Scram! (23 page)

Knight eased the Wessex away towards
Broadsword
, waved in by the Lynx aircrew who were now making themselves useful on the hangar roof. Time was pressing because of their lack of fuel and the urgent need to get the wounded back to the field hospital at Ajax Bay. It would be much quicker if they didn't have to winch anyone down. Parking one wheel on
Broadsword
's hangar roof for added stability, Knight skilfully swivelled the Wessex around in the hover so that the less seriously injured survivors could simply jump out onto the roof. The other two wheels were suspended in mid-air. ‘Another deck landing,' concluded Knight, before clearing away and accelerating towards San Carlos.

Heathcote and Gleeson arrived just in time to watch the other Wessex balancing precariously on the side of
Broadsword
's hangar. After D-Day in San Carlos, where
he
had the impression of seeing very few helicopters at all, Heathcote was surprised to see so many Sea Kings now buzzing around HMS
Coventry
. Hands waving from a liferaft showed them their immediate task. It was just a few days after the rescue from
Ardent
, where hovering fifteen feet over a glassy sea had proved so difficult. This time the surface choppiness and bubbles gave Heathcote a lot more to use as visual references, making hovering above the liferafts a little easier. Gleeson kept up a constant chatter of instructions as he winched survivors into the aircraft. In all the urgency to recover people from the sea and liferafts, Heathcote barely noticed that
Coventry
had rolled slowly over, and was completely inverted.

It was almost one hour since the attack by the Skyhawks. With the additional fuel giving them more time in the air, Heathcote and Gleeson filled their cabin several times, winching survivors down to the hangar roof of
Broadsword
. Making a final sweep of the area, eventually they returned to
Tidepool
back in San Carlos Bay, lost in their own thoughts of what they had just witnessed. Far from receiving a hero's welcome on return, Heathcote received a bollocking from Crabtree for pushing his luck and heading too far out into the unknown on his own.

Nineteen men died in the attack on HMS
Coventry
. A disastrous afternoon for the British forces was about to get a whole lot worse.

Out to the north-east of the Falklands, the battle group positioned itself to despatch
Atlantic Conveyor
into San Carlos to offload the vital helicopters and huge volume of stores. All of the Harriers had left the ship noisily several days earlier and were now operating from the carriers
Hermes
and
Invincible
. Two of
Conveyor
's
helicopters
– one of the heavy-lift twin-rotor Chinooks and Yankee Delta, one of the Wessex that had transferred from RFA
Fort Austin
via
Hermes
– were now airborne on check test-flights

In the cabin of the Wessex sat Royal Marine aircrewman Corporal Ian ‘Gus' Tyrrell. He had spent most of the morning wandering around
Hermes
in search of a spare part that was common to both Sea King and Wessex. Somehow finding his way through the maze of corridors, the Sea King engineers told him that they couldn't help after all. The search was in vain. As he wandered empty-handed back up to the flight deck to hitch a lift back to
Conveyor
, his mind switched to the exciting prospect of landing on the Falklands timetabled for the following day. Almost without thinking he paused by the ship's main notice board. Amongst various bits of paper was one headed ‘Casualty List'.

He didn't really expect to see any names that he knew. So it took a while to filter in. The name at the top of the list was Corporal M. Love, 846 Squadron. Michael ‘Doc' Love had been killed in the terrible Sea King accident a week earlier. The news had been kept from Gus Tyrrell deliberately, though it was inevitable that he would find out somehow. Love and Tyrell were not only best friends and fellow Royal Marine aircrew, but Love was engaged to the twin sister of Tyrrell's wife. They were about to become brothers-in-law.

Back on board
Conveyor
, Tyrell spent most of the afternoon in a daze, writing a letter to his wife's twin sister. Maybe he was sent up for the early evening test flight to get his mind back onto the job. Maybe, more prosaically, it was just that the duty crew who should have been airborne had pulled rank and sent him and pilot Kim Slowe up in their place. The flight clashed with
dinner
time and the free beers on offer as a farewell from the
Atlantic Conveyor
officers.

