Scram! (26 page)

For aircraft caught out on the Ajax Bay side of San Carlos Bay, taking shelter from air raids was much less of a problem. With both 2 Para and 45 Commando occupying the hills to the south and west, aircraft could hide as far into the hills as they liked. It was where Pete Manley and Ric Fox had holed out during the many air raids of the first few days.

With so few pilots and aircraft in the San Carlos area, single pilot operations made sense. This freed up Jack Lomas and Oily Knight to take turns running operations on the ground. It kept a few fresh pilots in reserve. And it added some ten per cent to the available payload, whether in extra fuel or extra stores. The flying was straightforward enough, but still exciting. Operating alone showed the incredible responsibility and trust placed in the skill and capability of twenty-one-year-olds, including junior pilots Heathcote, Harden, Judd and Morton, who in some cases were just months out of training.

Now late in the afternoon of Thursday 27 May, Hector Heathcote sat alone at the controls of Yankee Charlie. The Wessex was parked facing north, rotors running, on a concrete hardstanding next to the newly converted field hospital, the red and green life machine. Behind the hospital and up the side of the hill at Ajax Bay was the Brigade Maintenance Area, destination for much of the vast amount of equipment and ammunition offloaded from the ships in San Carlos Water. Surrounding the helicopter were eight-foot-high piles of 105mm gun ammunition. In the cabin of the Wessex, Heathcote's Royal Marine aircrewman Kev Gleeson was poised to unload the pile of eighty empty fuel jerrycans they had just brought down from the Rapier sites on top of the hill. They were waiting for groundcrew to show them which full replacements they should be taking.

Days of Argentine air raids had made them less fearful of the warnings. They were still very much alert but blasé. Hearing the transmission ‘Air raid warning red, SCRAM!', they thought it best to stay where they were.

Over his right shoulder, Heathcote saw the first pair of Skyhawks swoop low out of the Sussex Mountains and into the bay area. But instead of heading for the ships, this time their target was the headquarters area at San Carlos on the far side. He watched at least two explosions bloom amongst the settlement houses. ‘I think we'd better get out of here,' he said to Gleeson, both of them suddenly and acutely aware that they were sitting amidst piles of live ammunition.

Gleeson called ‘clear' and they lifted off, dropping the aircraft nose steeply in order to accelerate away. Heathcote immediately rolled the Wessex round to the left, staying just twenty feet above the hillside and heading back down to the south. Pulling the nose of the Wessex back into a high flare to kill his speed, he brought the big helicopter gently down onto a flat area of grass. They were now 400 yards from the Brigade Maintenance Area facing downhill into the bay.

As they landed, a second pair of Skyhawks sped past from right to left in front of them. Heathcote had a clear view of the bombs dropping below the jets and slamming into exactly the piece of hardstanding they had been on thirty seconds earlier. A massive explosion filled the air as one of the bombs set off a pile of the artillery shells. Two other bombs dropped into the field hospital, mercifully without exploding, where they were to remain for the duration of the war.

For Heathcote and Gleeson, it was their third miraculous escape. Together with Mike Crabtree, they had survived the streams of tracer fire on the night of the
landings
and then the following day being strafed by a Mirage down both sides of the aircraft. Now, one week later, they were just seconds away from being bombed by Skyhawks. Had the Skyhawk pairs attacked in different order, Heathcote and Gleeson would have been killed.

The Skyhawk attack on the ground forces at San Carlos blue beach and Ajax Bay red beach proved to be the only Argentine air strike of Thursday 27 May. One of the four Skyhawks was sufficiently crippled by gunfire from the assault ships
Fearless
and
Intrepid
that the pilot ejected soon after crossing Falkland Sound. Uninjured, he spent four days on the run in West Falkland before finding Argentine forces. Seven British soldiers were killed in the Skyhawk attack, one Royal Engineer on the San Carlos side of the bay and six Royal Marines at Ajax Bay. The explosions continued on through into the night as the pallets of shells destined for 2 Para burned.

