by Pete Scholey
Hamilton and his men pored over maps and charts, examining every known aspect of the glacier and their probable routes down the mountain. They spent hours studying street plans of all of the settlements and consulting with personnel who had visited the areas to create detailed room plans of key buildings. Hamilton made sure that they all prepared thoroughly for their forthcoming mission. Everyone was given photocopies of the maps and plans to study. Then they carefully prepared the kit they would need. They knew that they were to face Antarctic conditions on the glacier and in any form of polar warfare, survival skills are ten times more vital than combat expertise. They were to take skis, snowshoes, crampons, ice axes, tents, winter warfare clothing, sleeping bags and waterproof bivvy bags. They would have four pulks – a kind of supply sled with a harness that allows it to be dragged across snow and ice. They would take turns in pulling the pulks, each of which would be loaded with around 200lb (91kg) of equipment. In addition to that, each man would carry around 80lb (36kg) of kit himself. Their preparations were meticulous and they were in confident mood when the helicopters ferried them to their base of operations aboard the County-class destroyer HMS Antrim.
As dawn broke on the morning of 21 April, a Wessex 3 equipped with radar that allowed for all-weather flying took off to reconnoitre the Fortuna Glacier landing zone. The weather was unpleasant, with wind-driven rain sweeping across the glacier, but the chopper, affectionately known as ‘Humphrey’, made it to the LZ where the Royal Navy pilot, Lieutenant Commander Ian Stanley, judged that conditions were still good enough for the mission to go ahead. He returned to the Antrim. At noon he took off again, with Hamilton and three of his men aboard. Two Wessex 5s each embarked six more of D Squadron and followed Stanley’s lead all the way to the glacier. As they made their approach, the weather conditions quickly deteriorated. To avoid being spotted by any Argentine patrols, their route to the glacier took them across Possession Bay and Antarctic Bay to the northwest of their target. Heavy cloud and torrential rain, which soon turned to icy snow as they crossed open water near Possession Bay, forced them to return to Antrim where Hamilton and his men waited impatiently for the weather to improve so that they could try again. Twice they attempted to reach the glacier and twice they were forced back by appalling weather and zero visibility. On their third approach, the choppers forced their way in and disgorged their passengers, all grateful to escape from the bucking, weaving machines and get their feet on solid ground. But their problems were only just beginning.
Mountain Troop dragged their kit out of the choppers, battered by winds in excess of 50mph (80km/h). The helicopters wobbled into the air and headed off back in the direction of Antarctic Bay, leaving the troop to fend for itself. They began to make their way across the glacier in a slow, painful trek, during which they frequently halted in maelstroms of fresh snow that swirled all around them. The disorientating effect of a ‘white-out’ leaves you unsteady on your feet. You can’t tell which way the ground beneath your feet is sloping. You can’t even tell which way is up or down. That brings on a dizzy feeling that, combined with the wind roaring in your ears and the mind-numbing cold, leaves you unable to move. Neither was there any escaping the wind by turning your face away from its icy blast. The wind direction was changing almost with every laboured footstep the men took, one moment blowing up the mountain, the next racing down its slopes. Every gust whipped up spindrift from the surface of the glacier, fresh snow and old snow charged with needle-sharp ice particles that raged against the outer fabric of their snow suits. The ice and snow clung to their equipment, penetrating the actions of their weapons and freezing them solid. Even if they could have seen an Argie to shoot at, their M16s and GPMGs were, for the moment, completely useless.
Their progress across the glacier was further slowed by the need to probe constantly for crevasses hidden beneath thin crusts of snow and ice. One large crevasse, rising through a high vertical slab of glacial ice, provided them with partial shelter from the storm. In five hours they had managed to cover only a few hundred yards and Hamilton decided that they would have to make camp for the night in the hope that the storm would lift. In attempting to pitch one of their two-man tents, the wind snapped the flexible tent poles and whisked the entire structure off into the night. Another tent was successfully erected and five men crowded into it, leaning against the walls to keep it upright. The others crawled into sleeping bags inside bivvy bags, and attempted to find shelter under the pulks. The next morning Hamilton knew that if he was not to start losing men to frostbite or exposure, he had to get them out of there. He reported by radio that they had been unable to move off the glacier and requested that the whole troop be evacuated by helicopter.
