by Harry Benson
After settling heavily but without breaking anything, he shut the aircraft down to one engine to try and work out what had caused the jam. He never found out what it was. The geometric lock on the controls, or whatever the actual cause was, mysteriously cleared itself. His skill, and a little luck, helped him avoid a nasty crash which would inevitably have been blamed on pilot error.
* * *
At this time, I was still plodding south at a painfully slow twelve knots on board Engadine. I and the thirteen other Wessex pilots and fourteen aircrew were all beginning to doubt that we would get to the war in time. We had already been delayed by the detour following our visit by the Argentine 707 jet. The converted airliner paid us a further visit a few days later just before we reached the rest of the fleet. To the frustration of my colleagues on the upper deck, armed with machine guns and rifles, willing the airliner to come in closer, the jet had a quick look at us from five miles away before turning and heading for home.
All the little delays were mounting up. We’d spent a day fixing Engadine’s engine in Gibraltar; we’d detoured away from the 707; we’d stopped in the middle of the South Atlantic to recover a supply of anti-submarine torpedoes airdropped into the sea from a Hercules; and we’d stopped again to recover a team of SAS soldiers airdropped into the sea from another Hercules.
Nor was our mood helped when the boss, Mike Booth, switched off the beer taps so that we would be ready for battle. We had no idea that our colleagues at Port San Carlos felt no such need for restraint.
So it was with barely constrained excitement and relief, on a hazy Monday, 7 June, that Engadine finally joined the other ships of the task force in the choppy South Atlantic waters. All four Wessex were used to move the huge volume of weapons and stores we had brought for the other ships. It was our first chance to put into action the procedures, codes and flying techniques we had practised on the way south.
It was my first operational encounter with Royal Navy warships. I flew as left-hand seat co-pilot to Adrian Short, a major on exchange with us from the Army Air Corps. A charming and gung-ho ex-Royal Artillery officer, Short also had a reputation for being a bit deaf. This reputation was wonderfully enhanced by the story of a recent incident in Northern Ireland where his co-pilot pointed out the town of ‘Portadown’ passing beneath them.
‘Put her down?’ shouted Short, dumping the aircraft into an emergency autorotation. ‘Where? Where?’
My role as co-pilot was to find out ships’ callsigns and positions and help with fuel management. With a hundred ships changing codes every day, we had a huge list. For example, taking a load from ‘Kilo Uniform Eight Echo’ to ‘Golf Tango One Juliet’ meant running down the list of names to find out that this meant a journey from our own ship RFA Engadine to the stores ship RFA Fort Grange.
Because we were always trying to take the maximum possible mix of fuel and stores, we had to stop for fuel every half hour or so. As we ferried stores from Engadine to the other ships, our focus was on flight flexibility and on trying to find ships that were not in the sector to which they were assigned. Often we would be queuing up behind other helicopters to drop a load. Pingers in their anti-submarine Sea Kings seemed to test our patience especially and gave us an easy target on which to vent our frustrations. We needed to get on with it.
Trying to land on the flagship aircraft carrier HMS Hermes (‘Charlie November Two Eight’) to drop off senior pilot Rob Flexman for an operations brief was almost impossible. We were not the first Wessex crew to be put in our place at the bottom of Hermes’s list of priorities. While we were relegated to hover behind and to the right of the ship in the ‘starboard wait’ or ‘spot 10 starboard’, we had plenty of time to reflect on how all of the warships looked the worse for wear. From our bird’s-eye view, looking down on the seven Sea Harriers parked out on her deck, Hermes’s sides looked almost more brown than grey, dripping with streaks of rust and weather damage.
It felt good to be airborne for the first time in a week and to have arrived with the fleet at last. Next stop was San Carlos. We really needed to get in before dawn to get the aircraft safely off the ship and disembark our accompanying SAS passengers. It was already taking longer than we had planned to get rid of all our stores. The final straw was when one of the supply ships, for reasons best known to themselves, would only accept a delivery when ordered to do so by the Admiral. It added yet another hour.
