AT FIRST IT was just a suggestion on a brisk northwesterly wind, but the noise was soon unmistakeable. As much as Hendrix, the Stones and the Doors, it had been the soundtrack to the Vietnam War. Bob Iveson recognized the distinctive rotor slap of the Bell UH-1 Huey immediately. It had been a constant companion during his exchange tour with the US Marine Corps. This time, though, the familiar ra-tat-tat-tat clatter and thump beat out none of its usual reassurance.
Before daylight faded, Iveson had managed to put distance and high ground between him and where he’d come down. Now they were looking for him. Through the darkness he could see the beam of a spotlight streaming down from the sky. The Huey was hovering over a single spot.
Must have found the remains of the aircraft, he thought.
Then the high-power beam began walking across the ground towards him. Desperate for cover, Iveson tried to flatten himself into the low heather bushes.
The helicopter continued its slow hover-taxi towards him.
That was when the shooting started.
Across the water, 2 PARA launched their assault on Goose Green. The sharp crack of covering rifle fire was followed by the more expansive report of 84mm ‘Charlie G’ Carl-Gustaf recoilless rifles and grenades before being joined by the crump of artillery.
There was a change in tone from the blades of the Huey as the pilot poured on the power and pitched forward out of the hover, gathering speed before hauling the cab into a sharp turn back towards where it had come from.
Better things to do, thought Iveson with relief, imagining that the helicopter crew would want to be anywhere but airborne with all that ordnance flying about.
The rattle of the rotor receded into the night. Once he was sure of its departure, the Harrier pilot continued his trek away from the Argentine lines. He’d not been walking for long when he made out the dark silhouette of a remote shepherds’ cottage. Despite the bitter chill, Iveson resisted the temptation to approach it immediately, instead maintaining his distance and watching for any sign of life. Only two hours later was he sufficiently confident it was deserted, and sufficiently cold, to let himself in.
He surveyed his surroundings. The cottage, called Paragon House, was a comfortable two up, two down, a shelter for the shepherds tending the local sheep farm. Upstairs there were mattresses and sleeping bags on the beds. Finally undercover, warming up and out of immediate danger, Iveson reflected on the circumstances that had brought about his shootdown.
‘Single pass only’ was the policy. It had been repeated at the briefing earlier in the day. ‘If you miss, tough, come back to the ship.’ But what choice had he had really? Without proper targeting or adequate forward air control the GR.3 pilots were forced to use a first pass just to find a target. There was no chance of actually hitting anything without going round again. And so, unaware that 2 PARA’s assault on Goose Green had yet even to get underway, he and his wingman had ignored the risk to their own safety to provide the close air support they believed was so desperately needed on the ground. Iveson had nearly paid for it with his life.
He reached for the packet of cigarettes he’d tucked into the pocket of his flightsuit only to discover they’d been ripped away in the ejection. Happily, the hut was well stocked with tinned and dry food in anticipation of winter. He helped himself to a can of baked beans, climbed into one of the sleeping bags and watched the Battle of Darwin-Goose Green unfold across the water through a skylight in one of the upstairs bedrooms. While 3 Escuadrilla’s Alberto Philippi had been forced to slaughter, butcher and barbecue a lamb, Iveson was able to tuck into one of Heinz’s fifty-seven varieties and, if he could fire up the Rayburn, a full English breakfast. Already a Falstaffian figure, ‘Big’ Bob knew there’d be no living that down when he got back to the squadron.
But the contrast between the experiences of the two downed airmen spoke volumes.
The war in the South Atlantic had undoubtedly exposed some cracks in the British war machine. There were, unsurprisingly, teething troubles as it was thrown at short notice into an unexpected war 8,000 miles from home. The machinery was not as well oiled as it might have been, nor were the three branches of the military, after nearly forty years of peacetime turf wars over funding following the end of the Second World War, as smoothly joined-up as they should have been. As guests of the Royal Navy, the small RAF contingent aboard Hermes were feeling that lack of cohesion more than most.
Even the SHAR pilots had noticed it. When Hugh Slade had gone to pick up his immersion suit he’d found Mark Hare on his knees trying to mark up target runs on a map spread out over the floor.
This is really wrong, Slade thought, as he saw pilots squeeze past Hare to grab their kit. It was symptomatic of the way 1(F) had been forced to try to go about their business. Still unable to properly align their navigation systems they were operating using dead reckoning and fixed gunsights. Their difficulties were compounded by the absence of a Carrier Borne Ground Liaison Officer.
