each known in the Navy as a ‘Mess’) by invitation and then infrequently. This may surprise current management gurus, but it does stand out as one great strength of command at sea, proven over many generations – and, when misapplied, of eccentricity or worse! Solitude allows space for reflection and detachment, both essential ingredients in maintaining the big picture, and for ensuring a sound balance between the human and material elements of the business. At sea there is an obvious need for a particularly high level of alertness, unchanged in essentials since Nelson’s day and described so admirably by C S Forester and Patrick O’Brien, and in current practical terms made the more acute by the short-fuse capabilities of modern weapon systems and their antidotes.

For generations the buck has stopped at the RN Captain’s door, in a manner Nigel Turnbull ₂₃and his colleagues would entirely approve. Solitude links back also to my observations on the decision-making spectrum between the analytic and the naturalistic (RPD). It gives essential time and space for what-iffing. It provides a fertile seedbed from which RPD can flourish when things happen quickly, founded upon thorough prior analysis constantly reviewed. To do this well is one of the ultimate challenges to the captain of a ship, and I do not see anything different in essentials between this and the highest challenges to a Captain of Industry. As in any business, the balance between professional detachment and a vital intimacy with one’s Heads of Department is a nice judgement. By conferring and informing, warmly and with close mutual trust, yet standing back with a high degree of independence, and without any suggestion of fear or favour, the command can give considered direction and timely inspiration which may
make the difference between success or failure in the fog of war, or in the fog of commercial opportunity or crisis alike. It seems to me that the pursuit and application of this complex balance, almost an art form, is under-valued by some modern business managers, and I fear this to be a serious deprivation.

There is an important complement to the solitary element of the command profile in the Royal Navy, and that is the custom whereby ship’s captains seek out each other’s company to discuss command practice at every opportunity – an approach again instituted during the Nelsonic era, possibly by Admiral John Jervis, later Earl St Vincent, and First Lord of the

Admiralty and the guiding naval strategist for key periods of the wars against Napoleon. (Advising on the prospects of the French armies invading England in 1804 during the defensive campaign which culminated in the Battle of Trafalgar, he is said to have remarked dryly “I do not say they cannot come, only that they cannot come by sea”). John Jervis saw Nelson as a prodigy, and rejoiced in his famous iconoclastic initiative at the Battle of Cape St Vincent where Nelson captured two Spanish battleships with highly unconventional tactics – a shining example of creative decision making, incidentally. Whenever two British warships are in company, the junior captain will seek to visit (or ‘call upon’) the senior, a custom linked traditionally with entertainment to lunch or dinner (see again Forester and O’Brien for the Nelsonic era – the custom is as lively today). This is not a pompous practice in the least, it is a matter of two commanders conferring. Thus will the captain of an aircraft carrier entertain as a colleague the immensely junior captain of a minesweeper. The latter will be received by the aircraft carrier’s second-in-command (also greatly his senior) and be escorted by him to the captain’s cabin.

One cardinal and appealing feature of leadership is to be both able and prepared to do competently anything one asks of one’s workforce, especially if unpleasant or hazardous or, less glamorously, plain boring. There are obvious practical limits in applying this principle: the correct balance between sharing and example on one hand and plain effectiveness on the other always requires judgement. In Egypt in WW II, General Auchinleck insisted that staff officers share fully the privations of the army’s desert camp. His successor General Montgomery, taking command before the Battle of El Alamein, moved them to more comfortable quarters to work better _{24 25}. But sound reasons such as this can readily degenerate into droits des seigneurs, a perennial worry in military organisations – and many others.

To illustrate both the sharing and hubris dilemmas, here is a cautionary tale. John Kelly expressed his anxiety that I might overdo my enthusiasm for helicopters. It was appropriate to have drawn full flying gear. Once accustomed to its use, no doubt I began to look the part. One day a new mark of helicopter landed on our flight deck in the hands of an eminent test pilot. Would I care for a ride? But of course! Duly clad, I hoisted myself into the left-hand seat like a pro and strapped in. Would I like to take the aircraft off? To me this meant following the pilot through on the controls. It did not occur to me that this paragon might think I could fly, nor to him that I was not a qualified pilot – a prime example of reciprocal flawed recognition-primed decisions, in the guise of mutual assent. Moreover he had inadvertently switched out the automatic stabilisation. During the seconds that followed we, the flight-deck crew and possibly many others were lucky to survive the near disaster of an otherwise exceedingly comic take off. I had been disgracefully irresponsible. I had posed, if artlessly, as a pilot. It is often important for the leader not to wear his heart on his sleeve. He must however take care never to act what he is not. “Be yourself” is one of the most valuable command advice I ever received₂₆.