The same formation of three helicopters that had landed them on the glacier set out to pick them up, but was again driven back by the atrocious weather conditions. Eventually, when it seemed like the wind had died enough to let the rescue choppers in, ‘Humphrey’ led the two Wessex 5s up onto the glacier at around 1.30pm. The brief clear spell was not to last for long and they were still experiencing winds gusting at up to 70mph (113km/h), making controlling the aircraft near the ground especially hazardous. The three choppers were guided in by a SARBE radio and flares were lit to try to give the pilots some idea of wind direction, although the green smoke swirling around the LZ seemed to confirm only that the winds were as unpredictable as ever. Mountain Troop clambered aboard as soon as the choppers made their tentative landings, hauling most of their equipment with them. The flight then lifted off unsteadily, with ‘Humphrey’ taking the lead. After only a few seconds, one of the Wessex 5s was engulfed in a white-out squall and the pilot struggled to keep the chopper’s nose from ploughing into the ice. The aircraft drifted across the glacier, tipped the ice and crashed down on its side. Amazingly, no one was seriously injured. The men clambered from the wreckage and were picked up by the other two choppers. The pilots dumped fuel and Hamilton ordered his men to abandon their equipment to give the overloaded choppers the chance to get off the ice.
‘Humphrey’ led the way once more but, like some sickening replay of the previous take-off, the second Wessex 5 vanished in a squall of snow and ice, hit a ridge on the glacier and tipped over. Just as before, its passengers and crew escaped with no serious casualties, but they were forced to watch as Ian Stanley wheeled ‘Humphrey’ away from the crash site and headed back to the Antrim. The Wessex refuelled in record time and immediately set off back to the glacier, covering the 30-mile (48km) trip flat out. With zero visibility and howling gales on the mountain, however, Stanley was forced to turn back. Radio contact confirmed that the men remaining on the ice were in reasonable shape. They scavenged what they could from the crashed Wessex to protect themselves from the elements and settled in to wait. As soon as a break in the weather appeared, ‘Humphrey’ was back and this time Stanley was able to coax the Wessex down onto the glacier. The crash survivors crammed themselves in and, desperately overloaded with 17 on board (including Stanley and his navigator), ‘Humphrey’ struggled into the air. When they reached the Antrim the extra weight meant that the Wessex came in like a brick and crash-landed on the deck, but Ian Stanley and ‘Humphrey’ had brought all of John Hamilton’s troop back alive.
It was an inauspicious start to D Squadron’s Falklands War. They were bitterly disappointed at not having been able to follow through with the plan, but hugely relieved to be back on Antrim alive and, apart from a few cuts and bruises, in reasonably good shape. I’ve had quite a few hair-raising moments in helicopters and can well imagine the feelings of panic and sheer terror that gripped the men in the Wessex 5s when they realized that they were going to crash. Those who went through the nightmare twice deserved to have picked up more than a few grey hairs. On board Antrim, however, their feelings turned to relief and profound gratitude to the helicopter crews who had risked their lives to pluck them from the glacier. They all piled into the Antrim’s wardroom to buy drinks for their rescuers. Normally the wardroom
is strictly for officers only, but these were far from normal circumstances. D Squadron truly appreciated the courage shown by the helicopter crews. Ian Stanley was to be awarded the DSO for his actions that day.
For any normal person to have gone through such an ordeal, the sheer stress and utter exhaustion would have wiped them out for weeks. All John Hamilton and his men wanted to do was to get back into the fray and prove themselves in action. They got their chance just three days later when Mountain Troop found itself back on the Wessex heading to South Georgia. They were landed just a short march from the BAS station at Grytviken where, along with a mixed force of Royal Marines, they witnessed the surrender of the Argentine garrison.
