Scram!

by Harry Benson

  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.’

  ‘Roger.’

  Just as they were fifty feet from the deck, the Hermes flight-deck director crossed his hands above his head. It was a wave-off. It didn’t matter why. They were now being refused permission to land. The ship might have been about to turn. Harriers might be about to land. There might be some other emergency. But whatever the reason, it was too late. The helicopter was committed to its descent. They would either land on the ship or ditch in the sea. If they made it in one piece, they would have to deal with the consequences later.

  ‘Yankee Delta, I’m committed,’ radioed Slowe.

  The ship didn’t seem to be turning. He ran the Wessex onto the aircraft carrier’s deck and braked to a halt. The survivors spilled out of the cabin and onto the flight deck. The flight-deck crew marshalled them towards the superstructure where they could be gathered up. The wave-off now seemed forgotten. As soon as the survivors were clear, Slowe lifted off again and returned towards Atlantic Conveyor. The light was now beginning to fade.

  Rushing up to Conveyor’s bridge, Lieutenant Nick Foster grabbed one of the orange survival suits and was about to put it on. The Exocet had hit the ship thirty minutes earlier. Smoke and flames were spreading from beneath them and there were intermittent explosions somewhere down below. Foster wondered when the weapons at the front of the ship would blow.

  The two captains, North and Layard, were standing out on the bridge wing. ‘What do you think about going down and flashing that up and getting airborne, Nick?’ asked Layard.

  Foster looked down at the Wessex beyond the swirling smoke. ‘Sir, if you’re ordering me, I’ll do it.’

  Even if he could make it through the smoke to get to the aircraft, he worried that the thing might not start, leaving him stranded on the front deck. He’d also have to take off the four strops that held the helicopter on the rolling deck before he climbed up to get the rotors started. Not a good idea.

  ‘If you’re just asking, sir, then I’ll decline.’

  ‘I’m just asking.’

  Foster overheard the two captains discussing the worsening situation. They agreed it was time they left. North calmly picked up the tannoy microphone. There was no sense of panic in his voice. ‘The fire is out of control. We are going to abandon ship. Make your way to the starboard side where there are ladders and liferafts already deployed.’

  Nick Foster headed back down to his cabin only to find David Baston complaining that he couldn’t get the zip up on his goon suit.

  ‘What’s wrong with this?’ he said, tugging at it frustratedly.

  ‘Try reading the name tag, David. Look – Lieutenant Foster, not Lieutenant Commander Baston.’

  ‘Bugger,’ said Baston.

  Once safely zipped up in the right suits, both men put on their lifejackets and fighting order. Grabbing rifles and 9mm Browning pistols, they headed down to deck level. As they ran down the stairway, they checked the others had heard the message to leave.

  At deck level, ship and flight crew were already scrambling down the long drop to the liferafts below. There was a lot of smoke. Explosions were becoming more frequent, now directly below their feet.

  Perched on the side of the ship in his goon suit, Foster felt remarkably relaxed about the surging water far below. Years of underwater escape drills in the dunker back at Portsmouth gave him confidence as he guided some of the younger men over the side and down the ladders. Close by, Alacrity was vainly firing jets of water into Conyeyor’s smoking hull.

  As Baston clambered over the side and down, behind him, on the rear flight deck, he heard the whine of a power unit starting up of its own accord. ‘Bloody hell, it must be hot to set that off,’ he thought.

  Halfway down the rope ladder, he realised there was no more ladder beneath him. It must have been sliced away when Alacrity bumped up alongside. Nearby explosions were blowing small holes in the ship’s side. Baston let go of the rope and dropped into the water, to be hauled into a liferaft by one of his aircrew. As the only one with a knife, he then hopped around the dangling liferafts cutting them free.

  Foster watched in horror as the ship’s Chinese laundrymen jumped over the side with their lifejackets already inflated. The two men vanished immediately beneath the surface, leaving the buoyant jackets floating pathetically.

  ‘Time for me to go.’

  Just as he began to clamber down one of the ladders, there was a huge explosion right next to him. A hole appeared in the side. The gas bottles inside the ship were exploding in the heat. He saw another ladder further down the deck and decided to try it. As Foster ran, he could see nobody else around. It looked like he was last on board. Smoke and flames were getting worse. Halfway down this ladder, another canister exploded, this time directly beneath him, blowing the bottom half of the ladder away. There was just enough rope to get a little further down. Seeing a liferaft now eight feet below him, he let go, and landed in it, to the displeasure of its occupants. He hadn’t even got his feet wet.

