Portsmouth dockyard veteran recalls 'incredible' effort to get warships ready for Falklands War

Workers were dismayed to find that they were being made redundant – in their thousands – and morale was at an all-time low.

But on April 2, while the nation slept, prime minister Margaret Thatcher received a message informing her of the imminent Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands.

The Portsmouth-based task force had to be prepared as fast as possible and so these men had to kick into overdrive, in the knowledge that when the job was done, so were they.

Dennis Miles, now chairman of the board of trustees at the Portsmouth Royal Dockyard Historical Trust, was working at the dockyard at the time.

He says the hustle and bustle is as vivid a memory now as it was then.

‘The way things happened at that time have never left me,’ he said.

‘I was writing the specification for the conversion of the warships at the time, so was at the dockyard every day.

‘Walking through the heart of the operation, the noise was deafening – you couldn’t hear yourself think over the sound of grinders and heavy machinery.

‘Then there was the smell of arc welders, which ran right up your nose.'

The men at the dockyard worked around the clock on ships such as HMS Hermes, preparing them for the assault.

SEE ALSO: 25 photos showing how the Second World War changed Portsmouth

According to Dennis, many of them put in a huge amount of overtime to get the work completed.

But watching the warships set sail from Portsmouth Harbour, and then discovering their fate on the news weeks later, created a sombre mood in the dockyard.

He said: ‘People were being made redundant but still had to come into work.

‘The overtime payments were huge – and I don’t think that was on accident either. Workers wanted their money’s worth before being made to look elsewhere.

‘There was a big sense of national pride and at the time, the dockyard could produce absolutely anything.

‘Because of that, the preparations took a matter of days, rather than months. It really was an incredible effort.’

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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