Scram! (37 page)

From hurtling downwind some fifteen feet above the ground at over 100 miles per hour, I executed a perfect downwind fast stop of which I was extremely proud. Rolling the aircraft into a sharp turn and flaring the nose up to reduce speed, I brought the heavily laden Wessex gently down to a peach of a landing with the aircraft partly hidden in a small depression. That was definitely a steely commando landing.

The Gurkhas leapt out and took cover, spread around the aircraft. The whole manoeuvre felt thoroughly impressive, right up to the point when a Wessex flew past me and a familiar voice came over the radio: ‘Yankee Tango, are you OK?'

I recognised my boss Mike Booth.

‘Just waiting for the air raid to clear,' I replied.

He told me not to worry and to get on my way. So that was that. Thanks boss, I thought. The Gurkhas piled back in and, with my tail between my legs, we continued on our way.

The incident brought home to me two things. The first was how incredibly competent we were at handling the aircraft. Here I was as a baby pilot thrust straight from training into a war. I may have felt out of my depth on the ground, but I felt completely at home with a helicopter strapped to my back. And it really was a case of strapping it to me rather than strapping me into it. Coming in to land for example, I could sense exactly when the tail wheel fifty feet behind me was about to touch the ground. I could feel the Wessex as if it were a part of me. The training really had been brilliant.

The second was how uncertain war is. Our morning brief may have given us a reasonable idea where the good guys and the bad guys were located. But once airborne, we just had to focus on our task, ignoring distractions
like
air raid warnings, and hoping like mad that whoever was giving us instructions knew what they were doing. Most of the time, they did. But in the midst of the unknown, we just had to get on with the job calmly and professionally. We were good at it.

After a day of lifts between Goose Green and Bluff Cove settlement beyond Port Pleasant, I brought Yankee Tango back to Port San Carlos having completed our tasking. As I was approaching almost the exact spot from which we had lifted off seven hours earlier, a shout in my ear from Eke warned that we were about to land on a telegraph wire. A quick burst of power and we moved up and over. I was greatly relieved to get back safely.

With a little daylight still left, Eke and I decided we would wander the half-mile or so across the hill from the briefing tent to the temporary runway. An RAF Harrier had overshot the end of the runway and collapsed its wheels in the soggy turf. A green tarpaulin had been thrown over the cockpit to protect it from rainwater. We steered clear of the two-inch rocket pod nestling in the wet grass. Eke posed manfully for a photograph in front of the Harrier with his rifle. The light was fading as we trudged back into the settlement area and remembered we had been up since well before dawn. Food and sleep were now our priorities.

Because our squadron had been cobbled together from a variety of sources, our arrival brought in an incredible amount of flying experience. Mike Booth had spent a tour as a ‘trapper' with Naval Flying Standards Flight, carrying out annual squadron inspections. Although outstanding pilots, trappers were also social pariahs, revered and feared in equal measure. As squadron boss, he had rejoined the ranks of the ordinary. His relief at finally getting to the
action
was tempered by the nagging thought that we could easily have lifted the Welsh and Scots Guards, as well as the Gurkhas, if only we'd got to the Falklands a few days earlier. All those little delays had probably cost lives.

Booth's number two, Rob Flexman, had just returned from a two-year exchange with the French navy. His appointment fell hardest on Neil Anstis, the most experienced pilot on our squadron. Their occasional tiffs were well camouflaged from us Junior Joes. The charming Mike Spencer, the test pilot from Farnborough responsible for getting hold of the night vision goggles for the Sea Kings, had also joined us. Our combined Wessex squadron at Port San Carlos now had eight officers of lieutenant commander rank or equivalent. Six of them were pilots. All of this experience meant that there was a hierarchy to keep an eye on the junior pilots like me. Nine of us were sub-lieutenants in our early twenties. Some of the lieutenants were only a year or two older.

Now Flexman and Spencer took responsibility for running operations, matching up crews, and allocating roles and jobs. It took the pressure off Jack Lomas.

