Scram! (12 page)

What Black Buck One undoubtedly achieved was to
wake
up the Argentine defences in time for the surprise dawn raid on Port Stanley airfield by the Sea Harriers of 800 Squadron. Launched from
Hermes
a hundred miles north-east of Stanley, nine Sea Harriers attacked the airfield at low level. Two toss bombs hit the runway scarring it; others bombs left the airfield facilities in smoke and flames. The other three jets attacked the grass airstrip at Goose Green, to where all of the twelve Argentine Pucara twin turboprop attack aircraft had been moved. One Pucara was destroyed in the attack by a direct hit and two others were damaged.

Meanwhile, out at sea, Jack Lomas was at the controls of his Wessex, Yankee Hotel, oblivious to the drama unfolding ashore. In the rear cabin was his crewman Petty Officer Steve MacNaughton. After dropping off passengers and stores on the deck of
Hermes
, he now received curt orders over the radio from
Hermes
' ‘flyco'. ‘Yankee Hotel, clear the deck immediately and hold as close as you can on the starboard quarter. Expedite.'

Lomas lifted off straight away and circled round to bring the Wessex to a hover just to the rear and to the side of the carrier. After a wait of ten minutes or so, Lomas called flyco for an explanation.

‘You're planeguard. Confirm you are equipped.' They were to act as search-and-rescue cover in case any of the returning Sea Harriers ditched into the sea.

‘I have one winch and one crewman. I'm also short of fuel. Request a quick suck.'

‘Negative, hold.'

Almost immediately Lomas heard the first of the Sea Harriers call up on the radio as the ship began a turn into wind to assist their recovery. Lomas was more concerned about his fuel state to think much about the sailor wandering a few yards in front of him towards the
triple
chaff launchers just behind the
Hermes
bridge superstructure. Chaff comprises thousands of tiny strips of aluminium foil that form a bloom. This then creates a big false target on radar to an attacking missile or jet.

With a giant
whoosh
, one of the chaff launchers suddenly fired its rocket up through Yankee Hotel's rotor blades before bursting high above the helicopter. Lomas's heart leapt in his mouth at the shock. ‘Fuck me. What the fuck was that?' he shouted to MacNaughton before transmitting to
Hermes
: ‘You've just fired chaff through my rotor blades.' His message was ignored.

He was also almost too shocked to notice the Sea Harriers landing on the deck, one by one, just a few yards to his left. The historic event was reported later on the BBC news by correspondent Brian Hanrahan: ‘I counted them all out and I counted them all back.'

‘OK you can leave now,' a seemingly unconcerned
Hermes
told a still stunned Lomas.

Of course
Hermes
was correct to prioritise the Sea Harriers. Without them, there would be no task force. A single Wessex was well down the pecking order. But the brusque way that the situation was handled seemed unnecessary. Barely coaxing Yankee Hotel back to land on
Resource
with well below minimum fuel left in the tanks, Lomas told Steve MacNaughton, ‘My God, that was frightening.'

The other half of Jack Lomas's flight, Oily Knight, Noddy Morton, Petty Officer Aircrewman Arthur Balls, and Royal Marine Colour Sergeant Tommy Sands, had deployed the previous afternoon to the County-class destroyer HMS
Glamorgan
, sister ship of
Antrim
which was operating in South Georgia. Tommy Sands had been embarked with the flight as military trainer. But for reasons of practical operational efficiency, he had been trained up by Arthur
Balls
and Steve MacNaughton to act as an additional aircrewman.

It was a tight squeeze landing Yankee Tango on the flight deck of
Glamorgan
with the ship's own Wessex folded and stowed in the hangar. To Oily Knight, operating two Wessex from one deck looked like an accident waiting to happen, should one aircraft be stuck on deck with the other needing an urgent suck of fuel. Still, he thought, close cooperation between crews should minimise the risk.

