Eye of the Storm (25 page)

Yet while I was with him, not a single one of the Royal Navy officers aboard
Hermes
came to where he sat silently brooding. Not one arrived to offer his condolences, or to say ‘Sorry about your ship, Sam. You did your best.’ Perhaps Captain Salt had found his way to 2 Sierra Flats because he wanted solitude. I don’t know. To this day I find it strange, however, that none of the naval officers had any words of comfort for him during that hour and more while he was sitting opposite me, that not one of them put a friendly hand on his shoulder. It must have been the lowest point in that man’s life. Yet the naval officers on
Hermes
simply ignored him. I remember reading that there was once a time when a Royal Navy captain who lost his ship could expect no mercy from the Admiralty. That was a long time ago, but maybe the Royal Navy still suffers from that kind of antiquated thinking.

Sheffield
was the first ship the Royal Navy had lost to enemy action since the Second World War. In the Chief Petty Officers’ Mess aboard
Hermes
that night the story of her tragic loss began to unfold.

During our time on
Hermes
, the carrier was in ‘Zulu’ state, which meant that all watertight doors and hatches were secured. When any of us, seamen or soldiers, passed through a door in a bulkhead we screwed or clamped it shut behind us. The idea was that if the ship was hit and the sea came in, the water would only get through to certain compartments, rather than flood the ship to such a degree as to threaten to sink her.

I was told that
Sheffield
had been on air-defence duty at the south-west corner of the Task Force, then lying some forty miles off the south-eastern tip of East Falkland. At the time, however, she had been at a state known as ‘Yankee’, which meant that, unlike state ‘Zulu’ on
Hermes
, doors and hatches were open. When the Exocet hit the destroyer, a ball of fire had instantly swept along the ship’s ‘Burma Road’.

Many ships have a Burma Road – a corridor which stretches the length of the ship from bow to stern. Clamped on brackets on the steel walls of
Sheffield
’s Burma Road was the ship’s firefighting equipment. The super-heated fireball engulfed the corridor from end to end, immediately destroying all the firefighting equipment and making it all but impossible for the crew to fight the blaze. Within minutes, the fire had roared through the ship like a blast furnace, effectively ending the destroyer’s life. After four hours spent trying to control the blaze, Captain Salt reluctantly gave the order to abandon ship as the flames threatened to engulf the magazine for the Sea Dart missiles. Twenty-one men were dead, and many more were injured, some with terrible burns. The Type 21 frigate HMS
Arrow
came alongside and took off most of the crew; others, including Salt, were winched off by Sea King helicopters.

In the CPOs’ Mess on
Hermes
that night, one petty officer was walking about dramatically exclaiming, ‘A ball of fire … a ball of fire …’ It may be that he was in a state of shock, although I don’t know why, since he was just a member of the carrier’s crew and certainly hadn’t been aboard
Sheffield
when she was hit. The squadron 2IC and I were drinking together at the bar as the ball-of-fire merchant walked up and down repeating his lines. We laughed – simply chortled into our glasses, and even mimicked him. This may seem callous, but the fact was that imminent death was nothing new to us. We’d lost men in action, and seen aircraft crash with friends and comrades aboard. To us, sudden, often violent death was simply a matter of occurrence.

In our business, we recognize that we can’t deal in death without being able to accept the consequences. To the navy guys it was different, however, almost as though they couldn’t understand how the Argentinians could have had the audacity to wipe out one of our ships. And this despite the sinking, two days earlier, of the
General Belgrano
, with the loss of more than 350 Argentinian lives. Now everyone in the Task Force had been made to realize that we were a fair target, and that the Argentinians had a sting in their tail. They had the assets, and they had the firepower; they also had the determination.

The loss of the
Sheffield
had brought home to us how vulnerable we were to enemy air or submarine attacks while floating about in the South Atlantic. We also all now knew it wasn’t going to become any easier, and that the Argentinians were not going to go away.

