Ghost Force

by Patrick Robinson

  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 sighti
ng.

  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…”

  And Price called again, “Agave regained!! …bearing two-eight-four.”

  The ship’s radar officers confirmed the contacts, range now only thirty miles.

  “That’s two Super-Es just popped up,” called Captain Yates crisply.

  “Chaff!!” roared Harley. And across the room the hooded figure of a Chief Petty Officer slammed his closed fists into the big chaff fire buttons.

  Harley again broadcast on the circuit to the whole Battle Group… “This is Daring …Agave radar bearing two-eight-four … ” But the picket ships were all up to speed, Commander Hall’s ops room in Dauntless was instantly on the case, and Captain Day was only fifteen seconds behind as HMS Gloucester prepared to tackle the second pair of Etendards heading to their right, straight toward him.

  For the next five minutes Daring had to place herself carefully between the four clouds of chaff that were blooming around her, taking account of the wind and the natural drift of the giant clouds of iron filings, which Harley hoped to Christ were confusing the life out of the radar in the nose cones of the incoming missiles.

  Captain Yates called to the Officer of the Watch on the bridge, “Come hard left to zero-eight-four…adjust speed for zero relative wind.”

  At 0638, the Argentine pilots unleashed their missiles and banked right, not knowing for certain at what they had fired. Their Exocets fell away, locked on to their targets, and the two Etendards headed for home, flying once more low over the water, but this time heading west.

  And in the ops room of Daring , the familiar cry of a modern warship under attack was heard… “Zippo One! Bruisers! Incoming. Bearing two-eight-four. Range fourteen miles.” But the two amber dots flickering across Daring ’s screen were so small they could scarcely be seen.

  “Take them with Sea Dart,” snapped Captain Yates, knowing his fire-control radar would have trouble locking on to the tiny sea-skimming targets at this range, but hoping against hope the missile gun director could get the weapons away.

  Eventually he did, but only one of them struck home, blasting the Exocet out of the sky. The second one was completely baffled by the chaff and swerved high and left, crashing harmlessly into the sea six miles astern.

  Commander Hall’s Dauntless never did get her Sea Dart missiles into action, but the chaff did its work and both missiles aimed at the destroyer passed down the port side.

  Captain Day’s Gloucester , out to the left of the Ark Royal , found herself facing four incoming Exocets, and her Sea Dart missiles, given more choice, slammed two of them into oblivion. Again the priceless chaff did its work and the remaining two Exocets swerved right into a huge cloud of iron filings and careened into the ocean with a mighty blast, two miles away, off the destroyer’s starboard quarter, prompting a roar of delight from the seamen working on the upper decks. Argentina 0, Royal Navy 8.

  But not for long. Two formations of four Skyhawks and four Daggers were on their way off the runway at Mount Pleasant. The British frigates, armed with only Harpoons as a medium-range missile, were still seventy miles too far east to attack the airport, and the GR9s were only just ready to fly off the carrier, thanks to an early morning fog bank.

  The returning Etendard pilots, flying slower now, had already been in contact with Mount Pleasant and had passed on the range and positions of the three British ships they assumed they had located. They also alerted the base to the possible location of three, possibly four, other large Royal Navy ships anchored in Low Bay.

  And meanwhile the Daggers and the Skyhawks continued their fast, low journey, flying fifty feet above the waves, well below the radar, straight at the Royal Navy picket ships, the Type-45 destroyers, Daring , Dauntless , and the older Gloucester .

  They lifted above the horizon and into range of the ships’ missile systems at a distance of around ten miles. But the visibility was poor, and within sixty seconds they would have overflown the entire picket line.

  All eight of the Argentine aircraft had their bombs away before the Sea Darts could lock on. Desperately the three commanding officers ordered their missiles away, and with mounting horror the observers on the upper decks saw the big thousand-pounders streaking in, low over the ocean.

  That’s the way a modern iron bomb arrives. It travels too fast to drop. It comes scything in at a low trajectory, its retardation chute out behind it, slowing it down. The bombs are primed to
blast on impact.

  All Royal Navy Commanders know the best defense is to swing the ship around, presenting not its sharp bow to the incoming attack but its beam. That way there’s a fighting chance the damn thing may fly straight over the top, as such bombs frequently do.

  But there is so often no time. And there was no time right now on Admiral Holbrook’s picket line. As the Skyhawks and the Daggers screamed away, making their tightest turns back to the west, eight miles from the destroyers, the lethal Sea Dart missiles came whipping in. The first one from Daring slammed into a Dagger and blew it to smithereens. The second smashed the wing off a fleeing Skyhawk and sent it cartwheeling into the ocean at five hundred knots.

  Three more missed completely, but Colin Day’s first salvo downed another Dagger and blew a Skyhawk into two quite separate pieces. This was the very most they could do. They had no other defense, because, high above, they had no Harrier FA2 Combat Air Patrol, which would probably have downed all eight of the Argentine bombers twenty miles back.

  Meanwhile the first two bombs from the lead Skyhawk slammed into HMS Daring with colossal force, one crashing through the starboard side of the hull and detonating in the middle of the ship, killing instantly everyone in the ops room and twenty-seven others. It split the engine room asunder, and a gigantic explosion seemed to detonate the entire ship.

  The second bomb, meeting the ship on the rise, crashed through the upperworks, blasting the huge, pyramid-shaped electronic surveillance tower straight down onto the bridge. Everyone inside was killed either by the explosion or was crushed, which brought the death toll to fifty-eight, with another sixty-eight wounded. There were huge fires, the water mains were blown apart, and HMS Daring , shipping seawater at a ferocious rate, was little more than a hulk on her way to the bottom.