That evening, David Baston and Nick Foster and most of the embarked aircrew were enjoying the hospitality of the Cunard ship's officers, excited in anticipation of testing their skills in action in San Carlos. It was still light as Nick Foster wandered out onto the bridge wing and chatted with merchant seaman Ian North, captain of
Conveyor
, and universally known to all as Captain Birdseye, due to his bushy white beard.

‘Don't you worry about it, lad,' said North, detecting some nervousness from Foster about going ashore the next day, ‘I was sunk twice in the last lot. You'll be OK.'

An announcement over the ship's tannoy reminded of the final opportunity to take unwanted kit to the ‘op baggage' store by 19:45 hours. Foster finished his beer in order to ensure his officers' whites and other non-combat clothing would be returned to the UK. A voice behind him said: ‘Come on Foster, have another beer. Are you man or mouse?'

‘No, no. I've only got five minutes to get all the way down.'

But Foster needed little encouragement to stay for a fresh tin. The extra Double Diamond probably saved his life.

Thirty-five miles away, two newly refuelled Super Etendards of the Argentine air force had picked up radar returns indicating they had a big target in front of them. It must have looked like one of the British carriers. Just ten minutes after
Coventry
had capsized, Argentine jets had another British ship in their sights. The Argentines only had five Exocet missiles. They had sunk HMS
Sheffield
with one of the first two. The Super Etendards were now heading
inbound
towards the British task force with two of the remaining three.

Dropping down to low level, the pilots released their load. The missiles looped away from the jets in a cloud of white smoke before settling down to skim over the water towards the British ships at supersonic speed. The Super Etendards wheeled away, their job done.

It was the Type-21 frigate HMS
Ambuscade
, sister of
Ardent
and
Antelope
, that first detected fast-moving inbound targets, flashing an immediate ‘handbrake' warning to the rest of the fleet. On the bridge of
Conveyor
, the action-stations warning bell sounded. Officers and senior ratings dropped their drinks and ran out to the bridge wings in time to see nearby helicopters and ships excitedly firing off rockets and chaff. The Exocets bore on remorselessly, perhaps deflected through the chaff cloud decoys, but then immediately scanning the horizon to acquire a new target.

On board the Wessex Yankee Delta, Tyrrell and Slowe had finished their test flight. They heard the shrill warning ‘Air raid warning red' over the radio as they began their final approach to
Conveyor
. The sky was overcast, the sea choppy with a low swell, not especially rough.

Tyrrell sat in the doorway of the Wessex with his camera in hand. He was pleased that he now had good snaps of some of the warships. He was getting ready to take one more of the forward flight deck of
Conveyor
as the Wessex came in to land. A thin dark shape hurtled low towards him across the water, flame jetting from its rear. It was going to pass directly beneath them. His camera was already in hand. All he had to do was point it at the missile and flash off a couple of quick photos as the missile sped below and out of sight.

Out on the port wing high up on
Conveyor
's
superstructure
, Lieutenant Ian ‘Lapse' Chapman, another of the Wessex pilots, watched helplessly as the brown and red shape screamed in towards the ship. There was a huge
whump!
as the missile struck the port quarter of the ship about ten feet above the waterline and just forty feet below the mess where the officers had been drinking beer. They all looked at one another in shock. A second massive bang followed immediately after the first. Maybe it was the second Exocet. Maybe it was an echo of the first explosion within the giant hold. Nobody could tell.

To Nick Foster, now flat on his face on the floor, the sound was like a 4.5-inch gun firing from a frigate. The impact made the ship shudder horribly. Within seconds, the sharp smell of cordite filled the air, making Foster wince as if he'd swallowed lemon juice. It was now obvious what had happened.
Exocet
. Over the ship's tannoy came the urgent but redundant warning ‘Hit the deck, hit the deck.'

The immediate effects of the blast were more apparent inside the ship than out. Within the ship, smoke spread throughout the ventilation system with extraordinary speed. In meeting rooms near the lower end of the island, thick dark smoke shut out all of the daylight. Even high up on the bridge, smoke quickly filled the air.

