by Stuart Slade
A few minutes later, Dowling found himself returning to semi-consciousness. That was when he felt one hand take a firm grip on his neck while another grabbed his chin. He knew what was coming next. It was no surprise when he felt the rapid jerk and his body went numb as the bones in his neck separated. He remained alive just long enough to feel himself being dragged somewhere.
Blackburn Buccaneer S4H XT-279, Approaching Argentine Airbase, North East of Stanley
XT-279 was coming in light. The Highball equipment in her belly prevented her from carrying normal bombs in there so she was restricted to the four Martel anti-radar missiles carried under her wings. The six surviving Highball aircraft had been joined by the three remaining dedicated anti-radar aircraft. Together their barrage of missile devastated the anti-aircraft fire control radars and the airfield search systems. The nine aircraft turned away long before the guns ringing the airfield could engage them.
Mullback knew this mission was a milk-run. The Highball aircraft and the anti-radar birds were now too precious to waste on pounding airfields. That had been left to the eight bomb-carriers. They made their low-level runs over the airstrip. Each deposited eight thousand pound retarded bombs over the parking area and taxiways. Mullback saw the sky stained by the flak bursts from the 47mm guns and the eruption of primary and secondary explosions from the airfield area. There were also two columns of smoke rising away from the airfield, columns that Mullback recognized as graves of crashed Buccaneers. By the time the bombers had formed up again for the flight back to Furious, Mullback had done the maths. He came to the grim conclusion it was only a matter of time before the British fleet ran out of aircraft.
Control Room, HM Submarine “Saint Vincent”
“We’ve got another contact, Captain. Multiple screws, moving fast. Estimated speed 27 knots.”
“Up scope.” Captain Wiseart waited until the periscope tube was passing him on its way up, then grabbed the controls on either side and did a quick scan. “Down scope.”
The exposure had been less than 15 seconds, a tribute to much training and long practice. Wiseart was grinning broadly when he turned to his control room crew. “Welcome to my parlor said the spider to the fly. Five ships out there; a cruiser and at least four destroyers. The cruiser is one of those weird Argentine assault cruisers; the ones with eight inch guns forward and quarters for a marine landing force aft. She’s coming straight for us. Sonar, target data?”
“Course is one-oh-three, Sir; estimated speed still 27 knots. Range is 12,000 yards and closing quickly.”
“Prepare tubes one to four with Mark 2s. We’ll take the cruiser with tubes one to three, the nearest destroyer with tube four. Then we’ll make a quiet and dignified departure. Or, alternatively, run like hell depending on which seems most appropriate.”
“Course and speed constant, Sir.”
“Fire control solution?”
“Set and ready to go.”
“Fire all tubes. Then turn onto a reciprocal bearing and get us out of here.”
Saint Vincent lurched as the heavy torpedoes fired in sequence from her bow tubes. The ticking of the clock seemed to slow down as the entire control room crew waited for the dull thunder of torpedoes striking home. Eventually, Wiseart had to admit at least one failure. “First torpedo missed.”
Anything else he might have said was interrupted by a long low rumble followed quickly by a second. Then, there was a long pause before a third explosion. The control room crew erupted into cheers.
“Up scope.” Wiseart repeated his scan. “We got her. Her bows are half-hanging off and her back is broken amidships. She’s burning like a torch. No way she is anything but a goner. We clobbered one of their old Gearings as well. She’s broken in two and is going down fast.”
“Go back for the other destroyers, Sir?”
Wiseart shook his head. “They’re closing in on the targets. Picking up survivors I think. We’ve neutered that group. Leave the rest to go home.”
Destroyer Catamarca, Standing by Argentine Assault Cruiser La Argentina, Falkland Islands
The blow had been swift, deadly and utterly destructive. La Argentina had been hit twice; once under the forward turrets, once just aft of her machinery spaces. The hit forward had blown her bows off. The whole bow assembly was twisted to one side and sinking fast. What had happened aft was far worse. La Argentina had been loaded with anti-aircraft missiles and guns in her hangar and on her flight deck, but she had been carrying drummed fuel in the living quarters for her Marines. The under-the-keel explosion of the Mark 2 torpedo vaporized that fuel and spread the explosive mixture through her hull. Then, that mixture had ignited and turned into a fuel-air explosion. The fireball raced through the ship, killing and burning everything in its path. The assault cruiser was an inferno. The survivors on board frantically jumped over the side to escape the ghastly alternatives of being burned alive by the fires or sucked down when the cruiser sank.
Captain Isaac Leonardi had already started to bring Catamarca in to assist the stricken ship when one of the other destroyers, the Santissima Trinidad was hit. The blast was dead amidships and the old destroyer was overwhelmed. She broke in half and was sinking so fast that few of her crew would escape. Leonardi had already seen the casualty figures from the carrier battle further north. More than fifteen hundred men had died on the Veinticinco de Mayo. The dead on board the three destroyers that had gone down added at least another five hundred to that total. Now, with La Argentina crammed with her own crew and the complements of the anti-aircraft systems she had on board, Leonardi guessed that more than a thousand more were in extreme danger.
