‘Prince Andrew’s War’ by A J McIlroy (who sailed with Invincible and reported the Falklands’ operation for the ‘Telegraph’)
The Falklands war was as tough a campaign for a prince of Royal blood as it was for any other Serviceman. That was what 22-year-old Prince Andrew himself, his commanding officer, and the Royal Family all wanted.
During my weeks with the aircraft carrier Invincible in the South Atlantic, when I spent much time at close quarters with the men of 820 Squadron, among whom the Prince served as a Sea King helicopter pilot, his commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Ralph Wykes-Sneyd, told me: ‘I will order Prince Andrew into battle just as I would any of my other pilots. He is a co-pilot and with the others he gets the same work to do – and he gets no quarter from his fellows.
‘I have found him an extremely capable young man, very competent in the air. He has been with the squadron a year and, of course, he is very special to the public – you are conscious of that fact. But he gets no special treatment here, and I am under no instructions from above to treat him any differently from others under my command.’
In fact, a statement from Buckingham Palace indicated a wish from the Queen for no VIP treatment for Prince Andrew just before Invincible set sail for the South Atlantic early in April. ‘He is a serving officer,’ it said, ‘and there is no question in her mind that he is going.’
In Invincible the Prince worked hard at being just ‘one of the crowd’ – he was known simply as ‘H’ (for Highness) to his fellow pilots – even though, in the early days of the voyage, he distanced himself, with a nervousness that was perhaps understandable, from myself and my four newspaper correspondent colleagues, who included representatives of the popular press (the Sun and the Daily Star). But as time went on, the reserve melted away, and the Prince talked quite freely with us.
Prince Andrew won a single tribute to his undoubted popularity within his squadron even before Invincible sailed on Task Force duty. His companions wrote a special, good-naturedly mocking addition – called ‘Prince Charming’ to 820 Squadron’s ‘sacred’ song book. The tune was one featured on a pop record ‘Prince Charming’ by Adam and the Ants, in the charts last year.
But war overtook the Task Force before the Prince, who I never saw drink anything but a Coke at the bar, incidentally, was able to join the squadron and guests around the Wardroom piano to sing the song, which ran as follows:
Don’t you ever, don’t you ever
Stop being Andy showing them you’re handsome?
Prince Charming, Prince Charming
William Hickey is nothing to be scared off.
Don’t you ever, don’t you ever
Stop being Randy showing them you’re handsome?
The Prince, a Sub Lieutenant, commended himself, too, to Captain Jeremy Black, who commanded Invincible, and the ships company of 1200, by taking part enthusiastically in the traditional ‘Crossing the Line’ ceremony. Wearing a T-shirt with ‘A Real Prince’ inscribed on the back, he was charged by King Neptune with having deliberately positioned himself in front of the ship’s internal television camera so that eventually the film would reach home and ‘your mum will see you on television.’ When he denied the charge he was promptly daubed with red food dye and soundly ducked in a canvas water tank on the deck.
Prince Andrew seems to be as much a practical joker as his elder brother was. On one occasion, accompanied by Sub Lieutenant Heweth and other 820 Squadron members, he dashed into the Wardroom where I was drinking a pint of lager the bar with the Daily Star’s Michael Seamark. Face flushed with enthusiasm, the Prince said he had the ideal joke to play on the Sun’s man. ‘Just tell him I want to play him at snooker,’ he said, ‘and that he will find me at the ship’s gyro-stabilised snooker table.’
This, as I learned, was a traditional Senior Service jape, aimed at susceptible landlubbers or recruits who might wonder whether snooker or billiards really were practical possibilities on a rolling ship. The Sun correspondent, however, was not to be fooled. But we knew that we had earned the Prince’s confidence.
Such light relief, a feature of Service life everywhere, served to punctuate the frequent tracts of boredom and the briefings and the final training for any action to come.
The atmosphere in Briefing Room Number 1 in Invincible was at once detached and intimate but, above all, professional. At a typical briefing, pilots and crews of 820 Squadron, flying in the Sea Kings, lounged in the green leather seats which were raked in the manner of a small cinema, in rows facing the briefing screen. The surrounding walls were fertile with information and instructions, which I noticed included a warning to ‘brush up’ on de-icing procedures – a hint of worsening weather.