From outside, it was hard for Slowe and Tyrrell in their Wessex to believe what they were witnessing as they approached the port side of the ship. There was initially very little smoke coming from the missile strike, but hovering alongside the ship, the gaping hole just above the waterline was very obvious. From the Wessex doorway Tyrrell snapped more photos.

They heard the radio report of a man overboard at the same time as figures on the flight deck started waving down into the water near the missile's entry hole. In the swell, it was hard to spot the casualty. But a quick-thinking
serviceman
had thrown a liquid oxygen container into the freezing water to mark the position. Tyrrell immediately began to talk Slowe across to a hover over the floundering man, at the same time lowering the orange rescue strop down on the winch wire. In the freezing South Atlantic water, the man struggled to fit the strop properly over his head and around his back. The first attempt ended frustratingly with his body lifted halfway out of the water, only to drop straight back through into the sea. The lightweight strop flitted about in the downdraft. The second attempt was better, if unorthodox, as the man finally grabbed the strop and wrapped it around himself. He hung suspended like a rag doll as he was winched up into the cabin.

Tyrrell hauled the soaking body into the cabin and slid the door shut. The man, an RAF sergeant, was suffering from the onset of hypothermia. He quickly folded up the troop seats and shoved the man up against the cabin heaters that Slowe had switched to full blast, as the helicopter headed off in the direction of
Hermes
.

Making his way to the bridge, David Baston found
Atlantic Conveyor
's attached senior naval officer, Captain Mike Layard. They looked down onto the huge forward deck spread out in front of them. A Wessex stood ranged between the stacked containers pointing aft and ready to go. They briefly discussed the possibility of getting the Wessex airborne. But with smoke and flames billowing from below and to their left, the ship's company had been split in two, one forward on the flight deck and one aft from the superstructure. It would be extremely dangerous for any pilot up on the island to get forward to the helicopter.

Royal Navy and Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships are all equipped with firefighting and damage control systems
specifically
designed to contain major damage. As a merchant ship
Atlantic Conveyor
had none of these. It was becoming obvious that everyone would be leaving imminently. Baston ran down to his cabin and put on his goon suit, the waterproof flying overalls that would protect him in the freezing water.

By now, Slowe and Tyrrell had returned from
Hermes
after dropping off their casualty. People were clambering down ladders attached to the stern of
Conveyor
and into liferafts suspended close to the ship's side at an uncomfortable angle. The ropes holding the liferaft weren't quite long enough for the fifty-foot drop. The frigate HMS
Alacrity
had positioned herself close in and was beginning to draw some of the liferafts across.

Slowe adjusted his approach to make for the group of men on the clear area of the flight deck, right up forward. As Tyrrell began paying out the winch, he realised it would be far quicker to land. Smoke shrouded the back end of the ship but the flight deck seemed clear. Both of them were well aware that the bomb store lay immediately underneath the flight deck. Neither mentioned it.

Maintainers and flight-deck crew watched anxiously as the helicopter came in to land next to them. As soon as the wheels touched, Tyrrell held up both hands. ‘Ten,' he mouthed, waving them in. With the fuel they were carrying, he reckoned that was all they could take.

‘Take in three more,' Slowe told him.

The ship was on fire. With all the seats up they could make extra space for casualties.

As Slowe increased power to lift off, the men still on the deck leant into the gale-force downdraft created by the helicopter. He was acutely aware he was leaving them behind. Realising he had power to spare, he immediately dropped the Wessex back onto the deck.

‘I can do two more.' Tyrrell held up two fingers to wave in the extra men.

Yankee Delta finally lifted clear of
Conveyor
with fifteen passengers crammed into the cabin. As the Wessex circled around to head for
Hermes
, Tyrrell watched a dark blue anti-submarine Sea King approach for the next pick-up. ‘Best we don't tell them what's underneath,' he said to his pilot.

Slowe now set up his approach to land on
Hermes
. But with the extra passengers, the Wessex was way over its normal maximum weight. Once in the descent, they would be committed to land. Tyrrell stood in the doorway giving a running commentary on their approach. Because of the weight, they were unlikely to be able to hover. Slowe radioed his final approach to the carrier. ‘Yankee Delta, we're really heavy with survivors. Request you clear space for us to do a run-on landing.'