Scram! (13 page)

By the early hours of 2 May, the naval gunfire support group of ships led by
Glamorgan
withdrew from the coastline and Yankee Tango returned to
Resource
the following day.

Sunday 2 May was a momentous day. During the night a reconnaissance flight by a Sea Harrier had detected a group of surface targets that included the Argentine aircraft carrier ARA
Veinticinco de Mayo
, named after Argentina's National Day, possibly as close as 150 miles to the west of the British fleet. All ships of the British carrier group
went
to action stations anticipating an attack from the carrier-borne A-4 Skyhawk jets. The attack failed to materialise because a radar problem with the Argentine carrier's Tracker aircraft meant the exact location of the British fleet was not known.

The second Argentine naval task group did not fare so well. Later that day the British nuclear-powered submarine HMS
Conqueror
attacked and sank the cruiser ARA
General Belgrano
using two Mark 8 torpedoes.
Belgrano
, formerly the USS
Phoenix
, was an old US Navy light cruiser that had been sold to the Argentine navy in 1951. As the
Phoenix
, the ship had survived the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in 1941. She now became the only ship to have been sunk by a nuclear submarine, and only the second to have been sunk at all since the Second World War.

The immediate consequences were the death in the icy South Atlantic waters of 323 Argentine seaman and the permanent withdrawal of the Argentine navy, including the
Veinticinco de Mayo
. The action was considered politically controversial because the
Belgrano
was outside the 200-mile Total Exclusion Zone and heading away from the Falklands. Militarily, it was a devastating blow. At a stroke the naval threat to the British fleet was removed. While the politicians argued over the rights and wrongs, the way was now clear for the British amphibious group to set sail from Ascension a few days later.

With the Argentine navy out of the way, the main threat to the British fleet was from the air. Two days later, on Tuesday 4 May, two Argentine Super Etendard jets headed inbound from the mainland towards the British fleet at low level. The raid was detected by one of the ships as a fast-moving pop-up target. The 801 Squadron Sea Harrier on Combat Air Patrol (CAP) was immediately directed
towards
the target. The Sea Harrier's Blue Fox radar had already proved its worth, detecting the Argentine fleet at night a few days earlier. Its deterrence effect alone was also powerful. Several Mirage raids had been seen to turn away when faced with an encounter with the ‘black death'. Those that had not turned away had not fared well. Inexplicably the Sea Harrier was ordered off-station and given another job. Whether through bad luck or bad judgment, it left a hole in the air defences. The Argentine jets continued their run unopposed and released their load of two Exocet sea-skimming missiles with deadly effect.

It was mid-morning. The Type-42 destroyer HMS
Sheffield
was out to the south-west of the fleet on ‘picket duty': the awful responsibility of being second line of defence after the Sea Harriers but the first target for the enemy. There was a mild swell and good visibility. One missile flew harmlessly past the frigates
Yarmouth
and
Alacrity
and dropped into the sea. The other slammed into the side of HMS
Sheffield
with what its captain Sam Salt described as a ‘short, sharp, unimpressive bang'.

As the day's search-and-rescue helicopter, Jack Lomas and Steve MacNaughton scrambled Yankee Hotel from
Resource
as soon as news of the strike came through. By the time Lomas brought the Wessex to the hover just short of
Sheffield
, other ships and aircraft had already reached the scene. It was one that was hard to digest. Lomas and MacNaughton just couldn't believe what they were seeing; they couldn't take it in.

Sheffield
had begun to smoke behind her forward circular radome (radar dome) but the smoke hadn't yet started billowing. The dark entry hole made by the Exocet missile was visible on her starboard side just above the water line. Men in blue number eight uniforms and anti-flash gear – the white cotton balaclavas and gloves that
protect
head and hands against flash burns – were standing on the foc'sle. A body lay on the deck. The Type-21 frigate HMS
Arrow
was already alongside transferring survivors and spraying water across
Sheffield
in an attempt to cool the fire.
Arrow
's Lynx and an anti-submarine Sea King were flying burned and bedraggled survivors across to the carrier
Hermes
. Amazingly,
Sheffield
's Lynx survived the attack and recovered to
Hermes
later that day. The frigate
Yarmouth
was firing off mortars, spooked by the possibility of a submarine threat; there had been claimed sightings of torpedo tracks in the water. Everybody was shocked and nervous, but calm.