If the sinking of HMS
Sheffield
was Argentina’s revenge for the reconquest of South Georgia and the loss of the
General Belgrano
, the Task Force’s response was robust, effective, and not slow in coming. Quite early after the arrival of the Task Force in the theatre of operations, the pilot of a Sea Harrier, returning from a sortie over Goose Green, had reported that a radar lock had registered on his avionics as he had flown over Pebble Island, a barren place off the north coast of West Falkland. There was a small civilian settlement there, and it was known that the enemy had established a substantial outpost in and around it. Thinking that the signal might be coming from a ground-radar installation, he went for a closer look, and discovered that there was a grass airstrip on the island which the Argentinians were extending.

No one knew how much of a threat the strip on Pebble Island might be to the invasion ships, or to the land forces which, as the plan was even then, were to go ashore in San Carlos Bay on East Falkland. Once it was suspected that a radar installation had been set up on the island, however, the place became a very serious threat indeed. Admiral Woodward believed that the radar might be able to detect the British main assault fleet while it was out of range of radar on the Argentinian mainland or on East Falkland, while the airstrip was only a few minutes’ flying time, even for piston-engined ground-attack aircraft, from the proposed site for the main landings.

Although they appear as mere specks on any map of the world, the Falkland Islands cover 4,700 square miles – about the same area as Northern Ireland. Distances between settlements are long and, outside the town of Port Stanley, population is sparse, and sparser still on West Falkland. Pebble Island is a narrow strip of land some twelve kilometres long, with the sheep-farming settlement and its grass airstrip lying at the eastern end. At its narrowest, the strip of water separating the island from the north coast of West Falkland is some 500 metres.

We had some intelligence that there was a force of between sixty and seventy Argentinian servicemen on the island, made up of engineers, surveyors, radar technicians and a guard force. There were also a number of civilians whom the enemy might be holding as hostages. This was why an early plan to bomb the runway was given the thumbs down. We didn’t want any of the islanders to be hurt, and least of all as a result of British action. That was not what we’d come all this way for.

Some of our intelligence was conflicting, however, for other reports indicated that the Argentinian engineers might be there to prepare a new airstrip to receive Aermacchi light ground-attack aircraft which, among other armament, were equipped with Kingfisher air-to-surface missiles, representing a very real threat to any land force once it was ashore. But whatever the truth of these reports, it was absolutely clear that it was vital for someone to find out just what was happening on Pebble Island.

‘Someone’ turned out to be D Squadron, 22 SAS. Two four-man patrols from Boat Troop, led by Captain Ted, the troop commander, were to be sent ashore in inflatable boats for a close look at Pebble Island. By now, however, the weather was so poor that the plan was called off. Instead, the patrols were airlifted by Sea King helicopter on to West Falkland on the night of 11/12 May. Their orders were to get as close to the airfield as they could without getting caught, set up covert OPs, and radio back the information that would allow the Task Force’s planning directors to make a proper plan of attack.

They took with them two five foot-long bags, each containing a Klepper collapsible canoe. Once they had been dropped, they laid low on West Falkland until nightfall and then ‘tabbed’ – the SAS (and Para) equivalent of the Royal Marines’ ‘yomping’ – across country until they reached a point that was closest to Pebble Island. With them they carried the dismantled canoes in their bags.

Kleppers are constructed from willow frames which, once assembled, then have a rubber skin drawn tightly across them. Skilled hands can assemble them in a few minutes, and the Regiment’s Boat Troops are nothing if not skilled. In pitch darkness, the patrols paddled their craft across the sound and beached them on Pebble Island. Then, while one patrol guarded the concealed boats and their escape route, Ted and the other three men crept towards the airstrip across land that had barely enough cover to hide a rabbit. Indeed, so sparse was the vegetation that to avoid detection during the hours of daylight, they had to lie completely motionless in the elephant grass. Given the close proximity of a much larger enemy force, they were in constant danger of being spotted and attacked, which would almost certainly have compromised any subsequent attack on the airstrip.

At about eleven o’clock on the morning of 15 May, the Boat Troop commander sent a signal which will go down in the annals of the Regiment. Coded and transmitted in Morse, once deciphered it read, ‘Eleven aircraft, repeat eleven aircraft. Believed real. Squadron attack tonight.’

