DAWN BROKE ON Sunday, 30 May to clear skies and calm seas. The Met reported visibility of 20 kilometres. It was, noted JJ Black without enthusiasm, a lovely day for an Exocet attack.
Invincible was piped to Action Stations, and at 1115Z launched the morning’s initial CAP pair. Two hours later, Dave Braithwaite and Al Craig launched on their first sortie of the day. In a welcome nod to the provenance of the 809 aircrew and aircraft absorbed into 801 Squadron, ‘Phoenix’ had been added to the list of callsigns used by the squadron. Today, Brave and Al were the first of the 809 alumni to use it. Apart from showing a little jet-fuelled moral support for HMS Penelope as she led another convoy towards the AOA on their return, the mission passed without incident. Phoenix Section landed back aboard at 1445Z. They had three hours for food, sleep, coffee and cigarettes before they were slated to return to their cockpits on Alert 5.
At 1645Z, an hour and a half before Craig and Braithwaite’s next launch was programmed, Invincible received a SHUTTER report from Santiago warning that a Super Etendard attack was on its way. As ever, though, Sidney Edwards’ operation to monitor the Argentine airfields could only give notice of aircraft movements, not of intent or tactics. And, once again, Jorge Colombo’s squadron was mixing things up.
From Río Grande, the two SuEs tracked southeast. Only one, flown by Capitán de Corbeta Alejandro ‘Pancho’ Francisco, carried an Exocet – 2 Escuadrilla’s last. Unusually, for this mission he and his wingman, Teniente de Navío Luis ‘Cola’ Collavino, were using a callsign: ALA. But, as they’d learned to their surprise a day earlier, on this mission, the SuEs were not hunting alone.
Forty miles out from the coast they were joined by the four Skyhawks of ZONDA Flight. The Fuerza Aérea Argentina A-4Cs each carried three 500lb bombs. Led to the target by the Super Etendards, it was hoped that the Air Force fighter-bombers would lend greater weight to the attack on the British carriers. The sinking of the Coventry had shown that, with luck, the A-4s could get through to inflict serious damage. The Armada pilots, given no choice in the matter, had hurriedly briefed the Skyhawk pilots on the route, tactics and operating procedures. They had stressed the importance of strict radio silence.
‘Any indiscretion,’ Pancho had warned them, ‘could jeopardize the mission.’
After joining up, the mixed formation of six jets continued southeast towards a planned rendezvous with the two KC-130 tankers 400 miles out over the South Atlantic. After continuing east for another 180 miles as they took on fuel, by the time they unplugged they’d be almost as close to the tip of the Antarctic peninsula as they were to Tierra del Fuego.
Far from everything, thought Pancho, over icy waters. But it was worth it. The position of the British carriers given to them by the radar operators on Malvinas was 51°38S 53°38W, 186 miles east of the islands’ capital. And he was going to lead the raid in from behind them to attack from the southeast, from where they least expected it.
Pancho rolled on to a north-northwest heading, leading the formation into a cruise descent over the next 80 miles down to low level to run in over the last 100 miles to the target below the radar.
Ian Mortimer, Sharkey Ward’s AWI, had been scheduled to launch at 1715Z as leader of Phoenix Section alongside Charlie Cantan. But instead of enduring another long wait on Invincible’s deck at Alert 5, Morts was scrambled at 1635Z as a replacement for an unserviceable jet in the previous CAP pair. He was flying XZ458, one of the original 809 Squadron jets. It had been the first of Tim Gedge’s SHARs to be stripped and repainted in Philip Barley’s new air defence grey before John Leeming had flown it, with a faulty oxygen supply, to Ascension to embark on Atlantic Conveyor.
At 1719Z another pair of SHARs launched from HMS Hermes, steaming 7 miles northeast of Invincible. Aboard the smaller carrier, the Flight Direction Officer tracked their progress west on the ship’s Type 992 search radar. They stayed low, out of sight of the Argentine AN/TPS-43 at Stanley.
