Scram! (17 page)

* * *

By the evening of Wednesday 19 May, signals intelligence and an SBS patrol on the ground were reporting the presence of around forty Argentine commandos in the settlement of Port San Carlos and a further twenty commandos manning an observation post on nearby Fanning Head. Two other land-based units had threatened the intended amphibious assault at San Carlos. The airfield at Pebble Island across Falkland Sound to the west had now been effectively disabled by the SAS raid a few days earlier. Only the larger group of Argentine forces at Goose Green and Darwin to the south still remained. At dusk on Thursday 20 May, the four night-flying Sea Kings flew in a detachment from D Squadron SAS, led by mission commander Cedric Delves. They were to prevent the Argentine forces from heading north into the landing area at San Carlos.

It was also imperative that the local Argentine forces at Port San Carlos and Fanning Head were immobilised before they had a chance to call on these southern units for reinforcements. HMS
Antrim
, now returned from its success in South Georgia, was given the job of neutralising this threat. The force comprised
Antrim
's own radar-equipped Wessex helicopter to act once again as pathfinder, an embarked
junglie
Wessex that would insert 3 Special Boat Service Royal Marines onto Fanning Head, and naval gunfire support from
Antrim
's powerful 4.5-inch gun.

Mike Crabtree, Hector Heathcote and Corporal Kev Gleeson RM had spent much of the day in Wessex Yankee Charlie, transferring troops between
Tidepool
and
Antrim
. They had then spent a chunk of a very dark night transferring stores from ship to ship. Lifting loads high above
Antrim
's deck, with the ship completely blacked out, required exceptional skill from Crabtree. Flying without any lighting involved relying almost entirely on peripheral
vision
– in the absence of an effective supply of carrots or, best of all, the night vision goggles that had proved so vital to their Sea King colleagues. A very relieved Crabtree completed the transfer and shut down, his Wessex squeezed onto
Antrim
's deck behind the other Wessex.

The following day, Lieutenant Colonel Mike Rose, commanding officer of 22 SAS regiment, gave a briefing to the two Wessex crews on his plan to secure Fanning Head. On completion Rose diffused some of the tension in the air by buying all of the aircrew half a pint of beer each from
Antrim
's wardroom bar; perhaps Dutch courage; perhaps final farewell. The aircrew thought it churlish to refuse such an offer and chose to disregard the normal rule about not drinking before flying. This was not going to be a normal flight.

It was already dark as the two pilots clambered up the outside of their Wessex and into the cockpit. Armed with a thermal-image camera fitted in the doorway of the rear cabin, the plan was for the Wessex to recce the Fanning Head area, locate the Argentine observation post, return to
Antrim
and begin the insertion of SBS troops. As soon as Yankee Charlie had lifted off from the deck,
Antrim
's own Wessex was ranged on the now vacant landing spot and started up.

Once airborne, Chris Parry in the back of the
Antrim
Wessex would then use his radar to direct the troop-carrying Wessex towards the coast. The problem for Parry was that, just as he found in South Georgia, his radar was designed more for detecting submarines than for detecting land. Yankee Charlie was soon lost in the ground clutter on his radar screen. Crabtree and Heathcote quickly realised that the unexpectedly dark and solid area of sky looming in front of them was in fact the headland of Fanning Head. Unable to rely on radar control, the Yankee
Charlie
crew discretely chose to ignore the directions from Parry. They would have to fly visually. While Mike Crabtree flew, Hector Heathcote squinted over his map using a blacked-up right-angle torch with only tiny pinholes of light to keep light levels low. Outside, the only visual cue was the barely noticeable contrast between the extremely dark, which was land, the slightly less dark, which was sea, and the least dark but still very dark, which was sky. It was a mission that would never have even been attempted in peacetime.

Approaching Fanning Head from the north, Crabtree's Wessex crossed the coast, climbing up over the headland and flying on down towards the little settlement of Port San Carlos. Throughout the flight, an Intelligence Corps sergeant peered through the thermal-image camera in the cabin looking for enemy activity. It was not especially reassuring to the aircrew to hear his voice exclaiming excitedly: ‘Look at all those Argies down there. There's hundreds.' It fairly quickly became obvious that many of these ‘hundreds' were in fact sheep.

