Themes

David Cragg on the work of the Royal Navy’s ships during the Gulf War.(RNM)

Transcript: “It was a strange feeling. I mean it could be exceedingly boring most of the time because the war did not effect the navy to the same extent in the sense that we didn’t have air attacks coming in repeatedly launching missiles at us - which was a great relief. So as I say, most of the time it was boring because you were patrolling the same areas with nothing happening. (What did the sailors do?) Well they had their duties obviously, I mean they were on defence watches so they were working six hours at any one time with maybe five off and then going back on duty. So their programme was set and it was quite demanding to the service that they were putting in. I mean men would be on the look out on the upper deck, others would be in the operations room watching the radar screens and controlling. I mean they had control of the sky above, their particular piece of sky above the ship so American and British aircraft that flew over would pass the air traffic control of HMS Cardiff and an operator deep in the ship would be telling them where they could go and when and identifying them as well to see that they weren’t enemy. Interestingly the navy took some time to convince the American air force that they could do this and for some time they were not given that control it was only after a few weeks that the Royal Navy Air Traffic Controllers were allowed to have control of any American aircraft over flying the ship. I think the Royal Navy were very proud of the reputation that they won with the United States Navy in terms not only of operating/controlling of air craft, but also identifying hostile ships and air craft, and also in Gloucester’s case actually engaging an enemy missile.”

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