Authors: Patrick Robinson
Between the carrier and the frigates, Admiral Holbrook placed three ships from the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, principally to add confusion to the enemy radar. The
Ark Royal
would be positioned astern of these, accompanied by her goalkeeper,
Westminster
, the no-nonsense missile frigate commanded by the austere and able Commander Tom Betts.
By some miracle, the Navy had completed the work on both the
Lancaster
and
Marlborough
in Portsmouth, and both of them arrived in one piece on Friday afternoon. They would operate around the coast to the north, specifically trying to get rid of any Argentine warships in the area and launch naval missile and shell attacks on any new Argentinian positions at that end of the island.
The most impressive arrival of all, however, was that of P and O’s huge ocean cruise liner the
Adelaide
, which had been ordered to abandon her next journey to the Caribbean and get to Portsmouth for instant conversion into a troop carrier. She had arrived on Thursday, from out of the eastern Atlantic, bearing 7,000 troops, her decks shored up to stand the enormous weight of men, equipment, and ordnance. Her galleys were now filled with rather more basic fare than the rich
gourmet de luxe
to which her cooks and steward were accustomed.
As colossally useful as she was, the
Adelaide
was a bit of a problem. She had totally inadequate damage-control and firefighting arrangements, and she was essentially, just as her sister ship the
Canberra
had been in 1982, in the words of Admiral Woodward, “a bloody great bonfire awaiting a light.”
Admiral Holbrook intended to unload her massive cargo of men
and materiel, hopefully into other ships, as soon as it was humanly possible to undertake such a formidable cross-decking operation.
Meanwhile, the warships were on their way to the Admiral’s designated position four hundred miles east of Burdwood, well out of Argentinian air range. The
Ark Royal
brought up the rear with her goalkeeper,
Westminster
. Both ships were largely dependent on the accuracy of the new improved Seawolf missile system carried by the frigate. Commander Betts described it as “amply competent to knock any Argentine fighter-bomber clean out of the sky, just so long as the chaps are paying proper attention.” That was Betts. No nonsense.
0300, SATURDAY, APRIL 16
RIO GRAND AIR BASE
TIERRA DEL FUEGO
Argentina’s Aviation Force Two, the Second Naval Air Wing, in concert with the Second Naval Attack Squadron, had virtually evacuated from Bahia Blanca, the sprawling air station that sits at the head of a deep bay 350 miles southwest of Buenos Aires, sharing its geographic prominence with Puerto Belgrano, the largest naval base in the country.
These two bastions of Argentina’s air and sea power are situated exactly where the South American coastline swings inward, and begins to narrow down, running south-southwest, 1,200 miles all the way to the great hook of its granite southerly point of Cape Horn.
The fighter aircraft from Bahia Blanca had been flown a thousand miles south to Rio Grande, the mainland base from which Argentina would conduct its defense of its newest territory, Islas Malvinas, which lay 440 miles to the east.
Admiral Oscar Moreno, Commander in Chief of Argentina’s naval fleet, a devoted, lifelong
Malvinista
, had been instrumental in planning the entire naval attack strategy. And now he had his substantial squadron of fourteen Super-Etendards, with their Exocet missiles, in position on the huge airfield.
It was curious, but in the last conflict against the British, the success of this missile had taken some people by surprise. Today Admiral
Moreno was not quite so sure. He knew the Royal Navy had spent years perfecting an antimissile shield against the Exocet.
And he was well aware the British ships carried an excellent chaff system and top-class decoys, all designed to seduce an incoming missile through a large cloud of iron filings, which the stupid missile recognized as bigger than the warship and therefore representing a more desirable target.
But the Argentine Navy had a very large Exocet inventory and they were obliged to use them, unless it became obvious they were a total waste of time against Admiral Holbrook’s ships.
Nonetheless, Oscar Moreno considered if you hurled enough Exocets at the Royal Navy, some may get through, and when one did, the damage would be colossal, as it had been in 1982.