It is of subsidiary interest that I was unstressed by this incident in which I nearly killed myself and many others. It is a quality of preparedness that one can accept close calls with equanimity – for a period at least.

The Falklands campaign

All records broken, and a sombre prospect

The Falklands Campaign had its origins in a dispute between Britain and Argentina over the sovereignty of the islands, to which the Argentines refer as Los Malvinas, the complexities of which are irreconcilable. In defence of the British case, the inhabitants of the Islands in 1982 were almost universally of British stock, and their wishes as to their governance were unambiguous. Amongst civilised nations, this is the normal criterion for decisions on such matters. In defence of the Argentine position, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, contrary to the view of Parliament whenever it was periodically consulted, regarded the Falklands as an administrative liability and had for some years been warm to some form of condominium with Argentina – signalling to the Argentines accordingly. Thus when it suited the Argentine Junta to divert attention from an unsavoury domestic political situation with a popular military campaign to occupy Los Malvinas, it did not occur to them that Britain would do more than create a ritual international rumpus and let the islands go.
This is of course not, once outraged, the British way, and the peremptory and rapacious invasion of British territory, even at almost the other end of the earth, caused outrage that was virtually universal. Firm leadership by Mrs Thatcher, armed with resolute assurances by the First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Henry Leach that a maritime task force could be assembled to repossess the Falklands, prevailed over many faint-hearted counsels _{27 28}. The colours of a united kingdom were nailed to the mast.

Fearless sailed from Portsmouth on the Tuesday 6 April with an unprecedented operational load. My people and numerous helpers, including normally rule-bound dockyard workers and the teenage sons of my Deputy Weapons Officer, moved mountains to reassemble and store the ship. Four large helicopters, artillery, ammunition, light tanks, and many lesser vehicles packed into every conceivable corner. False decks were created from a cornucopia of stores. Topping up to the 1,400 people, we broke all previous records. From the round tower at the narrow harbour entrance, crowds, including Fearless families, cheered and wept us on our way. We anchored immediately at Spithead and docked-down to embark our four large landing craft. Local television beamed visions of our distressed womenfolk clutching wide-eyed children. It was a sombre moment, presaging deep leadership needs even for a ship fundamentally so ready.

Establishment of command patterns – less than ideal

It is an ancient custom that the Captain of a command (or Flag) ship joins the embarked commander (Commodore or Admiral) for meals – he is in any case Chief of Staff. This I had learnt first-hand from the best of teachers, the then Rear Admiral John Fieldhouse, when I had had a windfall youthful innings as Captain of the magnificent guided missile destroyer HMS Glamorgan, then his flagship. But now, in Michael Clapp and Julian Thompson, there were two guest commanders. They would have much to talk about. I was shy of intruding gratuitously and a cautious enquiry indicated they would prefer to remain a deux. Hindsight told me I should have been more insistent. Now an adviser to company boards on crisis management, I have discovered that three or four makes a much sounder strategic debating group than two. This was, I now see, a weak decision, in consequence of which I failed to support my leaders to the limits of my knowledge and experience. Here is an example, interleaved with the enormous importance of getting the command organisation straight.

The senior commander afloat was Rear Admiral Sandy Woodward. The situation was however complicated by a command structure under Admiral Fieldhouse which appointed Sandy Woodward, Michael Clapp and Julian Thomson as co-equal Task Group Commanders, each Task Group having of course a particular function. Sandy Woodward had degrees of primus inter pares status which varied and were by no means always clear to those concerned. Notwithstanding Admiral Fieldhouse’s superb personal leadership of the campaign from his shore headquarters at Northwood, Middlesex, the consequent misunderstandings were serious. To ensure an absolutely unambiguous command and control structure is a lesson of war clear to Alexander the Great, Marlborough, Napoleon, Nelson, Wellington, and the great German Army commanders alike. Such difficulties apart, it was a shining feature of the Falklands Campaign that overall we proved so ready and so flexible, and that really very few ancient lessons were forgotten.

