Hugh McManners - Falklands Commando

The SBS patrol commander, a small, fair-haired Royal Marine lieutenant Roger F., was busy writing his orders, which he would give at noon the next day. He was not so much planning as coordinating the various arrangements. There was much advice on offer from the very experienced senior NCOs in the section, almost too much in fact. The SBS patrols were not used to working as a larger unit, normally being on their own. Their strength was individuality, which was hard to suppress in order to mount this large and unusual combined patrol.

The operation was quite complicated, especially the helicopter insertion phase. A Sea King would have to be used in conjunction with a borrowed Wessex from Fearless . As Antrim’s flight-deck could only manage one helicopter at a time, the spare would have to take off and hover, then land back on again once the other aircraft had taken off. These complications would take place at night, and in what looked certain to be rough weather.

Our biggest complication was lack of information about the enemy. We had a choice of three fairly widely separated locations that our intelligence said they might be occupying. They could also be at several other places, and not necessarily all together, or in the numbers expected. Several secure-speech telephone calls to Jonno Thompson the SBS OC in Fearless failed to get any clarification, so we were left with an imprecise aim for the operation.

In my opinion, Fanning Head was the most important geographical feature – and so was the ground of tactical importance that we had to dominate. Failing everything else, we had to deny it to the enemy, in order to ensure the ships’ safe passage into San Carlos Water. We’d deal with any other enemy that materialised elsewhere on an ad hoc basis.

We were not going to have enough time to carry out a full recce of the area. The dictates of security meant we could only go ashore after dark the day before the landings, which gave us only the one night to locate the enemy then ‘neutralise’ them. If the planners had assessed enemy morale correctly, it was thought our Spanish speaker would persuade them to surrender. The fleet would then enter the anchorage, 3 Commando Brigade would land and we would recover by landing-craft to Intrepid . Thus went the plan.

The spare helo, a Wessex, was in the process of having a very new bit of equipment fitted, a prototype thermal image camera to enable us to locate the heavy-weapons company, hooked up to a video recorder and TV screen. Our parachute instructor from Poole RAF Flight Sergeant Doug Fletcher, had been instructed in its use – partly from the manufacturer’s handbook, but also by a REME sergeant major from the Farnborough Research Establishment, who accompanied this equipment.

The camera was suspended in the doorway of the Wessex using parachute strops, away from the heat of the exhaust. The thermal imager (TI) produced a heat picture in which living things were said to show up very clearly, which could be recorded and played back on the TV screen.

The plan was to fly slowly over the whole area, ‘vacuuming’ with the ‘TI’ to record a video. We’d then fly back and land onto Antrim , play back the tape, from which we’d determine the enemy location – or locations. I fervently hoped that they would prove to be in the Fanning Head area and that there would only be one group of them. Our patrol would already be briefed in every way except for the enemy location details. After a few minutes to decide on a helo landing-site, the RVs and the objective, we’d quickly brief everybody, then the first lift would clamber aboard the Sea King and fly off to secure and prepare the LS for the rest of us.

Facing the possibility of being wounded, before the ship closed up at Action Stations and the sickbay stopped seeing ordinary patients, I decided to have a tetanus booster injection, just in case. At Action Stations, the medics moved to the wardroom, the traditional location of the medical centre of an RN ship in action, leaving the sickbay as an otherwise unused deck space, which rapidly becomes littered with stretchers, medical equipment boxes and oxygen cylinders.

Once we left the rest of the fleet and sailed for East Falkland, a tetanus jab would not be possible. This was like a good luck charm that I hoped would not turn out to be a temptation of fate.

Throughout the day of 20 May, tension mounted. We moved our kit from the admiral’s day cabin to the main galley, which was more accessible to the flight-deck. The day was spent eating and packing kit, accompanied by more or less continual planning conferences in the admiral’s cabin.

The formal Orders Group that afternoon was a tense affair, with wrinkles in the plan being ironed out as we went. Everyone had a sleep in the afternoon and woke for a huge supper and a last meeting. The captain of Antrim came to this, as in theory he was in charge of the operation and wanted to give the plan his approval. We were not terribly enthusiastic at having to have to present the plan to him at this late stage.

We then went down to the main galley to load ammunition. Small-arms magazines are always stored empty to stop the springs weakening. Mortar bombs and 66-mm rockets had to be unpacked from the ship’s magazine. Our personal weapons were cleaned, pulled through to remove oil from the barrel that would make smoke when the weapon was fired, then lightly oiled. Hand-grenades were cleaned then primed, sliding in the detonators that would set them off, tensioning the striker spring, inserting the split pins, before carefully storing these lethal objects into our pouches. Everyone settled down to sleep if they could manage it, and rest if they could not. Special Forces operations are characterised by many hours of tense waiting.

Outside in the howling, heaving darkness, Antrim was steaming very fast away from the Task Force to the point at which she would launch the Wessex for our recce flight. This point would be over 100 miles distance from East Falkland, so not only would our insertion take some time, but any problems would occur a very long way from any help.

It was a totally dark night, with no moon, and sparse cloud cover. It took some time for the eyes to become adjusted, in spite of the dim lighting below decks. Standing shivering in spite of thermal underwear on the sharply moving and vibrating deck was a very lonely experience.

Roger and I were called forward to the flight-deck for the thermal-imager recce flight. The sea was very rough with a strong wind. The occasional faint flash of light at various places on the deck indicated the deck crew doing pre-flight checks, staggering drunkenly against the steep rolling of the ship. The Wessex was ‘burning and turning’ to hold it in place, and we were escorted to the door, handing our weapons to the crewman before climbing aboard. The TI camera was blocking most of the door and so we had to squeeze round it. Flight Sergeant Doug Fletcher – our self-taught cameraman, the crewman and two pilots were all wearing immersion suits and lifejackets. Roger and I felt vulnerable in our heavy fighting order, and quick-soak, instant-sink combat uniforms.

Take-off under these conditions is always fraught. The pilot has to get the helo ‘flying’ up into the safety lashings, so that when released, the rolling of the deck doesn’t pitch the aircraft into the sea. There are only the briefest of flashes of light to indicate that the straps are about to be removed, another when they’re released, and immediately the pilot lifts off into the howling wind as best he can.

Once away in the air and away from the ship, the wind can only slow you down. Nevertheless the need to fly as low as possible to avoid enemy radar, and the total blackness of the night were alarming to say the least. The open door sent very cold air roaring in and very soon my shivering turned to shaking. The fate of the SAS Sea King was very much in my mind during that flight. In the headphones I could hear the pilot and the co-pilot cracking gallows-humour jokes about helicopters crashing into the sea.