Scram! (33 page)

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.

As the Chinese flight-deck crew connected the hose up to the Wessex, Hughes watched the
junglie
Sea King Victor Zulu lifting loads off
Sir Tristram
. Lieutenant John Miller and Petty Officer Aircrewman ‘Splash' Ashdown had spent the night on board
Sir Galahad
as she sailed around the coast from San Carlos with the Welsh Guards. Having got airborne at first light, both the Sea King crew were surprised that stores and ammunition were being unloaded by pontoon, yet the Guardsmen had been left on board ship. It didn't seem sensible considering how much the ships stood out in the morning light. Victor Zulu was now busy offloading the Rapier air defence missile systems from ship to shore. Some of the missiles and their control boxes had been set up but were not yet ready to fire. It was a vital task. Rapier had already been credited with shooting down one Argentine Mirage jet at San Carlos, and probably a Skyhawk as well. Once the system was up and running at Fitzroy, the two landing ships would no longer be quite so exposed.

The newly arrived 825 Squadron Sea Kings had dramatically boosted the available lift to the land forces. Each Sea King could carry roughly double the load of their Wessex counterparts. Lieutenants John Boughton and Phil Sheldon were both experienced pilots but well aware of
junglie
suspicions about the ability of
pingers
to cope in a commando environment of featureless Falkland terrain
and
poor visibility. They hadn't helped their cause when, soon after disembarking from
Atlantic Causeway
a week earlier, they were briefed to move artillery and other equipment forward to Mount Kent as underslung loads. Standing on the slopes of Mount Kent, Brigadier Julian Thompson had watched a Sea King approach, with a jeep underslung, clearly heading towards enemy territory. Major Peter Cameron, boss of 3 Brigade Air Squadron ‘teeny-weeny' helicopters, came running up to him: ‘Do you see that helicopter there? It's got my fucking vehicle hanging underneath and it's flying straight towards the enemy.'

The Sea King overflew the commanders into no-man's land and onto a hill top that was in full view of the enemy. The pilots reacted quickly to the fire now coming at them from the Argentines, dropping the jeep onto the hillside and swinging the Sea King away down into a valley and safety.

It was an unfortunate, and thankfully rare, navigational error. But it cost them the jeep. Thompson and Cameron were worried that there might still be code books in the vehicle that could compromise operations, so the ‘fucking vehicle' was comprehensively shelled.

Now, on the morning of Tuesday 8 June, both John Boughton in Sea King 504 and Phil Sheldon in Sea King 501 had been told to help move equipment off the two landing ships at Fitzroy. But with Miller's
junglie
Sea King Victor Zulu already on the job when they got there, they returned to Goose Green to shuttle men and equipment back to Fitzroy.

Bad weather and attrition had prevented the Argentines from launching any meaningful air strikes so far in June. But this was to be a big one. Soon after midday local
time
, fourteen Argentine air force jets powered into Falklands airspace in three waves intent on sinking British ships. It was HMS
Exeter
again that raised the alarm ‘Air raid warning red'.

The first Argentine jets were decoys. Four Mirage 3s ran in at low level across the northern half of West Falkland. They broke off their attack after the Sea Harrier Combat Air Patrol started to intercept. Within minutes, the main attacking force of five Skyhawks was crossing the southern end of Falkland Sound and winding its way across Lafonia through the occasional rain shower. The arrowhead formation sped onwards towards Fitzroy, ignoring two British helicopters. One of the helicopters was Boughton's Sea King. He immediately radioed a warning of the contact before taking cover in a fold in the land, talked down by his Leading Aircrewman Roy Egglestone. To the Argentine pilots, the only other sign of British activity appeared to be a lot of troops on the ground at Fitzroy who opened up on them with small-arms fire. But as the Skyhawks climbed and banked steeply on their starboard wings, the two ships came into view. Circling round to the south of Bluff Cove, the Skyhawks continued their turn to run in from the east. The first three jets aimed at
Sir Galahad
, the nearest target. The second two went for
Sir Tristram
.

On the ground at Fitzroy, some of the Rapier batteries had been deployed but were not yet properly calibrated. To the frustration of the operators, their missiles failed to respond at all when fired, sitting uselessly on their rails as the Skyhawks streaked past. In the air, the Combat Air Patrol was nowhere to be seen. The brand new airstrip at Port San Carlos had been put out of action earlier that morning after an RAF ground-attack Harrier crash-landed, while
Hermes
had withdrawn
further
to the east for repairs, shortening the available time on task for the Sea Harriers anyway.
Galahad
and
Tristram
were defenceless.

Meanwhile a third wave of Daggers crossed Falkland Sound, intending to follow the Skyhawks to Port Pleasant. However, the frigate HMS
Plymouth
appeared unexpectedly in the open water, providing an opportunity that was too good to miss. The Daggers swept past the ship and turned in to attack from the north. One by one they ran in, dropping their bombs and spitting cannon fire.
Plymouth
returned fire with cannon and a Seacat missile that missed. One of the Dagger's bombs went straight through
Plymouth
's funnel. Two bombs ricocheted off the ship. A fourth lodged in a rear compartment, causing a depth charge to go off. Miraculously, none of the bombs exploded. Yet the smoke billowing from
Plymouth
's fire caused the Argentine pilots to leave the scene convinced that they had sunk another British ship.

Paul McIntosh was at the controls of X-Ray Tango, assigned to the field hospital at Ajax Bay for the day. He had fled to a small gulley overlooking Falkland Sound on hearing the warning from
Fearless
, ‘Air raid warning red, SCRAM!'