  Just as had happened with Coventry hours earlier, the liferafts now found themselves being sucked back towards the crippled ship in the swell. Only this time the rounded shape of the giant container ship high above them was sucking them underneath the overhanging stern. It was terrifying, but far worse for those in lifejackets still in the water. The two captains were submerged by the dark hull. Miraculously, Mike Layard surfaced ri
ght next to Nick Foster who grabbed him and hauled him on board. Ian North was never seen again.

  A body, one of the ship’s officers, floated past the liferaft. There were flecks of foamy vomit around his mouth. Unable to lift him on board in his water-filled survival suit, Nick Foster clung onto him. Maybe a kiss of life might have saved him, maybe not. He was dead by the time they reached Alacrity.

  With cold fingers, and bodies frozen by the water and pulling on the thin ropes that held the liferafts, climbing the scrambling nets was now a major hurdle. David Baston had reached the top of the netting when somebody trod on his frozen fingers. He fell back into the water. Hands grabbed at him from the liferaft and helped him up successfully a second time.

  After a final check for people on the forward deck, Kim Slowe and Gus Tyrrell flew back to Hermes only to be told to hold off during a Harrier strike on Port Stanley. Apart from being allowed to land for fuel, it was two and a half hours later into the night that they were finally cleared to shut down. They passed the time chatting about life back home. Separated from their shipmates, little did they know that they had been recorded as MIA, Missing in Action.

  When they did finally land and shut down on Hermes, they were taken from the aircraft and treated as survivors. Gus Tyrrell had to hand in his camera and his valuable photos. Both of them had to give in their flying clothing for use as spares. They decided to pass on film night; the movie showing on Hermes that evening was The Poseidon Adventure.

  The Wessex aircrew from Atlantic Conveyor never actually made it to land, although they came close. HMS Alacrity spent the next two nights conducting runs up and down Falkland Sound. The day after the Exocet strike, the ship’s off-duty crew and some of the Conveyor survivors assembled on deck for the burial of the three bodies they had recovered at sea. It was a deeply moving occasion. The following day, Thursday 27 May, the survivors transferred to the tanker British Tay to sail to Ascension Island.

  Their eventual return to the UK was a classic story of inter-service rivalry. The RAF survivors from Atlantic Conveyor were given new uniforms for their triumphant return to Brize Norton. They were to leave the RAF VC-10 aircraft first for the waiting media. But when they saw the smartly dressed young men emerge, the welcome band stopped playing, disappointed that this was merely the aircraft crew. Then the Royal Navy aircrew and engineers emerged, unshaven and dishevelled, the image of true survivors, to roars of applause. It wasn’t the stage-managed RAF return that made all the papers. It was the photo of Royal Marine Gus Tyrrell’s welcome hug from his wife.

  The fires burning inside the stern section of Atlantic Conveyor eventually reached the bomb store underneath the forward flight deck a day after the double Exocet strike. The explosion blew off the nose of the ship. The giant stern and superstructure sank into the darkness of the South Atlantic the following night.

  As well as the tents and portable runway, ten helicopters were lost – three Chinooks, six Wessex and a Lynx. Two helicopters survived. Another crew could be found to fly the Wessex. But the unique capability of the Chinook to carry huge loads made it an exception. The sole surviving Chinook was too important to lose. The RAF crew stayed behind on Hermes with the intention of disembarking to San Carlos as quickly as possible.

  Twelve men died as a result of the missile strike on Atlantic Conveyor. They included two young 845 Squadron engineers, Air Engineering Mechanic Adrian Anslow and Leading Air Engineering Mechanic Don Pryce. Most shocking was that nine of the deaths happened in the water and only three on board. There were plenty of liferafts. There was plenty of time. It seemed so avoidable.

  Chapter 10

  Break-out: 26–29 May 1982

  THE LOSS OF Atlantic Conveyor was a stunning blow to the forces on land. Three Commando Brigade had been relying on the extra helicopter support to airlift them nearer to the capital Port Stanley. They would now have to do it on foot.

  The loss of HMS Coventry was an equally stunning blow to the forces at sea. Four out of twenty-three British warships had now been sunk. Several others were badly damaged.

  Fearing stalemate, the politicians and military commanders back in the UK now demanded progress on land and some sort of victory. On Wednesday 26 May, invasion commander Brigadier Julian Thompson gave the orders to move out. Three Para and 45 Commando were to head for Stanley. Two Para were to take Goose Green.

  After such terrible losses it was hard to imagine that Tuesday 25 May would prove to be such a turning point in the war to regain the Falkland Islands. The British forces were now firmly established on their beachhead at San Carlos. Although it wasn’t appreciated at the time, the Argentine air force and navy had suffered such traumatic losses themselves – losing ten Skyhawks and sixteen Mirages – that further air attacks on the islands would become sporadic. Argentine ground forces at Goose Green had been successfully constrained, and the destruction of their helicopters by the ground-attack Harriers had made it all but impossible for them to reinforce troops by air. Argentine forces no longer had the means to dislodge them.

  Concerns had already been growing in London that the British advance had become bogged down at the beachhead. There were also worries that, in the absence of any sort of land battle, an enforced international settlement might leave the British stranded without securing the islands. Little of this was communicated to the forces on the ground. What was conveyed was an assumption that, having landed, the British troops should move out towards Stanley immediately. It was an utterly impractical expectation, given the nature of the terrain and extent to which the logistical supply line was already stretched.

  Brigadier Julian Thompson was under no illusions that the landing forces needed to have a strong base from which to extend. Only after unloading stores, ammunition and supplies could the vital few helicopters be released to move the troops forward. It was frustrating to all that the build-up of the Brigade Maintenance Area was slower than expected. Part of the reason was that supply ships were remaining in the San Carlos anchorage for the minimum time, sometimes lingering only during daytime. Also, as Tim Stanning had wryly forecast during the planning stage at Ascension, the number of helicopters able to operate was limited by the number of available decks.

  The loss of so many helicopters with Atlantic Conveyor now made it virtually impossible to move 3 Brigade by air. With the next wave of support helicopters still en route from the UK, Thompson now had little choice but to instruct his commanders to move out east, on foot, across the Falkland bog. He was also given clear instructions from London to engage the Argentines in order to achieve some sort of land victory. The Argentine forces at Goose Green held no strategic significance and were to have been sidestepped by the British in their move towards the main objective of Port Stanley. However, Goose Green, some twelve miles south of the beachhead, was also the obvious target for the politically desirable land battle. Thompson held a meeting with his commanders on Wednesday 26 May and instructed 2 Para to proceed immediately.

  There were still only fifteen troop-carrying helicopters available on the Falklands, ten Sea Kings and the five Wessex.

  Because the larger Sea Kings were operating as a squadron, the jobs they were assigned to do could be coordinated. However, the Wessex were operating without any sense of coordination, mostly making it up as they went along. Pete Manley and his Wessex gunship had set up shop at Ajax Bay on the day after the landings. Without maintenance or support, he had been operating largely on his wits and negotiating skills. Mike Crabtree and two more Wessex joined him there three days later.

  Rather than running around picking up odd jobs, it made sense to coordinate what they had to do. So on the morning of Wednesday 26 May, Manley got himself dropped off onto the command ship HMS Fearless to go and speak to helicopter tasking commander, Tim Stanning. Walking into the operations room, he was delighted to see Jack Lomas, who had come on board for exactly the same reason. ‘Jack’s here,’ thought Manley. ‘Dave Baston’s gone home. So where’s the boss?’

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bsp; It was the first time he’d wondered where his commanding officer might be. In fact Lieutenant Commander Roger Warden was stuck 4,000 miles north, running the resupply operation at Ascension Island. Lomas was now the senior Wessex flight commander on the Falklands. ‘You’d better get everyone to come over and join us. We’re on the other side of the bay,’ said Lomas.

  When they arrived two days earlier, Lomas and his two Wessex had joined up with the Sea Kings at Old Creek House, some two miles north of the settlement at San Carlos. Now with five Wessex together in one place, 845 Squadron was beginning to feel a bit more like a single unit once more. Royal Navy junglie squadrons are accustomed to operating helicopters out in the field, living in tents, being flexible, making do, and playing at soldiers. But two and a half years on exchange with the Army Air Corps in Germany had shown Lomas that it could be done so much better. He needed somebody who could kick arse and concentrate on the military side of things, somebody who didn’t have to worry about flying or aviation or engineering. That was why he had brought along Warrant Officer Tommy Sands RM. Sands had already proved his worth as an additional unofficial aircrewman on the way south. Now it was time for him to do his day job.

  The threat of intruders on the ground was very real. Some of the Argentine commandos who had been driven off Fanning Head on the night of the landings had not yet been captured. They were still at large north of Port San Carlos. Just a day earlier, an Argentine marine corps officer had been picked up by a patrol in the hills just behind the Wessex base. It made aircrew wary of wandering too far away.

  The threat of bombing from the air was also real but a lower priority threat. Had the aircraft remained on the ground for long during the day, they would have been dispersed to protect them from air attack. But as darkness fell, it made more sense to keep the aircraft fairly close together in order to keep a tight perimeter.