Hannan, Martin (14 November 2018). "Clive Ponting warns of Brexit threat to Scottish Parliament". The National. Ponting was married four times. In 1969 he married Katherine Hannan. After their divorce in 1973 he married Sally Fletcher, who also worked in the Ministry of Defence. Laura, a teacher, was his third wife. His fourth wife, Diane Johnson, died before him in 2020. [4] Retirement [ edit ] The Argentines were forced to use their airpower to oppose the British fleet, but the more than 400 nautical miles from their air bases on the Argentine mainland to the Falkland Islands limited their aircraft’s operational endurance. The extreme range constrained the aircrafts’ loitering time to a few minutes to locate and conduct air strikes against the British naval task force. The retreat of Argentina’s naval forces also inevitably resulted in terminating the resupplying of its forces on the Falkland Islands by sea, contributing to severe logistics support problems. Berkoff, Steven (2000). Steven Berkoff: Plays One (Reviseded.). Faber and Faber. p.145. ISBN 0-571-20721-9. His historical works have attracted attention from other academics, with scholar Paul Addison writing that "Ponting writes well and the clarity with which he summarises the issues calls to mind a model civil servant briefing his minister. He swoops like a hawk on the damning quotation or the telling statistic." [16] [17] [18] C. J. Coventry reviewed Ponting's biography of Churchill, writing that "Ponting shattered the Churchill illusion for his readers leaving them little to piece together, just marble shards on the floor of his looted temple". [19] Personal life [ edit ]

This single submarine action by HMS Conqueror, the first and only torpedo sinking of an enemy combat ship by a nuclear submarine, managed to deter and deny the Argentine Navy from threatening the British naval task force. HMS Conqueror’s performance demonstrated the value of nuclear-powered hunter-killer submarines. With the capability to travel at high underwater speeds with a long underwater endurance and large operational radius, nuclear hunter-killer submarines continue to be a prized strategic asset today.

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The controversy over the sinking did not end with the war (although officially it wasn’t one, as there had been no declaration of it). Gott, Richard (9 November 2008). "Review: Three books about Churchill". The Observer– via www.theguardian.com. There had been a Peruvian peace proposal 14 hours earlier, which Britain would later accept (although Argentina rejected it) and in a live television interview on BBC1’s Nationwide the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, denied that she had received it. The Belgrano was a threat to British ships, she said, justifying the action. Shortly after his resignation, The Observer began to serialise Ponting's book The Right to Know: The Inside Story of the Belgrano Affair. The Conservative government reacted by amending the secrets legislation and by introducing the Official Secrets Act 1989. Before the trial, a jury could take the view that if an action could be seen to be in the public interest, the right of the individual to take that action might be justified. As a result of the 1989 modification, that defence was removed. After the enactment, it was taken that "'public interest' is what the government of the day says it is". A Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations (1991), Penguin, ISBN 0-14-017660-8

When later asked about the sinking of Belgrano, Wre ford-Brown responded with typical British understate ment: “The Royal Navy spent 13 years preparing me for such an occasion. It would have been regarded as extremely dreary if I had fouled it up.” Brown, Cynthia Stokes (2012). Big History: From the Big Bang to the Present. The New Press. p.xiii. ISBN 978-1595588456.The sinking of the General Belgrano remains controversial, mostly in Argentina and on the British left. The Argentine Navy and the captain of the Belgrano, however, have maintained that the sinking was legal. Focus on the Belgrano’s end, however, has obscured the service that USS Phoenix performed in the Pacific during World War II. She was the last of the survivors of Pearl Harbor to be lost to enemy action, even if the “enemy” turned out to be the Royal Navy. However, ministers demanded his prosecution. It came in the wake the MoD’s embarrassment over the case of Sarah Tisdall, a junior civil servant jailed the year before for sending photocopies of documents concerning the deployment of US cruise missiles in Britain to The Guardian. On August 17, 1985 – 35 years ago next week – Ponting was charged under Section 2 of the 1911 Official Secrets Act. While other warships circled each other off the Falkland Islands, a British submarine stalked the Argentine light cruiser

a b Rosenbaun, Martin (18 March 2011). "Clive Ponting case: Where is the investigators' report?". BBC News. In 1951, it had been sold to Argentina and renamed the ARA General Belgrano. It would not see out 1982 and survive the Falklands War. Apart from conducting the initial landings, the Argentine Navy was largely quiet at the beginning of the Falklands War. On April 26, however, it was decided to dispatch the General Belgrano and two escort destroyers on patrol south of the islands. Although the political purpose of this patrol was understandable, its military logic is unclear. General Belgrano did have certain advantages against modern naval vessels. Her 6″ guns would have made very short work of any British ships unfortunate enough to wander within twelve or so miles. General Belgrano’s armor, while considerably lighter than a battleship, might still have been sufficient to provide considerable protection from the surface-to-surface missiles of the day. However, while General Belgrano’s initial probe was in the direction of the British task force, it is extremely unlikely that any British surface ship would have wandered into her patrol area. Having virtually no anti-air or anti-submarine capability, her ability to decisively affect the battle was extremely low. On May 2, General Belgrano and her group began repositioning toward the Argentine mainland, perhaps in preparation for another sortie to be coordinated with the Argentine Air Force. In 1985 Ponting came across the one file about Operation Cauldron—1952 secret biological warfare trials that had led to a trawler being accidentally doused with plague bacteria off the Hebrides—that had not been destroyed, and confidentially told The Observer newspaper about it, [4] leading to a story that July headlined "British germ bomb sprayed trawler". [13] The sinking of ARA General Belgrano rattled the nerves of the Argentine naval groups, which, realizing the dangers and the vulnerabilities of their surface ships against advanced British nuclear submarines, decided to return to port, including the aircraft carrier ARA Veinticinco de Mayo. There would be no more attempts by the Argentine Navy to oppose or threaten the British naval task force which subsequently landed successfully on the Falkland Islands on May 21.However, Ponting had drafted two papers stating that the cruiser had altered course and was moving away from the zone. Thirteen Days - Diplomacy and Disaster, the Countdown to the Great War (2003), Pimlico, ISBN 0-7126-6826-8 Mr Nott said the past week had been a successful one for British armed forces, but that the overriding aim was a peaceful and lasting settlement. mile round-trip. The carrier-based Sea Harriers followed up with strikes on the airport and the landing strip far ther west at Goose Green. Meanwhile, the destroyer Glamorgan and frigates Alacrity and Arrow bombarded Argentine defensive positions around Stanley. The Argen tines launched more than 50 sorties in hopes of finding and sinking British ships. But only one flight of three mainland-based Israeli-built IAI Dagger fighters found a target: the three ships bombarding Stanley. Though the jets inflicted only minor damage on two of the Royal Navy vessels, the air strike was enough to convince the British ships to break off and rejoin the main task group. A New Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations (2007), Penguin, ISBN 0-14-303898-2 Penguin's description of the book