Hugh McManners - Falklands Commando

Gun positions are hard to see, and very often it’s only possible to locate one or two of the six guns, and perhaps a command post. I was looking through the telescope at one of the 105-mm guns we’d already spotted, under its camouflage net, when smoke came from its barrel. To my amazement, five other smoking guns appeared in the same small area – a battery position. Once we’d identified the centre of the position, the rest were easily found.

The lines of Argentine soldiers wandering about at first light also gave us an indication of their defensive positions, and the equipment they were manning. To avoid missing things you had to let your eye ‘walk’ very carefully and slowly over the ground, pausing to look into rock clefts and around buildings. At high resolutions, the slight shake on the telescope, and the need to hold your breath when looking added to the fatigue caused by eyestrain. We had to take regular breaks.

Having ‘stagged’ each other in the OP all day (alternating between observing, and doing other things like cooking, eating and resting), we had a very good night’s shooting. I’d spotted a radar dish antenna behind some prefabricated huts, which had been listed in the intelligence reports I’d studied on the ship as ‘Argentine officer’s quarters’. We’d watched a lot of soldiers going in and out, which confirmed this. I wondered if the radar dish was something to do with the land-based Exocets the Intelligence Cell believed were in Port Stanley, or possibly to give early warning of incoming aircraft. Either way, it was a very high-value target.

We’d also found a 155mm howitzer in a gun pit to the east of Sapper Hill. As there were at least two more of these, and they had plenty of range to hit both us and the rest of the Brigade, this was also something I was keen to take out.

All these shoots were technically difficult, and required careful thought, particularly about where to aim the first ‘navigator’s’ round. Moving the rounds from where we would definitely see them fall, onto these targets – especially the ones in the town, was a careful, very tense progression, with brief discussions when rounds were lost in dead ground. Once we’d sent the correction, as we waited for them to fire, we’d discuss all the possibilities and how we’d adjust for the next round. The ship would report ‘Shot’ with the time of flight in seconds, which Nick would time, calling out the last five seconds to ‘Splash’. We’d only look at the target for those last five seconds, conserving our concentration for when it really mattered.

That night we had a good go at the radar and the officer’s quarters, using the streetlights to line up the fall of the shells. Blocks of streets lights kept going out then coming back on. It wasn’t clear from the town electricity grid map I’d brought with me from Fearless whether this was because we’d hit a substation, or a belated Argentine attempt to turn all the lights off while we were firing. I don’t think Nick and I discussed this concern. If the Argentinians had worked out that this shelling was being controlled by observers, with only a few places from which this could be done, we were in deep trouble.

But maybe we’d damaged the electricity grid, or maybe it wasn’t that simple just to turn all the lights off… Or maybe their fear of MI6 or Special Forces agents infiltrating the town under cover of darkness led them to try to turn off only the areas we were shooting at… This was all too much to worry about, so we didn’t bother discussing it. As long as we remained here, undetected we hoped, we had to concentrate on things we could do something about…

We were able to set the ammunition piled around the 155mm Howitzer alight. It burned suddenly and with an extremely bright, fierce flame. We once gain set fuel alight on the racecourse dump.

At dawn the next day, we crept out as usual for the usual camouflage check, to spot a Royal Navy Wessex 5 helicopter making its way laboriously along the edge of Berkeley Sound. It came up towards our position then hovered in the lee of the ridge. It was another very bright, clear day, with the rising sun gradually shortening the shadows with its golden light.

The pilot of the clattering helicopter was presumably the small, bearded naval officer Peter Manley I’d met on Sir Lancelot and, as he’d promised, on this beautiful, bleak morning, was going to try to kill General Menendez.

The Wessex came over the top of our ridge then down, concealing itself in a tongue of mist that spread out from the west of Beagle Ridge to the Murrell River and along the surface of the water, like a grey curtain about 100 feet high. The helicopter clattered steadily, getting closer and closer to Port Stanley. Nick and I held our breath. He hovered over the top of an Argie anti-aircraft gun position we’d spotted the day before. I was wondering whether they had a sentry who was awake, and how long it would take to get out of their sleeping bags and man the guns.

The aircrewman (who I discovered afterward to be the appropriately named Petty Officer JA Balls BEM) fired the first missile with a loud bang and guided it onto the target, while Peter Manley held the hover. There was an explosion as it hit the upper storey of Stanley police station, where Menendez was said to be based. [13]

PO Balls fired the second missile, then, as the Wessex continued hovering, guided it onto the same target. Immediately it hit, the Wessex dipped sharply to the right and down into the mist to fly flat-out northwards. As it vanished into the mist, the AA guns burst into life and within seconds, the stunned silence into which the two rocket explosions had echoed, was shattered by every anti-aircraft gun in the town blasting away for several minutes. Happily this time, none of the residue of this firework display came our way, but we kept our heads down just in case. The engine noise of the Wessex died away to the north-west.

We continued with our routine of daytime observation and night time firing, until we received a coded message informing us that D Squadron 22 SAS would be flying onto Beagle Ridge to make a diversionary attack to complement the main effort. Des and Tim were tasked to secure and mark out the LS, then lead D Squadron back to our positions. Nick and I would be busy firing. It was a real relief to know that the end was nigh and that we were to be stiffened up so considerably on our lonely ridge.

We spent yet another day getting headaches peering through binoculars and telescope. The BBC World Service to which we were listening whenever we could, was saying little more than “Our forces are continuing to consolidate their positions and move forward equipment. The Task Force continued its bombardment of military installations.” This last sentence referred to our efforts, which was a bit odd to hear on world news.

The results of the night’s firing were very good. The 155-mm gun had been hit and knocked over, defying all-day efforts of its crew to get it turned the right way up again. There were huge holes in the roofs of the officer’s quarters, and the large seaward-facing radar dish, which I’d spotted behind these buildings aimed south, was no longer to be seen. (Months later, back in England, I attended an intelligence debriefing in MoD Main Building in Whitehall. A colour slide taken by someone after the fall of Stanley showed this radar dish turned over and broken. The intelligence spooks confirmed my suppositions to have been broadly correct. The radar had probably been used in the successful Exocet attack on HMS Glamorgan earlier that week.)

Des and Tim’s long vigil down at the landing site was rewarded by the arrival of D Squadron, plus a mountain of equipment. As Des reported back to us, interestingly the bulk of their gear was long, wooden crates holding Milan anti-tank missiles.