As the Wessex hovered over
Arrow
's foc'sle, MacNaughton winched several walking wounded with blackened faces on board and the Wessex headed off for
Hermes
. Altogether twenty-one men died from the missile strike. Many of those burned had injuries made worse by the polyester uniforms which melted into their skin. It was a bad day for the Royal Navy.

To compound the day's tragedy, two hours after the Exocet strike on
Sheffield
news came that a Sea Harrier flown by Lieutenant Nick Taylor had been shot down during a second bombing raid on the airstrip at Goose Green. His death was a terrible blow to the Yeovilton-based aircrew who knew him.

The day after the attack, Lomas flew Yankee Hotel back to the stricken
Sheffield
several times to take firefighters on board to investigate the extent of the damage, to remove recoverable parts, and to see if the hull could be salvaged. The paint on the ship's hull had blistered more or less everywhere and the deck was still steaming. It was with a curious fascination that the crew circled the ship to look at the gaping entrance hole. It should have been macabre
but
it wasn't. Subsequently the burning hulk of
Sheffield
was left to drift eerily for several days. During an attempt to tow the ship to South Georgia, the sea came up and the
Sheffield
sank.

RFA
Fort Austin
and her Wessex flight arrived on the scene from Ascension. Nick Foster's first task in Yankee Delta was to collect
Sheffield
survivors from the frigate
Arrow
and take them over to
Resource
. The Wessex was too big to land on
Arrow
's deck so he maintained a low hover. The crewman chucked a net onto the deck with instructions for the survivors to put in any spare kit before being winched on board.

Each
Sheffield
survivor had been issued with a blue number eight shirt and trousers, lifejacket, a pair of voluminous Y-fronts, white plimsolls and, of all things, a string vest. To Foster, in a strange preview of things to come, the survivors looked incongruous in their white daps. The string vests soon became carrier bags for whatever extra they managed to beg, borrow or steal. For whatever reason, the men had not been issued with decent clothing and Foster thought how demeaning it was for them. The helicopter's net remained unfilled as the dishevelled survivors pathetically clung on to all that they owned. With their glassy stares and sullen looks they appeared to have lost the fire in their bellies. ‘So that's what happens when you've been sunk,' thought Foster with a surge of sympathy.

Around half of the survivors from
Sheffield
were temporarily housed in
Resource
while waiting to be repatriated via Ascension. The ship's master, Captain Seymour, wisely told the aircrew: ‘Take them into the bar, give them a few drinks and get them to talk about it. It's the best thing you can do.' The four pilots did exactly that. It proved an extremely emotional time. One young medic told of how he felt he had let the ship's crew down because
too
many people had died. He was distraught. Two of the pilots took him back to his cabin to put him to bed, sat down and stroked his head like a child to try to get him to sleep. It was the only way to cope with such trauma.

For many and perhaps most of those in the British task force, whether in the carrier group in the South Atlantic, in the amphibious group about to depart from Ascension, or still in the UK as I was,
Sheffield
was the turning point. For the Argentines, much the same could be said about
Belgrano
. These were deeply shocking events. There was a general hardening of resolve on both sides. It was the time when we realised that this was for real. We were actually going to go into battle. The land war would be fought.

As the world looked on horrified at the escalation of conflict between two former friends over a scrap of land in the middle of nowhere, it was clear that too much blood had now been spilt to step back. Our two nations were at war.

Chapter 6

Preparing to land: 7–19 May 1982

THE GLOVES WERE
off and there would be no pulling back. With the Argentine navy no longer a threat, the British amphibious group and its embarked troops could now set off into the South Atlantic. The problem was that most of the troop-carrying helicopters needed to support them were in the North Atlantic or back in the UK
.

All remaining Wessex and Sea King aircrew were now formed into new squadrons and promptly despatched to the Falklands. At last I would be on my way. By mid-May, some forty-six Wessex, twenty-four troop-carrying Sea Kings, and four heavy-lift RAF Chinooks were making their way to the South Atlantic
.