The timescale was very tight – clearly Ted saw the matter as urgent. In the light of this, the squadron commander and the senior planners got together and worked out that any attack launched against the aircraft on the Pebble Island airstrip would have to be completed by 0700 hours the next day to allow sufficient time for the raiding parties to be recovered by helicopter. The reason for this was because the Task Force ships closed up to the islands at night, but steamed away into the South Atlantic so that they should not be vulnerable to air attack when daylight came some time after 1100 hours. As they sailed out of danger, so the distance the helicopters would have to fly back to the ships increased.

The plan began to go wrong from the first. Because of bad weather conditions and
Hermes
miscalculating her run in to a position eighty miles offshore, which would bring Pebble Island within helicopter range of the ships, the operation started running late almost from the start. The South Atlantic lived up to its foul-weather reputation, and the aircraft carrier had to sail in fierce headwinds and mounting seas. Movement on board was risky, which meant that the Sea Kings on the hangar decks could not be safely readied by the technical crews in the time allowed. Once they were ready, there were more delays while the choppers were brought up to the flight deck for lift-off.

The helicopters were carried up from the hold of
Hermes
by huge lifts let into the flight deck, for all the aircraft, Sea Harriers as well as Sea Kings, were kept below deck at all times when they weren’t flying. The mood and atmosphere among D Squadron was electric, with everyone raring to go. By then our faces were covered in cam cream and we were all tooled up. Each SAS man tasked for the raid carried an M16 rifle with three spare magazines taped to the butt, and another 200 to 400 rounds of 7.62mm GPMG ammunition in belts. Everybody carried two mortar bombs, one of high explosive and one of white phosphorus, which we were to drop off when we reached the mortar pits that would be established near the airstrip. Several of the guys also carried LAWs – M72 light anti-tank weapons – which are extremely effective against aircraft on the ground.

Adrenalin raged through our systems like rivers of fire, giving us an enormous rush. Armed to the teeth, forty-five of us boarded the Sea Kings; with us also went a naval-gunfire support team from 148 Battery, 29 Commando Regiment, Royal Artillery, whose task was to direct the bombardment from the 4.5-inch guns of the ships lying offshore. We all embarked on the hangar deck, and eventually the Sea King that my troop was to fly in was brought up to the flight deck. The helicopter’s engines roared into life. We waited on deck for at least fifteen minutes, only to be told that one of the Sea Kings carrying another troop had developed mechanical problems and would have to be replaced. All in all, this took over an hour, leaving our time on the ground less than adequate, as everything had been planned on the basis of the distance between
Hermes
and Pebble Island and the range of the Sea Kings, making timing absolutely critical.

At last we lifted off, flying low level over the sea in blackout conditions, occasionally gaining fleeting glimpses of the waves below. I had never experienced surges of adrenalin to the same extent. To be part of the largest SAS raid since the Second World War was something that I would not have missed for anything, especially when I remembered that I should have been back in a Birmingham drill hall completing my two-year stint as an instructor.

The navy pilots were terrific, lifting off in the dark and, despite very high winds, flying only forty or fifty feet above the waves to dodge any enemy radar cover. For all their efforts, however, because of the atrocious weather we were already running an hour late when they dropped us off three miles from the airstrip. We estimated that it would take us about two hours to reach the target.

On landing we were met by Captain Ted, the Boat Troop commander, and his men. They had spent the last four days lying up on Pebble Island, watching the enemy without being seen; now it was their job to lead us to the target. The squadron commander and the headsheds of each troop were briefed by Ted. Once the briefing had finished, we were told that this was not a night for tactical movement; instead, we had to get our arses in gear and get to the target as quickly as possible, since otherwise we wouldn’t have enough time to carry out the mission and rendezvous with the helicopters before the latter had to return to
Hermes
. The plan was for Mobility Troop to attack the eleven aircraft on the ground and destroy them with plastic-explosive (PE) charges. Air Troop was tasked to mask off the settlement, and Mountain Troop was to be held in reserve at the mortar pit, from where they would be able to go instantly to the aid of any troops that might be in trouble.