Having served Sandy Woodward four times, I knew him well with awesome admiration – and deep affection – as an intellectual, keenly astute and a masterful submariner by background. The Rt. Hon Margaret Thatcher in 1992 wrote:

There were those who considered him the cleverest man in the Navy. ……. He was precisely the right man to fight the world’s first computer war. ₁₉

His agile brain generated bright ideas at an alarming rate. At inception these were generally not ordered, and his hapless staff could readily be run ragged without stern prioritising by a firm deputy – which it had once been my privilege to be. Michael Clapp knew Sandy Woodward only slightly and Julian Thompson not at all.

A meeting of these seagoing principals would almost certainly occur near Ascension Island where the small Carrier Group had assembled before us. Sure enough, as soon as Fearless was within range, a helicopter bearing the Admiral approached. The pressures from the Commander-in-Chief’s headquarters at Northwood were already acute and there was a residual air of stress aggravated already by the ambiguities in the command structure. Some days before, I had decided to attempt to prepare my leaders for the type of intercourse such a meeting was liable to bring. I was anxious above all that they should recognise the inevitable barrage of Woodward ideas, some projected simply as a cheerful agenda for lateral-thinking debate. They should stand their ground, especially on amphibious principles – on which the Admiral would wish to be educated.

Everything turned out as predicted, but my attempts to fix the chemistry proved in vain _{2 19 20}. My two champions were defensive, and dismayed and offended by Sandy Woodward’s breezy and provocatively creative demeanour. This set a pattern of mistrust, almost adversarial, between the offshore Carrier Group and the inshore Amphibious Group – the two principal headquarters groups afloat. They rubbed along together. But it was a sadly raw relationship, fraught with misunderstanding and perceived offence. I did go on trying to moderate these stresses and strains, with some modest success. Max Hastings and Ewen Southby-Tailyour, in books about the campaign, were amongst those who had kindly things to say in this respect. Max Hastings, in my view, the most outstanding of a strong media corps present in the South Atlantic, wrote with Simon Jenkins a book (1983) which remains one of the most powerful accounts of the campaign amongst a great deal of more-recent literature. It was there with gratitude that I read that:

Larken …… was to play an important role in keeping ‘combined operations’ combined. His ….. great skill in sympathising with other men’s points of view contributed enormously to the eventual success of the amphibious operations. ₂₈

As a caution to readers, I would only add that a bunker syndrome between command centres under pressure is the rule rather than the exception. Command centres quickly adopt personalities. The analogy of personal relationships to those between command centres, with imperfect communications in stressful, threatened and entrepreneurial circumstances, is therefore a useful guide to their likely behaviour. As a redeeming factor in the Falklands Campaign, this was in some senses a creative tension, and it did not prevent our ultimate success.

Command in war involves a matrix of command centres, great and small, but all with mandates (known variously as ‘directives’, ‘orders’ or ‘rules of engagement’) designed to give maximum independence, within specific (often politically-driven) constraints. This is the crucial key to flexibility, and it applies equally in principle to any organisation well prepared for crisis. Operational flexibility, as long as it is founded upon mutual understanding between well-trained command centres, is a fundamental concept for successful military operations. This is almost completely misunderstood in the civilian world, where ‘orders’ are interpreted as rigidity, rather than as mandates for integrated independence and initiative – due partly to the habitual film and television caricatures of the armed forces. A consequence is an exaggerated distinction between commercial and military methods of doing business, which in turn conceals sadly many valuable elements of practical experience each sector has to offer the other.

Creating super-togetherness for the big push

Fearless’s aim had now changed, from being an instrument ready for her operational role, to the discharge of this role in earnest, as required and directed.