With this in mind, he had flown four Super-Es into Mount Pleasant Airfield, hoping that an assault that began on land would initially confuse the British warships’ radars, as they scanned the horizon and ran into the customary difficulties all search radars encounter while looking across the water to a coastline.
Admiral Moreno understood these matters. And he understood he was facing the possible failure of his Exocet attack. Which was principally why he had removed the entire Third Naval Air Wing down the coast from their east coast base of Trelew, a distance of 650 miles, to the new operations center at Rio Grande.
With them the Third Wing brought their entire squadron of twelve Dagger fighter aircraft, an Israeli-built, cheap and cheerful, no-radar copy of the magnificent French Mirage jet. With a few minor adjustments, the Dagger was capable of carrying two thousand-pound iron bombs, slung underneath in place of the 1,300-liter centerline fuel tank.
To compensate for this shorter range, Admiral Moreno had stationed six of them on the airfield at Mount Pleasant. At H-hour he would send them in, flying low-level, against the British ships, which were, he knew, totally vulnerable to bomb attack. This time there were no high-altitude Harrier Combat Air Patrols, with their medium-range radars, always ready to hit and down the Daggers. The most the ships’ missiles could achieve would be to slam the aircraft
after
the bombs were away. And even that was pretty tenuous.
The remaining six would take off from Rio Grande, rendezvous with one of the Hercules tankers and refuel in midair, before pressing on with their bomb attacks on the British ships.
The Argentine Air Force was also working closely with Admiral Moreno, who, as the most fanatical of all the military
Malvinistas
, was rapidly acquiring Homeric stature in Buenos Aires.
At his request, the Air Force removed its Fifth Air Brigade, based at Villa Reynolds, down to Rio Grande. This included its formidable force of fighter-bombers—two squadrons of Lockheed Skyhawk A4Ms and one squadron of A4Ps, a total of more than thirty-six aircraft.
The bigger Sixth Air Brigade had left its inland home HQ southwest of Buenos Aires at Tandil air base, and moved south to Rio Gallegos, which lies to the north of Rio Grande on the coast, a 496-mile flight from the Malvinas. The Sixth Attack Group flew seven Mirage Interceptors, thirteen Mirage 111 E fighter/attack aircraft, and a squadron of twenty Daggers, all bombers. The Mirage jets would mostly be used for high-escort cover for the Israeli-built antishipping specialists—the Daggers, the ones with the thousand-pound iron bombs.
Admiral Moreno requested ten Skyhawks from the Fifth Brigade and six Daggers from the Sixth, to fly to Mount Pleasant in readiness for the attack at first light on the opening morning of the battle. For many weeks, of course, he had no idea when this would be.
But he did know on the previous afternoon, the fog around the islands and on the Burdwood Bank had cleared, and the Royal Navy ships were on the move, in the dark. He also guessed they would come out fighting at dawn. His task was to hit them first, hit them hard, hopefully with the ships silhouetted against the eastern horizon.
A few hours earlier, at midnight, he had been driven to the Roman Catholic church on Avenue San Martin, in the nearby town of Rio Grande. There, on his knees, he had prayed devoutly for the success of Captain Gregor Vanislav’s torpedo attack on the
Ark Royal
…
that we may restore once more these ancient Argentinian territories of the Islas Malvinas to Thy Holy Will
.
Presumably Admiral Moreno considered Great Britain’s grand brick-and-stone edifice of Christ Church Cathedral on Ross Road, Port Stanley, complete with its superb stained-glass windows, made no contribution whatsoever toward His Holy Will.
However, Moreno was now back from his prayer interlude, working as ever on the split-second timing required for his dawn assault on the Royal Navy. As he worked, massive refueling operations were going on, both at Rio Gallegos, on the airfield beyond his office in Rio Grande, and on Mount Pleasant Airfield itself.
