Hugh McManners - Falklands Commando

Having foolishly placed myself in this situation, I continued as if inhabiting a different and more peaceful, soapy world. But afterwards, the thought of my completely bare body and a flash fire made me shiver.

It was on 21 May, the morning we came back on board after the Fanning Head raid, that San Carlos Water earned its nickname ‘Bomb Alley’. The first captured Argie pilot said they’d named it ‘Death Valley’. Both were equally appropriate.

It was ideal flying weather for the Argies, unnaturally bright and clear. The Falklands experts had said the clearness of the air would make things appear much closer than they really were – which to soldiers well-practised in the judging of distances, was another peculiarity of this strangely beautiful place.

The Daggers, Mirages and A4 Skyhawks seemed like Airfix models as they came screaming in over the low hills surrounding San Carlos Water. The LPDs, RFAs, and particularly the ‘Great White Whale’ herself Canberra , looked terribly vulnerable.

The Navy’s ‘goalkeeper ships’ were getting hit. This was inevitable as they were positioned in the most likely attack approaches, and also it was said, because the enemy pilots had been told to go for our naval escorts.

I think the latter explanation less likely to be true. The enemy pilots had just split seconds to acquire a target and carry out their weapon-release drills, while trying to avoid missiles and flak. I think they attacked the first thing they saw – which would be the ships placed at the points at which aircraft would first appear. Purely logically, it wouldn’t make sense to target the escorts above other shipping. They were the most dangerous targets, which could be replaced from UK, whereas the troops and their troop-ships could not – and were also the most vulnerable.

The loss of Canberra, such a large and well-loved ship with so many people on board, would have put the whole expedition in jeopardy. The political as well as military implications would have been huge, as would the problem of getting us safely back home again afterwards.

The daylight hours were filled with Red Alerts, air raids and tense waiting. The constant pipes from the Bridge were now providing useful information: the number, direction and type of air raids on their way in, the number of casualties and, most important of all for general morale, the number of Argies ‘splashed’.

On the first day we shot down 18, to the loss of one Harrier, with Ardent being set on fire then later sunk, the Argonaut severely damaged and Antrim having a bomb through the flight-deck on which we’d so recently been standing – and which thankfully had not gone off.

The tally was vitally important, allowing every man on board to judge whether we’d be able to withstand this enormous Argentine reaction to our landing.

The Argentine Air Force effort was redoubled on the Sunday, wave after wave of jets coming screaming through, running the Royal Navy’s air defence gauntlet, frantically dropping bombs then jinking and weaving their way northwards, to face the Harriers on combat air patrol astride their route home.

My diary reports:

Sunday 23 May: No respecters of the Sabbath, these Argies. It’s been another air-raid day – with a progression of sudden, very terse pipes:

“Air raid warning Red.”

“Raid imminent”

“Raid now 40 miles red and closing”

“Two Skyhawks and three Mirages detected”

“CAP [Combat Air Patrol] moving south to close.”

“CAP dog-fight 10 miles south”

“Air raid imminent, air raid imminent, 4 Skyhawks from astern.”

At this point we throw ourselves on to the floor, me under the stout oak wardroom table, and cover our heads with our hands.

“This is the PWO speaking [Principle Warfare Officer, pronounced ‘peewoe’], the score so far is two Skyhawks and a Mirage. Antelope is reported hit.”

“This is the Captain speaking; Antelope looks to be OK, Brilliant and Argonaut each claim hits…”

Rumour and counter-rumour abound:

“Antelope has a hole in her starboard side but seems to be steaming alright.”

“The air raid of the six Mirages is about 80 miles due NW and seems to be holding.”

“The air raid seems to be escorting a C130 transport aircraft possibly with a food resupply. There are several ideas on this one”

“Air raid Condition Yellow. Relax anti-flash.”

Everyone gets up and pulls off the white asbestos hoods and gloves, the interrupted briefings and planning sessions continue.

“Air Condition Red. Don anti-flash. Raid detected 40 miles and closing.”

“Raid is 6 Mirages, CAP moving from Invincible to intercept.”

“Raid Imminent. From starboard bow. Take cover. Take cover.”

Everyone literally hits the deck and the ship reverberates with the clatter of machine guns and the steady popping of the Oerlikons. The ‘bang-whoosh’ of the Sea Darts as they go off, adds to the racket, which fades as soon as it started.

“CAP has shot down one Skyhawk, and two Mirages are believed destroyed.”

When jets are hit by missiles, they completely explode so you’d think that they were never there and that the missile simply went off in mid-air. One second there’s a jet screaming along, then just a brown cloud or nothing at all.

The missiles kill using an ‘expanding rod’ – a bendy steel rod compressed tightly down from about 100 feet long to form a single 6” diameter cone inter-packed with explosive. The missile has a sensor that explodes the rod outwards at a certain distance from the aircraft, which is simply chopped up by the scything tumble of now uncompressed metal.

When jets get hit by guns, they generally lose bits then crash. If a vital part is hit they explode leaving a small oily, brownish-black cloud.

The Argies are at present losing about 50%, which cannot be good for their morale. They don’t seem to veer away when the Sea Darts are launched, which is a steered missile and therefore not nearly as good as a ‘fire and forget’ missile like the Sea Wolf. Bob Harmes was on Ardent, which was sunk yesterday, but we’ve heard that he’s OK.”

We heard a patrol from 3 Para had been ambushed by about 50 Argies. The grid location was only a few thousand metres from where we’d been dropped by helicopter two nights previously.

This was a great blow, it seemed to me that these could only be remnants of the Argentine company from Fanning Head. We’d found only a few bodies, and taken less than a dozen prisoners. It looked like we’d allowed most of them to escape.

My diary entry read:

Eight 3 Para casualties were brought on board. Two were left on the wardroom floor for most of the afternoon.

They were the worst, bullet wounds in the head and both thought likely to die. One had a fractured skull and was haemorrhaging into his face, his head and face slowly swelling up. He had a drip up [intravenous drip] and his eyes opened occasionally, but blankly. Only a very good surgeon with the best facilities could have tried to sort him out. The other was worse, a bullet in his head. His eyes were open and kept darting about, even seeming to follow what was going on, but he had that very disturbing blankness of expression that all serious head wounds seem to have. They were both very pale and still, heads swathed in blood-soaked first field dressings with bits of mud and heather where their mates had patched them up.

I stayed with them for an hour or so to give the medic a coffee break. I felt physically sick because they were so corpse-like, and mentally sick because they could have been shot by enemy that’d escaped from us that first morning.