Royal NavyObituary

Admiral Sir Sandy Woodward obituary

Commander of the Royal Navy taskforce that retook the Falkland Islands after the Argentinian invasion in 1982

Admiral Sir John Woodward, known as "Sandy", who has died aged 81, led the naval expeditionary force which, against all the military odds, recaptured the Falkland Islands from the Argentinian invaders in 1982.

Woodward, then a rear admiral, was in the right place – at sea in the north Atlantic exercising his First Flotilla of destroyers and frigates – at the right time, when the Royal Navy was hurriedly assembling a taskforce to sail for the south Atlantic. And although he candidly admitted in his memoirs that "no one would ever have heard of me but for the events of 1982", he proved also to be the right man.

The Argentinian military junta invaded the Falklands on 2 April 1982. In London Margaret Thatcher's government, caught unawares, wrung its collective hands. Even the defence secretary, John Nott, regarded the occupation as irreversible. Enter, in the most dramatic fashion, the first sea lord and chief of naval staff, Admiral Sir Henry Leach. He left a ceremony in Portsmouth and ordered a helicopter to fly him to London. On arrival he marched in full uniform into parliament and assured Thatcher and her officials that the navy could mobilise a suitable task force "by the weekend". It was already Friday. The prime minister announced in an electrifying broadcast on Saturday 3 April that an amphibious operation would be mounted.

In overall command was Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse, commander-in-chief (C-in-C) of the fleet. Three nuclear-powered attack submarines under his direct control were secretly sent out at once. Woodward had tactical, frontline command of the taskforce, TF 317, at sea as it assembled and sailed southward via Ascension Island. His flagship was the old carrier HMS Hermes, supported by another carrier, Invincible (which were both up for sale at the time), destroyers and frigates – a total of 27 warships plus transports.

Once it was near the Falklands, the taskforce, TF 317, was divided into task groups (TG), including an amphibious group led by Commodore Mike Clapp, TG 317.0. The carriers and their escorts, TG 317.8, remained under Woodward's direct, tactical command. His role now was to provide air, surface and anti-submarine support for the landing of a counter-invasion force of 6,000 soldiers and marines, under half the total of the occupation forces.

The exercise off Gibraltar that made him the nearest available admiral, and which he abandoned to head south, had involved simulating highly effective missile "attacks" on a US navy carrier group. Woodward was therefore particularly worried by Argentina's formidable, French-made Exocet anti-ship missiles. The loss of even one of his two carriers would probably have meant defeat. Intelligence also reached him of three enemy task groups at sea: a carrier with escorts to the north, a group of frigates in the centre and the 1930s former US cruiser General Belgrano with two destroyers to the south of the exclusion zone around the Falklands, declared by the British as a free-fire area.

Woodward, who had spent much of his career in submarines, felt that he should have had control of the three British nuclear boats sent to shadow the Argentinian navy and signalled his frustration by ordering HMS Conqueror to attack the Belgrano, which he had no authority to do.

Northwood, the British military headquarters, countermanded this order, while Fieldhouse and Admiral of the Fleet Sir Terence Lewin, chief of defence staff, sought the prime minister's permission. The submarine was allowed to attack the cruiser, just as the US, Peru and other parties were trying to mediate. More than 300 men died when the Belgrano went down, and a massive controversy erupted because the ship had been outside the maritime exclusion zone and sailing away from the Falklands and the taskforce. It was only in 2003 that the Belgrano's captain, Hector Bonzo, revealed that he was under orders, and also very keen, to turn round and attack the British.

Vengeance was not slow in coming. Daring pilots flying at the limit of their range with their Exocets mortally wounded the destroyer HMS Sheffield, a ship Woodward had once commanded, and her slow death under a vast column of black smoke was televised around the world. However, most of the crew were saved.

Three other escorts were sunk along with two transports, while several ships were badly damaged; but the carriers, kept as far east as possible, were unscathed and gave Woodward essential local air superiority while the soldiers and marines defeated the Argentinian forces on land. From the Argentinian invasion to the victorious return of the admiral took 100 days, a fact that gave Woodward the title of his bestselling memoirs, published 10 years later.

Woodward was born into the family of a bank official in Penzance, Cornwall, and entered the navy on a scholarship to the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, in Devon, as an officer cadet in 1946, aged 13. After various courses and posts at sea, Woodward, uncertain which career path to follow, found himself at HMS Dolphin, the submarine training establishment.

Eventually, as lieutenant commander, he passed the notorious "Perisher" test for would-be submarine captains. Asked which boat he would now like to command, the brash Woodward named HMS Dreadnought, Britain's first nuclear submarine, a story that went round the fleet. He commanded two diesel-electric submarines and became the "teacher" of the Perisher course before taking over the nuclear HMS Warspite.

After staff posts and command of the Sheffield, in 1981 he was appointed rear admiral and flag officer of the First Flotilla. Knighted with a KCB after the Falklands war, he became flag officer, submarines, and Nato commander of submarines in the eastern Atlantic. His final post before retirement – as a full admiral in 1989 with his second knighthood, the GBE – was C-in-C, naval home command, entitling him to hoist his flag on Nelson's Victory at Portsmouth.

Despite his unique status as successful leader of the most successful British naval expedition since the second world war and the country's most expensive war fleet, Admiral Woodward never reached the topmost posts of C-in-C fleet, first sea lord or chief of defence staff. Last year he deplored the reduction of investment in the navy that had left it without an aircraft carrier, believing that he and his colleagues should have made more of how the Falklands were recovered.

He married Charlotte McMurtrie in 1960; they had a son and a daughter, and later separated. In retirement he pursued his interests in skiing, sailing and philately, living in a small village on the Sussex coast.

John Forster "Sandy" Woodward, sailor, born 1 May 1932; died 4 August 2013

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