Scram!

by Harry Benson

  For over an hour, they sat on one side of the room face to face with their Argentine hosts, waiting for the inspection team to complete their tour. The young Argentine junior officers were dressed in smart naval whites; the junglies were in their well-worn and well-flavoured green combats, armed with loaded 9mm Browning pistols. The welcome they received was civil and the coffee was good. The only interruption was the need to wave to a passing Sea King sent to check they were alright.

  As soon as the inspection team returned, the crew climbed back into their Wessex and flashed up. It was exactly as if they were starting up on a British ship: once the rotors were going, the flight-deck crew ran in to remove the lashings; Judd signalled that he wanted to take off; the flight-deck officer waved his arms upwards and the Wessex lifted away.

  On the way back, the risk of attack by a Pucara remained the same. Yet somehow the crew felt immune. They had landed on an Argentine ship and it was completely normal. The whole episode had felt surreal. The team leader plugged in to chat to them on the intercom. He had found some large boxes in the ship’s hold that his team hadn’t been able to shift. Otherwise they had found nothing that shouldn’t be there. He didn’t say as much, but it was clear they had been looking for Exocet.

  Chapter 12

  Reinforcements: 1–7 June 1982

  THE BATTLE FOR Goose Green may have been instigated by politicians in Britain worried by losses and impatient for success, but the victory by 2 Para against such a weight of Argentine opposition was good for morale. What it also showed was that Argentine forces would be no pushover. Even if they had failed to counterattack against the British landings at San Carlos, they had defended their own positions with courage and vigour. The same could be expected of their defences, dug into the hills to the west of Stanley.

  For the British forces, the overwhelming problem was how to advance sufficient troops and equipment over fifty miles of inhospitable Falkland terrain between San Carlos and Stanley without a significant proportion of the anticipated helicopter support. The sixteen helicopters currently available were never going to prove adequate. A further thirty helicopters were due to arrive imminently in Atlantic Causeway, along with the additional troops of 5 Brigade brought south on the QE2. Reinforcements were on their way. The question was whether the Argentines could do to Causeway what they had just done to her sister ship, Conveyor.

  For the week after the landings, the commando helicopters had been used almost exclusively for two main roles: building up supplies at San Carlos by day, and inserting special forces teams around the islands by night. There was little or no spare capacity to move any of the 3 Brigade units or their heavy equipment forward, let alone build up the supplies of ammunition and food they would need for the final attack. The loss of Atlantic Conveyor had forced the decision to send 3 Para and 45 Commando off eastwards towards Stanley and to send 2 Para off southwards to fight at Goose Green – all of which had to be done on foot.

  The relatively benign weather of the first week had proved a double-edged sword. For the troops in San Carlos, conditions were cold and wet, much like Dartmoor in February, but manageable. The flip side was that frequent clear skies exposed the landings to fearsome attacks from the air. Keeping most of the supply ships out of harm’s way during the day meant shuttling them in and out of the anchorage at night, thus slowing the process of unloading.

  For Jack Lomas, now in charge of the Wessex FOB Whale at Old Creek House, the way his helicopters were being directed was causing him to lose sleep. His aircrew were becoming deeply frustrated watching the Royal Marines and other troops below them marching across the rough Falklands terrain with heavily laden bergens, yet unable to give them a lift. The troops in turn were similarly frustrated hearing the sounds of helicopters all around and yet getting little or no support. Surely some of the air assets could be released from unloading ships. The Exocet attack on Atlantic Conveyor had cast a long shadow over the land campaign.

  Still 2,000 miles north of the Falklands, my own journey south on RFA Engadine with the rest of 847 Squadron remained painfully slow. At least my deck-landing skills had improved dramatically. I no longer bounced from wheel to wheel in ground resonance on landing. And my personal fitness was ensured by days of flight-deck hockey, hundreds of press-ups and sickening star jumps, and miles of running around the outside deck of the ship. I had even given up smoking.

