by Harry Benson
As I strapped myself into the left seat, I found my vision further obscured to the side. Yankee Tango was one of the few aircraft fitted with armour plating in the cockpit seats and side windows. I strained hard to pull up the heavy window plate and lock it beside me. For a moment I thought I couldn’t lift it and would have to deal with the embarrassment of asking for help. The seat armour under my bottom was definitely a good idea. But I would have preferred to do without the window armour for the extra visibility and lighter weight. After all, it hadn’t stopped Oily’s bullet.
Our maintainer plugged a battery into the ground supply socket and we pressed the start button on the port engine. Provided you could get the engines started, the Wessex would usually keep going all day. Their incredible reliability was down to two factors. First, our maintainers were superb, both pragmatic and creative. All of their field maintenance had to be done in the pitch dark and numbing cold of the Falklands night. If the pilot could accept certain faults and limitations, the aircraft would be signed off as flyable. If the fault was too serious, the aircraft became a source of spare parts to be robbed – a ‘Christmas tree’.
The additional faults we had to accept on Yankee Tango were a dud oil pressure gauge and a dud fuel gauge. At least the other fuel gauge was working. Provided we kept the fuel flows to each engine the same, we could reasonably assume that both tanks held roughly the same amount of fuel. The list of assumptions was beginning to build up. My first mission of the war was to be in an aircraft with limited visibility, a main gearbox that might grind to a violent halt at any moment, and a fuel system that might run out without warning. Apart from that, Yankee Tango was great.
We wound up the rotors, completed our final checks and, with Chris Eke in the back armed with his machine gun, we launched into the South Atlantic dawn. Flying over the Falklands terrain in the early morning light was beautiful. Glorious blue skies, stunning rugged scenery, no wind. It was hard to believe there was a war on.
Our task was to head straight to Goose Green and help move the remaining Gurkhas forward to Fitzroy. We departed due south at low level from Port San Carlos climbing up over the Sussex Mountains. We spent as little time as possible on the skyline as we rolled downhill into a narrow valley that offered some concealment. The flying was exciting and fabulous. Rarely did we climb much more than twenty or thirty feet above the ground. Whilst keeping his eyes on the scenery around us, Evans managed to pull out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter from the side pocket of his combat trousers. ‘Light one for me, would you Harry? And help yourself.’ Most aircrew smoked. I’d given up on the way down south to get fit. ‘What the hell,’ I thought. ‘This is war’ – although we were not supposed to smoke in the aircraft.
It felt good having Evans show me the ropes. But I couldn’t wait to boot him out and have the controls to myself. As we approached the grassy airstrip next to the settlement, I could see two damaged Argentine Pucara and the remains of Lieutenant Nick Taylor’s shot-down Sea Harrier. It was a sobering sight.
This was my first view of a dreaded Pucara, thankfully with its wings clipped. The combination of slow speed and a couple of rocket pods made the Pucara the biggest threat to our helicopters. These two at Goose Green airstrip were put out of action by the very first Sea Harrier raid on 1 May.
Our cabin was filled up with the first load of stores and equipment. We headed east towards the front line, flying close to the ground and steering a couple of miles south of the suspected SAM site. Well before we reached the inlet at Port Pleasant, the two landing ships Sir Galahad and Sir Tristram stood out starkly against the flat grasslands and sea. They were both still smoking and horribly charred. The reality of war was shocking. Our normal in-flight running commentary and jokey banter turned to silence. There was nothing to say. As we flew past the ships in the now dull morning sunshine, I slid my window open and took a photo. With the image scarred in my mind, we flew on to the grid reference we had been given to deposit our load.
The burning hulks became an all too familiar landmark that day. I flew past them many times. Fortunately, there was little opportunity to linger over such thoughts. Completing our tasking took our full attention, not just in working out how to get from A to B, but how to manage our fuel and load. We were constantly calculating the minimum and maximum fuel needed to complete the next few trips. Too little and we ran out. Too much and we couldn’t do the job. Although FOB Fitzroy was established that day, Tim Stanning’s forward refuelling station had not yet been set up. Our only sources of fuel were the dozen or so flight decks and the airstrip thirty miles away in San Carlos Water. Even with fifty helicopters airborne, competition was never fierce. However we would occasionally have to wait on a hillside for a few minutes until cleared to come in. All pilots, including me, had their own scare stories of getting perilously low on fuel. Amazingly, nobody ever actually ran out.