Pete Manley and his crew, who had been based at Ajax Bay for the previous few days, were fortunate not to have been caught up in the attack. Shortly before the strike, they had been despatched with their Wessex, Yankee Sierra, to insert a MAOT radio team into Camilla Creek House. On the return journey, they collected the captured Argentine reconnaissance prisoners and returned them to brigade headquarters back in San Carlos. Crossing over the Sussex Mountains and to within four miles of the Argentine positions meant flying ‘nap of the earth', staying as close to the ground as they dared, making use of valleys, folds and gulleys, and slowing to sixty knots or less.

In the end their mission was uneventful. But being sent up to the front line gave Manley hope that Yankee Sierra would at last be used in her role as a gunship. Armed with two-inch rockets, the Wessex could lay down a
fearsome
barrage of twenty-eight rockets. Even if the rockets were famously inaccurate, the high explosive would fill an area the size of a football field. At worst, it would keep heads down and frighten the living daylights out of any enemy troops in the firing line. At best, it would do serious damage.

But even if the Paras had asked for a gunship, the Wessex was soon taken out of the action altogether. As darkness fell, Yankee Sierra was shut down on the deck of
Fearless
as she sailed out of San Carlos. The Wessex had been earmarked to collect the incoming land forces commander, Major General Jeremy Moore RM, from HMS
Antrim
. It seemed odd to Manley that a key airborne weapon system, ideal for supporting the attack on Goose Green, was now no longer available. It was a curious use of resources and a potentially expensive oversight for the Paras.

It was not the only misallocation of helicopters. Oily Knight, Noddy Morton and Arthur Balls spent a very uncomfortable evening on a ‘special mission' flying up and down Falkland Sound in pitch darkness, with their Wessex fitted with a thermal-image camera in the cabin doorway. The plan was to try and identify Argentine observation posts that might have been reporting the position of the British ships to the incoming Argentine jets. Just as Crabtree and Heathcote had noted on the night of the landings, the imager failed to distinguish between the heat of a sheep and the heat of a man. Morton had only a rifle night sight that could resolve little more than occasional blobs. The crew listened nervously as the camera operator reported lots of sightings. It seemed a fruitless task.

Having satisfied the operator, the crew still had to find their way back into San Carlos in complete darkness. With
the
aircraft lights switched off, they expected to be shot down at any minute. Morton could barely make out the outline of Fanning Head and the various ships with his rifle sight. It was just enough to pass instructions on to Knight, who could see nothing at all. As they slowed their approach towards HMS
Fearless
, it was touch and go whether they would have to use their bright landing lights, ruining the blackout that concealed the position of the ships in the bay from Argentine observers. Flying blind in the darkness, it was only in the final few yards that Knight could pick out the outline of the ship.

During the night, the Paras moved into their final positions ready to attack the narrow isthmus of land containing the settlements of Darwin and Goose Green. The night-flying Sea Kings lifted three 105mm howitzer guns and ammunition into position. No other
junglie
support was allocated for the forthcoming battle. To Brigadier Thompson, the amphibious force commander, Goose Green was a sideshow, a politically induced diversion from the main task of moving east towards Port Stanley. Other than offering naval gunfire support from HMS
Arrow
, 2 Para would have to do it alone.

The first few phases of the six-phase attack went according to plan, with the four ninety-man paratroop companies moving forward one by one, leapfrogging one another. It was only in the last few hours of darkness that the Paras hit trouble, closing in on well dug-in enemy positions on Darwin Hill. Fog out at sea prevented any assistance from ground-attack Harriers. Worse,
Arrow's
gun jammed, removing the ability to illuminate the battlefield for the 81mm mortars.

The Paras were now completely on their own. They were also pinned down by machine-gun fire as first light
dawned
on the morning of Friday 28 May. A failed attempt to break the deadlock led to the loss of several men, including the Para adjutant and a company second-in-command.

Impatient at the loss of momentum, Lieutenant Colonel ‘H' Jones stood up and charged the enemy trench, with his bodyguard following behind him, but was cut down by machine-gun fire. A radio message was shouted to battalion headquarters ‘Sunray is down'. There was disbelief among 2 Para that their commanding officer had been shot.

In the Argentine trenches, ammunition and morale were running low as the morning wore on. Their machine-gun posts on Darwin Hill were now overrun with help from well-aimed 66mm rockets fired from the shoulder. Within hours, the Paras had taken the high ground. Three Argentine Pucaras now swept over the scene, having taken off earlier from the airport at Port Stanley. Their first target was the gun position just to the north of Goose Green. The British gunners managed to drive off this attack, firing more shoulder-launched rockets, this time Blowpipe.