  Being a merchant ship, we had no fixed-weapon systems on board. However, we had a load of machine guns, rifles and rocket launchers. Air raid warning drill meant spreading our most valuable cargo – the twenty-eight pilots and aircrew – around the ship while the rest of the crew and engineers pointed as many weapons as possible outwards at any incoming threat. It still seemed more of an irritant than anything else when the alarm was sounded during lunch. They hadn’t even waited until we finished our apple crumble.

  The siren went off, followed by the dramatic announcement ‘Hands to action stations. Hands to action stations. Assume NBCD State One Condition Zulu’. NBCD stood for Nuclear Biological Chemical and Damage Control. My adrenalin flowed as we all rushed down corridors, bolting watertight doors behind us to get to our assigned stations. I waited for the call ‘This is for exercise’. It never came. This time it was for real.

  My action station was in a briefing room with Lieutenant Ray Colborne, a lovely man and experienced Wessex pilot who had done everything and been everywhere. If there was anything a junior officer like me ever needed to know about matters Wessex or matters Navy, the first person to ask was ‘Uncle Ray’. Despite being immensely professional and skilled in the air, he had a very relaxed view of naval life on the ground. Amongst the least physically fit of all junglie pilots, and a heavy smoker, passing his annual medical check was always touch and go. ‘You see Doc,’ he’d say, ‘we only have a limited number of heartbeats in our life. I just don’t want to use mine up too quickly.’ Humour, popularity and experience usually saved the day. A bottle of whisky left on the table undoubtedly helped.

  A dozen other senior and junior ratings were stationed with us. As Colborne and I sat in the corner, I became increasingly scared. My worries escalated and I told him what I was thinking: ‘This is bloody great. We are stuck in a tin can. Bombs or missiles will just come straight through the sides. We can’t see anything. We can’t fire back. We’ve got no chance.’

  Very surreptitiously and quietly, Colborne leaned over to me and spoke through gritted teeth: ‘You listen to me. Everybody in here is shitting themselves. There are sailors younger than you – eighteen, nineteen – who are looking at you. You’re an officer. So get a grip. Be a man. Live with the fear and show some gumption.’

  Colborne’s wise words would ring in my ears for the whole of the war. It was a powerful lesson that I have never forgotten.

  Mike Booth’s action station, as squadron boss, was on the upper deck. He got outside just in time to see an Argentine air force Boeing 707 pulling away at low level, having overflown and identified Engadine at less than 500 feet. Booth could clearly see the light blue Argentine air force markings down the side. It was an astonishing sight in the middle of nowhere. The Boeing jet then peeled away and disappeared over the horizon.

  One of our Royal Marines was on duty manning a machine gun, mounted on the upper-deck railings. Booth was annoyed. Nobody had thought to fire at the big airliner, yet they could have been rolling bombs out of the back. ‘Why didn’t you shoot at it?’ he berated the gunner unfairly. Although it would have been nice to have bagged a 707, the rules of engagement were less than clear. London never answered Booth’s subsequent request for clarification.

  Recovering from the surprise and shock, Booth went straight to the bridge of Engadine. ‘Look,’ he asked Captain Freeman, the master, ‘could I suggest as an initial reaction we do about a twenty-degree detour on our way down to the TEZ just to open our range from the Argentine coastline?’

  ‘Yes,’ Freeman replied, ‘that’s sensible.’

  Two
hours later, Engadine received a flash signal suggesting that the ship alter course by twenty degrees. ‘Not bad for a little aviator,’ thought Booth.

  While the Paras were fighting it out at Goose Green on 27 May, the Scots and Welsh Guards had been in the relative calm of Grytviken harbour in South Georgia, transferring from the luxury of the QE2 to the merely comfortable Canberra and Norland. Along with the 1/7th Gurkha Rifles, these were the reinforcements of 5 Brigade. Their arrival in the Falklands was now only days away.