And so, for the third time in barely more than a few weeks, Catamarca closed on a wrecked and burning ship and did what she could to succor the survivors. All the time, Leonardi was waiting for the slam under his feet that would tell him that another British torpedo had stuck home and that his own ship and crew were to be added to the horrifying butcher’s bill. But, the slam never came and he slowly relaxed. He guessed that the British captain was first of all a Seaman also and he would not fire on ships that were saving the lives of stricken mariners.
He looked down at his ship and saw the sights that had become all too familiar to him. Nets over the side of his ship; survivors being brought on board to be wrapped in blankets and rushed below. Even a few minutes exposure to the waters of the South Atlantic would be fatal. The Arctic Convoys had taught navies much about helping their crew survive in frigid waters but there was only so much they could do. A swift rescue was still the best way of saving survivors. He watched as men from his ship jumped into the water to pull the survivors too badly wounded or exhausted into safety. And so it was that Catamarca slowly filled with the survivors from the sinking cruiser.
By the time the wreckage of La Argentina had sunk, every spare space on Catamarca was filled. The missile destroyer Entre Rios had joined the rescue effort while the remaining Gearing class was picking up survivors from her sister.
“Our contribution to this war seems to be restricted to picking up survivors.” Lieutenant Brian Martin was also watching the rescue effort. He had to, his cabin was one of those that had been taken and filled with badly wounded men from the La Argentina
“We started this remember, by sinking Mermaid.” Leonardi’s sadness was evidence in his voice. “Perhaps this is our penance for that act. We are to survive while the ships around us are sunk and be tasked with picking up those men from them whom God has in his mercy spared.”
He was interrupted by an officer from La Argentina, a young ensign whose hands had been burned and were bandaged as well as the desperately-overloaded medical team on Catamarca could manage. “Captain Leonardi, I wanted to thank you and your crew, on behalf of my men, for what you have done to rescue us. Truly Catamarca is a ship crewed by the angels of deliverance.”
Darwin Road, Port Stanley, Falkland Islands
The convoy of trucks came to a halt; one more annoying incident in a day fill
ed with them. All the tracks were overloaded since the plan had been to make up the unit’s requirement by confiscating vehicles from the civilian population. The planners had overlooked something, most of the confiscated light trucks were gasoline powered while the Argentine Army’s own vehicles were diesel-engined. Last night, the inevitable had happened. During the preparations for this move, somebody had filled the tanks of the gasoline-engined vehicles with diesel fuel.
Colonel Alfonso Fernandez got out of the lead track and walked down to the bridge. It was easy to see what had happened. The Landrover had smacked into the bridge abutment, ricocheted off and overturned. The driver was on the ground beside the overturned vehicle. From the way his head was twisted, he had obviously been killed on impact and thrown out. He walked over to these scene of the accident and looked at the victim.
“That’s Major Dowling. At least nobody human has been killed.” Captain Vazquez made the observation with at least some satisfaction in his voice.
“Shut up you fool. Somebody will hear you.” Fernandez looked at the bridge again and sighed. His battalion had been tasked to take possession of Mount Tumbledown and Wireless Ridge overlooking Stanley. Nobody had admitted it but it was widely known that the Argentine Navy had fought an engagement with the British. It had not ended well for them. Now, the British amphibious ships were closing in to land their troops. According to the last reports, they had been some 600 kilometers out, so the counter-invasion was expected in around 24 hours time. Fernandez was supposed to be holding the back door to Stanley in case the British did an end-run and tried to hit the position from the South. Only, everything had gone wrong as usual. Now this idiot from military intelligence has gone and blocked the road. “Organize a work team and get that wrecked Landrover out of the way. And put Dowling’s body somewhere appropriate.”
Fernandez tried not to hear the splash as the dead Major’s body was thrown over the parapet into the swamp. The simplest way to get the Landrover off the bridge would be to push it off with a truck. To do that efficiently and without damage to a scarce truck, it would have to be righted and put on its wheels first. A group of men from Vazquez’s company had just started that when Fernandez heard a strange whistling noise; one that seemed to be modulated by a low-pitched drone. He spun around just as the stream of British Rotodynes burst over the ridgetop and opened fire on his battalion, helplessly strung out along the road.
Fairey Defenders, that’s what they’re called, Fernandez thought, hardly able to credit himself with remembering that at such a moment. Those are the assault versions, troop carriers armed with unguided rockets, guided anti-tank missiles and a 20mm gatling gun in a nose turret. And they are all trying to kill me. It was that last thought that broke the strange freeze in his mind and he dived into the ditch for cover.
Armies had learned from the damage wrought by low-flying fighter-bombers in the Second World War. The Argentine Army was no different. One man in five carried a shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile. But the Defenders were flying as low as helicopters and as fast as aircraft. They were skimming terrain features, using buildings and trees as cover, flying down roads and around hills rather than over them. More frighteningly than that, each Rotodyne carried six 38-round packs of 3 inch unguided rockets. They were firing a constant stream of them into the battalion strung out along the road in front of them. They also had Adder anti-tank missiles on their wing racks and had used those to pick off the four vehicles in the battalions anti-aircraft platoon. Lastly, each had a 20mm gatling gun that poured a hundred rounds a second at its target. For all those reasons, not one of the Argentine soldiers managed to fire his missile. Most died in their trucks as the rockets reduced the convoy to blazing chaos. The rest saved their lives by throwing away their equipment and running.