‘Seaballs’, as the Navy referred to the position, had been a fixture aboard the Navy’s strike carriers since 1943, when embarked Army officers first advised the Fleet Air Arm as they provided close air support for the Salerno landings in Italy. The arrangement grew to be so successful that by 1945 Admiral Chester Nimitz, the head of the US Navy, directed that, in anticipation of a long campaign against the Japanese, the US fleet should adopt the same system. But with Ark Royal’s retirement in 1978, the role had disappeared.
Now, operating from two carriers that were no longer expected or required to provide air support ashore, Peter Squire’s men found themselves doing the best they could without adequate, timely intelligence about their targets or the defences they faced, in an aeroplane that, hobbled by its inability to make proper use of the avionics and weapons system, was barely offering them Second World War levels of technology.
But while it was easy to highlight British shortcomings, that the country was able to stage an operation as ambitious as CORPORATE at all was remarkable. Furthermore, mountains were being moved back in the UK to try to plug the gaps. As Argentina’s resources grew increasingly depleted, her opponent, despite the extraordinary challenges she faced, was growing stronger.
In short order the RAF had revived or developed from scratch an in-flight refuelling capability for the Vulcan, Nimrod and Hercules, and fitted new navigation and electronic warfare kit to the Canberra, Harrier, Nimrod MR.2 and R.1, Victor and Vulcan. The Nimrod, Victor, Vulcan and Harrier had all been cleared to use a variety of new weapons. The RAF had also been the hub through which a valuable intelligence-gathering operation in Chile had operated. And while, with the loss of Bob Iveson’s Harrier, there were just four GR.3s in theatre, 38 Group now had a proper pipeline in place to prepare pilots and jets that could practically provide replacements and reinforcements as required.
The fundamental strength of the organization was much in evidence, but what the Air Force really wanted was to have operational control of its own jets in theatre, free from the obstructions and vicissitudes they felt so keenly on Hermes where they remained at the mercy of the Captain’s beck and call. From the moment the GR.3 deployment was first mooted by Ken Hayr, his thinking was to try to establish a FOB ashore as soon as was practically possible. But with the destruction of the Atlantic Conveyor much of the equipment with which they’d planned to do that was now sitting at the bottom of the Atlantic.
In the short term, they were stuck on Hermes, and forced to wrestle with Lin Middleton over every requirement, from the need to fly attrition replacements direct from Ascension – a move the Captain had tried to veto as an RAF publicity stunt – to the angry exchange endured by Peter Squire following the receipt of a signal from the RAF’s Central Tactics and Trials Organization containing guidance on how the Harriers should employ laser-guided bombs. It had run a little long. Squire was hauled into the Captain’s day cabin where the South African tore strips off him.
‘I will not,’ he said, his voice all gravel and glue, ‘have my communication channels blocked by these great books being written by the Air Force on how—’
‘Now hang on,’ Squire intervened. Instead of being cowed by Middleton, he stood his ground. ‘This gives us the details of how to use what could be a battle-winning weapon that will enable us to take out targets with precision.’
To his credit, Middleton, instead of being provoked further by Squire’s interruption, accepted the logic of his argument. It was typical Middleton: hard, but ultimately pragmatic. And yet the 1(F) Squadron boss couldn’t shake the feeling that the Captain’s resistance stemmed less from any concern about the signals traffic than it did from the possibility that, using laser-guided bombs, the RAF might actually distinguish themselves in what he considered to be a naval war.
Perhaps, thought Ken Hayr, if the Navy would prefer to reserve its ships for naval aircraft, the loss of the Conveyor might open the door to another possibility: a dedicated RAF aircraft carrier.
‘In view of the long list of requests to the Americans,’ began a memo from Hayr’s Alert Measures Committee to Ben Bathurst at DNAW, ‘why have we not included an aircraft carrier? If the Navy have any problems manning the ship, the RAF Marine Branch will be glad to help.’
Bathurst couldn’t believe his eyes. But, jokes about the Marine Branch aside, Hayr was completely serious about an RAF bid for their own flat-top. As an additional asset to British forces in the South Atlantic, it could have, he felt, a significant influence.