My task in achieving the remaining relatively modest metamorphosis to a war footing was now mainly a matter of human relations, and education in war imperatives and stratagems. To this I devoted all the powers of leadership accumulated over my career, drawing fully upon the fruit of seeds I had taken so much trouble to sow and let flourish in Fearless. From a demanding and pushy Captain who, whilst quite approachable, never seemed satisfied, I found myself a source of strength, dependability and reassurance – and I dare say some inspiration. Correlli Barnett (in lectures, 1966-2001) says that:

Leadership is a process by which a single aim and unified action are imparted to the herd. Not surprisingly it is most in evidence in times or circumstances of danger or challenge. Leadership is not imposed like authority. It is actually welcomed and wanted by the led. ₂₉

Field Marshal Lord Slim, with Montgomery perhaps the outstanding UK Army leader of WW II, offers a similar slant:

When things are bad, there will come a sudden pause when men will just stop and look at you. No-one will speak; they just look at you and ask for leadership. ₃₀

As we progressed south, cumulative pressures on my time drew down upon my wandering habits. I replaced these by increased use of the public address (PA) and CCTV systems. My senior managers all became able presenters on these media. As Captain, I had previously used the PA system only when there was news or a message of major import to convey to the whole ship’s company. Its use had in any case presented me with something of an ordeal, since I retained the residue of a once serious stammer. As Fearlessmoved towards war as a pawn in a dynamic and complicated diplomatic situation, I quickly discovered that – over and beyond the hourly World Service bulletins – my people thirsted for homespun news and comment. And it was from me, their captain, that they preferred to hear.

A central leadership task is to promote a clear view of today’s reality and expectation in a constructive way. Fast moving circumstances and a deteriorating or increasingly alarming situation can create a reality lag.
Of Sir Ernest Shackleton, the celebrated Antarctic leader and (to my pride) a distant cousin, Dr Alexander Macklin (following the loss of the Endurance in the Weddel Sea ice pack) wrote:

As always with him what had happened had happened. It was in the past and he looked to the future…Without emotion, melodrama or excitement he said ‘Ship and stores have gone – so now we’ll go home’. ₃₁

Henry Kissinger writes that:

The most important role of a leader is to take on his shoulder the burden of ambiguity inherent in difficult choices. That accomplished, his subordinates have criteria and can turn to implementation. ₃₂

We took the morale pulse from day to day. One evening during our three week pause at Ascension Island, the very same Royal Marine band that had unleashed such carefree enthusiasm but two months previously boarded to give a concert. The event was well-attended but subdued. Concerned at first, I concluded correctly that sober stock was being taken of our prospects. We accepted that our likely fate was to sail south to the Falklands, to face hazards new to us all.

I was determined there be no jingoism in my ship. When the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano – of comparable size to Fearless – was sunk by HMS Conqueror, I briefed on PA hour by hour on the number of her ship’s company reported saved. Soon HMS Sheffield was lost also. Thus, as we now moved inexorably towards the theatre of operations, together we cultivated and nurtured by every available means a waxing, realistic and implacable resolve.

Conquering fear with information

The last fourteen years of intimate experience of crisis and emergency management in the civilian world has assured me that many commercial and industrial managers understand all such principles of motivating and empowering the workforce. But only a few companies really practice emergencies sufficiently. Consider an industrial workforce sheltering during a prolonged chemical or nuclear emergency. Few if any major-hazard plant senior managers truly comprehend the need for and the basic techniques of briefing, reassuring and providing material comfort for their people in such circumstances, probably very frightened, and later resentful – and thus poor ambassadors when interviewed by the media.

The techniques even of using a PA system effectively in emergency are rare, if not totally unknown.

A senior soldier wrote of the air attacks on San Carlos following the landings as follows:

Being on a ship whilst it is being attacked by aircraft was a completely new experience for me. You get a countdown, you can hear the roar of the engines of the jet aircraft, the whoosh of missiles firing and the cackle of small arms and machinegun fire. Then the whole aluminium and steel fabric of the ship – or cell as it seems at that moment – rocks and shakes in combination with the noise of the bombs exploding. You have no understanding of what is going on outside of your immediate area.

