Authors: Patrick Bishop
Air power sustained the campaign at every stage. The first military response to the arrival of thousands of Argentinian troops on the Falklands on 2 April 1982 was the despatch the following day
of RAF transport aircraft to Wideawake Airport, the British air base on Ascension Island, lying in the equatorial waters of the South Atlantic, a thousand miles off the coast of Africa. They were
followed two days later by the first of the Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft, which would scour the seas for Argentinian submarines.
The spearhead of the Task Force’s air component was the Fleet Air Arm’s Sea Harriers. Three squadrons – Naval Air Squadrons 800, 801 and elements of 899 which reformed as 809
– headed south on the aircraft carriers HMS
Hermes
and HMS
Invincible
after sailing from Portsmouth on 5 April. Their job was to protect the Task Force from aerial attack.
The RAF’s 1 (F) squadron, equipped with GR3 Harriers, was also sent to support the troops on the ground. The fixed-wing component was augmented by 170 helicopters – mostly Sea King and
Wessex – tasked with searching and destroying enemy shipping as well as rescue and transportation duties.
The air war opened three weeks before the landings. On 30 April the British government declared a 200-mile total exclusion zone around the Falklands, and any Argentinian
vessel entering it risked attack. Late that evening, eleven fully loaded Victors – enjoying a new lease of life as aerial tankers – took off from Ascension. Their job was to provide
in-flight replenishment for a sole Vulcan carrying twenty-one 1,000 lb bombs, which was bound for Port Stanley airport, 3,886 miles away. Another Vulcan flew behind in reserve. The Black Buck raids
– as the five bombing and missile missions against the airfield at Stanley and the Argentinian radar defences were called – were amazing logistical feats. They required skill, precision
and huge resources. The attack bomber had to be refuelled seven times on the outward journey and once on the return, burning 22,000 gallons in all. The tankers needed in-flight refuelling
themselves to stay in the air. The operation involved a round trip of more than 9,000 miles – sixteen hours’ flying time. This made it the longest bombing mission in history.
There were a thousand things to go wrong and, inevitably, many did. As the lead Vulcan XM 598 climbed to cruising altitude, the captain, Squadron Leader John Reeve, noticed the cabin was not
pressurizing properly – the result, as it turned out, of a perished window seal. The bomber was forced to turn back and it now fell to the reserve Vulcan, 607, to carry out the mission. The
pilot, Flight Lieutenant Martin Withers, informed the crew with the laconic observation that ‘it looks like we’ve got a job of work, fellas’.
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The bomber arrived in the target area just before 4 a.m. local time, to the astonishment of the Argentinians. It swooped down to 300 feet for its approach, then climbed to
attack height, delivering its stick of twenty-one bombs at a 35-degree angle across the runway. It then roared away, unscathed, to the north for a rendezvous with a tanker, after flashing the
signal ‘superfuse’ to indicate a job well done. It had, indeed, been quite a feat. To laymen, however, the results did not seem proportionate to the enormous effort and vast outlay of
resources. Only one bomb had hit the runway. When this news reached the
Canberra
, steaming southwards towards the islands, the sailors, marines and paras on board reacted with delighted
derision. Regret at the limited damage the raid had inflicted was more than outweighed by pleasure that a rival service – the ‘Crabs’, as they called the RAF – had
apparently ballsed things up. In fact, it was always understood by the air force that bombing runways rarely had lasting effect and the single bomb did at least render the Stanley airstrip unusable
to Argentinian fast jet fighters – though not to C130 transports supplying the garrison. The four Black Buck raids that followed produced similarly modest results and the series was
essentially a side show that served to remind the world that the RAF had a part to play in the enterprise.
The main role in the air battle belonged to the aircraft and pilots of the Royal Navy. From the earliest days, naval aviators had lived in the shadow of the Royal Air Force. In both world wars
they had carried out their duties with the same dedication and skill as the RAF, but had not received their
fair share of recognition or acclaim, perhaps because most of their
activities took place out of range of public or media notice. Fleet Air Arm jets had conducted thousands of operations off light fleet carriers throughout the Korean War and its helicopters buzzed
over the jungles of Malaya, operating against communist terrorists throughout the Malayan emergency. Navy fighters also provided fighter cover and carried out air strikes during the Anglo-French
intervention in Suez in November 1956.
