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Small scale model is big tribute to HMS Sheffield’s rescuers
22 July 2024
The deeds of those who strove to save the crew of HMS Sheffield – and the destroyer herself – have been immortalised in miniature form.
Former sailor-turned-modelmaker John Chivers toiled for 600 hours (the equivalent of four whole weeks non-stop) to recreate the immediate aftermath of arguably the greatest shock to the Royal Navy since 1945.
HMS Sheffield was reduced to a burned-out hulk when hit by an Exocet missile on May 4 1982 during the opening moves of the operation to liberate the Falklands.
Twenty men were killed either by the immediate impact and blast or subsequent fires and smoke while the destroyer’s loss – she sank a few days later under tow – had a profound effect on all involved as well as the wider Navy (she was the first British warship lost to enemy action since World War 2).
Equally importantly, however, over 260 men survived the attack, some 225 transferred to Type 21 frigate HMS Arrow, which came alongside the stricken Type 42 destroyer and spent five hours fighting the fires, while taking aboard 225 souls.
Four decades later, the Arrow Association decided to commemorate those lifesaving efforts courtesy of a diorama depicting the Type 21 frigate’s role with veteran Type 12 frigate HMS Yarmouth, commissioning Mr Chivers to turn their vision into reality - in 1/350 scale. He used a combination of kits, 3D printing (to create the replica Sea King), cotton wool, tin foil, the innards of a teddy bear, and authentic paints and weathering powder to turn the Falklands veterans’ vision into a recreation so realistic (the radars and Sea King rotor blades turn courtesy of tiny motors, while navigation lights glow) that it instantly brought back memories when it was unveiled at a gathering.
That’s not entirely surprising as Mr Chivers studied official photographs plus those captured by veterans, diary extracts and recollections to piece together the diorama over 600 painstaking hours.
The resulting artwork depicts HMS Arrow pulling alongside Sheffield in the aftermath of the Exocet strike to assist in fighting the fire, while HMS Yarmouth drives off suspected Argentine submarines initially thought to be on the scene.
It was unveiled in the presence of Arrow veterans Mr Tritton and Scott Fletcher, Steve Worsfold from HMS Yarmouth, and Sheffield survivor Mark Warner in Helensburgh’s Commodore Hotel.
All were struck by the authenticity of the model.
Mr Tritton, chairman of HMS Arrow Association, was a petty officer marine engineering artificer aboard the frigate assigned to the forward damage control party trying to keep the fires raging aboard the Shiny Sheff in check.
He mostly oversaw running emergency power cables to sustain the stricken destroyer’s electricity supply, but also helped with other duties – anything from physically fighting the fires to carrying ammunition.
He vividly remembers the moment Arrow pulled up alongside the Type 42 and he was asked to help ascertain what the frigate’s crew could do for the destroyer.
“What I can never forget is the smell – a cross between steam from a donkey boiler combined with burning paint, oil and diesel with the occasional whiff of avcat,” he recalled.
“The scene resembled a nightmare, unreal, too much to take in.”
Sheffield’s survivors were cared for by the comrades; those who did not require subsequent evacuation to hospital were fed bread and soup – the quickest meal Arrow’s chefs could knock up.
The frigate’s crew offered up their bunks for the Sheffield sailors to rest and clothes – largely drawn from the PTI’s sportswear inventory – to replace possessions lost to the flames devouring the destroyer’s messes.
What strikes Mr Tritton to this day is the mental impact of the loss of their ship had beyond the physical injuries.
“They were extremely anxious, not knowing where they were on the ship and jumped at the slightest noise,” he recalls.
“These jitters passed to the Arrow crew and although I was proud of what we had achieved and will never forget it, for them the war was over and it was a relief when they disembarked so that we could return to the ‘normality’ of being at war and getting on with our jobs without the distraction.”
For now the diorama will be kept at his home but the ultimate goal is to display it either at the Falklands Heritage centre or the planned Type 21 museum in Glasgow.