Two of the small Scout helicopters had been ferrying ammunition to the guns from San Carlos. They were now told to go further towards the battlefield and pick up the body of Jones and other wounded Paras.

As the Scouts approached their pick-up point, two more Pucaras swept past them, quickly turning for a second pass. The Argentine turboprops now lined up for a head-on attack on the two helicopters. It was the worst nightmare for the British pilots. The slow-speed Pucaras would keep coming at them until they had finished off their target. There was simply nowhere to run.

The Pucaras singled out one of the Scouts, Delta Romeo,
firing
a deadly blast of machine-gun fire. The pilot, Lieutenant Richard Nunn RM, was killed immediately. Delta Romeo, now out of control, crashed and bounced across the grassy terrain, throwing clear the crewman Sergeant Belcher who had been badly hit by the machine-gun fire.

Watching this appalling scene unfold next to him, Captain Jeff Niblett had no choice in the other Scout, Delta Tango, than to land immediately. If he stayed in the air the Pucaras would chase him down. But the Pucaras broke off their attack and peeled away to the north. They had seen the second Scout on the ground and assumed they had shot it down as well. It was little consolation that the lead Pucara crashed into a mountain on return to Stanley. The wreckage was found four years later. The other Pucara returned safely.

The injured Belcher was loaded into Delta Tango and taken back to the field hospital at Ajax Bay. Niblett then returned to Camilla Creek House, leading two gunship Scouts armed with anti-tank missiles. The weapons were not fired. For his ‘dashing leadership and courage throughout the battle', Lieutenant Colonel Jones was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross. Lieutenant Nunn, posthumously, and Captain Niblett were both awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

By mid-afternoon, 2 Para were closing in on Goose Green airfield and the settlement. The soldiers were still fighting from trench to trench. To the south of the airfield came the disparaging sound of Argentine helicopters, a Puma and Hueys landing troop reinforcements, suggesting the battle had a way to run. Two Aeromacchi jets appeared out of nowhere. The Para soldiers watched the aircraft make their low-level runs towards them. The cannon shells and rockets streaked past, exploding harmlessly in the soft
Falkland
peat. A quick-thinking Royal Marine from the attached air defence unit turned and fired a Blowpipe missile at one of the retreating jets. The high-speed missile roared away from him, quickly catching up with the slower jet as it retreated into the distance. The Aeromacchi dived towards the ground and exploded.

Two more airplanes followed up the attack minutes later. This time it was propeller-driven Pucaras crossing the battlefield at low level. A bomb fell from one aircraft, exploding in a ball of fire as it hit the ground. It was napalm. The other aircraft released its stream of rockets at the troops on the ground. Once again, all of the weapons missed their target. But a hail of rifle- and machine-gun fire was directed against the Pucaras. It was inevitable that some of the bullets would connect, damaging both aircraft. As one of the Pucaras tumbled from the sky, the pilot ejected. He was captured soon afterwards.

Almost immediately, a ground-attack Harrier shot through the low cloud that was just beginning to break up. Rockets spewed from the British jet, silencing the two Argentine air defence guns on the edge of the Goose Green airstrip.

Mark Evans had already been flying on and off all day. Summoned on board the assault ship HMS
Intrepid
well before dawn for another ‘special mission', a Royal Marine major had briefed him to take some night sights and spot for Argentine soldiers lying in wait ahead of the British advance on the northern flank. Flying over land in the darkness can only be done at high level in order to avoid flying into a hillside. Attempting to fly blind beneath the cloud and pouring rain would have been a suicide mission. Turning the job down was not what the major expected to hear. It had been a tense start to the day.

Now, late in the afternoon on 28 May, Evans was heading south towards Goose Green in Yankee Whiskey. Although the cloud still hung low over the hills, there was only just enough of a gap to cross the high ground of the Sussex Mountains. Beneath the Wessex hung a pallet load of ammunition for the guns at Camilla Creek House. Leading Aircrewman Smiler Smiles was leaning out of the doorway keeping an eye on the net swinging below them, as they began their descent towards Camilla Creek.