Scram!

by Harry Benson

  As the Chinese flight-deck crew connected the hose up to the Wessex, Hughes watched the junglie Sea King Victor Zulu lifting loads off Sir Tristram. Lieutenant John Miller and Petty Officer Aircrewman ‘Splash’ Ashdown had spent the night on board Sir Galahad as she sailed around the coast from San Carlos with the Welsh Guards. Having got airborne at first light, both the Sea King crew were surprised that stores and ammunition were being unloaded by pontoon, yet the Guardsmen had been left on board ship. It didn’t seem sensible considering how much the ships stood out in the morning light. Victor Zulu was now busy offloading the Rapier air defence missile systems from ship to shore. Some of the missiles and their control boxes had been set up but were not yet ready to fire. It was a vital task. Rapier had already been credited with shooting down one Argentine Mirage jet at San Carlos, and probably a Skyhawk as well. Once the system was up and running at Fitzroy, the two landing ships would no longer be quite so exposed.

  The newly arrived 825 Squadron Sea Kings had dramatically boosted the available lift to the land forces. Each Sea King could carry roughly double the load of their Wessex counterparts. Lieutenants John Boughton and Phil Sheldon were both experienced pilots but well aware of junglie suspicions about the ability of pingers to cope in a commando environment of featureless Falkland terrain and poor visibility. They hadn’t helped their cause when, soon after disembarking from Atlantic Causeway a week earlier, they were briefed to move artillery and other equipment forward to Mount Kent as underslung loads. Standing on the slopes of Mount Kent, Brigadier Julian Thompson had watched a Sea King approach, with a jeep underslung, clearly heading towards enemy territory. Major Peter Cameron, boss of 3 Brigade Air Squadron ‘teeny-weeny’ helicopters, came running up to him: ‘Do you see that helicopter there? It’s got my fucking vehicle hanging underneath and it’s flying straight towards the enemy.’

  The Sea King overflew the commanders into no-man’s land and onto a hill top that was in full view of the enemy. The pilots reacted quickly to the fire now coming at them from the Argentines, dropping the jeep onto the hillside and swinging the Sea King away down into a valley and safety.

  It was an unfortunate, and thankfully rare, navigational error. But it cost them the jeep. Thompson and Cameron were worried that there might still be code books in the vehicle that could compromise operations, so the ‘fucking vehicle’ was comprehensively shelled.

  Now, on the morning of Tuesday 8 June, both John Boughton in Sea King 504 and Phil Sheldon in Sea King 501 had been told to help move equipment off the two landing ships at Fitzroy. But with Miller’s junglie Sea King Victor Zulu already on the job when they got there, they returned to Goose Green to shuttle men and equipment back to Fitzroy.

  Bad weather and attrition had prevented the Argentines from launching any meaningful air strikes so far in June. But this was to be a big one. Soon after midday local time, fourteen Argentine air force jets powered into Falklands airspace in three waves intent on sinking British ships. It was HMS Exeter again that raised the alarm ‘Air raid warning red’.

  The first Argentine jets were decoys. Four Mirage 3s ran in at low level across the northern half of West Falkland. They broke off their attack after the Sea Harrier Combat Air Patrol started to intercept. Within minutes, the main attacking force of five Skyhawks was crossing the southern end of Falkland Sound and winding its way across Lafonia through the occasional rain shower. The arrowhead formation sped onwards towards Fitzroy, ignoring two British helicopters. One of the helicopters was Boughton’s Sea King. He immediately radioed a warning of the contact before taking cover in a fold in the land, talked down by his Leading Aircrewman Roy Egglestone. To the Argentine pilots, the only other sign of British activity appeared to be a lot of troops on the ground at Fitzroy who opened up on them with small-arms fire. But as the Skyhawks climbed and banked steeply on their starboard wings, the two ships came into view. Circling round to the south of Bluff Cove, the Skyhawks continued their turn to run in from the east. The first three jets aimed at Sir Galahad, the nearest target. The second two went for Sir Tristram.

  On the ground at Fitzroy, some of the Rapier batteries had been deployed but were not yet properly calibrated. To the frustration of the operators, their missiles failed to respond at all when fired, sitting uselessly on their rails as the Skyhawks streaked past. In the air, the Combat Air Patrol was nowhere to be seen. The brand new airstrip at Port San Carlos had been put out of action earlier that morning after an RAF ground-attack Harrier crash-landed, while Hermes had withdrawn further to the east for repairs, shortening the available time on task for the Sea Harriers anyway. Galahad and Tristram were defenceless.

