Scram! (2 page)

The story of the deeds of the
junglies
in the Falklands War is well overdue. I am delighted that it has been written at
last.

Introduction

A great deal has been said and written about the Falklands War: the task force, the Sea Harriers, the Exocets, the Paras, the Marines, the amphibious landings. But what is so extraordinary is how little is known of the exploits of the young helicopter crews, my friends and colleagues – the
junglies
– who made much of the war happen.
Junglies
are Royal Navy commando pilots, a throwback to the 1960s when British helicopters flew over the jungles of Borneo. Days after the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands in April 1982, a British task force was deployed with
junglie
crews spread throughout the fleet. These squadrons, with their Sea King and Wessex helicopters, flew most of the land-based missions in the war. Yet almost nothing has been written about our exploits.

It wasn't until an informal reunion in June 2007 that I realised this. A bunch of us former
junglies
had arranged to meet in a pub in Whitehall the night before we were to parade down the Mall for the formal twenty-fifth anniversary celebrations. I hadn't seen many of these guys in years. Seeing old friends was an emotional moment at first. But then the beer did its work and we were off, armed with a licence to tell each other our war stories.

What was so amazing that evening was not just that there were so many fantastic stories, but that none of us knew what the others had done during the war. In many cases, the stories were coming out for the first time. I sat transfixed as I heard about the helicopter missile strike on Port Stanley. And although I knew about the helicopter crashes, I had never heard any of the detail first hand. I knew little of the dramatic rescues from burning ships and even less of the harrowing story of being on the wrong end of an Exocet strike. I had absolutely no idea that anybody had gone head to head with an Argentine A-4 Skyhawk or the dreaded Pucara, or been strafed by a Mirage and survived. None of us had spoken about it. Until now.

As helicopter crews, we'd been so busy doing our own thing, flying our own missions, very often unaware of what else was going on. We only ever saw our little piece of the jigsaw, our own personal adventure. But between the lot of us we'd seen pretty much the whole thing and been involved in almost all the major events of the war. Perhaps it was understandable that we had said little to others in the intervening years, yet we hadn't even told each other.

And so, from that evening, the first grain of an idea formed: to write the untold story of the helicopter war in the Falklands.

Back in England after the Falklands War, I'm ready for a mess dinner in the wardroom at Royal Naval Air Station
Yeovilton.

Key Characters

Almost 500 helicopter pilots, aircrewmen and observers flew in the Falklands War. The following are some of the key personalities who feature in this book
.

845 Squadron (Wessex 5)

Pilots:
Roger Warden (commanding officer, Ascension Island), Jack Lomas (A Flight commander), Nick Foster (B Flight commander), Mike Tidd (C Flight commander), Mike Crabtree (E Flight commander), Andy Berryman, Mark Evans, Ric Fox, Ian Georgeson, Richard Harden, Paul Heathcote, Steve Judd, Dave Knight, Richard Morton, Andy Pulford, Kim Slowe

Aircrew:
Arthur Balls, Kev Gleeson, Dave Greet, Jan Lomas, Steve MacNaughton, Smiler Smiles, Ian Tyrrell, Tug Wilson

846 Squadron (Sea King 4)

Pilots:
Simon Thornewill (commanding officer), Bill
Pollock
(senior pilot), Alan Bennett, Martin Eales, Bob Grundy, Ray Harper, Bob Horton, Paul Humphreys, Dick Hutchings, Trevor Jackson, Dave Lord, John Middleton, John Miller, Nigel North, Pete Rainey, Peter Spens-Black

Aircrew:
Splash Ashdown, Kevin Casey, Pete Imrie, Michael Love, John Sheldon, Colin Tattersall, Alf Tupper

847 Squadron (Wessex 5)

Pilots:
Mike Booth (commanding officer), Rob Flexman (senior pilot), Peter Hails (B flight commander), Neil Anstis, Harry Benson, Ray Colborne, Willie Harrower, Tim Hughes, Dave Kelly, Norman Lees, Paul McIntosh, Adrian Short, Pete Skinner, Jerry Spence, Mike Spencer, George Wallace

Aircrew:
Mark Brickell, Jed Clamp, Neil Cummins, Al Doughty, Chris Eke, Steve Larsen, Jock McKie, Sandy Saunders, Reg Sharland, Smudge Smyth, Bill Tuttey

848 Squadron (Wessex 5)

Pilots:
David Baston (commanding officer), Chris Blight (A Flight commander), Mark Salter (B Flight commander), Ralph Miles (D Flight commander), Ian Brown, Ian Bryant, Ian Chapman, Pete Manley, Dave Ockleton, Mark Salter, Paul Schwarz, Jerry Thomas

Aircrew:
Ginge Burns, Martin Moreby

737 Squadron (Wessex 3)

Pilots:
Ian Stanley (HMS
Antrim
flight commander), Stewart Cooper

Aircrew:
Chris Parry (
Antrim
observer), Fitz Fitzgerald

825 Squadron (Sea King 2)

Pilots:
Hugh Clark (commanding officer), John Boughton, Brian Evans, Steve Isacke, Phil Sheldon