The aircraft flew on south and passed close to Port San Carlos settlement itself where a few lights were showing. Knowing from the brief that there were very definitely enemy troops here, Hector Heathcote thought to himself: ‘This is a very bad idea. I really don't want to be over the top of here at night in a Wessex with enemy troops on the ground.' Suddenly the sergeant in the back was shouting about how many troops he could see. While he was only trying to do his job, he was beginning to irritate the crew: ‘This bloke does go on.'

Recce complete, it was time to return to
Antrim
, make a report, and start the business of clearing out the enemy.

Back on
Antrim
, the darkened flight deck seemed relatively well lit in contrast to the pitch-black headland.
Yankee
Charlie refuelled and loaded the first ‘stick' of eight SBS troops. The first attempt to launch nearly ended in disaster. After removing the nylon strops that restrained the Wessex on deck, Crabtree pulled in power to lift off. Normal maximum power in the Wessex 5 is 3,200 pounds of rotor head torque, or ‘twisting moment'. Brief use of 3,500 pounds of torque was cleared for emergency only. As the Wessex became light on its wheels with normal full power applied, the flight deck dropped away in the swell of the sea, in effect kicking the aircraft in to a low hover. Crabtree was forced to pull and sustain 3,500 pounds of power in order to maintain any kind of flight. Just as it seemed certain that the aircraft would crash down over the edge of the flight deck, the deck came back up again to meet the aircraft.

Unbelievably, the tail wheel of the overloaded Wessex caught on a spotlight one foot behind the flight deck, allowing the main wheels to land back on normally. The flight-deck crew quickly reattached the nylon strops to prevent the aircraft sliding off into the sea.

The brief to the SBS had been clear. They absolutely must not exceed a total weight of 350 pounds per man. In their enthusiasm to go into battle heavily armed with extra weapons and ammunition, they had put everybody's lives at risk by loading up to around 450 pounds per man. Two of the troops were quickly offloaded and the Wessex launched successfully.

In the cockpit, Heathcote now had a single-lens night sight from the SBS team. It would be considerably less effective than the binocular goggles used by the Sea Kings. But it gave the crew a realistic chance of making a lights-off landing to a totally dark drop zone half a mile to the east of the Argentine position. Talking Crabtree down the approach to the landing site, Heathcote felt like Bernie
the
Bolt – ‘
Left a bit, right a bit
.' With the altimeter showing thirty feet above ground, the lack of distance information from the night sight rendered Heathcote's commentary less and less useful. Gleeson was hanging out of the cabin door trying to call out distance. But with the landing site completely dark, it was no good. Crabtree started to lose any kind of reference and, careering across the ground, reverted to instrument flying and maximum power just in time to pull away without crashing.

Junglies
are well known for their creative and inventive ability to deal with rapidly changing circumstances. Unusually on this occasion there was a ready-prepared ‘Plan B' that did not have to be made up on the spot.
Antrim
's Wessex 3 had already loaded with three SBS troops on board. Pilot Ian Stanley, rescuer of the debacle on Fortuna Glacier, would make an instrument approach, taking advantage of his flight control system and radalt height hold. All was going well with his approach when, also some thirty feet above the ground, Stanley's aircraft became unstable. The three-foot-high lumps of tussock grass growing on the headland were confusing the aircraft autopilot. Stanley switched on his landing lights in the nick of time. It was fortunate that he did, as one of the wheels was perched over a dip. The aircraft would have rolled over on landing.

Crabtree and Heathcote were now circling nearby, their eyes well adjusted to the blackness of the night. To them the sudden dazzling and lavish display of floodlighting that lit up Fanning Head, turning a very black night into a bright white day, could not have failed to alert the Argentines. The lights were on for just a few seconds to enable a safe landing. But those seconds seemed like an eternity.

The second part of ‘Plan B' was for Crabtree's Wessex
to
make an approach to the troops on the ground using their torches to form a ‘T' pattern. This was a well-established method of bringing troop-carrying
junglie
helicopters safely into an unlit landing site at night. Using the perspective of the T, the pilot could judge the approach angle and speed correctly. The standard T pattern requires five men holding torches. The light from the torches is just enough to enable a safe hover and landing. In this case, however, there were only three SBS troops on the ground. Nonetheless Crabtree was able to bring his aircraft in successfully to the half-T and increase the number of troops on the ground to nine. Five further round trips raised the SBS force to thirty-five troops. The aircrew were much amused by the sight of a large battery-powered loudspeaker being loaded into the cabin on one trip, presumably to warn, rather than taunt, the enemy.