After an hour and a half of lifting and shifting equipment between the ships at San Carlos, Goose Green and the southern end of the front line, Evans said he was happy for me to do the rest of the tasking on my own. It felt good. We landed in an open area next to Goose Green airfield so that he could get out. He would catch a ride back to Port San Carlos and get another aircraft for himself.
The usual routine for swapping seats, since I needed to be in the right seat, would be to shut down. However, with an old helicopter in a cold wet climate there was always the chance that the Wessex wouldn’t start again. So as we kept the rotors turning, I got out and Chris Eke got in. While Eke held on to the stick for dear life, Evans climbed gingerly out making sure not to knock any of the flying controls. I then climbed very quickly into the empty right seat, hauling up the heavy armour plate in my window. My non-pilot crewman seemed strangely reluctant to relinquish his temporary and highly unofficial command of a large Royal Navy commando helicopter. ‘Sorry Chris, my turn now,’ I grinned. ‘I have control.’ I couldn’t wait.
Our first task was to ferry Gurkhas. As the first group of men approached Yankee Tango, all I could see were these enormous bergens with boots sticking out of the bottom of each, an array of weaponry on the side, and a huge set of gleaming teeth near the top. Having walked over the Sussex Mountains, the Gurkha troops were clearly thrilled to be given a lift for the next stage.
Although we were supposed to take a maximum of twelve troops, Eke kept on waving them in. I’m sure I counted sixteen men disappear into the cabin behind me. Take-off with such a heavy load was hard work. At full power, I could just about make a low hover. By gradually drifting forwards across the grassy airstrip, I eventually achieved the fifteen knots or so needed to escape from the recirculating air and into the clean air that gave us translational lift. We were away.
Every few miles we passed another Wessex or Sea King coming back from the front line, flying just a few feet above the barren grassland. It was a good game to radio a hello to the other aircraft without using names and see if we could guess whose voice it was.
In our introductory brief on arrival, Jack Lomas had explained the various warning codes to us. ‘Air raid warning red’ meant an incoming attack. ‘SCRAM, SCRAM!’ meant hit the ground fast. My adrenalin levels shot up the first time I heard that radio call and the final crackled words on the HF radio that may or may not have been ‘SCRAM!’ All I knew was that I didn’t want to be in the air. I reacted accordingly.
From hurtling downwind some fifteen feet above the ground at over 100 miles per hour, I executed a perfect downwind fast stop of which I was extremely proud. Rolling the aircraft into a sharp turn and flaring the nose up to reduce speed, I brought the heavily laden Wessex gently down to a peach of a landing with the aircraft partly hidden in a small depression. That was definitely a steely commando landing.
The Gurkhas leapt out and took cover, spread around the aircraft. The whole manoeuvre felt thoroughly impressive, right up to the point when a Wessex flew past me and a familiar voice came over the radio: ‘Yankee Tango, are you OK?’
&nb
sp; I recognised my boss Mike Booth.
‘Just waiting for the air raid to clear,’ I replied.
He told me not to worry and to get on my way. So that was that. Thanks boss, I thought. The Gurkhas piled back in and, with my tail between my legs, we continued on our way.
The incident brought home to me two things. The first was how incredibly competent we were at handling the aircraft. Here I was as a baby pilot thrust straight from training into a war. I may have felt out of my depth on the ground, but I felt completely at home with a helicopter strapped to my back. And it really was a case of strapping it to me rather than strapping me into it. Coming in to land for example, I could sense exactly when the tail wheel fifty feet behind me was about to touch the ground. I could feel the Wessex as if it were a part of me. The training really had been brilliant.
The second was how uncertain war is. Our morning brief may have given us a reasonable idea where the good guys and the bad guys were located. But once airborne, we just had to focus on our task, ignoring distractions like air raid warnings, and hoping like mad that whoever was giving us instructions knew what they were doing. Most of the time, they did. But in the midst of the unknown, we just had to get on with the job calmly and professionally. We were good at it.
