Word: woodwarding
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Violence of some sort had been expected as soon as the British task force, led by the aircraft carriers Hermes and Invincible, reached the area of the Falklands on April 29. The first action of the fleet's commander, Rear Admiral John ("Sandy") Woodward, 50, had been to enforce a total air and sea blockade within 200 miles of the islands. In a daring, long-distance raid on May 1, a delta-winged Vulcan bomber blasted the airstrip near the Falklands' tiny capital, Port Stanley. Flights of carrier-based Sea Harrier jets pounded the airfield with more bombs...
Wraith flashed the information of the Belgrano's course change to Fleet Commander Woodward, who passed it on to London. Admiral Sir Terence Lewin, chief of the British defense staff, took the news at once to the five-member emergency War Cabinet of Prime Minister Thatcher, which was meeting at 10 Downing Street. Lewin's recommendation was that the Conqueror act to defend the British task force. The War Cabinet agreed, and the order to fire was sent back to Commander Wraith...
...pall of smoke from the Sheffield had been clearly visible from the Hermes, where it brought a personal sense of loss to Fleet Commander Woodward. He was captain of the Sheffield from 1976 to 1978. There was another irony. While the Sheffield was being built at Barrow-in-Furness, England, a part of her hull was damaged in an industrial explosion. An identical type of destroyer, the Hercules, was being constructed alongside the damaged vessel, and the prospective owners, the Argentine government, generously offered to give the hull section intended for their ship to the British. The Hercules...
Britain's aerial weakness over the Falklands is the task force's Achilles' heel. Rear Admiral Woodward is extremely limited in the number of aircraft he can send aloft for combat patrols and raids on the islands while continuing to protect his fleet. That weakness, more than any other factor, might hamper a British invasion of the islands. To help beef up the British air effort further, the government late last week dispatched long-range Nimrod reconnaissance planes to the South Atlantic. Nimrods, the British version of the AWACS, can give British ships warning of enemy aircraft...
...Admiral Woodward's prophecy comes true, the British would move to the still largely undefined Stage 3. The chief option being considered: a further long-range strike by British strategic bombers, this time against Argentina's mainland airbases. It would be carried out by Britain's venerable fleet of Vulcans, the planes that took part in the airfield attacks last Saturday. Once part of the country's nuclear deterrent force, the Vulcans, most of which are some 20 years old or more, have been refitted to carry as many as 21 conventional 1,000-lb. bombs...