  Meanwhile a third wave of Daggers crossed Falkland Sound, intending to follow the Skyhawks to Port Pleasant. However, the frigate HMS Plymouth appeared unexpectedly in the open water, providing an opportunity that was too good to miss. The Daggers swept past the ship and turned in to attack from the north. One by one they ran in, dropping their bombs and spitting cannon fire. Plymouth returned fire with cannon and a Seacat missile that missed. One of the Dagger’s bombs went straight through Plymouth’s funnel. Two bombs ricocheted off the ship. A fourth lodged in a rear compartment, causing a depth charge to go off. Miraculously, none of the bombs exploded. Yet the smoke billowing from Plymouth’s fire caused the Argentine pilots to leave the scene convinced that they had sunk another British ship.

  Paul McIntosh was at the controls of X-Ray Tango, assigned to the field hospital at Ajax Bay for the day. He had fled to a small gulley overlooking Falkland Sound on hearing the warning from Fearless, ‘Air raid warning red, SCRAM!’

  Leading Aircrewman Martin Moreby managed to spot two of the five Mirages as they sped through. The scene was lit up with an array of weaponry fired from the ships. As the attack cleared, smoke could be seen pouring from Plymouth’s funnel and flight-deck area. A radio call summoned the Wessex to stop by to pick up the senior surgeon from Fearless. McIntosh lifted from the gulley and headed down across the water. As soon as their wheels touched the deck of Fearless, Rick Jolly ran across the flight deck. They now flew straight out into Falkland Sound where Plymouth had already turned to limp back in towards San Carlos, escorted by a Type-21 frigate.

  With smoke pouring from the ship, Jolly was winched down onto the foc’sle. It was a scene reminiscent of his rescue of the sailors from the burning HMS Ardent. A few minutes later, the Wessex was called to approach the flight deck, now smoking less vigorously, to collect one of the wounded sailors on a stretcher. The flight deck of Plymouth was designed for the much smaller Wasp helicopter and in any case was now cluttered with damage control and firefighting equipment. McIntosh improvised by edging his starboard wheel onto the deck, leaving his port and rear wheels suspended over the sea. One wheel of the Wessex had landed. Martin Moreby helped medics slide the stretcher into the hovering helicopter. Jolly jumped in afterwards and X-Ray Tango headed straight for Ajax Bay.

  Hearing the air raid warning red call on the long-range HF radio, junglie helicopters Sea King Victor Zulu and Wessex X-Ray Quebec immediately left the landing ships for the relative safety of land. Hughes called down to Tuttey: ‘If you don’t mind, I think we’ll go and hide behind those rocks.’ He lifted off the deck of Sir Galahad and set the Wessex down on a spit of land a few hundred yards away to the south-west. Even though their refuel had been interrupted, X-Ray Quebec had taken on just enough to get back to San Carlos. As soon as the all-clear sounded, they could head back. The landing ships were not to be so lucky.

  From the cabin door, Tuttey and his unknown SAS passenger had a clear view of the RFAs out to their right in Port Pleasant. Hughes picked up his camera from the dashboard to take some photos of the ships. Boughton’s voice over the radio soon made it clear the raid was heading their way. ‘All stations, four enemy contacts west of Fitzroy.’

  It was the soldier who spotted them first, pointing out the swooping black shapes that were now heading directly towards them. The Skyhawks sped pa
st the ships, behind the Wessex, and away. It was just too far away to see the bombs falling from each jet. But their effect was soon apparent. To the helicopter crew with their helmets on and the Wessex whirling away noisily, the explosions appeared strangely silent. Numbed and in shock, Hughes could only think that his photos would be a scoop.

  Sea King Victor Zulu was on the beach pointing west as the raid approached. From his cabin doorway, aircrewman Splash Ashdown was watching soldiers lying on the ground, test-firing their rifles to align the sights. He couldn’t see the Skyhawks as they sped down the other side of the helicopter. So when John Miller shouted ‘We’re under attack!’ Ashdown calmly replied: ‘No we’re not. They’re just zeroing their weapons.’ The noise of the explosions shortly afterwards made it clear that he was very wrong.