With their four-and-a-quarter-hour mission complete, a relieved Wessex crew returned to
Antrim
for the night, unaware that they had been under almost continuous machine-gun fire from an Argentine observation post throughout each approach and insertion. They could not see the bullets fired directly at them because the red tracers are at the rear of each bullet. The watching Wessex 3 crew had discussed whether or not to say anything. From a distance, they could see the tracer all too clearly. They decided to keep quiet. They thought it might put the
junglies
off.

Attempts by the SBS to persuade the Argentine observation post to surrender were only partly successful. With time pressing on before H-Hour, when the assault would begin, they radioed
Antrim
to engage with their 4.5-inch guns. The dramatic airburst shells exploding high over the Argentine position and lighting up the sky above them caused the commandos to retreat. Although some withdrew
in
the direction of their colleagues at Port San Carlos, others disappeared into the hills to live off the land for the next two weeks. Nicknamed the ‘Fanning Head mob', the remaining dishevelled Argentine troops were eventually picked up by a British patrol in the second week of June.

Although the Argentine commandos at Port San Carlos had by now alerted their colleagues elsewhere, the opportunity to reinforce the position with troops from Goose Green was lost. The capability to reinforce by air was further diminished by an air strike on an Argentine forward operating base, just to the north of Mount Kent. Guided in by directions from an SAS patrol on the ground, two RAF ground-attack Harriers from
Hermes
successfully destroyed two Argentine Chinook and Puma helicopters on the ground.

Soon after midnight, the British amphibious group arrived in Falkland Sound. With HMS
Plymouth
stationed at the mouth of San Carlos Water, the big troop-carrying ships dropped their anchors just west of Fanning Head. The huge docks at the stern of the twin assault ships
Fearless
and
Intrepid
were flooded and opened up to allow their eight landing craft to exit. The landing craft from
Fearless
were loaded with 40 Commando Royal Marines, headed for San Carlos settlement, designated ‘blue beach'. The craft from
Intrepid
shuttled across to the cruise ship MV
Norland
where the soldiers of 2 Para did their best to scramble into the landing craft alongside, which were rising and falling in the ten-foot swell.

Although slightly later than scheduled, the combined landing force now set off like a long line of ducks for blue beach. As the landing craft approached the shore, they moved into line abreast for the assault. Unable to beach fully because of rocks, the troops were ordered to jump up to their waists into the freezing water and wade
ashore
. Mercifully, the landing was unopposed: 40 Commando dug in around San Carlos to secure the landing zone while 2 Para marched in another long line up Sussex Mountains to secure the southern perimeter of hills overlooking San Carlos Water.

Meanwhile, the landing craft returned to the ships to collect 45 Commando from RFA
Stromness
and land them at ‘red beach', the Ajax Bay refrigeration plant immediately across the western bay from San Carlos settlement. In turn, 3 Para were collected from
Intrepid
and taken to ‘green beach', Port San Carlos settlement, in the eastern bay. Seeing the troops land, the Argentine commando force withdrew into the hills to the east.

As dawn broke, Lieutenant Ray Harper was at the controls of his Sea King flying in ammunition and equipment for the Paras. His escort was a smaller Gazelle helicopter fitted with a door-mounted machine gun. The landing site wasn't obvious and both aircraft flew over the top. Realising their mistake they turned to withdraw at low level. The Paras on the ground had been unable to warn the approaching aircraft about the retreating Argentine commandos. The Gazelle was hit by the ground fire. It dropped quickly down and ditched into the water just off the beach. The crewman, Sergeant Ed Candlish, dragged the wounded pilot from the wreck and waded ashore. To the horror of the watching Paras, Argentine troops continued to fire at the aircrew in the water in spite of an apparent order to cease fire. The pilot, Sergeant Andrew Evans RM, died shortly afterwards. Minutes later a second Gazelle appeared and was also shot down, this time crashing upside down into the ground.