Sparky Harden was one of the sub-lieutenants, a feisty and popular junior pilot who had joined the Navy six weeks before me. For our first day in the Falklands we, the new arrivals, were paired with pilots who were older hands. Harden was paired with my colleague Jerry Spence. Despite Spence having completed nearly a full front-line tour as the more experienced pilot, Harden had already been in the Falklands for over two weeks. Like me, Spence's first mission was the Gurkha battalion lift from Goose Green to Bluff Cove. Altogether some six Wessex spent the day crossing to and fro between the two settlements.

Sparky Harden's Wessex was unmistakable. I thought my own flying had been pretty low and exciting at fifteen
feet
above the ground, but Harden was almost beneath me as he flew past at five feet. Whilst I was impressed at his skill and accuracy at flying so low, I was also thinking ‘Bloody idiot'. There was no scope for error. One tiny lapse in concentration, one misjudgement, and it would be curtains for him, his fellow pilot and aircrewman, his passengers, his payload and a vital helicopter resource. Even a hardened Royal Marine SBS captain riding in the back signalled to the aircrewman that he thought it might be a good idea to fly a fraction higher. After two trips, his co-pilot Jerry Spence could stand it no longer: ‘Sparky, take me back to Port San Carlos, will you mate. You don't need me.'

Three years later, Harden flew a
junglie
Sea King through some wires in Norway, cutting off the tail of the aircraft as he crash-landed into a snowy field. His reputation as a hooligan had followed him. His new boss warned that he would be court-martialled if he stepped out of line. Ironically, Jerry Spence had been appointed Provost Marshal.

‘Look at this Sparky.' Spence showed him the official letter. ‘I've got to take you by the ear and drag you in!'

Harden was thrown out of the Navy. Later that evening back at Port San Carlos, I asked Harden why he flew so low. ‘You remember during training Crabbers used to tell us what being a
junglie
was all about. “Dash and panache, Sparky,” he'd say. “You've got to have a bit of dash and panache.”'

On the morning that we were disembarking to Port San Carlos, Jack Lomas called Pete Manley over for a chat. He'd been asked by Colonel Mike Rose if a Wessex could park an AS12 air-to-surface missile on General Menendez's desk in Port Stanley. Intelligence suggested that his orders
group
met every morning around 8 a.m. in the Town Hall. ‘Can you do it, Pete?' asked Lomas.

‘Tell me more,' Manley replied.

Within an hour they were shutting down Yankee Hotel on the deck of special forces headquarters,
Sir Lancelot
. Descending deep into the interior of the landing ship, Lomas and Manley entered a darkened operations room. Six men stood leaning over a large map table. Rose welcomed the two pilots and introduced the outline mission and the latest intelligence. A roll of photographic paper displayed a panoramic view of Stanley, taken covertly from one of the hills to the west. Some of the houses, such as ‘Town Hall' or ‘Mr & Mrs …, ex-Navy', were marked with arrows. Manley immediately proposed that the best approach route for a missile attack would be from the north. Rose agreed, advising that there was nobody up there apart from ‘our guys'.

Manley then asked about the Argentine assets that would be brought to bear against them. The SAS artillery specialist described two main threats. The first was a couple of anti-aircraft Oerliken guns on the quayside near Government House. He wasn't sure which type they were. The absence of a dish suggested they weren't radar guided. Their effective range would be about 4,000 yards, although the shells would fly twice that distance. The second and more serious threat was the radar-guided 105mm howitzer guns currently pointing out to the east towards Mounts Longdon and Two Sisters. ‘If they're good,' he said, ‘they'll turn them round and get their first rounds down in about four minutes.'

Manley said he'd give it a go with his best missile aimer, Arthur Balls, who was particularly good at dusk and lowlight conditions. He'd need to check everything was working beforehand by firing a test missile at a rock
somewhere
out near Teal. ‘Absolutely,' said Rose. ‘Fire as many as you like.' He'd also need to check that Balls was happy to do it in case he thought it was all too gung-ho.

The following morning Balls was instructed to return to Port San Carlos for a briefing. He and Manley went for a quiet chat. Within an hour, they were sitting on the deck of
Fearless
, loading two live AS12 missiles onto the wing pylons, ready to head off to Teal. In the cabin were a weapons electrician and two more missiles.