After a day of lifts between Goose Green and Bluff Cove settlement beyond Port Pleasant, I brought Yankee Tango back to Port San Carlos having completed our tasking. As I was approaching almost the exact spot from which we had lifted off seven hours earlier, a shout in my ear from Eke warned that we were about to land on a telegraph wire. A quick burst of power and we moved up and over. I was greatly relieved to get back safely.
With a little daylight still left, Eke and I decided we would wander the half-mile or so across the hill from the briefing tent to the temporary runway. An RAF Harrier had overshot the end of the runway and collapsed its wheels in the soggy turf. A green tarpaulin had been thrown over the cockpit to protect it from rainwater. We steered clear of the two-inch rocket pod nestling in the wet grass. Eke posed manfully for a photograph in front of the Harrier with his rifle. The light was fading as we trudged back into the settlement area and remembered we had been up since well before dawn. Food and sleep were now our priorities.
Because our squadron had been cobbled together from a variety of sources, our arrival brought in an incredible amount of flying experience. Mike Booth had spent a tour as a ‘trapper’ with Naval Flying Standards Flight, carrying out annual squadron inspections. Although outstanding pilots, trappers were also social pariahs, revered and feared in equal measure. As squadron boss, he had rejoined the ranks of the ordinary. His relief at finally getting to the action was tempered by the nagging thought that we could easily have lifted the Welsh and Scots Guards, as well as the Gurkhas, if only we’d got to the Falklands a few days earlier. All those little delays had probably cost lives.
Booth’s number two, Rob Flexman, had just returned from a two-year exchange with the French navy. His appointment fell hardest on Neil Anstis, the most experienced pilot on our squadron. Their occasional tiffs were well camouflaged from us Junior Joes. The charming Mike Spencer, the test pilot from Farnborough responsible for getting hold of the night vision goggles for the Sea Kings, had also joined us. Our combined Wessex squadron at Port San Carlos now had eight officers of lieutenant commander rank or equivalent. Six of them were pilots. All of this experience meant that there was a hierarchy to keep an eye on the junior pilots like me. Nine of us were sub-lieutenants in our early twenties. Some of the lieutenants were only a year or two older.
Now Flexman and Spencer took responsibility for running operations, matching up crews, and allocating roles and jobs. It took the pressure off Jack Lomas.
Sparky Harden was one of the sub-lieutenants, a feisty and popular junior pilot who had joined the Navy six weeks before me. For our first day in the Falklands we, the new arrivals, were paired with pilots who were older hands. Harden was paired with my colleague Jerry Spence. Despite Spence having completed nearly a full front-line tour as the more experienced pilot, Harden had already been in the Falklands for over two weeks. Like me, Spence’s first mission was the Gurkha battalion lift from Goose Green to Bluff Cove. Altogether some six Wessex spent the day crossing to and fro between the two settlements.
Sparky Harden’s Wessex was unmistakable. I thought my own flying had been pretty low and exciting at fifteen feet above the ground, but Harden was almost beneath me as he flew past at five feet. Whilst I was impressed at his skill and accuracy at flying so low, I was also thinking ‘Bloody idiot’. There was no scope for error. One tiny lapse in concentration, one misjudgement, and it would be curtains for him, his fellow pilot and aircrewman, his passengers, his payload and a vital helicopter resource. Even a hardened Royal Marine SBS captain riding in the back signalled to the aircrewman that he thought it might be a good idea to fly a fraction higher. After two trips, his co-pilot Jerry Spence could stand it no longer: ‘Sparky, take me back to Port San Carlos, will you mate. You don’t need me.’
Three years later, Harden flew a junglie Sea King through some wires in Norway, cutting off the tail of the aircraft as he crash-landed into a snowy field. His reputation as a hooligan had followed him. His new boss warned that he would be court-martialled if he stepped out of line. Ironically, Jerry Spence had been appointed Provost Marshal.
‘Look at this Sparky.’ Spence showed him the official letter. ‘I’ve got to take you by the ear and drag you in!’