The Captain clearly understood how everyone was feeling. He calmly announced to the ship’s company over the ship’s loudspeaker system what was going on, both in and around the ship and what the Navy was doing about it. He was delightfully unruffled and his voice was gentle. He had an immediate, positive, calming effect on everyone, although no-one said very much. ‘Brits’ are conditioned to behave in a quiet self- composed manner in situations of extreme danger no matter what they are personally feeling inside”. ₃₃

Max Hastings covering this phase wrote:

All over the ship, more than a thousand men, many of whom never saw the light of natural day, strained to catch his voice over the hum of vents and air conditioners, the roar of machinery and the constant traffic of transmissions, telephones and hurrying figures.₂₈

In the wardroom of Fearless a scattering of spare pilots and survivors of lost ships clustered round the loudspeaker in their life jackets and respirators.₃₄

Battle of attrition at San Carlos – operational decisions

Map of the Falklands Islands. The two main islands are separated by Falkland Sound, and San Carlos Water is the inlet just inside the narrows at the north letting into East Falkland. The distance from San Carlos to Port Stanley is about 50 miles over extremely difficult terrain. The level ground is generally passable only to tracked vehicles, but even they are obstructed by many rock runs from the mountains, not shown on this map. Movement on foot with action loads is immensely demanding – a huge tribute to the marines and paras who ‘yomped’ it. (Map: Ewen Southby-Tailyour, OBE, Royal Marines)

Space does not permit me to describe the many fascinating considerations governing the final approach of the Amphibious Force to the assault, nor the unfolding of events. All this has been covered expertly in a range of fine books, including those by Max Hastings ₃₄ and Simon Jenkins (the latter covered the political elements in their excellent early joint book ₂₈), Sandy Woodward ₁₉, Michael Clapp ₂, Julian Thompson ₂₀, Nick Vaux ₂₁ and Ewen Southby-Tailyour ₂ ₃₅. My own contributions at this juncture majored in our anti-submarine measures and the crafting of a deceptive approach to the Falkland archipelago from the north-west. The aim of the latter plan was to indicate for as long as possible that we were heading for the east coast somewhere around Port Stanley – unnecessary in the event, since the Amphibious Force was not detected. Michael Clapp delegated to me the tactical handling of the Amphibious Force during the critical final 24-hour transit to San Carlos. To lead, finally, the long line of ships into the Falklands Sound, keeping very close to bluffs of West Falkland Island in total darkness and hence clear of the central channel which was where the Argentines might have laid mines, was certainly amongst the proudest episodes of my life.

Immediately following the landings at San Carlos during the early hours of 21 May 1982, it fell largely to me on Michael Clapp’s behalf to organise the stationing of ships in the anchorage. Here the recent Norwegian Fjord experience with camouflage proved valuable. We anchored ships packed together around the relatively slight major land features in a way that would inconvenience the Argentine fast-jet weapon-launch flight paths. Flaws in my initial calculations led to hits on two logistic ships, the bombs happily failing to explode. Thereafter no strikes on troop- or cargo-carrying ships in the anchorage were achieved. In case Argentine daylight intelligence of this unconventional arrangement might encourage high-level night attacks, I had all ships moved to dispersed positions at nightfall, resuming the compact formation before dawn.

I had also to decide from where to fight Fearless. My small 1960-vintage Operations Room was filled entirely by Michael Clapp and his staff. Moreover, my ancient air-defence radars saw nothing beyond the surrounding hills, from amongst which attacking aircraft would emerge some ten seconds from target (eg. Fearless). Having endured the first air attack as a frustrated supernumerary without even a radar monitor at my disposal, I decided to migrate to the missile/gun-direction platform at the very top of the ship, a level above the navigational bridge. This was better. From here I could see incoming aircraft as soon as anyone else. I could direct the manoeuvring of the ship to present the least target and best weapon arcs to the Argentines’ favourite flight paths. I had first-hand observation of each attack on the anchorage and its results, and could provide a deputy’s eyes for my Commodore. I could moreover set a direct example to my people, some fifty of whom were on the upper deck manning weapons from missile launchers to infantry automatic weapons – not to speak of Michael Rose and his SAS team, who emerged from their portacabin during attacks to join the shoot.