Engadine turned to the west and headed into the Falklands. Our final delay was to prove crucial.
Chapter 13
Disaster at Port Pleasant: 8 June 1982
THE LEAP FORWARD to Fitzroy by 2 Para on Wednesday 2 June had paid off so far. Opportunistic, it put tremendous pressure on land forces commander Major General Jeremy Moore to prevent the Paras from being isolated. Four major units of 3 Brigade – over 2,000 men of 2 and 3 Para, 42 and 45 Commando – now lay exposed thirty-five miles to the east of the beachhead at San Carlos. The successful arrival of Atlantic Causeway had more than doubled the number of Wessex and Sea King helicopters. Every one of them was needed to keep these troops supplied.
The newly arrived troops of 5 Brigade’s Scots and Welsh Guards were keen to get involved in the action. But with the helicopters fully occupied supporting 3 Brigade, the men of 5 Brigade would have to walk from San Carlos.
Throughout the land campaign, the Argentines had yet to show an appetite for counterattack. They had reinforced Goose Green. They had defended their own positions fiercely. They had attacked vigorously from the air. Nonetheless the threat of counterattack had to be taken seriously.
Two Para’s great leap forward at Fitzroy had been precipitated by the arrival of 5 Brigade in San Carlos from the liners Canberra and Norland. Their commanders simply hadn’t fancied sitting around at Goose Green watching the new arrivals wander past and take the next bit of glory. Having seized land at Fitzroy and opened up the southern flank, they were now in urgent need of support and reinforcements.
But the three units on the northern flank still needed supplies. An overnight run by HMS Fearless and two of its landing craft helped to move 3 Brigade’s stores area forward to Teal Inlet. Many of the troops on the front line were still without their bergens, having been forced to dump them during their long march from Port San Carlos. The early days of June were the coldest of the war so far, with temperatures dipping well below freezing. The constant need to build up forward supplies and the demand for ammunition and water meant restricting other requirements.
On the morning of Thursday 3 June, the remainder of 2 Para were helicoptered into Fitzroy by Chinook and 825 Squadron’s Sea Kings. The remaining 1/7 Gurkhas Rifles, the first of the 5 Brigade new arrivals, were also helicoptered across the Sussex Mountains to Goose Green. The Gurkhas were to conduct patrols into Lafonia, where the Argentine reinforcements had fled towards the end of the battle for Goose Green.
Getting 5 Brigade to Fitzroy as well was proving difficult. Equipment shortages, the lack of independent helicopter and marine support, the sheer confusion of linking equipment with people, and a general lack of communication were all contributing factors. After the aborted attempt by the Welsh Guard to cross the Sussex Mountains, it became clear that the only serious option for reinforcing Fitzroy was by sea.
The Royal Navy, however, were acutely aware of the potential threat to assault ships or landing ships in the exposed water south of Port Stanley, whether from land-based Exocet or air attack. Their ships at sea had already taken a beating from the South Atlantic weather. If the Navy lost another major warship, the political pressure at home for a ceasefire might prove irresistible. Commanders at Task Force HQ Northwood in the UK, and HMS Hermes at sea, signalled conflicting intentions to the amphibious warfare commanders on Fearless in San Carlos.
On the evening of Saturday 5 June, the assault ship Intrepid sailed out of San Carlos Water, through Falkland Sound, and around the coast to the south of East Falkland. Both assault ships Intrepid and Fearless had huge open tank decks
underneath their flight decks that could carry LCUs (Landing Craft Utilities). Opening the rear doors flooded the deck and allowed the landing craft to float out of the stern. The plan was to offload Intrepid’s four LCUs, under the command of Major Ewen Southby-Tailyour RM, near to Elephant Island for the relatively short transit to Bluff Cove. Although Fitzroy was the preferred landing site, with buildings in which to shelter, the retreating Argentines had blown up a small but vital bridge linking the two settlements. Landing the troops directly at Bluff Cove would save them a long detour around the coast.
