Scram! (32 page)

It wasn't the only unnerving experience for aircrew.

On Thursday 3 June, Sparky Harden was carrying an
underslung
load of munitions beneath his Wessex to the gunnery positions now establishing themselves in the hills around Stanley. At the exact same time that he pressed the red button on his cyclic stick to release the net from the load hook, an almighty blast shook the hovering helicopter. He thought his load had gone up, only to realise it was the guns firing. Even above the thundering noise of the Wessex, the blast from a 105mm howitzer makes a spectacular heart-stopping bang. Later that day, Harden fondly recalled the close encounter: ‘
I nearly shat myself
.'

A consequence of the constant exposure to extreme danger was that pilots risked becoming blasé and even reckless. After two weeks of surviving air raids and conducting daring rescues from burning ships, Hector Heathcote wondered if he really was invincible. It was late afternoon the same day. Heathcote and his crewman, Kev Gleeson, had one final task to complete in Yankee Charlie, dropping off an urgent load of jerrycans full of fuel for the gun battery on Mount Kent.

‘Why don't we see if we can see Stanley,' said Heathcote as he pulled in power to lift away.

Gleeson was not quite so keen on seeing the capital: ‘I really don't think this is a good idea, Hector.'

In the dwindling light, Heathcote headed east at very low level towards the skyline, ignoring Gleeson's objections. It soon became obvious that there was little to see in the poor visibility and he turned back. The incident was harmless, but Heathcote knew that he'd upset his crewman.

Though only two years older than Heathcote and Harden, new arrival Paul McIntosh was something of a Wessex veteran. Despite the poor weather and visibility, one of his first missions was to lead a six-aircraft detachment to set up a new forward operating base at Teal Inlet on Friday 4 June. Flying X-Ray Bravo, McIntosh slowed
the
formation into a low-level hover-taxi across the high ground, one helicopter following behind another. He had then found the 45 Commando headquarters in the murk, got out and talked to the staff to establish their needs and those of the special forces. It was a good example of how close cooperation between the Royal Marines and the commando squadrons worked really well.

However, McIntosh's particularly unnerving experience wasn't due to overconfidence or bad weather or dangerous tasking. Approaching a landing site downwind to pick up troops meant that he needed to reverse track to land into wind. As he passed the troops, he flared the nose of the Wessex up sharply and tipped the aircraft on its side. At the same time, he dumped all power by lowering the collective lever as far as it would go, allowing the aircraft to slow down. The manoeuvre was technically called a ‘downwind fast stop' but to the rest of us it was known as a ‘steely commando landing'. As he levelled the aircraft in front of the troops, he tried to pull in power to cushion the landing. The lever jammed solidly down. He almost pulled his arm out of its socket as he wrenched desperately upwards on the lever. It still wouldn't move. He shouted ‘Brace, brace!' through the intercom. Through skill, he had judged the landing perfectly without the need to use any power at all. But it was only through luck that the grassy terrain was level.

After settling heavily but without breaking anything, he shut the aircraft down to one engine to try and work out what had caused the jam. He never found out what it was. The geometric lock on the controls, or whatever the actual cause was, mysteriously cleared itself. His skill, and a little luck, helped him avoid a nasty crash which would inevitably have been blamed on pilot error.

* * *

At this time, I was still plodding south at a painfully slow twelve knots on board
Engadine
. I and the thirteen other Wessex pilots and fourteen aircrew were all beginning to doubt that we would get to the war in time. We had already been delayed by the detour following our visit by the Argentine 707 jet. The converted airliner paid us a further visit a few days later just before we reached the rest of the fleet. To the frustration of my colleagues on the upper deck, armed with machine guns and rifles, willing the airliner to come in closer, the jet had a quick look at us from five miles away before turning and heading for home.

All the little delays were mounting up. We'd spent a day fixing
Engadine
's engine in Gibraltar; we'd detoured away from the 707; we'd stopped in the middle of the South Atlantic to recover a supply of anti-submarine torpedoes airdropped into the sea from a Hercules; and we'd stopped again to recover a team of SAS soldiers airdropped into the sea from another Hercules.