Having unloaded at FOB Teal, Manley headed across the meandering inlet of Port Salvador until they came to a small island of grass and rock some seven miles to the north. Bob's Island was remote and uninhabited: perfect for a practice firing. Both missile firings went well and they returned to Teal to reload the replacements. To the three other Wessex crews operating out of Teal, including Oily Knight, Flipper Hughes and Pete Skinner, it was obvious something was afoot. Yankee Hotel had left the FOB with two missiles fitted and returned with none. ‘We're just practising,' Manley told them. It was not a very convincing explanation.

Even though rumours quickly circulated among the other Wessex crews back at Port San Carlos, all of us knew better than to probe. Manley and Balls, though very different characters, were equally well liked amongst the wider
junglie
community. In the war so far, Wessex had crashed and been sunk and attacked with missiles and mortars. We'd lost two Wessex engineers, but not a single pilot or aircrewman yet. Whatever they were up to, we just hoped like mad they'd come back alive.

That evening, in one of the Teal farm buildings that had become an operations room, Manley handed a piece of paper to Lomas. It was a letter to his wife in case of
the
worst. ‘Don't worry,' said Lomas. ‘When you come back, I'll give it back to you.' They had been given the go-ahead for an early morning strike.

Visibility was poor at first light on Friday 11 June. Yankee Hotel launched anyway into the mist, the noise attracting a great deal of attention around the settlement. Jack Lomas and Jerry Thomas found that their back-up Wessex – intended as search-and-rescue helicopter in case anything went wrong – wouldn't start. Lomas ran back to the ops room, quickly briefing Hughes and Skinner to take over the role in X-Ray Tango.

Yankee Hotel was by now heading due east at low level, along the coastline of Berkeley Sound and on towards Stanley through a gap in the hills. Visibility was still gloomy though improving a little. Balls lowered the M260 sight from the cockpit roof, like a periscope, and started to get it ready. The early morning mist had fogged up the lens. Because they were still well clear of any known troop movements, Manley put Yankee Hotel down on the ground so that Balls could climb halfway out of the cockpit and give the windscreen a wipe. It was hardly a high-tech solution and not especially good for the optics, but it sorted out the immediate problem.

As they lifted off again, Manley called up the SAS observers hidden somewhere on the hillside of Beagle Ridge and Mount Low, five miles to the north of Stanley. ‘This is Yankee Hotel approaching IP [Initial Point], any movements your location?'

‘It looks quiet, although a Huey has been operating in the area,' came the reply. ‘Do you have means to counter?' asked Manley.

‘Yup.'

The special forces man's reply confirmed that he had
a
Stinger missile available just in case. It sounded good to Manley. Stinger had already knocked down a Pucara on the first day of the landings.

‘Keep an eye on us?' asked Manley.

‘Yup. I can't see you but I can hear you,' came the reply.

By now Manley and Balls were approaching what seemed a good range to fire at their target. Manley eased the big Wessex helicopter up into a high hover 200 feet above the grassland, using the ridgeline behind them as a camouflage and a backdrop. He could see the lights of Stanley twinkling in the gloom just beyond Wireless Ridge as they edged slowly forward.

‘Any good yet?'

‘No, no,' replied Balls.

‘We'll keep going.'

Seconds later, Balls reported that he could now make out the target. ‘Is it good enough?' asked Manley.

‘Yes.'

‘OK, in your own time, select missile one and let's go for it.'

Immune to the sounds of the Wessex, it seemed to Manley that they were suspended in a bleak soupy bowl, quiet as a grave. Not for long. The AS12 missile made one hell of a racket as it flew off the port launcher, trailing sparks behind it like a firecracker. There was nothing for Manley to do but hold his hover and count off the seconds. With very small movements on the controller, Balls adjusted the flight path of the missile along the thin wire now dangling invisibly between launcher and AS12. At fifteen seconds, Balls switched to ten-times magnification on the sight slightly earlier than expected. Switching too soon risked losing sight of the orange dot altogether.

‘… 20, 21, 22, 23 …' Manley called out.

‘Impact,' said Balls calmly.

‘Christ, we're too far in,' said Manley.

To stay out of range of the Oerlikons, he had planned that they fire at 7,000 yards, which would take thirty-two seconds. The early impact suggested they were nearer 4,000 yards. ‘OK, cut the wires, select second missile and go for the alternative target.'