With the sea swell rising as the weather worsened, Intrepid flooded her stern and despatched her landing craft, each crammed with 150 soldiers from the Scots Guards. However, in an attempt to keep clear of the Exocet threat, Intrepid chose to do this off the coast of Lively Island, to the south of Choiseul Sound. They were supposed to be to the north. It meant that the landing craft now had an extra twenty miles of open water to cover, on top of the original ten-mile journey they expected to make along the coast and inland.
Off the coast of East Falkland, the destroyer HMS Cardiff and frigate HMS Yarmouth had not been informed of British movements in the area. As part of the bid to improve communications between units on the southern flank, a radio re-broadcast station had been set up on Pleasant Peak between Goose Green and Fitzroy. Shortly before midnight, an Army Gazelle helicopter carrying two signallers and replacement equipment approached Pleasant Peak to land. HMS Cardiff picked up the radar contact, thinking it to be an Argentine Hercules, and fired a Sea Dart missile. The Gazelle exploded in a ball of fire in front of the horrified radio operators on the ground.
Soon afterwards, Cardiff began firing her 4.5-inch guns at the unknown surface contacts near Choiseul Sound. Crashing explosions near the landing craft threw huge plumes of water into the air. Illuminated by starshell bursts above their heads, and unable to outrun the pursuing warships, the coxswains stopped their landing craft in the water. A hurried exchange of light signals in Morse code prevented further shelling and complete disaster.
Crammed into each flat-bottomed landing craft, the Scots Guards were now soaked and frozen from the sea spray, as well as traumatised by the near-misses. Food, hot drinks and rest were out of the question. The journey should have taken four hours at most. Instead the long night transit in the rolling seas became an agonising nightmare of human endurance. It was eight hours before the LCUs finally limped up to the jetty at Bluff Cove, to be met by the astonished soldiers of 2 Para. Dazed and exhausted, many Guardsmen were unable to move by themselves because of prolonged exposure, stiffness and cramp. The Paras had to lift them physically off the craft and onto land.
The whole episode was a monumental cock-up. Through a series of miscommunications, the British had lost a Gazelle helicopter and four men. Far worse, they were a whisker away from losing an entire battalion of 600 Scots Guards to naval gunfire, exposure and drowning – almost twice the number of lives lost in the sinking of the Belgrano. The pressure from so many grieving families back home might have made it impossible for the British government to continue the campaign.
The following evening, 6 June, it was HMS Fearless’s turn for the night-time run around the coast, carrying the battalion of Welsh Guards and various other specialist units. Only two landing craft were available to go with them inside the tank deck. The plan was for the four LCUs that had dropped off the Scots Guards at Bluff Cove earlier that morning to come out to Fearless and offload the Welsh Guards.
The good news was that Fearless had chosen to make the rendezvous at Elephant Island. It meant a mere four-hour journey in the landing craft in the rain and cold, and hopefully no naval gunfire. The bad news was that the four LCUs they expected to meet failed to show up. Poor weather and further miscommunication meant that the landing craft crews never got the message to come out. With Fearless desperate to get back to the cover of San Carlos before dawn, the Welsh Guards were forced to load half of their number, as well as the sappers sent to repair the Fitzroy bridge, into the two LCUs on board. Fearless returned with the other half of the Welsh Guards and no landing craft.
At the same time that half of the Welsh Guards were landing at Bluff Cove in the two landing craft, the landing ship RFA Sir Tristram was also on its way to Port Pleasant, the inlet just around the corner from them. When Tristram arrived in the early morning, loaded with her cargo of ammunition, stores and bridge repair equipment destined for Fitzroy, the missing LCUs were there to help the ship unload. The flatness of the landscape around the inlet of Port Pleasant meant that Tristram stood out starkly. With the weather beginning to improve, it was clear that all of the LCUs would need to work at full tilt to complete the offload by the following night.
Early that morning, 7 June, four Argentine photo-reconnaissance Learjets overflew Falkland Sound at high altitude, believing themselves to be safe from missile attack. Two Sea Darts sped upwards from HMS Exeter. Aircrew in San Carlos had watched the missile trail hanging like a piece of string from the sky. One missile fell short. The other, at extreme range, blew the tail off one of the Learjets. It was Exeter’s third success and Sea Dart’s fifth. The three other Learjets returned safely to the mainland with photos of the British activity in San Carlos and around East Falkland. It included a landing ship offloading in the distance at Port Pleasant.