Harden was thrown out of the Navy. Later that evening back at Port San Carlos, I asked Harden why he flew so low. ‘You remember during training Crabbers used to tell us what being a junglie was all about. “Dash and panache, Sparky,” he’d say. “You’ve got to have a bit of dash and panache.”’
On the morning that we were disembarking to Port San Carlos, Jack Lomas called Pete Manley over for a chat. He’d been asked by Colonel Mike Rose if a Wessex could park an AS12 air-to-surface missile on General Menendez’s desk in Port Stanley. Intelligence suggested that his orders group met every morning around 8 a.m. in the Town Hall. ‘Can you do it, Pete?’ asked Lomas.
‘Tell me more,’ Manley replied.
Within an hour they were shutting down Yankee Hotel on the deck of special forces headquarters, Sir Lancelot. Descending deep into the interior of the landing ship, Lomas and Manley entered a darkened operations room. Six men stood leaning over a large map table. Rose welcomed the two pilots and introduced the outline mission and the latest intelligence. A roll of photographic paper displayed a panoramic view of Stanley, taken covertly from one of the hills to the west. Some of the houses, such as ‘Town Hall’ or ‘Mr & Mrs …, ex-Navy’, were marked with arrows. Manley immediately proposed that the best approach route for a missile attack would be from the north. Rose agreed, advising that there was nobody up there apart from ‘our guys’.
Manley then asked about the Argentine assets that would be brought to bear against them. The SAS artillery specialist described two main threats. The first was a couple of anti-aircraft Oerliken guns on the quayside near Government House. He wasn’t sure which type they were. The absence of a dish suggested they weren’t radar guided. Their effective range would be about 4,000 yards, although the shells would fly twice that distance. The second and more serious threat was the radar-guided 105mm howitzer guns currently pointing out to the east towards Mounts Longdon and Two Sisters. ‘If they’re good,’ he said, ‘they’ll turn them round and get their first rounds down in about four minutes.’
Manley said he’d give it a go with his best missile aimer, Arthur Balls, who was particularly good at dusk and lowlight conditions. He’d need to check everything was working beforehand by firing a test missile at a rock somewhere out near Teal. ‘Absolutely,’ said Rose. ‘Fire as many as you like.’ He’d also need to check that Balls was happy to do it in case he thought it was all too gung-ho.
The following morning Balls was instructed to return to Port San Carlos for a briefing. He
and Manley went for a quiet chat. Within an hour, they were sitting on the deck of Fearless, loading two live AS12 missiles onto the wing pylons, ready to head off to Teal. In the cabin were a weapons electrician and two more missiles.
Having unloaded at FOB Teal, Manley headed across the meandering inlet of Port Salvador until they came to a small island of grass and rock some seven miles to the north. Bob’s Island was remote and uninhabited: perfect for a practice firing. Both missile firings went well and they returned to Teal to reload the replacements. To the three other Wessex crews operating out of Teal, including Oily Knight, Flipper Hughes and Pete Skinner, it was obvious something was afoot. Yankee Hotel had left the FOB with two missiles fitted and returned with none. ‘We’re just practising,’ Manley told them. It was not a very convincing explanation.
Even though rumours quickly circulated among the other Wessex crews back at Port San Carlos, all of us knew better than to probe. Manley and Balls, though very different characters, were equally well liked amongst the wider junglie community. In the war so far, Wessex had crashed and been sunk and attacked with missiles and mortars. We’d lost two Wessex engineers, but not a single pilot or aircrewman yet. Whatever they were up to, we just hoped like mad they’d come back alive.
That evening, in one of the Teal farm buildings that had become an operations room, Manley handed a piece of paper to Lomas. It was a letter to his wife in case of the worst. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Lomas. ‘When you come back, I’ll give it back to you.’ They had been given the go-ahead for an early morning strike.
Visibility was poor at first light on Friday 11 June. Yankee Hotel launched anyway into the mist, the noise attracting a great deal of attention around the settlement. Jack Lomas and Jerry Thomas found that their back-up Wessex – intended as search-and-rescue helicopter in case anything went wrong – wouldn’t start. Lomas ran back to the ops room, quickly briefing Hughes and Skinner to take over the role in X-Ray Tango.