Aircrew:
Roy Egglestone, David Jackson, Tug Wilson

829 Squadron (Wasp)

Pilots:
John Dransfield (HMS
Plymouth
), Tony Ellerbeck (HMS
Endurance
Flight commander), Tim Finding (
Endurance
)

Aircrew:
Joe Harper, Bob Nadin (
Endurance
), David Wells (
Endurance
observer)

3 Brigade Air Squadron & 656 Squadron Army Air Corps (Gazelle and Scout)

Pilots:
Peter Cameron (3 BAS commanding officer); Gervais Coryton, Andrew Evans, Ken Francis (Gazelle); Sam Drennan, Jeff Niblett, Richard Nunn (Scout)

Aircrew:
Ed Candlish, Pat Griffin (Gazelle)

42 Squadron RAF (Chinook)

Pilots:
Nick Grose, Dick Langworthy, Andy Lawless, Colin Miller

Other

Pilots:
HRH Prince Andrew (820 Sea King), Keith Dudley (senior pilot, 820 Sea King), Chris Clayton
(HMS
Cardiff
Lynx), Ray Middleton (HMS
Broadsword
Lynx), John Sephton (HMS
Ardent
Lynx)

Aircrew:
Peter Hullett (
Cardiff
Lynx)

Helicopters in the Falklands War

Altogether 170 British helicopters were deployed with the task force to the South Atlantic and actively involved during the Falklands War. They were used in four main roles:

Prologue

THE FALKLAND ISLANDS
is a small British dependency in the South Atlantic covering an area the size of East Anglia. There are two main islands, East and West Falkland, and hundreds of small islands. Much of the landscape is remote moorland. The abundant wildlife includes king penguins, sealions, upland geese, albatross and petrels.

The islands are just 250 miles from the Argentine mainland. However, the first settler in 1764 on East Falkland was in fact French, followed a year later in 1765 by the first English settler on West Falkland. Both were forced out by Spanish colonists from Buenos Aires, only for the British to reclaim their settlement in 1771. The British and Spanish garrisons eventually withdrew from the islands, distracted by other colonial wars, leaving behind little more than plaques to indicate their respective claims of sovereignty.

In the early nineteenth century, there were several short-lived attempts to establish settlements on the Falklands. The newly independent Argentine government appointed the most committed of these settlers as commandant in 1829. The British protested that Spanish rights had not transferred to the Argentines and, four years later,
sent
a garrison to establish administration over all of the islands. British colonisation followed in 1845 at the new capital, Port Stanley, on East Falkland.

Argentina continued to dispute British sovereignty, eventually bringing the issue to the attention of the United Nations in 1965. The geographical location of the islands – so close to Argentina and so far from Britain – argued for a transfer of sovereignty. But this was heavily constrained by the wishes of the islanders to remain a British dependency.

The military junta that took control of the Argentine government in 1976 was determined to press the issue. The establishment of an Argentine military base at South Thule, part of the South Sandwich Islands, provoked the British government to send a naval task force to the South Atlantic in 1977. However, reluctance to eject the Argentine occupiers by force resulted in diplomatic stalemate. This merely encouraged the junta that an invasion of the Falklands would not be resisted.

On Friday, 19 March 1982, Argentine soldiers masquerading as scrap merchants landed on the British dependency of South Georgia, another small group of islands under the administration of the Falkland Islands some 800 miles to their north. South Georgia is notable for its severe mountainous scenery, glaciers, wildlife colonies and appalling weather. The soldiers resisted the efforts of the British Antarctic survey ship HMS
Endurance
and her party of Royal Marines to encourage their repatriation.

Two weeks later, on Friday 2 April, a much larger Argentine force invaded the Falkland Islands, quickly overwhelming the resistance of the Royal Marines stationed at Port Stanley. It was the cue for the small force occupying South Georgia to raise their national flag. The Falkland
Islands
and South Georgia were now firmly in Argentine hands. The question now was: How would the British government
respond
?

Chapter 1

An inauspicious start: 22 April 1982

ONE OF THE
first British acts of the Falklands War was the attempt to recover South Georgia using the elite troops of Britain's Special Air Service. Still buoyant from their dramatic success in releasing hostages from the Iranian Embassy siege in London two years earlier, an SAS team planned to take control of South Georgia by the most unlikely and unexpected route. Inserted by two Royal Navy commando Wessex helicopters of 845 Squadron onto the Fortuna Glacier, the largest tidewater glacier on South Georgia, the plan was for them to march across the spine of the huge mountains and take the unknown Argentine force at the whaling station at Leith by surprise
.

Despite warnings about the treacherous and unpredictable nature of the sub-Antarctic weather and conditions high up on the glacier, the SAS were inserted. Overnight, on 21/22 April 1982, the weather duly did its worst: a violent storm, the wind gusting to 100 knots and producing squalls of driving snow, stopped the SAS in
their
tracks after just a few hundred yards progress. With frostbite and exposure a real concern, the SAS troop commander radioed for the helicopters to return and rescue them
.