Former Wessex boss Tim Stanning had been at the heart of command and control of the land war. He had helped plan helicopter operations on board HMS Fearless before the landings. He had sat in the 3 Brigade headquarter tent at San Carlos after the landings as the commanders wrangled over who could have what aircraft in between diving into trenches during the air raids.
His role had now switched to recceing forward bases for helicopter operations. At Teal Inlet on the northern flank a few days earlier, he had flown up to watch the unloading of the RFA Sir Percivale. It was an incongruous sight seeing the dark shapes of its largely Chinese crew dotted around the Falkland landscape in their blue raincoats. They had disembarked from the ship during unloading for their own safety and had no camouflage kit. Even though they stood out like sore thumbs, Stanning still thought they were far better off on land than on the ship.
It was now early morning on Tuesday 8 June. Stanning was sitting in the back of one of the 825 Squadron Sea Kings recently disembarked from Atlantic Causeway. He was on his way to explore possible locations for a forward refuelling site in the Fitzroy area.
The last thing anybody needed at Port Pleasant was more work for the LCUs. So it was a surprise when the landing ship Sir Galahad sailed into the calm waters to join her sister ship Sir Tristram under the clear blue skies. Now there were two landing ships in the inlet, both of them vulnerable and defenceless. It made sense to keep as many people off the ships as possible until they had finished unloading.
Ewen Southby-Tailyour immediately motored over to Sir Galahad in one of the LCUs, only to find the remaining 300 Welsh Guards on board. His encouragement that they disembark urgently quickly turned to agitated protest, even giving a direct order at one stage. The senior Welsh Guards officer initially refused to offload his men, insisting he had been ordered to wait until the LCUs were free to take them around the corner to Bluff Cove.
Opposite Tim Stanning in the back of the Sea King sat Commander Mike Cudmore, a senior air engineer officer tasked to investigate the crash of the Gazelle helicopter three nights earlier. Cudmore looked deeply worried as the Sea King came in to land on the side of Pleasant Peak. He was to be abandoned on a bleak and remote hillside miles from anywhere. A pile of ash marked the remains of the Gazelle. Before disconnecting from the intercom, he turned to Stanning and insisted: ‘You have to promise you’ll come back and get me.’ His plea invited a mischievous reply. But Stanning decided it wouldn’t be a good joke. He looked him in the eye and promised to return. The Sea King lifted off to continue its journey east towards Fitzroy.
As they came in to land at the little settlement of Fitzroy, the two landing ships at Port
Pleasant stood out clearly through the door windows in the clear morning light. ‘Sitting ducks’, thought Stanning. Having seen the surplus crew offloaded at Teal, it never occurred to him that there would be many people on board. It would be madness. After a quick discussion with the pilot, Lieutenant Commander Hugh Clark, commanding officer of 825 Squadron, the Sea King landed and shut down just on the edge of Fitzroy settlement. Stanning got out to have a good look around.
It was another classic Falklands day.
Tim Hughes and Bill Tuttey’s job that morning was to deliver urgent stores and mail to the two landing ships and then return to San Carlos. As they flew up towards the ships, still a few miles short of Fitzroy, they spotted a lone soldier wandering across the bleak terrain. It seemed a little odd that somebody should be out completely on their own. It wasn’t even obvious whether he was British or Argentine. But they decided to land their Wessex, X-Ray Quebec, and offer him a lift.
‘Where are you going?’ shouted Tuttey.
‘Just drop me off when you get there,’ the man replied vaguely and jumped in the back.
Hughes and Tuttey presumed he was SAS. The M16 assault rifle was the biggest clue, aided by the droopy moustache and the small rucksack. But he seemed happy to get a lift and stayed in the helicopter while Hughes landed on the deck of Sir Galahad for refuel.