HMS Coventry (D118): "We Were the Sacrifice", the Destroyer Lost as a Decoy

Built at Cammell Laird

HMS Coventry was built by Cammell Laird at Birkenhead, laid down on 29 January 1973, launched on 21 June 1974, and commissioned on 20 October 1978 under Captain C. P. O. Burne at a cost of £37,900,000, the last of the first tranche of fourteen Type 42 destroyers built between 1972 and 1985. Like the other early Type 42s, HMS Coventry had her bow shortened by 47 feet during design to reduce costs, a compromise that left her, along with her sister ships of the same batch, with notably poor seakeeping characteristics on trials, a design shortcut whose consequences would matter rather more than anyone might have anticipated four years later.

China, the Gulf, and the Road to War

HMS Coventry's early career included a landmark 1980 deployment to the Far East, where she became the first British warship to visit the People's Republic of China in thirty years, sailing alongside HMS Antrim and HMS Alacrity, before being diverted en route home to six weeks of patrol duty in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq War. Through 1981 and into early 1982, HMS Coventry took part in a series of exercises culminating in Exercise Springtrain off Gibraltar that March, training that would, within weeks, turn out to be a direct rehearsal for war rather than merely routine peacetime practice.

Opening Shots of the Falklands War

HMS Coventry entered the Total Exclusion Zone around the Falkland Islands on 27 April 1982 alongside five other vessels, and quickly established herself among the most active ships of the entire campaign. On 3 May, her embarked helicopter carried out the first Sea Skua air-to-surface missile launch ever fired in combat, striking the Argentine patrol vessel Alférez Sobral, and on 9 May, HMS Coventry became the first warship in history to fire Sea Dart surface-to-air missiles in anger, destroying two Argentine Learjets. She was also credited with shooting down an Aérospatiale Puma helicopter over Choiseul Sound, a genuinely formidable combat record accumulated in barely two weeks. Following the loss of HMS Sheffield and the damaging of HMS Glasgow on 12 May, HMS Coventry took on the primary air defence role for the task force until reinforcements arrived from Britain.

"We Were the Sacrifice"

On 25 May 1982, Argentina's national day, HMS Coventry and HMS Broadsword were deliberately positioned northwest of Falkland Sound as decoys, intended to draw Argentine aircraft away from the vulnerable amphibious shipping still landing troops and supplies at San Carlos. Captain David Hart Dyke later acknowledged the deliberate risk in stark terms, saying he realised why the two ships had been given the assignment: 'if necessary, we were the sacrifice rather than other ships which were more important.' Their proximity to land badly hampered their radar's ability to distinguish incoming low-flying aircraft from the terrain behind them, a critical vulnerability that Argentine pilots would soon exploit.

HMS Coventry's Sea Dart missiles claimed two more Argentine A-4B Skyhawks that day, flown by Capitán Hugo Ángel del Valle Palaver and Capitán Jorge Osvaldo García, before disaster struck. Two further waves of Skyhawks attacked at extremely low altitude, the first pair each carrying a single 1,000-pound bomb, the second wave three 250-kilogram bombs apiece. One bomb struck HMS Broadsword's flight deck, destroying her Lynx helicopter without detonating, while the second wave targeted HMS Coventry directly. Her port Oerlikon 20mm cannon jammed during the engagement, leaving her crew defending the ship with little beyond rifles and machine guns against modern jet aircraft.

HMS Coventry was struck by three bombs above the waterline on her port side. One detonated beneath the computer room and operations room, incapacitating senior officers at the very heart of the ship's command structure, while a second breached the critical bulkhead separating her forward and aft engine rooms, causing catastrophic and unstoppable flooding. The third bomb failed to detonate. Within twenty minutes, HMS Coventry had been abandoned and had completely capsized, sinking shortly afterwards. Nineteen of her crew were killed and thirty injured; one further wounded crewman, Paul Mills, later died on 29 March 1983 from complications of a skull fracture suffered in the attack. HMS Broadsword rescued 170 survivors from the water.

Legacy

Crew members of HMS Coventry received mentions in dispatches and commendations for their conduct during the sinking, and Chief Petty Officer Aircrewman M. J. Tupper of 846 Naval Air Squadron was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for his role in the rescue effort. A memorial cross was erected on Pebble Island in honour of those who died. Five months after the sinking, a Royal Navy Fleet Diving Team surveyed the wreck, finding her lying on her port side in around 100 metres of water, and Operation Blackleg later recovered classified material, personal effects and HMS Coventry's battle ensign, which was subsequently presented to her successor, a Type 22 frigate of the same name. Divers also recovered the Cross of Nails, originally from Coventry Cathedral, which has since been carried aboard successive Royal Navy vessels and today resides aboard the Type 45 destroyer HMS Diamond. The wreck site remains protected under the Protection of Military Remains Act. Captain David Hart Dyke later published his own account of the sinking in the book Four Weeks in May, later adapted into the BBC documentary Sea of Fire, and the loss of HMS Coventry has since featured in television documentary series and even in fiction, a lasting reminder of the price paid by ships deliberately positioned to draw danger away from others.