Hostage crisis report dents Navy’s reputation
Hostage crisis report dents Navy’s reputation | Uk News | News | Telegraph
It was a close run thing. In appointing a Royal Marine officer to do the investigation there may have been less fallout. But there was fallout none-the-less.
The Navy are not operating on the same war footing as the Army & (oh god it hurts me to say this) the RAF. To them the war is not as up close & personal as the ground war, and they have let standards slip.
The ditty doing the rounds in Army messes at the moment is “What shall we do with the captured sailor?” With verses like ” Take away his I-pod ’til he blubbers” amongst others less repeatable!
The Navy need to step up & get aggressive. Their excuse was that they’d no way of dealing with the threat, and therefor gave up. Well LADIES, read a few extracts from victoria cross recipients commendations. The theme running through them is, that faced with insurmountable odds, and probable death, they got on with the job anyway.
One thing St Crispin noticed that the report was a largely whitewash as it said that the helicopter availability was sufficient (it never is, even in peacetime, and St Crispin has been in the north arabian gulf, and knows that the Lynx’s are severely hampered with engine running hours issues). That the armaments on the RHIBS was sufficient. Again not true. The US use boats with 50 calibre machine guns & 40mm grenade launchers to do the same operations. Had our marines had these, then they may have put up a fight.
Finally the unwillingness of the Captain to manoeuvre close to the shore & provide better protection to the boarding party may have been a result of the high numbers of captains who are being court marshalled for dinging thier ships. They are assuming (probably correctly) that they’ll be treated as if it were peacetime, but we all know, that in war, risks must be taken.
EDIT
To illustrate what I said about experience in the Royal Navy, please look at the picture below of Sir Jonathan Band (to right of Her Majesty in the picture) who is the First Sea Lord. He’s only got two operation medals plus the Queens Jubilee medal. That’s not a lot of operation experience in my opinion and to now be the main man at the RN is quite sad for the rest. As a matter of interest, St Crispin has 4 medals, two of which are for operations, and I am just a Territorial Army officer!!
