LEBANON CRISIS - NEW 'DUNKIRK' GETS UNDERWAY

By Mike Barlow & Iain Ballantyne (UK), Charles Strathdee (USA), Neill Rush (Gibraltar), AFPS Reporters.

The Royal Navy has mounted a rescue mission to evacuate British and Commonwealth citizens from Lebanon, depicted by one UK government minister as a latter day Dunkirk.

The British Type 42 destroyer HMS Gloucester takes aboard more evacuees at Beirut port. Photo: Royal Navy.

Before the operation got fully underway, Minister for the Middle East Dr Kim Howells told MPs, in the House of Commons: "At the start of the crisis, 3,500 British families were registered in Lebanon and we have subsequently registered an additional 2,000 individuals, bringing the overall total to approximately 12,000 British nationals. There are also approximately 10,000 dual nationals. We have agreements with Commonwealth states, which means that we have some responsibilities there, too. When we take those numbers into account, the figures become very large. I have heard the situation described graphically in the sense that if we had to evacuate the numbers that I have just mentioned it would be the biggest evacuation since Dunkirk."

The United Nations was meanwhile trying to broker a cease-fire between the Israeli Defence Force and Hezbollah. G8 leaders meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, had also issued a statement expressing "deepening concern" about the deteriorating situation and vowed to work together to restore peace. A joint statement observed: "These extremist elements and those that support them cannot be allowed to plunge the Middle East into chaos and provoke a wider conflict. The extremists must immediately halt their attacks." The leaders affirmed Israel's right to defend itself but urged it to exercise restraint to minimise civilian casualties.

SIX British naval vessels, led by the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious (R06) and amphibious ship HMS Bulwark (L15), were by 20 July off the Lebanon, beginning the process of taking to safety more than 4,000 UK citizens and those others who had registered an interest in leaving the Lebanon. It appeared the rest of those who would be entitled to take advantage of the services of the Royal Navy had decided to stay put, rather deflating Dr Howell's claim that it would compare to Dunkirk (an operation that in the summer of 1940 evacuated 340,000 British and allied troops from French ports in the face of determined Luftwaffe air assault and Wehrmacht land attack).

 

UK citizens go ashore from HMS Gloucester at Cyprus. Photo: Royal Navy.

Over the two days previous to the main British naval effort, the destroyers HMS Gloucester (D96) and HMS York  (D98) went alongside in Beirut port to evacuate those most in need of escape to safety, including children, the sick, the elderly and pregnant women. By the late afternoon of 19 July, York and Gloucester had evacuated 400 UK citizens. Steaming hard for waters off Lebanon on 19 July was the Type 23 multi-role frigate HMS St Albans (F83), which had been in the Red Sea and Suez Canal zone on escort duties.
The Israeli Navy had agreed to lift its blockade of the Lebanese coast for a short period, to allow the evacuation to proceed.  Some hours before the British destroyers went in the Italian destroyer Durand de La Penne (D560) left the same port, transporting hundreds of evacuees to the Cypriot port of Larnaca.

The US State Department has estimated that about 5,000 Americans in Lebanon had requested evacuation. About 25,000 US citizens, many with dual US-Lebanese citizenship, live or work in Lebanon. Some had undertaken the perilous journey by road to Syria and from there flew to Jordan, although the US Government had advised its citizens not to take that route. A US Embassy statement released on Monday instructed American citizens to be ready to depart and advised them to monitor the local media and the embassy website for further instructions.

There was criticism of the American government for taking longer than some of the European nations to evacuate its citizens, as the US Navy's principal seaborne evacuation, spearheaded by the USS Iwo Jima (LHD7) Expeditionary Strike Group did not begin until 19 July. However, on 16 July CH-53 helicopters from the Iwo Jima had flown to a British airbase at Cyprus and began running a shuttle service to and from the island and the US Embassy in Beirut, evacuating hundreds of US citizens.

A terrified woman clutches her child as they go aboard a US Marine Corps CH-53 helicopter to be evacuated from Beirut. Photo: US Navy

A mother and her young son evacuated to safety from Beirut leave a USMC CH-53 helicopter at RAF Akrotiri, Cyprus. Photo: US Navy.

There were also reports of British citizens being angry that other nations, such as France, Sweden and Italy, chartered ferries and sent them into Beirut, so evacuating many more people and much quicker than the UK. However, those nations are not so high on the target list of Islamic fanatics, so it was perhaps wise for the US and UK to wait for the warships to deploy. Sending a large ferry into a port at a time when Hezbollah were firing Anti-Shipping Missiles at both Israeli warships and merchant vessels was perhaps a gamble neither Washington or London were anxious to take. Additionally, a fully constituted amphibious task group is theoretically able to lift many more people at once than several ferry trips can manage.

The American destroyer USS Gonzalez leaves Souda Bay, Crete, heading for the Lebanon. Photo: US Navy.

The Americans did, however, charter a cruise ship, the Ocean Queen, to begin bringing their nationals out en masse, assigning the Arleigh Burke Class destroyer USS Gonzalez (DDG 66) as her guard ship. Gonzalez cancelled a scheduled visit to Gibraltar and steamed at full speed across the Mediterranean to make her rendezvous with the Ocean Queen off the Lebanon.

Greece also sent a frigate into Beirut and on 19 July it emerged that even the Indian Navy was sending warships to carry out an evacuation. The frigates INS Betwa (F32), INS Brahmaputra (F31), destroyer INS Mumbai (D62) and the auxiliary Shakti (A57) had been on a friendship visits to the Israeli naval base at Haifa shortly before the fighting broke out. Having departed and passed through the Suez Canal, they were ordered by the Indian government to turn around and passed back through the canal on 18 July, arriving off the Lebanon on 19 July.

Meanwhile, on the afternoon of 18 July six Sea King Mk4 helicopters from the Royal Navy's Commando Helicopter Force had left their airbase in the UK, beginning a marathon flight to the eastern Med, where they would embark aboard the British evacuation ships Illustrious and Bulwark.

Twenty pilots and 70 support personnel from the RNAS Yeovilton-based 846 Naval Air Squadron went with the helicopters, with plans to refuel at Nice before the final leg to Cyprus. Many of the 846 NAS aviators were veterans of combat flying in Iraq. Pilot Lieutenant Matt Ward said of the potential dangers he might face during the mission ahead: "I think they will be pretty much the same kind, so I expect the tactics will be the same, as will the use of defensive air suites."

The Commanding Officer of the CHF, Colonel John McArdle RMs said as the helicopters departed: "What is paramount is the safety of the people we are there to rescue"

• For more reports on the Lebanon Crisis, see WARSHIPS IFR magazine.