Two helicopters parked on a single spot flight deck. These ones are actually on HMS
Antrim
, sister ship of
Glamorgan
. Ian Stanley's Wessex 3 is on the left next to Mike Crabtree's Wessex 5 on the right.

It wasn't entirely clear to any of the crew what their task was as they arrived on board. Their confidence did not improve when they woke up the following morning within sight of land.
Glamorgan
and two sleek Type-21 frigates,
Arrow
and
Alacrity
, had been tasked to provide naval gunfire support for the raids on Stanley with their 4.5-inch guns.

Their first mission, requested by
Glamorgan
's captain
Mike
Barrow, was to fly up to 3,000 feet and drop a few blooms of chaff at decent intervals so that they looked like ships to any attacking aircraft's radar. Armed with AS12 missiles on either side of the aircraft, Arthur Balls sat in the left seat behind the M260 missile sight as Oily Knight drove from the right seat. Noddy Morton and Tommy Sands sat in the back as stand-in crewmen. Next to them was a supply of brown paper parcels containing chaff.

Oily Knight was not at all impressed with the idea. First, all
junglies
hate heights. Staying at low level avoids the perceived problem of high-altitude nosebleeds, a common
junglie
concern, and the rather more real danger of having to descend blind through cloud. Second, it seemed obvious to Knight that chaff might fool an incoming missile, but it wouldn't fool an attacking aircraft. The pilot would see the sudden magical appearance of several big echoes behind a small slow-moving echo on their radar and draw the obvious conclusion: they're not ships. Third, opening the parcels through the open door of a windy helicopter inevitably meant that half of the thousands of tiny bits of foil would fill the cabin rather than the sky below. Nonetheless, having restrained himself from the temptation to express these concerns, Knight set off to complete the task professionally, as ordered, before returning to
Glamorgan
to refuel.

The second mission of the day was to conduct a surface search along the coastline. There had been talk of a possible submarine sighting near Port Stanley. This would be where the AS12 missiles might come in handy. Flying south of the capital, the crew of Yankee Tango had a good view of the bleak Falkland Islands coastline. The plan was to fly close enough to keep land in sight but not too close to come within range of any shore-based Argentine positions.

The low-lying land brought them closer in to the coast than they had intended. Through the long-range setting of his missile sight, Arthur Balls could see a column of smoke way out to the west, most likely a result of the earlier Sea Harrier raid on the airstrip at Goose Green. But if he could see so far inland, others much closer on land could also see them. Knight and Morton both spotted the missile launch out to the right side of the aircraft at the same time. A very bright white light source left the coastline and gradually climbed towards the Wessex at what seemed like a slow pace. Inside the aircraft there was a short pause as the situation sunk in. ‘
Fuck, we're being shot at
.' Knight's immediate reaction was to apply fighter-evasion techniques. He pushed the nose of the Wessex forward dropping low and fast towards the surface of the sea, trying to stay at right angles to the incoming missile.

When practising fighter evasion, the trick that always seemed to fool fighter pilots expecting an easy win was for the helicopter to achieve a maximum crossing rate. As the fighter closes with the helicopter at high speed, the attacking jet has to tighten its turn progressively. This would affect the targeting system enough for the jet to overshoot. I've seen how effective this can be at first hand, having sat next to a frustrated and surprised fighter pilot in the cockpit of a Hunter jet as we overshot a formation of low-level Wessex helicopters beneath us. At least this was the theory as Knight pushed the Wessex down to sea level. He hoped the same principle would apply against an attacking missile.

With Yankee Tango now powering across the line of the missile, the crew realised the missile was wire-guided. The flame from the missile produced a white light that was now bobbling about as it sped towards them. After
a
few further jiggles, the missile splashed harmlessly into the sea well short of its target. But there was no time to relax.