In all of these actions naval aviation had always been a junior player in an ensemble dominated by the RAF. The circumstances of the Falklands conflict gave the naval air squadrons a unique
opportunity to take centre stage and they relished this chance. The theatre of war was at the other end of the world from the United Kingdom, with the rocky speck of Ascension Island the only
friendly landfall between the two locations. As the Herculean exertions required for the Black Buck raids demonstrated, conducting protracted land-based operations would be impossible logistically.
Fortunately, the Sea Harriers aboard the carriers – and the men who flew, directed and maintained them – were more than equal to the challenge of defending the Task Force in the air, as
well as attacking the Argentinian enemy on land.
The first demonstration of their abilities was given on 1 May, a few hours after the Vulcan and Victors had departed Falklands air space. Once again the airfield at Port Stanley was the target,
as well as the airstrip at the settlement of Goose Green. The task of bombing was given to 800 Naval
Air Squadron, operating off
Hermes
, while 801 Squadron from
Invincible
flew top cover to protect them from attack by Argentinian interceptors. The raiders all returned safe and sound, a fact reported by Brian Hanrahan, the BBC reporter aboard
Invincible
and operating under censorship restrictions with a phrase that would lodge itself in the British folk memory: ‘I counted them all out and I counted them all back
again.’
Throughout the day the Sea Harriers flew Combat Air Patrols (CAPs) around the islands. This was their staple activity throughout the remaining forty-four days of the war. The purpose was to
intercept raids by the Argentinian Air Force, operating from airfields on the mainland, several hundred miles to the west. The Fuerza Aérea Argentina was not organized to fight a major
military power. It was designed rather for war with its neighbour Chile, with whom it had a history of territorial disputes.
The British naval air squadrons mustered twenty-eight Sea Harriers between them. They were facing a fast jet force with a notional strength of about fifty McDonnell Douglas A-4 Skyhawks, thirty
Daggers (the Israeli Aircraft Industry’s version of the French Mirage 5 multi-role fighter) and seventeen French-built Mirage IIIEAs. The Argentinian navy air fleet comprised eight Skyhawks,
six Italian Aermachis and four French Super Etendards, equipped with the devastating Exocet air-to-surface missile. The Argentinian ground forces on the islands were also supported by two dozen
Pucarás, powered by twin piston engines, which, although slow, were
very effective ground attack aircraft in the hilly terrain of the Falklands.
The numerical advantage was not as daunting as it looked on paper. The Skyhawk fleet was in poor shape, suffering from an arms embargo imposed by the United States to punish Argentina for its
protracted ‘dirty war’ against left-wing revolutionaries, dissidents, trade-unionists and students. A decision was made not to base fast jets on the islands – the wisdom of which
seemed reinforced by the Vulcan raids. They operated instead from air bases strung along the coast at distances of between 660 and 430 miles from the islands. Most of the jets had no in-flight
refuelling to extend their time over target and there were only two tankers to service those that had.
As to performance, the Sea Harriers had the edge. They were ingeniously designed to take off and land vertically – a requirement imposed by the decision taken in 1966 to scrap plans for a
new generation of large aircraft carriers. The four vector nozzles on the ‘Shar’ meant they could lift off and land on small deck spaces. The Shar’s top speed of 700 mph was
slower than the supersonic Mirages and Daggers. It was, however, considerably more manoeuvrable, and pilots used the nozzles as brakes to ‘Viff’ (Vector in Forward Flight), enabling it
to dodge pursuing aircraft and missiles. It was also armed with the latest AIM-9 sidewinder missiles (the Argentinians had only the short-range version).
The experience of flying in a Sea Harrier was memorably described by an Argentinian aviator and writer, Maxi Gainza, who, seven years after the war, was taken for a flip over South
Wales by 800 Squadron’s David Morgan. ‘It is quiet inside a Harrier,’ he wrote. ‘Even at 450 knots [517 mph], the engine sound coming through the helmet is
faint – like that of a seashell cupped to the ear. The ride was velvet smooth, there being little turbulence, and for minutes at a time I could sit and enjoy the scenery unreeling through the
haze . . . Then, suddenly wham! An invisible pile-driver would pound me into the seat, triggering the G-suit’s vice-like hold around my lower body, while my head turned to solid lead.