  The first Skyhawk scored direct hits with three of its four bombs. Two bombs detonated towards the rear of Sir Galahad. The second and third aircraft either failed to release their bombs or missed altogether. But the damage was done. Almost immediately afterwards the second pair of Skyhawks swept past Sir Tristram leaving unexploded bombs that killed two Chinese crewmen and started fires. Black smoke started to billow out of the rear end of Galahad, although Tristram appeared relatively unscathed.

  Inside Sir Galahad was a scene from hell. The exploding bomb had ignited a cache of fuel. The resulting fireball gathered pace and rolled through the tank deck. The intense heat set fire to clothes, flesh and hair of the exposed Guardsmen and crew. Ammunition cooked off causing new explosions. The subsequent evacuation from the tank deck and up onto the foc’sle was a model of exceptional order and individual courage. Stories abound of badly wounded and burnt men helping others worse off than themselves.

  Hughes and Tuttey had no idea whether the Skyhawks would come back for a second strike. Had Plymouth not taken the hit out to the west, the Daggers would also have added to the horror at Fitzroy. X-Ray Quebec lifted off almost immediately. Sir Galahad now began to spew black smoke and flames from the stern. As the Wessex approached the ship, they could see crew members escape the blaze by jumping over the side into the freezing water. At the front of the ship, smoke and men were beginning to emerge up through the hold onto the forward deck.

  Hughes hover-taxied the Wessex sideways across to the stern. Several Chinese crewmen were thrashing around in the water with suitcases floating next to them. Tuttey lowered the orange strop; one crew member managed to put his arms through it. As he was raised out of the water, two other crew clung onto him, their suitcases blowing across the surface. Somehow Tuttey managed to haul the three men into the cabin without any of them falling back into the sea. The two others were lifted up one by one. Hughes eased the aircraft’s nose forward and pulled in power to transition away towards the shore.

  Immediately after the attack, Miller and Ashdown had fled from the beach to the nearest cover and shut down. Within just two minutes they were starting up again. It was all too obvious that the Welsh Guardsmen would need urgent help. Over the short-range UHF radio an officer from Sir Galahad called: ‘Please hold off the front until we’ve launched the dinghies and lifeboats’. By now, the first two Sea Kings, Victor Zulu and 504, were approaching Galahad. Hughes repeated the request: ‘Approaching helos, hold off while they launch their boats.’

  Both aircraft flared sharply to slow down, but the huge downdraft upturned several of the empty dinghies. ‘Wankers!’ Tuttey said to Hughes. His frustration reflected the horror of the situation more than anything else.

  One behind the other, the two Sea Kings began winching shocked and bedraggled survivors from the foc’sle of Sir Galahad. Having dropped off the shivering crew, Wessex X-Ray Quebec returned to the stricken ship to join in. Thick layers of paint were now peeling from Galahad’s overheating funnel.

  To the north of the ships, Stanning and Clark had watched the appalling event from a different angle. They and their crew, Sub-Lieutenant Brian Evans and Chief Aircrewman David Jackson, ran for their Sea King 507 in a desperate rush to get airborne and help. Within minutes a third 825 Squadron Sea King was on the scene as Sheldon and his crewman Petty Officer Tug Wilson arrived from Goose Green in 501. They were followed soon afterwards by a fourth, Steve Isacke in 509.

  Sheldon was already low on fuel and directed 501 towards the apparently unscathed Sir Tristram. Her lifeboats had been launched to assist Galahad. As the helicopter approached the flight deck, the only indication that Tristram had been hit was a bomb hole below the flight deck. The big Sea King was cleared to land. Sheldon had no idea that the stern of the ship was on fire directly underneath him. Shortly afterwards, X-Ray Quebec took its place on the flight deck. Like Sheldon and Wilson before them, Hughes and Tuttey landed on Tristram completely unaware that they were on top of a raging fire. The Chinese flight-deck crew, like so many in Port Pleasant that day, displayed exceptional bravery.

  It was a cruel twist that Galahad took the brunt of the day’s bombing. After the initial blast and fireball that caused so many appalling burns, the worst of the fire and smoke was confined to the stern. Bodies scrambled over the side from the central deck into liferafts and other small craft. All of the helicopters were now either winching people from the front of the ship or directly from the rafts. The enthusiastic arrival of the first helicopters had given an idea about how to get the evacuees to shore faster. Now aircraft started using their downwash to blow the rafts towards shore, where shocked soldiers and medics from 2 Para acted as reception and first-aid parties.