Major Ewen Southby-Tailyour wrote:

He was sitting in the Captain’s bridge chair obviously resting from air attacks. Modern naval warfare requires ships to be fought by electronics in an operations room and not from first-hand knowledge from the bridge – or, in Jeremy’s case, the gun direction platform. But Fearless was not a conventional ship with sophisticated defences ₃₅

One attack splattered us with shrapnel, I believe from a shell fired by a friendly frigate. There was a yelp as a sailor beside me was clipped, and louder cries below announced injuries amongst the young Bofors guns’ crews on the bridge wings. I looked over to see men leaving their positions to tend the wounded. Having anticipated this comradely reflex, I used all my available decibels to get the guns back into action in time for the next passing predator. Stretcher teams succoured the casualties.

Selection of this command position had its amusing side. It was a new experience to stand unprotected in the path of fast jets bent on one’s destruction. Adrenaline and an imprecise feel for our life expectation carried us through the first day in almost carnival spirits, typical of novices to real war. It gradually became clear that prospects of survival were quite good. With just a few exceptions, we had substantial warning of attacks. I would update the ship’s company on PA before moving to my command platform, whereupon the Navigation Officer John Prime took up the commentary from the bridge. My arrival ‘up top’ signalled further to the weapons-direction teams that action was imminent. As the days went by, I sensed wryly a growing inner tardiness to indulge this routine exposure – although I never failed to appear except for one of the attacks that surprised us!

Command pacing

Certainly the issue was not straight-forward. Almost every night, during some fourteen hours of total darkness, Fearless deployed from the anchorage. The aim might be a special forces insertion, the meeting and escorting of the submarine HMS Onyx into the anchorage for a pit-stop and out again a few hours later, or the escorting of a convoy outbound, to rendezvous with another to be escorted back. The rule was to be within the relatively safe confines of the defended San Carlos anchorage by the first glimmerings of daylight – even if on two notable and nerve-racking occasions we did not achieve this. The two splendid Johns, Kelly and Prime, took turns at conducting the ship during part of these night-time forays once we were clear of Falkland Sound while I cat-napped on my sea-cabin couch, microphone in hand. Long years had taught me to absorb a question in my sleep and wake to provide considered response. This was an operation of serial marathon dimensions. We not only survived, but sustained our edge. With beguiling delusions of immortality, I felt we could continue indefinitely – wrong of course. We did between us manage the 100 days, with what seemed capacity to spare. I recognised with hindsight that there was a long-term price to pay, manifest within my family.

Night operations – issues of risk and reverse critical path planning

I have selected one operation of particular interest to illustrate some commonplace command problems. The central issue was what I would term ‘reverse critical path planning’. Following the loss of the Cunard container ship Atlantic Conveyor with much of the force’s military helicopter lift, the battle-fit battalions of Commandos and Paratroopers moved forward some 50 miles to invest the northern approaches to Port Stanley mainly by the celebrated and heroic expedient of ‘yomping’ heavily laden across the appalling Falklands terrain _{20 21}. Formations of the reinforcement brigade, who were to take the southern flank, were not equally robust in pure fitness terms, and anyway time pressed. It thus became necessary to take them forward by sea round the southern extremities of the islands.

Intrepid took the Scots Guards, launching them by landing craft some considerable distance short of their destination. They survived harrowing hours in very bad weather, amongst other nasty hazards, under Ewen Southby-Tailyour’s redoubtable command. Next day I persuaded Mike Clapp to let Fearless take the Welsh Guards that night, notwithstanding the serious disruption to command communications this would cause for some hours. The plan was to take two of my own landing craft (two had to be left in San Carlos), rendezvous at sea with Intrepid’s four off the entrance to Choiseul Sound, send four of the six forward with the Welsh Guards embarked to Bluff Cove and bring two back to San Carlos. I was determined to get nearer to their destination (Bluff Cove / Port Fitzroy) this time, whilst avoiding the footprint of a land-based Exocet site the Argentines were believed to have established south of Port Stanley. I had to be back at San Carlos by first light. This all involved some nice navigational calculations.

We sailed in nasty bumpy weather and proceeded south through the Falkland Sound and Eagle Passage, then north-east. We reached the rendezvous in good time, calm sea and comparatively docile weather. For reasons I need not recount but then unbeknownst to me, Intrepid’s landing craft had been unable to sail to meet us ₃₅. Against a calculated reverse critical path, I waited longer than I should have dared, finally launching my two landing craft with half the Welsh Guards and legging it for San Carlos. Twilight then full daylight found us still forcing our way back up the Falklands Sound. The Argentine Air Force did not call our bluff.

