Sea Wolf (missile) - Combat Performance

Combat Performance

During the Falklands War, Sea Wolf was present on board HMS Brilliant and HMS Broadsword. As the Royal Navy's only modern point-defence weapon at the time, the two Type 22 frigates so equipped were assigned "goalkeeper" duties, to provide close anti-aircraft defence of the carrier task force. Sea Wolf lived up to expectations and performed well in combat.

In an attempt to overcome the fleet's overall air defence deficiency following the loss of Sheffield, a new tactic was devised, which saw the two Type 22 frigates each teamed with one of the remaining pair of Type 42 destroyers (unofficially termed Type 64, the sum of both classes numbers); these were deployed together some distance from the main fleet, covering likely attack routes, in an attempt to draw attacking aircraft into a "missile trap". On 12 May 1982, Brilliant and HMS Glasgow were in combination. The ships were attacked by a flight of four Argentine A-4 Skyhawk aircraft. Brilliant was able to shoot down two of these and cause a third to crash trying to avoid the missile. A second wave of aircraft attacked during a failure of the missile system, which led to Glasgow suffering heavy damage. Broadsword however was unable to successfully defend HMS Coventry when the pair were attacked on May 25. The latter, moving evasively, crossed in front of Broadsword and broke the Sea Wolf's lock on the attacking aircraft. Sea Wolf also suffered from problems with hardware failure causing launches to fail, and broken lock resulting from the extreme sea conditions and the Argentine's low altitude hit-and-run tactics, and multiple targets and crossing targets - neither of which it was designed to intercept. Sea Wolf accounted for two confirmed "kills" and three further possible successes from eight launches.