HMS Ardent (F184): 22 Lives Lost Covering the Goose Green Landings

A Well-Armed Type 21

HMS Ardent was a Type 21 frigate built by Yarrow Shipbuilders on the Clyde, completed with four MM38 Exocet missiles fitted in the B position forward of her bridge, alongside a 4.5-inch main gun, a quadruple Sea Cat missile launcher, torpedo tubes and Oerlikon cannon. Powered by a combination system of Rolls-Royce Olympus and Tyne gas turbines, she was a genuinely capable frigate of her generation. In 1981 she took part in Operation Armilla, escorting the merchant vessel Mary R. Koch through the Persian Gulf, routine work that gave no hint of what awaited her the following year.

Into Falkland Sound

Ardent sailed from Devonport for the Falklands on 19 April 1982, reaching Ascension Island on 3 May and departing again on 7 May. On 21 May, she entered Falkland Sound in support of Operation Sutton, the main British amphibious landings, with the specific task of bombarding the Argentine airstrip at Goose Green, an important but exposed assignment that placed her squarely in range of Argentine air power operating from the mainland.

Wave After Wave

The attacks began around 4pm with an A-4 Skyhawk dropping two bombs that straddled the frigate without exploding, an early warning of the punishment to come. A more serious assault followed from around 5:40pm, when three Argentine fighters attacked from the northeast, striking Ardent with cannon fire and three bombs that destroyed her Westland Lynx helicopter, wrecked her Sea Cat launcher, and set her hangar ablaze. A further wave of five Skyhawks arrived around 6pm, dropping a mixture of free-fall and retard bombs, with a pattern of two to four exploding at her port quarter.

A final attack, delivered by three Argentine Navy A-4Q Skyhawks, scored direct hits on the stern, at least two of which exploded, with further unexploded ordnance also penetrating the hull. Amid the chaos, Lieutenant Commander John Sephton organised a last-ditch defence of the ship and was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for what was recorded as extreme valour and self-sacrifice, and Able Seaman John Dillon received a George Medal for his part in rescuing shipmates from the wreckage.

22 Men Lost

With uncontrollable fires developing in the stern, Commander Alan West, later to become First Sea Lord, gave the order to abandon ship. The surviving crew transferred first to HMS Yarmouth and then to the liner Canberra, while Ardent burned through the night before finally sinking at 6:30 the following morning, until only her skewed radar antenna remained visible above the water. Twenty-two of her crew were killed, one of the heaviest single losses suffered by any ship during the entire Falklands campaign, a stark reminder of just how costly the fight for Falkland Sound, later grimly nicknamed Bomb Alley, had become.