Nor was our mood helped when the boss, Mike Booth, switched off the beer taps so that we would be ready for battle. We had no idea that our colleagues at Port San Carlos felt no such need for restraint.

So it was with barely constrained excitement and relief, on a hazy Monday, 7 June, that
Engadine
finally joined the other ships of the task force in the choppy South Atlantic waters. All four Wessex were used to move the huge volume of weapons and stores we had brought for the other ships. It was our first chance to put into action the procedures, codes and flying techniques we had practised on the way south.

It was my first operational encounter with Royal Navy warships. I flew as left-hand seat co-pilot to Adrian Short, a major on exchange with us from the Army Air Corps.
A
charming and gung-ho ex-Royal Artillery officer, Short also had a reputation for being a bit deaf. This reputation was wonderfully enhanced by the story of a recent incident in Northern Ireland where his co-pilot pointed out the town of ‘Portadown' passing beneath them.

‘
Put her down
?' shouted Short, dumping the aircraft into an emergency autorotation. ‘Where? Where?'

My role as co-pilot was to find out ships' callsigns and positions and help with fuel management. With a hundred ships changing codes every day, we had a huge list. For example, taking a load from ‘Kilo Uniform Eight Echo' to ‘Golf Tango One Juliet' meant running down the list of names to find out that this meant a journey from our own ship RFA
Engadine
to the stores ship RFA
Fort Grange
.

Because we were always trying to take the maximum possible mix of fuel and stores, we had to stop for fuel every half hour or so. As we ferried stores from
Engadine
to the other ships, our focus was on flight flexibility and on trying to find ships that were not in the sector to which they were assigned. Often we would be queuing up behind other helicopters to drop a load.
Pingers
in their anti-submarine Sea Kings seemed to test our patience especially and gave us an easy target on which to vent our frustrations. We needed to get on with it.

Trying to land on the flagship aircraft carrier HMS
Hermes
(‘Charlie November Two Eight') to drop off senior pilot Rob Flexman for an operations brief was almost impossible. We were not the first Wessex crew to be put in our place at the bottom of
Hermes
's list of priorities. While we were relegated to hover behind and to the right of the ship in the ‘starboard wait' or ‘spot 10 starboard', we had plenty of time to reflect on how all of the warships looked the worse for wear. From our bird's-eye view,
looking
down on the seven Sea Harriers parked out on her deck,
Hermes
's sides looked almost more brown than grey, dripping with streaks of rust and weather damage.

It felt good to be airborne for the first time in a week and to have arrived with the fleet at last. Next stop was San Carlos. We really needed to get in before dawn to get the aircraft safely off the ship and disembark our accompanying SAS passengers. It was already taking longer than we had planned to get rid of all our stores. The final straw was when one of the supply ships, for reasons best known to themselves, would only accept a delivery when ordered to do so by the Admiral. It added yet another hour.

Engadine
turned to the west and headed into the Falklands. Our final delay was to prove crucial.

Chapter 13

Disaster at Port Pleasant: 8 June 1982

THE LEAP FORWARD
to Fitzroy by 2 Para on Wednesday 2 June had paid off so far. Opportunistic, it put tremendous pressure on land forces commander Major General Jeremy Moore to prevent the Paras from being isolated. Four major units of 3 Brigade – over 2,000 men of 2 and 3 Para, 42 and 45 Commando – now lay exposed thirty-five miles to the east of the beachhead at San Carlos. The successful arrival of
Atlantic Causeway
had more than doubled the number of Wessex and Sea King helicopters. Every one of them was needed to keep these troops supplied
.

The newly arrived troops of 5 Brigade's Scots and Welsh Guards were keen to get involved in the action. But with the helicopters fully occupied supporting 3 Brigade, the men of 5 Brigade would have to walk from San Carlos
.

Throughout the land campaign, the Argentines had yet to show an appetite for counterattack. They had reinforced Goose Green. They had defended their own positions fiercely. They had attacked vigorously from the air.
Nonetheless
the threat of counterattack had to be taken seriously.