  Some of the liferafts began drifting towards the blazing stern of Sir Galahad and into extreme danger. Clark manoeuvred his Sea King in and out of the billowing black smoke, behind the mangled ruins of Galahad’s flight deck, to blow the liferafts away from the exploding ship. Behind Clark, in the cabin of the Sea King, Stanning assisted Jackson with the wounded as the thick smoke and acrid stench of burning metal and flesh filled the cabin of the helicopter. The fires on Tristram had now taken hold and she was also being abandoned.

  All six helicopters took turns in winching wounded men from both ship and liferafts, dropping the blackened and bloodied bodies onto the immediate shoreline and later on into Fitzroy settlement. Hovering over the front of Sir Galahad, all crews felt the random blasts and heat of the exploding munitions eating away at the tank deck. Sheldon closed his window after one particular blast, somehow hoping it would add protection. Winching soldiers up from a nearby dinghy, Tuttey could hear the bumphs going off next to Sheldon’s Sea King, even with his helmet on and above the sound of the Wessex. ‘They’re doing a good job,’ he said to Hughes.

  As Boughton winched the last few men off, the task shifted towards moving the badly wounded back to the field hospital at Ajax Bay and on to the hospital ship Uganda.

  In the back of each aircraft, crewmen including Tuttey, Ashdown, Wilson, Jackson and Egglestone, all came face to face with the full horror of terrible burns and wounds: the blackened hairless faces and the stink of burning flesh. At the beach first-aid post, Tuttey loaded several wounded soldiers on stretchers to take them back to Ajax Bay. At first he thought one of the Guardsman was Indian; his head was like a big black football. It was the very badly burned Simon Weston. Tuttey lit a cigarette and stuck it in Weston’s mouth. The burns gave off a terrible heat as well as smell. A medic at Ajax Bay later told Tuttey that it was the worst burns he’d ever seen.

  In the cabin of the Wessex, the unknown passenger seemed remarkably unfazed. A wounded Guardsman was bleeding badly from a severed hand that was hanging by a few tendons. The SAS man simply pulled out his knife and cut off the useless hand, despatching it out of the cabin door without ceremony, whilst shoving a shell dressing onto the wounded stump. But it had clearly affected him. At the end of the day, Tuttey asked where he wanted to get off. ‘Anywhere,’ he replied, ‘except where we have just come from.’

  War viewed through the windscreen of an aircraft can seem remote. It is largely a visual experience, without the noise, smell or even temperature
of the battlefield. The acrid smoke and terrible smell of burning flesh had made it very real indeed. Even if it was a dreadful day for the crewmen, it was almost worse on this occasion for the pilots, unable to see their passengers but often overcome by waves of appalling stench. Hughes was not the only pilot to tell his crewman during the rescue that he was not feeling very well.

  Back at San Carlos, McIntosh and Moreby had been one of several crews to hear the ‘All stations: all available aircraft required for casevac’ radio call from a clearly very agitated Gazelle pilot.

  McIntosh had answered immediately as the assigned casualty aircraft: ‘Request location.’

  The reply from the Gazelle was ominous: ‘Head towards Fitzroy and it will be obvious.’

  In the distance, they could soon see the smoke rising, still not knowing what awaited. It didn’t take long to find out. Sir Galahad was ablaze from end to end. Casualties were being ferried ashore and there were floats everywhere in the water. Shutting X-Ray Tango down to load casualties, McIntosh was struck by the calmness of the situation. A Royal Marine officer seemed to be taking efficient charge. The two of them were left to conduct a sort of field triage, prioritising which casualties should go back to Ajax Bay first and, worse, who would be left behind. A journalist insisted on taking a space in the Wessex. McIntosh left him behind.

  As X-Ray Tango returned to San Carlos, a second wave of Skyhawks sped past them. It was one of two further Argentines raids on that day. Three hours after the attack on Fitzroy, four Skyhawks sent as a follow-up attack were driven away from Port Pleasant by sheer weight of small-arms fire. As they fled to the south, they sighted the landing craft at the mouth of Choiseul Sound. The craft was returning from Goose Green with 5 Brigade headquarters vehicles and vital radio equipment. Having previously been shot up near Elephant Island by the naval gunfire of HMS Cardiff, the coxswain of the landing craft unwisely thought it safer to travel in daylight. For the Skyhawks, it was an undefended target. Two of the jets swooped in for the attack. The first overshot but the second sunk the landing craft with a direct hit, killing six men.