THE AIR WAS gin clear. Visibility good for 10 miles or more across a weak blue sky streaked with a few wisps of low, thin cloud. The northwesterly wind was scarcely breathing. The sea that had battered them a few days earlier now barely lapped at Conveyor’s dark hull as she slipped through the cold swell. A battle-worn HMS Hermes steamed three or four cables to starboard, her grey hull streaked with rust. The carrier’s lines were broken by aircraft and stores on deck, aerials, masts, radar and the vast steel ski-jump rising from the bow like some industrial revolution feat of engineering.
Perhaps it was the sight of his new home that Steve Brown, in the cockpit of a Sea Harrier for the first time since landing at Ascension Island nearly three weeks earlier, found distracting, daunting even, as he carried out his engine checks in preparation for a Green 90 vertical take-off and a short hop to Hermes. He glanced at the rpm dial tucked in at the left of the instrument panel: 27%. With the nozzles set at 40º he advanced the throttle and, eyes glued on the rpm, timed the needle’s progress to 55%. Just over four seconds later, and satisfied that the engine was accelerating as required, he throttled back.
Then he slammed the throttle wide open.
From Conveyor’s bridge, Tim Gedge looked on in horror. He had a microphone in his hand with which to pass instructions to each departing pilot, but the 809 pilot’s launch was going south faster than he could possibly intervene. The SHAR lurched forward and upwards across the deck, the dorsal fin beneath the tail on a collision course with the guardrail running along the side of the pad.
After completing his engine acceleration checks, Brown had failed to then set the engine nozzles at 90º ready for a vertical take-off. Realizing his mistake, his first instinct was to pull back on the stick, but this only exacerbated the situation. As the nose rotated skywards, the tail looked certain to clip the guardrails. He pushed forward on the stick to try to correct the jet’s attitude. The nose flopped down over the side of the ship without hitting it.
That’s the end of the aeroplane, thought Gedge as he watched Brown’s SHAR drop towards the sea. But then Brown, thinking quickly, managed to arrest his descent by rotating the nozzles and riding the full 21,500lb of thrust from the Pegasus engine. In his lightly fuelled jet it was enough. Through a cloud of steam and spray the SHAR slowly hover-taxied away from the ship, carving a deep furrow of white water and swarming mist in its wake. Half a mile on Brown managed to haul his way into the air, gaining height and speed before disappearing out of sight.
But after the relief of watching his pilot save himself and his aircraft the 809 boss now faced a fresh anxiety: Brown’s fuel state. None of the jets had been loaded with more fuel than they needed for the short flight to Hermes. And as Gedge watched the SHAR disappear over the horizon he considered his next move.
What on earth do I say? he wondered. ‘Come back, all is forgiven!’ perhaps?
Standing alongside him on the bridge, Mike Layard and Ian North had watched Brown’s narrow escape with bated breath. As the 809 SHAR finally climbed away to safety a wry smile played out across the bearded face of Conveyor’s Master.
‘That’s a novel way of doing it …’ he said.
After making a safe landing aboard Hermes, a still-shaken Steve Brown shut down his engine just after 1300Z and climbed out of the cockpit. Two hours later, the three other 809 SHARs destined for the flagship had followed without incident. Apart from the fact that the ship’s Captain seemed to take an instant dislike to the appearance of the ghostly grey Phoenix Squadron jets. As welcome as their arrival was, ranged next to the darker 800 Squadron machines against the dull expanse of the flight deck, 809’s immaculate-looking new jump jets seemed altogether too pale and conspicuous for Lin Middleton’s liking. And instead of red, their low-visibility insignia appeared to be painted in a shade of pink. The lo-vis markings stayed, but the phoenix logo on the tail wouldn’t last long as the four new fighters were assimilated into the Hermes air group.
Bill Covington and Hugh Slade jumped down on to the crowded carrier deck and were greeted warmly by Des Hughes, 800’s Ops Officer. A hive of activity, piled high with ordnance and stores wherever space could be found among the aircraft, it reminded Slade of Wideawake airfield on Ascension, but even more cramped and overrun.
They made their way into the ship’s island and through narrow passages beneath a vascular system of pipes and bundled cables that ran along the ceiling to the SHAR crewroom. The welcome was warm, but both were shocked by the strained appearance of the 800 and 899 pilots already on board. Unshaven and red-eyed, many of them looked exhausted. It wasn’t hard to understand why.
