Hugh McManners - Falklands Commando

Nick and Des were to go to Port Howard, and Steve and I to Fox Bay. At first we planned three-day operations, inserting on the first night, recce’ing all day, shelling on the second night and, if the hours of darkness ran out, boating back out to sea to be picked up on the third night. In the end, a lack of time and the need to simplify things led us to do the whole thing over just one night – a very busy shift.

There was a reasonable amount of information available to us about Fox Bay. An SAS patrol had just been extracted after lurking there for several weeks. But although we were able to debrief them, they could only tell us what they’d observed from a distance – which wasn’t much. They hadn’t gone anywhere near the settlement, or troop enemy positions. The GCHQ radio intercept people had been monitoring transmissions, so we already knew there was at least a battalion of infantry, an artillery battery, a number of anti-aircraft batteries, a fuel dump, an unused airfield and a hospital.

The SBS Troop commander was Lieutenant David Boyd, another friend from RM Poole and an Irishman. We’d first met several years earlier when he’d been training as a member of NP8901, before starting the year-long tour in the Falklands. Soon after his return to England he’d married his Falkland girlfriend Colleen, then stayed on at Poole for SBS selection and training.

For Dave Boyd, Operation Corporate was personal business. Although his wife was safe in the UK, her parents were still at their home in a remote place to the north of Stanley. For him, it was as if we were ejecting the Argies from part of Ireland, and his enthusiasm for this job was infectious.

Our first raid would be on Fox Bay, the southerly of the two settlements. Accompanying Steve Hoyland and me, Dave Boyd brought five of his section. Sergeant Pete Beavers was the coxswain of the boat. We would use an RIB – ‘Rigid Inflatable Boat’ belonging to the ship that would launch us and fire the shells. Pete Beavers was well known in the Special Boat world as the ferocious canoeing and boating expert who made that phase of the SBS selection course so hard. Pete is slight with a gaunt face and crew cut, a frightening sight for the poor unfortunates just embarking on their basic 6-month Swimmer Canoeist course.

Our gunship for the raid was to be HMS Plymouth with her twin-barrelled, Mark 6, 4.5-inch gun, firing 55-pound shells up to a range of 18,000 yards. As we were using Plymouth’s RIB, all we needed to bring were the radios, lightweight dry suits, lifejackets, webbing, fighting order and weapons, with a couple of days’ emergency rations (mainly chocolate and biscuits) plus stacks of ammunition. A GPMG was put in the bow of the boat with several 66mm anti-tank rocket launchers. This was our ‘trending’ favourite, because of the 66’s very satisfying effect on snipers, and the sheer impact of their tank-killer rocket.

Under the dry suits we wore complete combat kit and many layers, pockets stuffed in the usual manner with ammunition, field dressings and food. Over all this we wore as many sweaters as would fit. When later we struggled into the dry suits, the wriggling and the pulling on of the rubber soon had sweat pouring off us – whereas after a few minutes being soaked in the very cold Atlantic Ocean as it swamped over the bow of the RIB, we were soon shivering and getting colder. Over the top of the dry suits, conventional webbing was replaced by combat waistcoats, in which pistols, rifle magazines, torches and knives could more handily be carried.

We transferred to Plymouth on the afternoon of Tuesday 25 May by LCM in San Carlos Water, nipping across between air raids. 148 Battery’s former battery sergeant major WO2 ‘Brum’ Richards was our Liaison Officer for the raid, already on board going through the gunnery procedures. The officers and crew of Plymouth were impressed with Brum – and made a point of saying so – which augured well for our operation. Brum was by a long way the most experienced Liaison Officer we had, having been in the NGS business all his military life. I was delighted that he was to be at the other end of the radio.

I gave Brum a copy of my fire plan and we talked it over before speaking to the PWO (Principle Warfare Officer) and gun-direction crew. Pete Beavers was at the stern sorting out the RIB, and organising the launching and recovery routines. The captain of Plymouth , David Pentreath, received us in his day cabin where, surrounded by charts and polished mahogany, looking over his half-spectacles, he listened very carefully to the fine detail of our plan.

Preparations complete, we settled down to an excellent steak and glass of Beaujolais. As last light and the threat of air attack faded, we sailed slowly out of San Carlos and turned left to go south down Falkland Sound toward Fox Bay. Once in the Sound, Plymouth wound up her engines and steamed flat out towards the drop-off point, so that we would have the maximum amount of darkness to wreak havoc on the Argentinians.

The drop-off point was five miles south of West Head .Then, once we entered the Bay, there was another mile and a half for us to run in the Gemini before our landing point. We’d motor in towards the Head in its lee in case there was an enemy observation or radar-post, or a gun position on the high ground.

The Chatelaine (the appropriately named portable thermal imaging device we’d used so successfully at Fanning Head) was in a waterproof box in the bottom of the boat. We wanted to vacuum-scan the coast as we crept into Fox Bay to be as sure as possible that it was clear. An outboard motor is surprisingly quiet, and its sound doesn’t carry very far, and if we kept as close to shore as possible, our image on an enemy radar-screen would be lost in reflections from the coastline.

The weather, calm back in San Carlos, was bad and getting worse here, Fox Bay being notorious for sudden changes. The sky was overcast, with a very stiff wind, and the sea was getting up.

The RIB was suspended from the davits and we stood huddled in the darkness getting our ‘night sight’, clutching rifles, faces blackened, wearing black balaclavas with dark-coloured woollen climbing hats on top, to try to keep our heads warm. The deck was taut with vibration as Plymouth steamed flat out through the blackness. Once our eyes had become adjusted to the darkness, all we could see was the white foam of the bow wave.

The Fire plan for the Fox Bay Raid. Target numbers, brief description and method of fire required in the order I thought likely. The ship’s and all ourcall signs for that night are on the bottom. Both this document and the next one were placed in a waterproof envelope and, with my unmarked map, were the only documents carried on the Fox Bay Raid. The envelope was handy; ready to be thrown into the sea had capture seemed likely.

Four nights’ worth of ships’ and our call signs and radio frequencies, crudely jumbled up to confuse a captor. We might well have been forced to stay for several nights, had our luck failed.

This sort of waiting feels very lonely. No more planning, nothing to say and only the job to get on with. The odd whispered joke and then a tap on the arm to move up to the boat and get in. Everyone checked their rifle safety catches were on then cocked, pulling back the slide, carefully feeding a round into the breech. Anyone who had completely dismantled their weapon fired off a round or two into the blackness to check that all was well, and we clambered into the RIB.