It was decided that Fearless could not again be released on such an extended and tenuous communications tether from the Land Force, and that she was anyway too crucial a command asset for such high-risk exposure. To underline the point, one of the two landing craft then launched, Foxtrot Four, never returned. She was destroyed two days later with six of her crew in a savage and pyrrhic air strike, three of the four Argentine aircraft being themselves destroyed with their pilots by a Sea Harrier counter-attack within one minute – such is the pace of modern warfare.

The next night Fearless once more escorted a convoy outbound and collected another inbound from the northern ocean holding areas. Some complications left us with another high-risk late return to San Carlos. There was an assessed threat from land-based Exocet on Pebble Island to the west as well as air attack, and once again our luck held. Meanwhile the less lucky remainder of the Welsh Guards embarked in the logistic ship Sir Gallahad, and moved forward to their tragic destiny.

Victory

A week later it was all over and Fearless was anchored in Stanley Harbour. Onboard as my ‘guest’ was the Argentine late Malvinos Commander, General Mario Menendez. We had some interesting discussions. The General had a final advantage however; he kept ‘Spanish’ hours with siesta to the local clock, whilst I was working a 20-hour day based on UK time (four hour ahead of the Falklands)! He poured the whiskey, with which I had had his cabinet stocked.

Principal lessons

Successful command and leadership have their foundation in thorough preparation:

Know and understand your team.Win the trust of your people, and keep faith with them – above all in hard times. Do everything practicable to fulfil their hopes and to assuage their fears.
Within reason, be prepared to do anything required of your people and demonstrate this from time to time.
Know your company/equipment/site as intimately as practicable – its capabilities and its weaknesses.
Set the right strategy and follow it in everything that you do.
Think through every conceivable credible development; you may still be surprised, but youcan then deal with this from a position of well-founded confidence.
Train and prepare to a high standard – and prepare your team as well as yourself for the unexpected.

Then when it all starts:

Set your aim and objectives, and review them repeatedly.
Ensure your resources are sufficient for the task and are applied efficiently.
Define the mandates of command centres with care; recognise and manage the ‘personality’ that command centres will develop; whilst giving direction (the ‘what’), let them get on with their work (the ‘how’) with as little interference as possible.
Win the information high ground, retain it and exploit it.It is essential always to know the present situation and how it is developing. Without accurate and timely processed high-quality information, you are lost.
Based upon sound strategy, thorough analytic preparations and exhaustive ‘what-iffing’, naturalistic (‘recognition-primed’) decision making can, with discrimination, sensibly be applied beyond the envelope of your previous direct experience. This prepares the ground for creative decision making also, as best may be.

Lead vigorously without fear or favour, and manage morale; recognise and respond to human needs – fear, anxiety – and do everything necessary to build, sustain and nurture this; be as upbeat as the situation permits.

Be yourself, but you need to practise the art of acting within this envelope of credibility; develop and use, therefore, all the modulation of delivery and style (demeanour, tone, volume and tempo) that you find useful.
Guard against the very real dangers of over-confidence and the corrupting effect of power.
Provide your team with the best information you can, not least as an antidote to fear.
Be constantly aware of the time-line.
Pace yourself, conserve stamina, delegate, and prioritise your cadence of command.

In any endeavour of the nature I have described, the reader will recognise the importance of leadership. As a final reference, I therefore recommend Shackleton’s Way by Margot Morrell and Stephanie Capparell (2001). This book, to which I have been privileged to contribute, is an examination of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s career as an inspiration and guide for any leader.

*Jeremy Larken joined the Navy in 1957. Following training in HM Ships Venus (FF)) and Carron (DD), he served in HMS Tenby (FF) for a SE Asia deployment. In 1961 he joined the Submarine Service, serving in HM Submarines Finwhale, Tudor and Ambush (the latter again off SE Asia). Joining the nuclear power programme in 1963, he qualified in navigation and was part of the building crew of HMS Valiant, the first all-British nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN). He moved to the assault ship HMS Fearless in 1981 – the topic of this paper.

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