For three weeks now, they and their counterparts aboard Invincible had maintained a continuous alert, ready to be scrambled at any time of day or night. It wasn’t unusual to plan, fly and debrief three sorties a day. And Hermes had carried the lion’s share of the ground attack burden alongside providing air defence. Denied cabin space below the waterline, a good night’s sleep was hard to come by, and pilots, dressed in flightsuits and immersion suits, were asleep in chairs in the crewroom. Covington had never been in an environment that so seemed to bleed tension. And he was struck by the reality of his situation: it was the responsibility of this small band of SHAR pilots he had now joined to protect the Battle Group whatever the cost.
For weeks the 800 Squadron crews had been flying long hours, at great personal risk, driven by adrenalin and shared purpose. They’d lost friends, though. And there was every possibility that they would lose more. No longer was their first priority, as it was in peacetime, the safety of the aircraft, but to provide the first line of defence against a determined enemy. For all the evident stress and fatigue, though, the can-do attitude on display was unmissable. No less was expected of 809, nor was that unwelcome.
We’re being thrown into battle, thought Covington, for the first time properly appreciating what that meant. And then, after a series of intelligence briefings, the four of them were told to saddle up. The best way to shake off the ring rust was to go flying. While John Leeming looked forward to launching himself off the deck of a ship he’d admiringly described as this heaving monster with Hugh Slade, Steve Brown was paired with Covington.
Peter Squire was the first of the GR.3 pilots to land on, bouncing down on to Hermes’ deck at 1630Z. Three more RAF jets followed, flown by Jerry Pook, John Rochfort and Pete Harris, the squatter-looking, camouflaged RAF jets immediately distinctive alongside the Sea Harriers. Bob Iveson and Jeff Glover were ferried across to the carrier by helicopter along with nine of the squadron’s engineering team and flyaway packs of spares. After suffering last-minute technical glitches, the remaining two 1(F) jets stayed aboard Conveyor and would join the carrier over the next couple of days once engineers had rectified a couple of minor unserviceabilities.
Before being taken to the 800 Squadron crewroom his men were expected to share with the SHAR pilots, Squire was introduced to Lin Middleton.
‘Right,’ began the ship’s Captain, after despatching an efficient greeting, ‘we’ve got to get you briefed up so that we can get you flying.’
On the face of it, the welcome afforded the RAF reinforcements to the Harrier force was similar to what had greeted the 809 pilots: a swift induction followed by an immediate effort to launch them on an in-theatre training flight. The logic was perhaps sound enough. The sooner they were comfortable flying on and off the deck, the sooner they’d become a useful component of the air campaign.
The trouble was that when the briefing for the 1(F) pilots began as scheduled, only Squire was aboard the ship and able to attend. Jerry Pook joined them half an hour later. It was, supposedly, a good briefing, clear and to the point. But, with the launch of the GR.3s already scheduled, no one other than Squire and Pook caught more than five minutes of it.
Led by Bill Covington, Tartan Flight’s two Sea Harriers launched from the deck that afternoon. For his number two, Steve Brown, a familiarization flight, a little air interception training and radio drill followed by a carrier-controlled landing was a chance to settle his nerves after his near disaster taking off from Conveyor.
Brown and John Leeming had been thrown in at the deep end when they’d arrived at Yeovilton from RAF Gütersloh a month earlier and had been operating at capacity ever since. Any fast jet pilot learning to fly a new aeroplane in a new role was used to a steep learning curve. It was how it was done. But ten days just wasn’t close to being enough for either of them to feel they were really on top of it.
Covington felt it too. Flying from a carrier deck was familiar enough to him but, fresh out of the cockpit of a US Marine Corps AV-8A, he couldn’t help but wish he was going to war with a tour on a frontline SHAR squadron under his belt so that he really knew the jet and its systems inside out.
Covington kept a close eye on his RAF colleague. Brown was still desperately unfamiliar with the SHAR’s radar and NAVHARS system, and the last thing he needed was to find himself alone over the South Atlantic and unable to find his way home to Mother.
As Tartan Leader shepherded his wingman back to Hermes, the other more recent RAF arrivals on board were being treated with rather less care.
With the briefing over, irrespective of how much anyone had actually heard, Squire and his two Flight Commanders, Iveson and Pook, were ordered into the air, their scheduled take-off time just before sunset. Squire resisted, explaining to Wings (the ship’s Commander Air) that FINRAE, the kit they needed to align the GR.3’s inertial navigation at sea, was still aboard Conveyor. If they took off, they’d be flying without the head-up display using nothing but standby instruments. None of them had ever carried out a ski-jump launch at sea. And none had ever landed aboard a carrier at night with or without a working HUD. Wings agreed. Relieved, the three Harrier pilots had pulled themselves out of their immersion suits when word arrived that the Captain had insisted they get airborne.
