John Woodward, Leader of British Navy in Falkland Islands War, Dies at 81
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Version 0 of 1. Adm. John Woodward, who became Britain’s most acclaimed naval officer since World War II when he commanded the Royal Navy battle group sent to retake the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic after they were seized by Argentina in 1982, died on Sunday in Bosham, West Sussex, on England’s south coast. He was 81. His death was announced by Britain’s Ministry of Defense. The Falklands, a British territory comprising a group of windswept islands 250 miles off Argentina’s southeast coast, had been a source of dispute between Britain and Argentina for 150 years when an Argentine military dictatorship staged an invasion in April 1982. The landings on the islands — which the Argentines call the Malvinas but were named by the British in 1690 for Viscount Falkland, treasurer of the British Navy — brought a major military response by the government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in support of nearly 2,000 settlers, most of British descent. Admiral Woodward was named commander of a naval force that included two aircraft carriers and dozens of other warships and transports that fought together with air squadrons, Royal Marines and army units in wintry conditions more than 8,000 miles from Britain. “I certainly don’t see myself as the hawk-eyed, sharp-nosed, hard military man, leading a battle fleet into the annals of history,” Admiral Woodward told the BBC when he went to war. “I am not in favor of blowing people’s heads off. However, as a loyal servant of the government, if I have to blow people’s heads off, I’ll do it in the most efficient and effective way I know.” Admiral Woodward was remembered most for his order to sink the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano, resulting in the deaths of more than 300 crewmen. The British government had declared a war zone around the Falklands, allowing its ships to fire on Argentine vessels that entered the restricted area. On May 2, the British nuclear submarine Conqueror detected the Belgrano and accompanying destroyers to the south of Admiral Woodward’s flagship, the aircraft carrier Hermes. The Belgrano was outside the restricted zone and heading away from it, but Admiral Woodward ordered the Conqueror to torpedo it, fearing he could be the target of a pincer attack, since an Argentine aircraft carrier had been spotted to the north. The British newspaper The Sun ran the memorable headline “Gotcha” to celebrate the attack on the Belgrano, which set the stage for a British amphibious counterattack in the Falklands later in May. Despite controversy over whether the sinking was a military necessity, Admiral Woodward remained unwavering. “It’s very simple,” he told The Telegraph last year. “There was the Belgrano and two destroyers armed with Exocet missiles milling around in the southern ocean. I know from experience that while they were within 200 miles of our ships, they could have us overnight. So I wanted them removed.” The Argentine junta, which had hoped to divert public dismay over economic and social conditions with a military triumph in the Falklands, surrendered its forces on June 14, ending a conflict that took the lives of 649 Argentine and 255 British servicemen, along with three civilians. Admiral Woodward told of his war experiences in 1992 in a memoir, “One Hundred Days,” written with Patrick Robinson. The book’s title refers to the time from the date of the Argentine invasion to his return to Britain. The naval historian Kenneth J. Hagan, writing in The New York Times, called the memoir “the finest primer on how to lead a fleet into battle since Adm. Horatio Nelson wrote his instructions to his captains on the eve of Trafalgar.” John Forster Woodward, known as Sandy for his hair color, was born on May 1, 1932, in Penzance, Cornwall, the son of a bank official. He attended the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth and became a submarine specialist in the early 1950s. He later served as head of naval plans in the Ministry of Defense. Admiral Woodward was knighted after the Falklands war, served as deputy chief of the defense staff and held the ceremonial post of flag aide-de-camp to Queen Elizabeth II. He retired from the military in 1989. His survivors include a son and a daughter. The sovereignty dispute over the Falklands, where offshore oil reserves were recently discovered, drags on. In March, 99.7 percent of Falkland Islanders who had participated in a referendum voted “yes” on retaining their ties with Britain amid a renewal of nationalist sentiment in Argentina over its claims. In his last years, Admiral Woodward was sharply critical of cuts to the British Navy. He wrote in The Daily Mail in June 2011 that if Argentina tried to seize the Falklands again, he feared they were “now perilously close to being indefensible.” |