Product Description

'On 25 May 1982, at a critical juncture in the Falklands War,
the destroyer HMS Coventry was attacked by Argentinian aircraft. In a
devastating strike, she was hit by three bombs, two of which exploded
inside her hull, killing nineteen of her crew and leaving many others badly
injured. Within minutes, Coventry had capsized, and would finally sink off
Pebble Island the following day. The loss of HMS Coventry was deeply
traumatic: it was the first occasion since the Second World War that a
British captain and his crew had to abandon a stricken ship and take to
life rafts in the cold and unforgiving waters of the South Atlantic.

Four Weeks in May is the highly personal, often harrowing story of
Coventry's war told by her captain, David Hart Dyke. It is the tale of a
proud fighting ship of the Royal Navy and of the complex ties that bind a
commander and his crew, especially in times of mortal danger. It is also
the record of one man's private anxieties about his responsibilities as
captain, the welfare of his men, and his wife and two young daughters back
at home.

Four Weeks in May is a riveting account of how men prepare for a war they
never expected to fight and how they endure its privations, terrors and,
finally, its horrors.'

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #86857 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-12
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Hugh McManners, The Times
`[An] honest, poignant and moving book.'

Greg Eden, The Bookseller
`Powerful account'

Synopsis
In March 1982, the guided-missile destroyer HMS Coventry was one of a small squadron of ships on exercise off Gibraltar. By the end of April that year, she was sailing south in the vanguard of the Task Force towards the Falklands. As diplomacy failed, crisis became conflict. By the time the ship left Ascension Island, its company knew war was inevitable - a war in which they would be in the front line. For Coventry, the war began in earnest on 1 May. Her job was to be 'on picket' to the north west of the islands. She was to provide early warning of approaching enemy aircraft from the west, and fend off any incoming threat to the highly valuable ships and aircraft behind her. On 25 May, Coventry was attacked by two Argentine Skyhawks, and hit by three bombs. The explosions tore out most of her port side and killed 19 of the crew, leaving many others injured - mostly by burns. Within twenty minutes, she had capsized, and was to sink early the next day. In her final moments, when all those not killed by the explosions had been evacuated from the ship, her Captain, David Hart Dyke, himself badly burned, climbed down her starboard side and into a life-raft.

This is his compelling and moving story.

Customer Reviews

Read This Book
I have read, recently, both this book (twice) and Sandy Woodward's book (100 days...). The different characters of the authors and the stresses and strains of their respective positions in the war, come through very clearly in both books. If you want to understand what it really FEELS like to Command a warship at war, and to lose that ship, then read this intensely personal account from David Hart-Dyke.

Disappointing
Considering that this is supposed to be providing the reader with an insight to the loss of a ship, I found this book to be very poor. [...]
Very little is written about the ship's company, and when compared with other similar tomes (Through Fire And Water for example) I was left wondering whether the Captain actually knew many of his crew at all. Very little is written about life onboard, and it was finally brought home to me when he admits to keeping himself apart from the crew once onboard Stromness just when his crew needed to see him providing leadership from the front.

I wanted to read about the ship, and for that it needs a lot more build-up to the events in May and especially events of 14-25th May. Instead, I was presented with a load of history about both the writer and his wife's historical links with the navy, which had very little bearing on the events in May, and especially the day of the loss.

In my view, this would have been better kept as a personal memoire.

From June 2007 review in Navy News
VETERANS of the 1982 conflict in the South Atlantic often complain that their ship was the `forgotten' ship of the war.
Others grabbed the glory, or the headlines, but their ship made the decisive contribution to victory.
It is a claim Captain David Hart-Dyke would never make on behalf of HMS Coventry, but it's probably fair to say her role in the Falklands war has often been overlooked.
She wasn't the first ship to be lost in the war; she would not be the last. She did not blow up spectacularly for the cameras like Antelope. She did not venture into Bomb Alley like Ardent. She did not survive an Exocet hit like Glamorgan.
She did, however, fight with supreme distinction and bravery - and made the supreme sacrifice, as her former commanding officer describes in the outstanding Four Weeks in May (Atlantic, £18.99 ISBN 978-1-84354-590-3).
The emotions, the nerves, the strain the Coventry men felt were identical to those felt by their predecessors 40 years before. The previous Coventry was subjected to repeated enemy air attack in the Mediterranean; like her successor, she fought with distinction but the odds were against her.
The sailors talked of home, of loved ones, they drifted oft silently into thought, tears rolling down their cheeks, they turned to God - irrespective of whether they were religious or not. And if the worst came, they prepared to die. "You know, sir, some of us are not going to get back to Portsmouth," Hart-Dyke's XO confided him as the war dragged on.
This was the real war, too honest to be trumpeted in the jingoistic press or to be reported to loved ones in letters home. For his daughters Miranda and Alice, David Hart-Dyke sketched a cartoon of Coventry blasting enemy an patrol boat out of the water and an enemy aircraft out of the sky.
It was something the destroyer was particularly adept; on the final day of her life, May 25 1982, Coventry had dispatched three Argentine Sea Darts.
Fate was against her as the day waned; HMS Broadsword's Seawolf played up, Coventry's own Sea Dart couldn't get a lock on Argentine Skyhawk jets, whose pilots showed undeniable bravery as they raced in towards the destroyer.
Coventry's crew responded with equal bravery; every machine-gun fired, the 4.5in main gun blasted away, the Oerlikons chattered (until one jammed); the sailors even tried to blind the Argentine pilots by shining the beam from the bridge wing signaling projector in their faces.
It was, sadly, to no avail. Three bombs tore into the side of the ship and tore her heart out.
The operations room where David Hart-Dyke had been directing the battle ceased to exist as he knew it. His headset and microphone had vaporised, his anti-flash hood and gloves were in tatters. And yet he was one of the lucky ones.
"I looked to my left and saw a sheet of orange flame leap out of the hatch down into the computer room below and envelop a man as he attempted to climb up into the operations room," recalls Coventry captain.
"He had nearly reached the top of the ladder and someone had stretched towards him and tried to catch his hand. It was too late: consumed by fire, he could go no further and fell back with a final, despairing cry for help."
Seven men were burned alive in the computer room - or were killed by the blast of one of the bombs. A dozen of their comrades were also lost.
The author paints a vivid picture of Coventry's final moments, drawing upon the accounts of numerous former comrades. Survivors of the Barham, Prince of Wales, Gloucester, Repulse and countless more vessels will identify strongly with the scenes in the destroyer in her death throes.
Training reaped dividends. There was no panic, no selfishness. Each man helped the next to escape the stricken Coventry. Some 250 of them survived.
His crew, Hart-Dyke wrote just a few days after the sinking, had been "nothing short of heroes" . Many of the heroes struggled to adjust to life after the Falklands. It took Coventry's captain perhaps 18 months to come around. He regards himself as one of the lucky ones; he never suffered flashbacks or nightmares like some of his former shipmates.
And it was only back in the UK that the captain realised the scale of Coventry's contribution to victory.
"I really had taken part in a momentous event in the country's history," he writes. "The conflict was not just something to be played down as having been merely in the line of duty."
Fifteen years ago, reviewers praised Sandy Woodward for the frankness of his account of the campaign, and in particular the strain of command.
David Hart-Dyke gives you the `business end' of that conflict, the story of the sailors in harm's way. It is one of the most moving, honest and vivid memoirs of life - and war - at sea you will ever pick up.