Almost immediately a second missile launched. This time, the white light angled straight upwards until it disappeared into the cloud base at 1,000 feet. This was far worse for the crew who were now becoming distinctly unnerved. ‘Shit, I can't see it any more but I know it's still heading our way,' exclaimed Knight trying to extract as much speed from the Wessex as possible. A few seconds later, the missile emerged from the cloud much closer. From the back, Morton called out distance even though there was no real way of being sure how far away it was. ‘Two miles. One and a half miles and closing. One mile.
Shit
.'

From the front, Knight prepared his crew for the worst: ‘Right boys, you'd better hang on. There might be a bit of a bang.' There then followed a moment of pure absurdity as Sands was seen trying to put his fingers in his ears, despite wearing a helmet.

In fact, once the missile was right on them, Knight's plan was to pull up hard and head for the sky. A trained missile-aimer himself, he knew that the aimer on land would never be able to keep up with the rapid vertical movement. The missile response would also be delayed because of the length of the wire now stretched out over the sea. Provided he timed his pull-up right, the missile would pass safely underneath before splashing harmlessly.

Knight never found out whether his plan would have worked. Mercifully for the crew, the missile exploded in an orange fireball just out of range. Afterwards, the crew speculated that the missiles were most likely Tigercats, the land-based version of the Seacat missile found on many Royal Navy ships. ‘Tigercat is obviously as useless as
Seacat
,' joked a remarkably relaxed Knight. Asked years later whether he had been scared during the attack, Knight replied, ‘No. I think I lacked imagination! Anyway, it was never going to get me. I was twenty-six and immortal.'

Now back up at a safer height above the sea and judiciously further out from the coastline, Yankee Tango returned towards
Glamorgan
, perhaps not now totally confident in the presumed immortality of its pilot. There was still the known threat from Argentine Mirage jets and Canberra bombers to contend with. As they headed back, HMS
Arrow
's Lynx called up over the radio: ‘All callsigns, air raid warning red, look out for inbound intruders coming around the coast.' The Lynx's first reaction to the threat was to climb up to hide in the cloud; Yankee Tango meanwhile disappeared down low to hide amongst the waves. No sooner was the Wessex down at low level than the Lynx called up again: ‘Yankee Tango, you might want to come up a bit. I can see your wake on my screen.' A grateful Knight raised the nose and climbed, but only a bit.

This particular group of three Mirage jets was in fact heading for a low-level attack on
Glamorgan
,
Arrow
and
Alacrity
engaged in naval gunfire support against the airfield at Port Stanley. From three miles away, Morton watched cannon shells strafe one of the Type-21s followed by bombs that produced huge plumes of water. Two of the bombs exploded either side of
Glamorgan
, blowing her stern clear out of the water. Amazingly, there was no serious damage.

Although the attackers escaped from this particular raid, other Mirage jets were not so lucky. Sea Harriers from 800 and 801 Squadrons both made successful interceptions with other raids before and after the attack on the ships. It was two RAF pilots flying the Navy jets who
claimed
the first air-to-air successes of the war by shooting down a Mirage jet using their AIM9L Sidewinder missiles. A third Mirage, damaged by a Sidewinder, was subsequently shot down by their own defences over Port Stanley. Later that afternoon, a Canberra was shot down by a Sea Harrier from 801 Squadron based on
Invincible
.

Returning to
Glamorgan
with precious little fuel remaining, Yankee Tango was forced to wait in the hover alongside while the Wessex 3 was cleared from the deck. Safely back on board, this incident prompted Knight and his crew to investigate whether in-flight refuelling was an option. The idea was to plug the fuel hose and connector into the side of the Wessex whilst in the hover alongside the flight deck. Should the flight deck ever be completely out of action, airborne refuelling would give the Wessex enough time to divert elsewhere. Although routine for Sea Kings, helicopter in-flight refuelling (HIFR) had never been done in a Wessex because the crewman would need to push in the connector at an impossible angle. The crew worked out that they could achieve HIFR using a crewman standing on the edge of the deck to connect up. It was an innovative solution but one that was never tried for real.