The Americans, too, seemed willing to be accommodating. Defense Secretary Cap Weinberger’s earlier intimation that a nuclear-powered supercarrier might lend weight to British efforts had been developed by Navy Secretary John Lehman into a more realistic and manageable plan. Under the direction of the Commander of the US Navy’s Second Fleet, Admiral James ‘Ace’ Lyons, the 18,000-ton helicopter assault ship USS Iwo Jima was identified as the best potential replacement flat-top, should the Brits need it. And not only was the Pentagon prepared to provide the hardware, it had made provision to recruit a team of civilian contractors – former US Navy sailors with knowledge of the ship’s systems – to act as advisers to any British crew who replaced Iwo Jima’s regular ship’s company. After serving with distinction in Vietnam and recovering the crew of the ill-fated Apollo 13 moon mission after their unscheduled splashdown in the Pacific, South Atlantic battle honours would have made an unlikely addition to the ship’s storied history.
Ultimately, Hayr was forced to acknowledge that the Navy didn’t like the idea of an RAF flat-top. And that was the end of it. The suggestion that the RAF Marine Branch had any meaningful role to play was also, as Hayr well knew when the idea was teased, a non-starter. It was an organization on its last legs, barely able to muster the handful of men required to operate the few rescue and target-towing launches still sailing under the RAF ensign, HMAFVs Spitfire, Sunderland, Stirling, Halifax, Hampden, Hurricane, Lancaster and Wellington. There would be no HMAFV Iwo Jima.
That the Marine Branch even existed, though, was a further illustration of the breadth and depth of the resources on which Britain could draw as the war rolled into its second month.
The UK still had its own sovereign capability across a broad spectrum of military endeavour even if, in some cases, it was suffering from a little ring rust and neglect. There also remained sufficient corporate memory to be able to revive some capabilities that had been allowed to wither. And in marshalling their own considerable resources, the RAF and the Royal Navy had drawn on the support of a huge range of government research and development organizations such as the A&AEE at Boscombe Down, the RAE at Farnborough and Bedford, the RSRE at Malvern, the Defence Operational Analysis Establishment and even, of course, the Aviation Bird Unit. Added to this was crucial support from Britain’s allies.
The United States provided war-winning equipment like the AIM-9L Sidewinders and SATCOM radios as well as fuel, satellite intelligence, diplomatic support and staging for RAF aircraft en route to Chile. France had helped train British pilots and missile operators, denied Argentina and her allies further Exocet rounds and shared technical insight into the missile itself. At the same time her intelligence agencies aided the SIS effort to spike Argentina’s Paris-based initiative to acquire AM.39s on the black market.
Despite a sharp decline in size over the preceding decade, the Merchant Navy contributed fifty-two ships to the campaign, including troopships, tankers, hospital ships and, in the form of the oilfield support ship MSV Stena Seaspread, a mobile battle damage repair facility for the warships. As well as Atlantic Conveyor, her sister ship, Atlantic Causeway, was also converted into a helicopter carrier in six days, while another container ship, MV Contender Bezant, was already on her way south carrying an additional four GR.3s.
Industry too had played a vital role. British Aerospace had accelerated Sea Harrier production, while developing both the SHAR’s and the GR.3’s weapons-carrying capability and self-defence suite. Ferranti and Marconi had tweaked, tuned and improved the fire control radars for the ships’ Sea Dart and Seawolf missiles, even if the former’s best efforts to get the GR.3’s navigation and weapons system to align at sea had ultimately fallen short.
Meanwhile, under a veil of secrecy and on a strictly need-to-know basis, engineers at Westland and Thorn EMI were working themselves into the ground in pursuit of DNAW’s urgent requirement for an AEW Sea King. After a frustrating ten days trying to source the necessary Searchwater radars, two prototypes were now under construction in a hangar at the manufacturer’s Yeovil headquarters. ‘Tell me,’ Ben Bathurst told project manager Jim Schofield, ‘if any of my staff ask for any equipment to be fitted which might delay its entry into service.’ Nothing could be allowed to slow progress.
By the end of May, Bathurst would signal FONAC with a formal order to commission 824 Squadron D Flight to operate the newly modified Sea Kings. It was scheduled to happen on 14 June under the command of a former Gannet AEW.3 Observer.
But that was two weeks away. While the country had shown itself capable of sending high-altitude reconnaissance jets, sophisticated SIGINT spyplanes, long-range strategic bombers and even a makeshift aircraft carrier to the South Atlantic at short notice, Operation CORPORATE was still without airborne early warning.
It remained a critical hole in Woodward’s defences.