Fernandez was one of the survivors. Vazquez and his team were not. They died as they ran, caught on the bridge where there was no cover and no hope of finding any. The Colonel shook his head and watched the Rotodynes overfly the remnants of his battalion and land on the hills he had been supposed to garrison. Troops poured out of the bellies of their assault transport aircraft. Little armored vehicles left with them. Some had guns strapped to the sides of their hulls; others were obviously infantry carriers. The message was obvious. Mount Tumbledown and Wireless Ridge had been seized by coup de main and were held by at least a battalion with armored support.
Fernandez was a professional officer and he already knew the area assigned to him well. Now the British were established on the high ground, it would be the devil’s own job to force them out. With his battalion gone and most of the rest of the Argentine Army the wrong side of the ridge, there was very little between the British and recapturing Port Stanley. Carefully, very carefully, he edged out of his ditch and worked his way between the wrecked vehicles that littered the road. Once on the other side of them, he set off for the Headquarters at Stanley.
Argentine Airbase and Garrison, Goose Green
The line of Junglies lifted over the ridge and poured rockets into the base that lay spread out before them. This was a classical airmech assault. The Fairey Defender ‘Junglies’ had lifted the assault force into the dead ground on the other side of a ridge. Then, the armored vehicles, the troops they carried and the Junglies that had brought the assault force into position swept over the ridge in a single devastating wave. The Argentine troops had a few minutes warning of the assault but it had done them little good. If anything, it worked against them. When the assault hit, they were half way between being at minimum readiness and at full alert. All too many of them were in the open when the waves of rocket fire tore into the camp. They scattered and went to ground, pinned down by the barrage of rolling explosions and unable to resist the assault that was already breaking upon them.
The Junglies had used their speed and range to slip across the coastline in one of the many undefended areas. Then, they had swung inland, still using the terrain as cover, and approached the base from the Lafonia side. What defenses the Argentines had prepared faced north, in anticipation of an assault from the landing beaches on the northern half of the island. It was the right choice; the logical choice to make. There were no good landing beaches for armored vehicles in Lafonia. The ground was open enough to make an assault by unsupported infantry a potential bloodbath. Goose Green should have been a very tough nut to crack.
The assault that was taking place was something entirely new. The little armored vehicles brought by the Junglies streamed forward; their machine guns raking the ground in front of them. The Junglies followed behind, firing their barrage of rockets over the heads of their infantry. It was teamwork. The infantry kept the Argentine missileers from attacking the rotodynes, the Junglies saturated the ground with fire and kept the defenders from mounting a coordinated defense against the infantry. The whole mixture, armor, infantry, rotodynes, formed a whole that was much greater than the sum of its parts.
The defenders had armor of their own; a platoon of four M92 light tanks. Had the fortress been attacked by unsupported infantry, those tanks would have been decisive. They were well-positioned and their crews were good. One blew up as soon as it started to move, hit by a Cobra anti-tank missile from one of the Junglies. A second was hit by a 120mm squash-head round from one of the British Chevalier light tanks. They were tanks in name only. In reality they were a descendent of the pre-World War Two Bren gun carrier and had armor as thin as paper. Each Chevalier mounted two 120mm Wombat recoilless anti-tank guns, one on each side of its hull. The Argentine M92 took a direct hit from one of the guns, lurched to a stop and was hit again by a shot from the Chevalier’s other gun. It started to burn; the crew bailed out into the torrent of rifle, machine gun and rocket fire that was already engulfing them
In the midst of the chaos, the Chevalier stopped and two of its crew jumped out from the back. Each was carrying a single 120mm round and they had the reloading drill down to a fine art. They had the guns reloaded just in time to see their vehicle hit by a
76mm high velocity round from the third M92. The armor on the Chevalier was barely capable of stopping a rifle round. It offered no resistance to the high-velocity 76mm shot. The Chevalier blew up, killing all four crew members. They would have been better off if they had gone to ground and reloaded under cover but their inexperience, shown as over-enthusiasm had got the better of them. Others would learn from the mistake they had never got the chance to correct.
The third Argentine tank got no chance to celebrate its kill. A Cobra missile exploded its fuel tanks and that set off the ammunition stowage. The explosion was spectacular; tanks brewing up always were. It highlighted the fourth and last tank as it tried to back away to a more defensible position. It died in the process, killed by the one-two tap from another Chevalier. By that time, the Argentine defense was collapsing. The British assault swept through the positions the infantry should have been holding but had never managed to reach. The battle was over before it had fairly begun.
Colonel Jones was already getting his own defenses set up when the Junglies took off for the long flight back to HMS Bulwark. Most of them anyway. One Junglie had crash-landed just outside the perimeter wire after an anti-aircraft missile had taken out one of its engines. It looked repairable, but that wasn’t his call to make. The other aircraft had to go back and pick up the Marines and shift them to Mount Kent.