The KC-130 Hercules refueling tankers were ready to take off from both the southern air bases and would rendezvous with the fighter-bombers 150 miles offshore. Both the Daggers and the Mirage fighters had new flight refueling receiving gear that they did not enjoy in 1982. That was the one shining fact to comfort Admiral Moreno: the extended range of his aircraft. There were no longer the endless concerns of the pilots running out of fuel before they made it home from the Malvinas.
By 0500 Admiral Moreno’s Navy and Air Force command HQ in Rio Grande had received an encrypted satellite signal from Moscow that the Royal Navy Task force was currently positioned 140 miles east of Port Stanley.
The signal made no mention of the landing operation taking place on the south coast of the Lafonia Peninsula, and contained no details of the deployment of the British fleet. That would all have to wait until dawn finally broke over the South Atlantic.
There was, however, one commanding officer operating on the Argentinian side of the equation who did know the whereabouts of HMS
Ark Royal.
Captain Gregor Vanislav’s sonar room had picked up the sounds of the British warships on the move as they came off the shallow waters of the Burdwood Bank, and by the small hours of that Saturday morning had closed in.
Viper K-157
now ran slowly, ten miles to the southeast of Admiral Holbrook’s Battle Group. The submarine was transmitting nothing active three hundred feet below the surface. Vanislav was just tracking the warships, listening to the pings of the sonar, waiting for the dawn, when they could come to periscope depth for a seven-second visual sighting.
At 0515, shortly before the first light began to illuminate the horizon, Admiral Moreno ordered the four Super-Etendards on the runway at Rio Grande to take off on their 440-mile race to the Malvinas. They would rendezvous with the tanker, refuel, and come hurtling
over East Falkland heading east at six hundred knots, flying below the radar of the British ships.
At 0614 they came streaking over Weddell Island, crossed Queen Charlotte Bay, and the narrowest part of West Falkland, before flying low over the Sound and straight across Lafonia. All four Argentinian pilots saw the three Royal Navy ships still anchored in Low Bay, and their own Air Force radar at Mount Pleasant Airfield picked the Etendards up as they flew over.
Making eleven miles every minute, the French-built guided-missile jets, flying in two pairs eight miles apart, rocketed out over the Atlantic, flying very low now, only fifty feet above the water, gaining the protection of the curvature of the earth from the line-of-sight sweep of the forward radars of the three British picket ships.
They held their speed and course for the next nine minutes, at which time the second pair swung farther left. The first two prepared to pop up to take a radar fix on whatever lay up ahead. None of the four Etendard pilots dared to turn on a radio, and the concentration required to stay that low without flying into the ocean was so intense they were each virtually alone.
And now, forty miles out from Admiral Holbrook’s picket ships, they climbed to 120 feet, leveled out, and hit the radar scans. Immediately both pilots saw two blips on the screens, and simultaneously they both reached down to the Exocet activate button.
Deep in the heart of Captain Rowdy Yates’s
Daring
, the ops room was on high alert. Everyone was wearing their antiflash masks, the Air Warfare Officers were murmuring into their headsets, the supervisors were pacing, all eyes were glued to the screens. They all knew dawn was breaking. They all knew an attack might be imminent.
It was 0632 when Able Seaman Price called the words that sent chills through the hearts of every experienced officer and Petty Officer in either ops room…young Price blew his whistle short and hard and snapped:
“Agave radar!”
Daring
’s AWO, Lt. Commander Harley, shot across the room and demanded,
“Confidence level?”
“Certain,”
snapped Price. “I have three sweeps, followed by a short lock-on—bearing two-eight-four. Search mode.”
Captain Yates and Harley swung around to stare at the big UAA 1
console, and they could both see the bearing line on Price’s screen correlated precisely with two Long-Range Early-Warning radar contacts forty miles out.
“Transmission ceased,”
reported Price.
Harley called into the Command Open Line,
“AWO to Officer of the Watch…go to action stations…!!”
And he switched to the UHF radio, announcing to all ships,
“Flash!
This is
Daring
…Agave bearing two-eight-four…correlates…”