After a lengthy period of planning and preparation, they were back in action again on the night of 14 May, when Hamilton led his troop on a daring raid that bore all the hallmarks of a classic SAS operation in the North African desert in World War II. The Argentines had established an air base at Pebble Island, an irregular strip of land in the north of West Falkland. A Harrier pilot had picked up radar signals from the base, which was previously believed only to be a facility that was home to a few engineers preparing an airfield to act as a back-up for the main air base at Port Stanley. D Squadron proposed a plan to raid the base, but it was considered too risky and the plan was turned down until firm intelligence from a reconnaissance team confirmed that it was home to 11 aircraft. The planes included a number of Pucaras, heavily armed ground-attack aircraft that posed an obvious threat to future operations.
In fact, Pebble Island had become a place of strategic significance to the Argentines. Before the war the whole island was entirely given over to farmland and was home to around two dozen people and several thousand sheep. Now the low-lying area of the island was in the process of becoming a vitally important air base. It was over 100 miles (161km) closer to the Argentine mainland than the runway at Port Stanley, making it an ideal staging post for the resupply of troops on West Falkland, especially when Port Stanley started to come under regular air attack. The raid was approved.
Three Sea Kings delivered 45 men of D Squadron from the task force’s flagship aircraft carrier HMS Hermes to an LZ that was less than 4 miles (6.4km) from the airstrip. There they were met by the Boat Troop reconnaissance team who led them in to the target. The group was heavily armed with 81mm mortars and Light Anti-Armour Weapon (LAW) rocket launchers. The LAW fires a 66mm High-Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT) round that can penetrate over 10in (25cm) of armour. A direct hit from one of those would be more than enough to destroy any aircraft on the ground. The men also carried their usual M16s and M203 grenade launchers and their GPMGs. They shared the loads of mortar bombs and demolition explosives. Once they were in position ready to launch their attack, one troop was to cover the two entrances to the airfield, one was to stay in reserve in case any surprise opposition materialized and a third, John Hamilton’s Mountain Troop, was to hit the airfield itself to destroy the aircraft.
As a prelude to the attack, the twin 4.5in guns of the destroyer HMS Glamorgan laid down a barrage on the Argentine defences, directed by a naval fire support officer. The mortar team began dropping rounds on the enemy as well and, with the suppressing fire from the attack team also persuading them to keep their heads down, there was little in the way of opposition from the Argentines. Hamilton had limited time to carry out his task of destroying the aircraft – Hermes and Glamorgan had to be far out to sea in safe water before daybreak. The SAS soldiers blasted the aircraft from a distance with the LAW rockets, grenades and their M16s before Hamilton led a team out among the parked planes to place demolition charges. Blazing fuel and ammunition dumps that had been hit during the naval barrage cast flickering pools of light out across the darkened airstrip, with smaller fires from already burning aircraft providing enough light briefly to illuminate the ghostly figures as they flitted from one plane to the next. One man was hit by shrapnel in the leg, another suffered concussion when a mine exploded among them, but with their job done Hamilton led all of his men off the airfield towards their RV. There was a brief skirmish with an Argentine squad as they exited the airfield, but they quickly drove them off with automatic fire and grenades, making their way back to the LZ without further incident. Later, they learned that the Argentine garrison defending the installation was three times as strong as the raiding force. This fact only served to heighten the elation. The raid had gone like a dream and, with only two relatively minor casualties, it had been an enormous success. They had wrecked six Pucaras, four training aircraft and a Skyvan transport. In his subsequent Military Cross (MC) citation, Hamilton was described as having:
led his troop on the successful and brilliantly executed raid on Pebble Island in the Falklands Islands when eleven enemy aircraft were destroyed on the ground. Acting quickly and decisively and with great courage and coolness, he personally supervised the destruction of seven of the aircraft.
