Call for Fire: Sea Combat in the Falklands and the Gulf War

Call for Fire is a first-hand account of fighting in the Falklands and the Gulf campaigns by the only British senior officer who commanded in both of these major wars.
In 1982, Chris Craig was captain of the frigate HMS Alacrity. By the end of the Falklands War she had steamed 30,000 miles, often in appalling sea conditions. Firing her guns in anger over 500 times, she had survived attacks by five Exocet missiles, as well as conventional bombs and cannon-fire. The only ship to have penetrated Falkland Sound before the invasion, she placed Special Forces in the heart of enemy-held territory there and became the only British surface ship to sink an Argentinian vessel, blowing up a fuel-carrier by gunfire.
Nine years later, Craig was once again in the thick of action, in command of the 26 British ships in the Gulf campaign. There he participated in a quite different war, managing the complexities of a large Task Group and cooperation with a multinational alliance. Yet that campaign, conducted in waters sewn with deadly mines, and in the face of enemy missile launches, was no less dangerous. And the blazing oilwells and devastated coastline of Kuwait provided a sobering reminder of the savagery of war.