Like condemned men they strapped into the cockpits of the jets and waited for the order to launch. As darkness fell, Squire asked Flyco if the launch was still on.
‘Standby,’ came the reply, without further elaboration.
Now seriously worried about the prospect of launching, Squire rebriefed the sortie over the RT. He kept it short: ‘We’ll get airborne, dump fuel, and come round for a carrier-controlled approach.’
It was pitch black when, half an hour later, Wings finally persuaded the Captain to let him stand them down.
Squire was in no doubt at all that Middleton was just imposing himself – showing them who was boss. And that evening, John Locke, the ship’s Commander and Middleton’s second-in-command, invited the 1(F) Squadron boss to his cabin for a more informal introduction to the ship. After pouring him a whisky, Locke told him that Hermes was not an especially happy ship.
‘The Captain has three battles,’ he said. ‘He fights the Admiral’s staff, he fights the ship’s staff and he fights the Argentinians; and he does it in that order.’ And he made it clear that Middleton was not overly enamoured with the arrival of the RAF aboard his carrier. While 1(F) offered welcome additional firepower, their unfamiliarity with shipboard operations added weight to the considerable burden the Captain already shouldered. He was keenly aware of the critical importance of Hermes to the successful outcome of the campaign. Responsibility for keeping her safe from both air and submarine attack lay with him. And unlike JJ Black, his counterpart aboard Invincible, he had to do it with Sandy Woodward – also unfamiliar with carrier operations – breathing down his neck. As if that weren’t enough, his twenty-year-old son Ray was also in harm’s way, serving as a Lynx pilot aboard Broadsword. ‘You should expect,’ Locke warned Squire, ‘a very difficult time.’
But if there were understandable reasons for Middleton’s abrasive manner, this wasn’t of much comfort to the newly arrived RAF squadron boss. While Squire might still enjoy administrative control over his squadron, he realized that with his arrival on board all operational control now lay with the ship’s Captain.
It was a sobering thought.
After settling his bar bill in the Atlantic Conveyor Officers’ Lounge, Tim Gedge had said his farewells to Mike Layard and Ian North, thanking them and the Navy and Merchant Marine crews who’d looked after him and his squadron so well, before strapping into the cockpit of ZA190.
Squire, Iveson and Pook were all on deck when Gedge dropped on to Hermes’ deck at dusk, expecting to stay for the night, refuel, then fly on to Invincible the next day. But as he pulled back the canopy, one of the ship’s company attached a ladder, climbed up and handed him a note telling him to stay in the aeroplane. They were sending him on to Invincible right away.
With darkness imminent, he felt a stab of apprehension. While he might have been a little rusty, night flying in and of itself held no fear. What concerned him was the prospect of approaching a heavily defended aircraft carrier at war, in the dark, while observing proper RT discipline, without any prior briefing on the procedures he was expected to follow. What height should he fly? Too high and the Argentine radar would pick him up. Too low and Invincible might gun him down. Should he turn on his navigation lights?
He was handed a piece of paper with a callsign and some lat/long coordinates which he fed into the NAVHARS. At 2042Z he launched into the night for the twenty-minute flight to JJ Black’s ship.
A reasonably leisurely approach at 5,000 feet felt as if it was pretty unthreatening. He turned on all the lights and thumbed the RT button on the stick. After addressing the ship by its callsign he announced himself: ‘This is Phoenix Leader.’
His call appeared to cause undue consternation. Unknown to Gedge, Phoenix seemed to be a codeword that signalled disaster of some sort. Or triumph. Something significant at least. But after a brief RT interrogation he was recognized as the CO of the reinforcement squadron and was welcomed aboard by JJ Black.
After the Exocet attack on the Sheffield, the Captain had taken to wearing a flightsuit, acquired from the carrier’s air group. Unlike the official-issue action working dress, it wouldn’t burn and stick to the flesh in the event of fire. His ship was also playing a more front-footed role in the effort to try to meet the missile threat from Argentina.
Unknown to Gedge, Invincible had just returned to the Battle Group following a twenty-four-hour high-speed dash south of the islands to a position around 150 miles west to launch a covert mission against the Argentine mainland.