Grinding my neck vertebrae in the effort of looking up, I would see ghostly green symbols dancing on the Head-Up Display and beyond it, the horizon tilting to near vertical and whirling away like a
fruit machine – trees, streams, sheep, houses . . .’
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The initial contacts suggested the Argentinian pilots were fully aware of their disadvantages. The first came at dawn on May Day when the air defence controller on board HMS
Glamorgan
spotted two ‘bogeys’ approaching from the west. He notified the Combat Air Patrol being flown by Lieutenant-Commander John Eyton-Jones of 801 and Flight Lieutenant Paul Barton, an RAF
pilot attached to the squadron. But as they approached the delta-winged Mirages the Argentinians turned away, apparently warned by the surveillance radar on the ground. The British pair returned to
their back-and-forth patrolling, whereupon the Mirages crept back, only to turn tail when it looked like they would be confronted again. This feinting continued until the Argentinians finally
seemed to commit to an attack. They swooped down and the Shars accelerated towards them. Just before they met, the Mirages
broke away and turned towards land. The pursuing
Harriers found they were flying straight into tracer from ground batteries. Whether it was a deliberate trap or happenstance they would never discover. They headed out to the safety of the sea
before returning to relate their experiences to an eager audience of their fellow pilots, awaiting their turn to test themselves against the opposition.
The second pair, Lieutenant Commander Robin Kent and Lieutenant Brian Haigh, also ran into two Mirages, one of which appeared to fire a missile that passed by harmlessly, before heading for
home. It seemed to 801 Squadron’s commander Nigel ‘Sharkey’ Ward that ‘the Mirages were obviously not too keen on mixing it, otherwise full combat would have developed.
Their tactics appeared to be to enter any intercept from high level with a lot of energy or speed. When they were met head-on they would release ordnance, turn away and return to base.’ The
tactics made him feel ‘a little frustrated. I wanted to see a result.’
Soon Ward himself was airborne, flying alongside Lieutenant Mike Watson, one of five pilots on loan from 899 Naval Air Squadron. Their CAP station was off Volunteer Point, a long peninsula north
of Stanley.
‘As we set up the patrol in battle formation at 12,000 feet, we could see little of the islands with only one or two rocky mountain peaks jutting through a layer of low cloud,’ wrote
Ward.
There was a flurry of excitement when the
Glamorgan
air controller vectored them onto some slow-moving aircraft, but
they lost them in cloud. Then they were
directed at some high-flying Mirages, but they, too, vanished before an interception could be made. It was not until the afternoon that the Sea Harriers drew blood.
By now the islands lay under a mattress of white cloud, but the skies above were a shimmering icy blue. Lieutenant Steve Thomas and Flight Lieutenant Paul Barton were cruising up and down,
awaiting instructions, when the
Glamorgan
controller alerted them to two Mirages approaching high and fast from the west. Down below on
Invincible
, Ward listened in as the drama
unfolded.
‘Initially the Mirages played the same tactics as in the morning, closing towards the CAP pair and then retreating when menaced,’ he wrote.
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‘But the Argentine pilots must have become as bored as we were by these cat-and-mouse games, and must have been adding up the odds for and against them.’ They
appear to have calculated that they held the tactical advantage, for ‘they were higher and faster and, when used to good effect, this extra energy of position and speed could be made to pay
dividends in a dogfight. They also were looking down against a white, cloud-top background, which made it much easier for them to see their targets when in visual range – the [Sea Harriers]
would stand out as distinct white dots against the cloud.’
Conversely, the Shar pilots would find it hard to pick up the tiny shapes of the Mirages against the clear sky, now darkening as dusk descended. These factors seem to have made up the
Argentinian pilots’ minds, for they tipped into a steep dive
towards the CAP pair. As the
Glamorgan
controller called the diminishing range between the two
pairs, Thomas and Barton climbed towards the attackers, straining to get them into radar contact so they could activate their Sidewinder missiles.