Photographs of Russian warships and weaponry identification charts were partially obscured by pictures of Argentine shipping and aircraft under the legend, ‘Know the Enemy’ and there was an appeal scribbled in erasable green ink for 820 Squadron to eat less ‘nutty’ (sweets and chocolate) because of a shortage on board.
We were then to be addressed by Commander Bob Young, Invincible’s senior meteorological officer. The missions were chalked on a 24-hour screen, and I noticed that the flight due to take off at 1040 hours listed on the operations board included my name alongside those of Wilson, Wykes-Sneyd, Green and Charnley. In the line-up above of were those of ‘Heweth, Prince Andrew, McAllister and Arnull’: they were the next crew to leave. In the weeks ahead, these sets of names were to appear with monotonous but essential regularity. Commander Wykes-Sneyd explained that it was part of his policy of moulding the most effective combination in the squadron by keeping the same teams intact wherever possible.
While the Prince penned occasional notes on the white square pad in the right leg of his flying uniform, Commander Young told us of the deteriorating weather situation. Other briefing officers stood by to follow with details of the latest routes and positions of Task Force shipping, navigation information, and special points about each mission. In 820 Squadron’s antisubmarine role these missions were largely the repetitive task of lowering sonar equipment into the Atlantic to take soundings would detect any lurking enemy submarines.
The Task Force depended on the Sea King helicopters to ensure safe waters ahead during the passage south. But Prince Andrew could also find himself on surface searches for any unidentified shipping, or on the daily ‘milk run’ servicing the needs of Task Force ships for mail collections and deliveries, dropping spare parts, and even exchanging recreational feature films between ship’s companies.
But on this occasion the Prince and his comrades-in-arms, 28-year-old Sub Lieutenant Christopher Heweth, Ian McAllister, 34, who was navigator, and Thomas Arnull, 24, crewman, were in for a spell of sonar ‘dipping,’ which the Prince described to me as ‘98 per cent boredom but, when you have a contact, two per cent excitement during which you can hear your own heart beats.’
The briefing over, the Prince stood zipping up his flying suit and followed Heweth towards the flight deck. You didn’t give precedence to royalty on a flight deck; it’s far too busy a place for the niceties of protocol, even if they had been called for. ‘Anyway, he wouldn’t want it,’ the nearest petty officer shouted over the aircraft engine din around us. ‘He expects us to treat him like all the others, and there is no side on him at all.’
Action for the Prince came as early as April 24, when the flagship carrier Hermes signalled for help after a helicopter had ditched in the foul weather.
Lightning flashes brought the driving rain and the cold, dark swell of the Atlantic into split-second clarity, temporarily swallowing up the circles of yellow light from the rescue helicopters. The team of Heweth, Prince Andrew, McAllister and Arnull was ordered into the search. This was their debriefing, as I heard it later:
‘It was a black, cold night, and although the sea looked deceptively calm from above there was a big swell, lightning and rain impairing visibility. We picked up the pilot’s distress signal and moved in.
‘Leading Aircraftman Arnull went down on the winch into the wind and rain. It was his first attempt at such a rescue, though we had practised it often. He was lowered three times before the pilot managed to seize his wrist long enough in the swell to be dragged into the winch harness.
‘Once, Arnull was nearly dragged into the water. The two pilots worked to keep the Sea King into position low over the water for dangerous minutes, when Arnull told them through the intercom that the pilot had indicated there could be a crewman trapped inside the still floating wreckage. But all attempts to find the crewman failed and, although three ships detached themselves from the Task Force to stay behind for a further 24 hours in patterned search, he was lost.’
As the Falklands campaign progressed, Invincible spent long periods closed up at Action Stations. Along with the rest of us, Andrew wore anti-flash gear of white hood, drooping nose and long white gloves.
Frequently, the Prince risked his life so that his Sea King called act as a decoy target to lure Exocet missiles away from Invincible. But he stressed to me that he was doing no more than the others in 820 Squadron, whose comradeship and professionalism helped everyone involved to face the dangers.