After a shaky start on the glacier, Mountain Troop was now brimful of confidence, but their high spirits were not to last. Four days later, while preparing for a raid on the Argentine stronghold at Darwin, the Sea King was lost in the cross-decking incident. Many of those lost were Hamilton’s men. They had survived the helicopter crashes on the glacier and the Pebble Island raid only to perish in a freak accident. John Hamilton’s reaction was to take it out on the Argentines. He took the remainder of Mountain Troop ashore a day after the accident as part of a contingent of 50 or so whose job it was to approach the Darwin/Goose Green area from the east. There they were to attack the Argentine garrison to make the enemy think that a major landing was taking place from the Choiseul Sound. This was to cover the fact that the real landings on East Falkland were actually taking place 20 miles (32km) further north across the mountains at San Carlos Water.
Once again, the squadron was heavily armed, each man’s load of around 80lb (36kg) consisting mainly of ammunition, not only for their GPMGs and M16s, but also for their faithful mortars and M203s as well as rockets for their Milans. The Milan is a wired-guided anti-tank weapon that packs an awesome punch. During the 1991 Gulf War, SAS patrols used Milans mounted on their Pinkies (Land Rovers painted pink as desert camouflage), but for the attack on Darwin they were fired from portable tripod ‘firing posts’. Highly accurate even in the dark, when an infra-red night sight is used, the Milan’s missile can be guided onto its target. When the weapon is fired the missile is blasted from the launcher by an explosive charge whereupon the rocket motor ignites and it scorches towards the target. Small in-flight adjustments to its trajectory can be made simply by keeping the target in the launcher’s sights, as the missile is controlled electronically via a trailing command wire. It’s a fantastic piece of kit to have in your armoury, but it’s no lightweight. The Milan is usually manned by two men, the gunner who carries the firing post and the loader who lugs two missiles. Neither of them gets off lightly. The firing post weighs in at over 36lb (16kg) and the missiles are almost 15lb (7kg) each. It doesn’t take long to make up an 80lb (36kg) load when you are packing that sort of ordnance.
The weight they were carrying mattered a lot this time round. On the Pebble Island raid they had only a few miles to cover. To maintain the element of surprise on the Darwin job, their approach to their attack positions involved a gruelling 20-hour route march over rough terrain, in freezing conditions, in the dark. Nevertheless, with John Hamilton urging them on every step of the way they made it on schedule. The single 4.5in gun of the frigate HMS Ardent provided the backdrop to the attack this time round, and from the hillsides surrounding the buildings that housed the Argentine soldiers, D Squadron let rip. Their brief was to make as much noise and do as much damage as possible to make it seem like they were a much larger invasion force. Had the Argentines known that there were so few attackers, the 1,200 men in the garrison buildings might have been tempted to make more of a showing. Hamilton ordered his men to change position constantly and present a widely dispersed formation to make it look like they wer
e covering far more ground than they really were. They kept the Argies pinned down until dawn, then broke off the engagement to make their way north and link up with 2 Para, who had landed on the other side of the mountains without a hitch. Hamilton’s fortitude and unstinting resolve during the raid earned him a further mention on the MC citation:
Later, even though his troop had lost half of its strength in a helicopter crash the previous day, Captain Hamilton led the remainder of his men on a highly successful diversionary raid on Darwin in order to cover the main amphibious landings on East Falkland. That he was able to do this after such losses is an immense testimony to his resilience and leadership qualities.
Within a few days, John Hamilton’s mob were back in the thick of it again. As the main battle groups closed on Port Stanley by working their way round the coast in a kind of pincer movement, any Argentines on Mount Kent, between the two prongs of the pincer, could clearly have caused a major problem. An SAS reconnaissance patrol had been on Mount Kent since 1 May, living in freezing conditions to man their OP and running the constant risk of being spotted by the enemy as they reported on Argentine activity. It was decided that a larger force would be inserted to occupy the mountain, until reinforcements became available to take over the mountain in strength and use it as a base for the final push on Port Stanley. D Squadron was sent in and quickly established itself, mounting ambushes and becoming involved in regular firefights with Argentine special forces. John Hamilton made the hillsides Mountain Troop’s killing ground, lying in wait on the slopes to devastate any Argie patrol that dared venture up onto the high ground. Again, Hamilton’s citation says it all:
