Scram! (9 page)

It was at this stage that the SAS hatched their bold plan to launch from one of the ships by helicopter, land a team of sixteen men on Fortuna Glacier, march down the central spine through the mountains, and take the Argentine troops by surprise from the rear. As if this plan wasn't sufficiently daring and risky, the initial plan was to do it all
at night
.

It meant the Wessex helicopters would have to get to and from the glacier in the dark in close formation. And so on the evening of Thursday 15 April, Tidd and Berryman took off in one aircraft, with Pulford and Georgeson in the other aircraft, to practise night formation without lights. Bearing in mind the drama to come just one week later, the thought today still sends shivers down Mike Tidd's spine. Having flown a night-formation sortie in a Wessex myself, I can vouch for the only word that begins to describe the experience. Terrifying. White knuckles and tight sphincter muscles are unavoidable.

Night formation is simple in theory. On the tips of the rotor blades and along the spine of the Wessex are about a dozen beta lights. These give off a faint green glow in the dark. The effect is to produce a disk of light from the spinning rotors. The pilot flying in echelon judges his position using the shape of the disk and the angle of the
lights
on the spine of the lead aircraft. He judges his distance by the extent to which he can see the red lights of the lead aircraft cockpit. If he can barely see the cockpit lights, he's too far away. If he can actually read the instruments, he's about to collide. It's quite an adventure.

The first problem is that flying smoothly enough to stay in stable close formation is hard enough during daylight, let alone in the pitch black. Fear and uncertainty lead to inevitable overcontrolling and wild swings in aircraft positioning. The second problem is how on earth to join up after launching from a ship where a formation take-off is impossible. As the more experienced pilot, Tidd put Berryman in the pilot's right-hand seat. This meant that Tidd's head was squashed in behind the M260 missile sight in the aimer's left seat. After ‘frightening themselves fartless' trying to join up with the other Wessex, the idea of a tactical night insert was quietly and sensibly binned.

Although Tidd, Pulford and Georgeson all had experience of Arctic mountain flying in northern Norway, any notion that South Georgia would be a similar environment was quickly disabused following an extensive briefing from Lieutenant Commander Tony Ellerbeck, Wasp flight commander from
Endurance
. His description of the Antarctic weather sounded pretty unpleasant. None of them fully realised quite how unpredictable and violent it would turn out to be. As for the SAS plan, Ellerbeck was not impressed. ‘They are out of their tiny trees,' he told
Antrim
's Ian Stanley.

Nevertheless, against the advice of all those with local experience of the severe conditions, the SAS mission went ahead. On the morning of Wednesday 21 April, with
Antrim
positioned some fifteen miles off the coast of South Georgia, Ian Stanley and his crew took off in their
anti-submarine
Wessex 3 from
Antrim
to attempt a recce of Fortuna Glacier.

For the first time, Stanley began to grasp the sheer scale of the task. The scenery was awe-inspiring, breathtaking. Gigantic black granite cliffs rose 2,000 feet vertically out of the sea. Fragmented shoulders of ice spilled off the edge of glaciers. The wind whipping around the bays produced considerable turbulence even before they got into the mountains. An engine failure in these freezing waters would be bad enough. The thought of climbing up into the mountains in these hostile conditions, even with a working engine, was not remotely appealing.

Stanley returned to
Antrim
to load the few troops he could take into his cramped cabin. He cleared the deck to make way for Yankee Foxtrot, flown by Mike Tidd, and Yankee Alpha, flown by Andy Pulford, to load up their aircraft one at a time with the bulk of the troops. The three aircraft formation then set off across Cape Constance and into Antarctic Bay towards the foot of Fortuna Glacier. However, a heavy snowstorm made further progress impossible and the formation returned to
Antrim
.

With the weather changing rapidly and violently, Stanley returned for a further recce with the SAS mission commander Cedric Delves and team leader John Hamilton. This time conditions had cleared sufficiently for them to hover-taxi at low level up the face of the glacier. As they climbed, co-pilot Stewart Cooper was mesmerised as the radio altimeter flickered from 30 feet to 200 feet and back almost immediately. The aircraft was crossing deep blue crevasses that cracked the white icy surface of the glacier. At the top of Fortuna, it was clear that Hamilton was less than thrilled at the prospect of legging it over the top of the mountains. Ian Stanley chuckled wryly as he heard Delves tell him: ‘You've got to get on John.'

Back one more time to
Antrim
, the formation loaded up, delayed yet again by a heavy snow shower. This time all three Wessex managed to work their way back up the glacier, buffeted violently in the heavy turbulence and snow squalls. One moment an aircraft would be in full autorotation with no power applied and yet still climbing. Another, they would have full power applied and still be going down. On each occasion, the pilots had to trust that the updraft or downdraft would reverse direction before too long.

This is one of the two ill-fated Wessex 5s on their way to drop SAS troops on the top of Fortuna Glacier in South Georgia. The massive cliffs give a hint of the awesome scale and power that lay ahead of them up in the mountains.

Stanley's first attempt to put his wheels down on the glacier was nearly disastrous. Only a warning from the crewman, Fitzgerald, and quick reactions from Stanley prevented the Wessex 3 from slipping into a crevasse. Behind him, Tidd was unable to bring his aircraft to a hover at all
and
was forced to circle round again. Pulford managed to land using the lead aircraft as a reference point. His crewman, Jan Lomas, voiced what all the other aircrew were thinking: ‘What a bloody stupid idea this is.'

Visibility shifted from clear to zero to clear with alarming speed. Still flying their aircraft on the icy surface with the wind gusting sixty knots, the pilots watched the SAS troops unload their equipment. All three aircraft were now profoundly unstable as the Wessex airframes shook from side to side.

Tidd was first to clear out his passengers, commenting to Tug Wilson in the back: ‘What on earth are these prats coming up here for. They'll be lucky not to fall into one these crevasses.' Eager to get off the treacherous mountain, Tidd decided to lift off early in order to take advantage of a clear gap in the weather that had suddenly opened up in front of him. It was a precursor to his fateful decision the following day. After receiving a thumbs-up from the SAS troop commander Hamilton, the two other Wessex gladly lifted off and headed down the glacier to join Tidd for the trip back to
Antrim
and
Tidespring
out at sea. ‘Thank God we'll never have to do that again,' announced a relieved Tidd on arrival back on board, prematurely as it turned out.

That night was a shocker. The weather worsened dramatically. The barometer dropped thirty millibars within an hour; the wind gusted to over 100 knots, and the seas became huge and burst over the bow of the rolling ships. On the flight decks of both
Antrim
and
Tidespring
, a Wessex remained open to the appalling weather, partly because of the danger of moving the aircraft into their respective hangars, partly to keep aircraft available on alert. On
Tidespring
, the Wessex maintenance crew were forced to lash heavy manila ropes to stop the blades thrashing themselves to death. The normal tipsocks were
simply
inadequate for the task. On
Antrim
, wardroom film night was abandoned as the projector became too hard to hold down. On Fortuna Glacier, the SAS troops had only moved a few hundred yards and were vainly digging themselves into the ice to gain even a few inches of shelter from the driving wind and snow.

It was no surprise the following morning, Thursday 22 April, when the signal came through from Hamilton requesting emergency evacuation. His team were suffering from frostbite and exposure. Tidd's roster put Ian Georgeson and Andy Berryman in the frame to fly the two Wessex 5s. But whereas he was happy for Arctic-trained Georgeson to fly in these appalling conditions, he was less willing to let the less experienced Berryman go, despite the fact that Berryman was an extremely competent young pilot. ‘It's not a “first tourist” day,' said Tidd.

The three Wessex set off again with conditions improved from the overnight storm to a mere gale. Stanley led in the Wessex 3 with Georgeson and Tidd following, having decided that he couldn't put Andy Pulford through a second dose of Fortuna Glacier. As the formation approached the foot of the glacier, Stanley told the two other aircraft to land on a flat promontory and wait while he recced the mountain. Violent changes in wind direction made it hard for Stanley to control his tail rotor as he climbed the glacier. He decided to abort the recce and recalled the other aircraft back to the ships for a refuel. An hour later, at lunchtime, the trio set off for a further attempt. This time the weather was clearer and calmer as the rescue team landed next to the orange smokes set off by the SAS teams on top of the glacier. Under normal circumstances conditions would have been considered appalling. The wind was gusting to sixty knots. The aircraft were still sliding around on the ice.

In the back of Yankee Foxtrot, Tug Wilson had closed
the
door and was pouring hot soup out for the frozen SAS troops. Mike Tidd made his fateful call for permission to go while the going was good.

Aside from the loss of the two troop-carrying Wessex 5s,
junglie
involvement in the taking of South Georgia was otherwise minimal. For the next few days, Tidd and Georgeson made themselves useful on board
Antrim
. However, an important and unusual role lay ahead.

Having discovered that the route over the top of Fortuna Glacier was impassable, the SAS now attempted to insert their patrols covertly in rubber inflatable Gemini boats. This method resulted in no greater success. Ian Stanley and his crew spent a day searching for and rescuing broken down Geminis that were now floating around the freezing Antarctic waters.

To the Royal Navy aircrew, the SAS were a peculiar bunch and a law unto themselves. Having refused to speak to anyone or take advice beforehand, suddenly they were now everybody's best friends. Maybe it was the relief at surviving near disasters. Maybe it was the camaraderie of having been into battle together, at least against the weather. The Wessex aircrew were even invited onto the subsequent assault, causing Jan Lomas to comment afterwards that ‘the SAS were lovely!'

Three days after the crash on Fortuna Glacier came news that an Argentine Guppy-class submarine was in the area. The ARA
Santa Fe
had already landed a party of marines at South Georgia and now posed a serious threat to the British surface fleet. On the morning of Sunday 25 April, the Wessex 3 crew spotted the
Santa Fe
on the surface leaving Grytviken in gloomy weather conditions. Ian Stanley immediately ran in from behind the submarine at low level, lobbing two depth charges into the water
just
ahead of it. As the Wessex banked hard to clear away from the area, the crew strained their heads behind them to watch the outcome of the attack.

The effect was dramatic. Huge explosions in the water blew the rear half of the submarine completely out of the water, its tail hanging suspended in the air before crashing back down into the sea. Amazingly the submarine remained afloat, although it had turned, zigzagging its way back towards land. From the Wessex 3 cabin, Fitz Fitzgerald fired his entire supply of machine-gun ammunition into the conning tower of the submarine. Shortly afterwards, HMS
Brilliant
's Lynx arrived on the scene, dropping a Mark 46 torpedo into the water alongside the surfaced submarine without effect. They followed up with their own burst of machine-gun fire, steering away when fire was returned at them from the tower of the submarine.

Next on the scene was Tony Ellerbeck in HMS
Endurance
's Wasp helicopter. Sighting the submarine's fin from two miles away, the Wasp launched one of its AS12 anti-ship missiles. From the left seat, aimer David Wells directed the wire-guided missile directly into the fin. The missile passed straight through the thin skin exploding in the sea on the other side. The impact was enough to blow the Argentine machine gunner off his firing position and down into the control room below. The second missile was not as successful.

In the air, the attack threatened to degenerate into chaos. The two
Endurance
Wasps couldn't talk to anyone else because they had a different radio fit. Their first missile attack had therefore taken the Lynx crew completely by surprise.
Brilliant
's second Lynx now appeared, circling overhead whilst firing her machine gun into the submarine hull. Meanwhile Tony Ellerbeck's Wasp returned to
Endurance
and rearmed with two more missiles, launching both in quick
succession
. This time the first missile flew into the sea whilst the second went through the submarine fin.