The Prince described to me graphically what acting as a decoy meant. ‘The helicopter is supposed to hover near the carrier, presenting a large radar target to attract the missile. The idea behind it is that the Exocet comes in low over the waves, and is not supposed to be able to go above 27 feet. So when the missile is coming towards you, you gain height quickly above 27 feet, and it flies harmlessly underneath. In theory. But the day the Sheffield was hit, one Exocet was seen to fly over the mast of the ship and that is well over 27 feet.’
His most daunting moment of the war came when he was helping to ferry wounded from the stricken Atlantic Conveyor, hit by an Exocet missile which narrowly missed Invincible. ‘I was airborne at the time the Atlantic Conveyor was hit,’ he said. ‘I saw it being struck by the missile and it was something I will never forget. It was horrific. At the same time I saw 4.5 inch shell come quite close to us and I saw my ship, Invincible, firing her missiles. Normally I would say it was spectacular, but at the time it was my most frightening moment of the war.’
Prince Andrew and his colleagues can point to endurance achievements scarcely thought possible in peacetime. Statistics provided for me by 820 show that, up to 3 weeks ago, the squadron had flown a total of 3623 hours since sailing with Invincible on April 6. This is the equivalent of one year’s peacetime flying, but of course carried out in far more testing and hazardous conditions.
The squadron’s tasks included many hours spent on search and rescue missions, load lifting, troop lifting, as well as fulfilling the primary squadron role of anti-submarine warfare, which was itself extended of necessity to anti-missile tactics after the sinking of Sheffield.
I know they would not have me mention this, but these young officers fought the Falklands war for pay which many civilians would regard with disdain (not, to be realistic, that pay would much concern the Prince). As a sub lieutenant, the Prince would receive £5950 a year plus £1 pound a day local overseas allowance, with flying pay of between £1610 and £2475. As a relatively senior co-pilot, who is almost certainly soon to be promoted to first pilot, Prince Andrew would be paid at somewhere near the top of the flying scale.
Lieutenant Commander Wykes-Sneyd, Lieutenant Mike Shrives and Sub Lieutenant Heweth were just a few squadron members who were quick to stress, on my return to Invincible after the Argentina garrison surrendered, that right through the Falklands campaign Prince Andrew continued to play his role to the full and in the best Service tradition. In Port Stanley, the fighting over, the Prince told me: ‘it simply never occurred to me that because I’m a member of the Royal Family I wouldn’t take part if it came to fighting or seeing it through. I’m jolly glad that I was here throughout with my squadron: they’re absolutely fantastic.’
I remember the young Prince standing confident and smiling in his distinctive plain green flying suit, which contrasted sharply with the camouflage smocks and red and green berets of 3 Infantry Brigade, in Stanley after the surrender. He had just been recognised by two local girls and the inevitable crowd was gathering. Perhaps he was being reminded that the days were numbered when he could enjoy what for him was the luxury of relative obscurity among fellow Servicemen accustomed to having him around.
Throughout the tense weeks of the Falklands campaign, longing for news from loved ones at home was a sentiment shared, of course, by all in Invincible, not least by Prince Andrew; no one was more introspective when the mail was dropped. Apart from the unnecessary observations about love and affection for family, particularly for his grandmother, the Queen Mother, there are many human things the Prince would say about home and family in innocent conversation that I would never dream of making public. Suffice it to say that, just like everyone else on board, he had to suffer long periods when there were no mail deliveries or news of home. These became harder to bear after HMS Sheffield was sunk by an Exocet missile, and Argentine news agencies were circulating reports and fake pictures of Invincible sinking.
The one single action that endeared Prince Andrew to me as ‘just another Serviceman’ in the Task Force, was the obvious happiness and delight in his face that day in Port Stanley after he had telephoned home and spoken ‘to Mum.’
Like other Servicemen, he had taken the opportunity to use a satellite telephone link on board the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Sir Bedivere, which stood alongside Invincible in port. ‘I made the call and she was in,’ he said. ‘It is about right time of the evening. She was quite surprised to hear my voice…’