By mid-April, commando helicopter support available to the commanders planning the amphibious assault was pretty modest by any standards. The main lift capability rested with the dozen
junglie
Sea Kings from 846 Squadron, which were en route to Ascension Island on board
Hermes
and
Fearless
. A further six Wessex 5s from 845 Squadron
were
on board the RFAs
Resource, Fort Austin
and
Tidespring
. Already at Ascension were two more Wessex 5s, one
junglie
Sea King and one RAF search-and-rescue Sea King, making a grand total of just twenty-four troop-carrying helicopters.

On board
Fearless
, Tim Stanning and his fellow taskers were more concerned at the lack of available deck space for the forthcoming amphibious landings. Even at this early stage of planning, it was the relatively small number of ships involved in the landing that would determine the tasking rather than any shortage of helicopters. The early assumption was that most troops would disembark by landing craft while most ammunition, equipment and supplies would be load-lifted ashore in Sea King-sized loads. Once the troops were ashore, however, a great deal more helicopter lift would be needed in support of the subsequent land campaign.

Meanwhile, the last of the 845 Squadron personnel not in Northern Ireland were despatched by Lieutenant Commander Mike Booth to embark on the reprieved HMS
Intrepid
off Portland. On Tuesday 20 April, Lieutenant Mike ‘Crabbers' Crabtree and Hector Heathcote flew the first of the two Wessex out to the ageing assault ship. Heathcote had come back from Aldergrove on the same flight as Mike Tidd. Like Tidd, he had also managed to conceal from Heathrow security the fact that he had a loaded 9mm Browning pistol inside his jacket.

Intrepid
was an old friend to many Wessex aircrew, whether through squadron detachments over the years, or in its role as Dartmouth Training Ship for young officers. Hector Heathcote and I had joined the Navy together on the same day in October 1979. Our first experience of life at sea came a few months later on board
Intrepid
,
sailing
from Taormina in Sicily up to Trieste in the north-east corner of Italy, and then back around to Livorno on the west coast. On a day trip to Florence our group of twenty aspiring helicopter pilots pretended to be terribly cultured. Of course we were really only interested in drinking lots of Italian beer.

The young officer's training programme was meant to build character by giving us a taste of life at the bottom. The staff laughed at our expense as we were sent off to find the ship's billiard-room keys. (Think about it.) The ship's company enjoyed seeing the young midshipmen given shitty little jobs, such as cleaning out boxes of rotten courgettes in the ship's galley. It was the Navy's idea of a joke. But because we knew it only lasted a few weeks, we loved it. We especially loved scrubbing down the flight deck because we could gaze longingly at the ship's detachment of Wessex 5s and dream of flying them ourselves one day.

Flickering thoughts of his time on
Intrepid
two years earlier barely interrupted Heathcote's concentration as he brought the Wessex into a hover alongside the huge flight deck, as they joined the assault ship for what was called a ‘work-up'. The point of these sea trials was to iron out some of the inevitable teething problems that arise when a ship tries to operate aircraft after a long break. Procedures get forgotten. Skills become rusty. A typical example might involve a ship-controlled approach where the helicopter is given instructions on how to approach the ship in poor weather conditions by using the ship's radar. Telling the pilot that he has still one quarter of a mile to run as the helicopter speeds past the flight deck is not good. Either the radar picture is not set up properly or the helicopter controller is not on the ball.

The two Wessex re-embarked for the journey to
Ascension
on Monday 26 April. Yankee Charlie was flown by Crabtree and Heathcote, and Yankee Whiskey by Lieutenant Mark Evans RM and Sub-Lieutenant Sparky Harden. Evans was known to all as ‘Jayfer' (Joke Flight Royal), from his time as the only Royal Marine on Nick Foster's flight, which was affectionately nicknamed ‘Joke Flight' by the squadron senior pilot. Behind his disarmingly gentle and joking manner was an exceptionally capable and professional pilot. One of Sparky's claims to fame was an enduring popularity that allowed him to get away with a casual disregard for the status of his course mate, HRH Prince Andrew, now flying an anti-submarine Sea King from the carrier HMS
Invincible
. Harden coined the nickname ‘H' for the Prince, treating him in exactly the same offhand manner that he treated the rest of us. We loved it. His other claim to fame was a reputation for enthusiastic low flying, a habit that led two years later to a subsequent crash, court martial and dismissal from the Navy.