  On the same day, other reinforcements were arriving in the Total Exclusion Zone, much closer to the Falklands. Following their misadventures on Fortuna Glacier and as prison guards, Mike Tidd’s flight had taken two replacement Wessex from Ascension and sailed south once again on RFA Tidespring. Having got within sight of the Falklands, it seemed extraordinary to Tidd that their badly needed commando helicopters weren’t being sent into San Carlos straight away. Although much of the tasking was undoubtedly vital – such as transferring weapons from the RFA supply ships to HMS Hermes and other warships – anti-submarine Sea King helicopters were available, even if they too were operating around the clock. The fact was that managing limited British air assets was a tricky balancing act.

  The reinforcements of 5 Brigade sailed south on board the luxurious QE2 as far as South Georgia, thus staying well out of range of the Argentine Super Etendard jets and their Exocet missiles. These two Sea Kings of 825 Squadron then helped transfer them to the only slightly less luxurious Canberra and Norland, arriving in the danger zone of San Carlos a few days later.

  Two days later, on Saturday 29 May, the container ship Atlantic Causeway joined the fleet. On board were the majority of 847 Squadron’s Wessex and four of our crews, led by Lieutenant Commander Peter Hails. Causeway also carried 825 Squadron’s anti-submarine Sea Kings, their sonar gear stripped out to convert them for their commando role. Just as a new front-line squadron of aircraft and crews had been formed from the Wessex training squadron at RNAS Yeovilton in Somerset, another new squadron was formed from the Sea King training squadron at RNAS Culdrose in Cornwall. Almost every Fleet Air Arm unit was now involved in the Falklands War one way or another.

  Having lost Conveyor on the way into San Carlos four days previously, it was not surprising that the Royal Navy command were nervous at the prospect of sending Atlantic Causeway in on a similar mission. All of the aircrew on board Causeway knew perfectly well they were at serious risk of attack from Exocet. But they also wanted to get on with it. Hanging around at sea seemed pointless.

  The armed forces are awash with various inter-service and inter-unit rivalries. The vast majority of it is healthy, good natured and tongue-in-cheek. There can sometimes be a hard edge that reflects competition between units that do similar things, such as between Paras and Marines, or between Fleet Air Arm and Royal Air Force. This is generally a good thing because it encourages excellence.

  Within the Fleet Air Arm there is a long tradition of friendly banter between the anti-submarine squadron pingers and commando squadron junglies. Any potentially hard edges are much softened by a network of longstanding friendships, mostly because all aircrew start their training together and many serve together on the carriers and larger ships. So it is usually with good humour that pingers generally view junglies as little more than housetrained orang-utans, operating in the field; dirty, smelly and barely civilised. Junglies generally view pingers as fancy typewriter operators. Push a few buttons in the cockpit and the helicopter moves automatically from one hover over the sea to the next. It doesn’t sound very taxing or exciting. Neither can see the appeal of the other.

  The difference this time was that Atlantic Causeway’s pingers were about to infringe on junglie territory. Could they cope with life in the field? Could they read a map?

  Aside from the constant banter, the journey south on board Causeway had been largely uneventful. The Wessex flight, led by Lieutenant Commander Peter Hails, comprised four pilots, two aircrew, various maintainers and twenty Wessex 5s. The small number of aircrew gave the feel of an embarked flight but the large number of aircraft meant there was work for a squadron. All of the usual jobs needed filling but there were only six aircrew to fill them.

  One of the jobs was ship’s met officer. Although all aircrew are trained to forecast weather, most will admit that the subject remains a bit of a mystery. Proper met officers claim to predict the day’s weather by reading the weather chart, interpreting the assorted isobars, air masses, temperatures and fronts. Aviators usually start with this method but soon resort to a quick look out of the window, a few radio calls to other ships, and a wise hedging of bets.

  Peter Hails and aircrewman Chief Petty Officer Bill Tuttey had served together for two years on an RFA. ‘We haven’t got a met man,’ said Hails, ‘and you did it for two years.’

  ‘I lied,’ replied Tuttey.

  ‘Well lie on this one,’ said Hails.

  When Tuttey’s subsequent briefings of a cloud base at 10,000 feet were questioned by pingers, he would ask whether it was normal practice to doubt met briefings in this way.

  Another of the essential jobs was ship’s vicar. Hails called Tuttey in again: ‘We haven’t got a vicar.’

  Tuttey was duly seconded. Only a few people turned up for his first Sunday service. The second took place a few days after the sinking of Atlantic Conveyor and attracted a hundred converts.

  On 29 May, the same day that Goose Green fell, Causeway was within flying range of the task force. With the loss of Conveyor still fresh in everyone’s mind, it was vital to start offloading helicopters from the ship as soon as possible.

  The first four of the radar-equipped Sea Kings launched straight away for San Carlos, stopping en route on the carriers Hermes and Invincible for fuel. The four-hour-long transit over the sea was a task for which the pingers were especially well equipped. Their arrival at the beachhead added significantly to the available helicopter resources on land.

  Remaining on board Causeway, Lieutenant Tim ‘Flipper’ Hughes was one of the four Wessex pilots. He had been dragged away from his ‘best job in the world’, flying a smartly painted Wessex, callsign Romeo November, around schools and agricultural shows for the Director of Naval Recruiting. The choppy and freezing South Atlantic water was far removed from the glamour of posing in blue overalls on an English summer’s day.

  Having finally arrived in the Total Exclusion Zone, he and all the other embarked junglies were raring to go. Having watched the first four pingers disembark, it seemed inexplicable that the rest of them were being made to spend a thoroughly tense and frustrating three days hanging around.

  Causeway finally headed towards San Carlos exactly one week after the ill-fated attempt by Conveyor. Junglies and pingers alike couldn’t know it then, but they were about to be thrown together into the same maelstrom.

  * * *

  The end of May marked a turning point for Wessex operations on the Falkland Islands. Operating together from a single base at FOB Whale had already allowed Jack Lomas to mix up his crews, making them more like a small squadron and less like a collection of separate flights. Lomas also knew from his time in Germany that any idiot can be uncomfortable under canvas. A more substantial operating base was needed, especially given the imminent arrival of the rest of 845 Squadron and the whole of 847.

  The departure of 3 Brigade troops from Port San Carlos offered the possibility of regrouping the growing number of aircraft in one place and housing most of the air and groundcrews under a solid roof rather than flimsy canvas. A quick chat with Tim Stanning on board HMS Fearless for approval was followed by a visit to the Port San Carlos settlement manager, Alan Miller, who was generous and welcoming. Lomas invited the Chinook crews to join him in the move. So, on Sunday 30 May, the tents came down and the joint FOB moved around the corner of the bay to Port San Carlos.

  Argentine air attacks on the British landing area at San Carlos had now dwindled almost to zero. The deteriorating South Atlantic
weather and heavy attrition amongst the Argentine air force and navy jets both played important roles in this. By the end of the battle for Goose Green, the Argentine forces had lost forty aircraft. By comparison the British had lost seven aircraft comprising five Sea Harriers and two ground-attack Harriers.

  Subsequent Argentine attacks would be focused on disrupting supply lines, whether the ships at sea or the troops on the ground. In any case, after the attack on Ajax Bay and San Carlos that had so nearly wiped out Hector Heathcote and Kev Gleeson, only two further daylight air raids were to reach San Carlos during the entire war.

  That said, life in San Carlos Bay still had the potential to be extremely alarming. Argentine Canberra bombers, their crews trained by the British, launched two high-altitude bombing strikes at night. In the first raid in the early hours of Saturday 29 May, four bombs were dropped without success. The second raid two nights later put four bombs into Fern Valley Creek, the commando Sea King base, wiping out one tent and causing serious injury to the squadron’s air engineering officer, Richard Harden.

  Most of the other occupants were fortunate to miss the raid. They had transferred overnight back to Fearless after the assault ship had returned to San Carlos with land forces commander Major General Jeremy Moore. One day earlier and the bombing raid would have produced many more casualties and fatalities.

  In the cold darkness of the morning of Tuesday 1 June, the container ship Atlantic Causeway sailed into San Carlos Water. The liner Norland was also arriving that morning from South Georgia, followed by SS Canberra a day later, to disembark the Scots and Welsh Guards of 5 Brigade. It was a critical moment in the war.