Two Para's great leap forward at Fitzroy had been precipitated by the arrival of 5 Brigade in San Carlos from the liners
Canberra
and
Norland
. Their commanders simply hadn't fancied sitting around at Goose Green watching the new arrivals wander past and take the next bit of glory. Having seized land at Fitzroy and opened up the southern flank, they were now in urgent need of support and reinforcements.

But the three units on the northern flank still needed supplies. An overnight run by HMS
Fearless
and two of its landing craft helped to move 3 Brigade's stores area forward to Teal Inlet. Many of the troops on the front line were still without their bergens, having been forced to dump them during their long march from Port San Carlos. The early days of June were the coldest of the war so far, with temperatures dipping well below freezing. The constant need to build up forward supplies and the demand for ammunition and water meant restricting other requirements.

On the morning of Thursday 3 June, the remainder of 2 Para were helicoptered into Fitzroy by Chinook and 825 Squadron's Sea Kings. The remaining 1/7 Gurkhas Rifles, the first of the 5 Brigade new arrivals, were also helicoptered across the Sussex Mountains to Goose Green. The Gurkhas were to conduct patrols into Lafonia, where the Argentine reinforcements had fled towards the end of the battle for Goose Green.

Getting 5 Brigade to Fitzroy as well was proving difficult. Equipment shortages, the lack of independent helicopter and marine support, the sheer confusion of linking equipment with people, and a general lack of communication were all contributing factors. After the aborted attempt by
the
Welsh Guard to cross the Sussex Mountains, it became clear that the only serious option for reinforcing Fitzroy was by sea.

The Royal Navy, however, were acutely aware of the potential threat to assault ships or landing ships in the exposed water south of Port Stanley, whether from land-based Exocet or air attack. Their ships at sea had already taken a beating from the South Atlantic weather. If the Navy lost another major warship, the political pressure at home for a ceasefire might prove irresistible. Commanders at Task Force HQ Northwood in the UK, and HMS
Hermes
at sea, signalled conflicting intentions to the amphibious warfare commanders on
Fearless
in San Carlos.

On the evening of Saturday 5 June, the assault ship
Intrepid
sailed out of San Carlos Water, through Falkland Sound, and around the coast to the south of East Falkland. Both assault ships
Intrepid
and
Fearless
had huge open tank decks underneath their flight decks that could carry LCUs (Landing Craft Utilities). Opening the rear doors flooded the deck and allowed the landing craft to float out of the stern. The plan was to offload
Intrepid
's four LCUs, under the command of Major Ewen Southby-Tailyour RM, near to Elephant Island for the relatively short transit to Bluff Cove. Although Fitzroy was the preferred landing site, with buildings in which to shelter, the retreating Argentines had blown up a small but vital bridge linking the two settlements. Landing the troops directly at Bluff Cove would save them a long detour around the coast.

With the sea swell rising as the weather worsened,
Intrepid
flooded her stern and despatched her landing craft, each crammed with 150 soldiers from the Scots Guards. However, in an attempt to keep clear of the Exocet threat,
Intrepid
chose to do this off the coast of Lively Island, to the south of Choiseul Sound. They were
supposed
to be to the north. It meant that the landing craft now had an extra twenty miles of open water to cover, on top of the original ten-mile journey they expected to make along the coast and inland.

Off the coast of East Falkland, the destroyer HMS
Cardiff
and frigate HMS
Yarmouth
had not been informed of British movements in the area. As part of the bid to improve communications between units on the southern flank, a radio re-broadcast station had been set up on Pleasant Peak between Goose Green and Fitzroy. Shortly before midnight, an Army Gazelle helicopter carrying two signallers and replacement equipment approached Pleasant Peak to land. HMS
Cardiff
picked up the radar contact, thinking it to be an Argentine Hercules, and fired a Sea Dart missile. The Gazelle exploded in a ball of fire in front of the horrified radio operators on the ground.

Soon afterwards,
Cardiff
began firing her 4.5-inch guns at the unknown surface contacts near Choiseul Sound. Crashing explosions near the landing craft threw huge plumes of water into the air. Illuminated by starshell bursts above their heads, and unable to outrun the pursuing warships, the coxswains stopped their landing craft in the water. A hurried exchange of light signals in Morse code prevented further shelling and complete disaster.