On the flight deck, as Morts turned for home after a fruitless sortie to CAP station 33, Cantan, his former Phoenix Section wingman, remained poised on the carrier’s centreline at Alert 5, ready to scramble at a moment’s notice.
The SHUTTER report had warned of a Super Etendard strike three-quarters of an hour earlier, but it had failed to materialize. And, given estimates of time, speed and distance, it should have hit them by now. In the Ops Room aboard HMS Invincible JJ Black and his team could only conclude that it was another false alarm.
Then at 1730Z, on an old FH5 direction finder aboard HMS Exeter, urgent-sounding Spanish voices were heard. Moments later, two sweeps of a Super Etendard’s Agave radar were detected approaching from the south. The crew of a Lynx helicopter flying as a picket 15 miles west of Exeter picked up the Argentine radar on their Orange Crop ESM equipment and reported it to Hermes. Then UAA1 radar warning receivers lit up aboard Ambuscade, Cardiff and Glamorgan.
They were under attack.
In Exeter’s Ops Room, Captain Hugh Balfour pulled his soft cotton anti-flash hood up over his head.
At the call of ‘Handbrake!’ ships throughout the Battle Group went immediately to Action Stations, employing now well-rehearsed responses to the Exocet threat, sealing hatches, firing patterns of chaff delta and turning either to bring their weapons to bear or to present the slimmest profile possible to the direction of the threat.
After the initial two sweeps the Agave radar transmissions were detected again in a sector scan lasting nearly thirty seconds. The SuEs were looking for targets. There was then a two-second pause. But it offered no respite, only a gnawing anticipation of what might come next.
When the Argentine radar transmissions returned they were no longer searching. A solid glowing dot on the RWR screen and a steady tone through the operator’s headset indicated that the Agave had found its mark.
The missiles would soon follow.
And I’m defenceless, thought JJ Black as Invincible’s Ops Room erupted around him. After maintaining an unbroken 24/7 vigil since the day the ship had first entered the TEZ, Invincible’s Sea Dart missile system was down.
At 30 miles, on a bearing of 205°, the first of the inbound Super Etendards appeared over the horizon of Invincible’s 992 search radar. Black watched the orange glow of the contact trace north across the screen and a thought began to take shape in his mind. Twenty seconds later a second SuE appeared to the west of his wingman on a bearing of 204°. Just 28 miles away. But at the same time over 16 miles west of his ship and tracking north.
He could now see both jets quite clearly on the radar display and they were flying away from Invincible.
Why, he wondered, can’t they see us?
Nor was his ship entirely defenceless. Her primary weapons were her aircraft. Within a minute of the SuEs’ presence first being reported, she’d launched two. The ESM-equipped decoy Lynx from 815 Squadron got airborne, its pilot feeling enough adrenalin coursing through his system, he thought, to get the whole population of China buzzing for the next twenty years. Then moments later, after the command ‘Scramble the alert Harrier’ had sirened over the flight deck, Charlie Cantan slammed the throttle forward and accelerated down the centreline towards the ski-jump.
At a console near JJ Black in the carrier’s Ops Room, the Direction Officer watched the SHAR’s progress on the 992. Already 8 miles north of the ship by the time the SuEs appeared on radar to the southwest, the challenge was going to be trying to get Cantan past the screen of escorts positioned between him and the Argentine jets without getting him shot down by his own side.
Because the shooting had started.
Exeter fired a Sea Dart missile within fifteen seconds of the first contact appearing over the horizon. And missed. Out at sea, over open water, Balfour was confident in a missile system he’d tuned to a fine pitch, but at a range of 25 miles they were operating at the edge of their capability against a low-level target.
Less than a minute after they’d first popped up on to Invincible’s radar, the SuEs disappeared again as they dropped to sea level to make their escape. At the same time, Cantan was ordered to make chase on a bearing of 220° at an altitude of 1,500 feet. He picked up a momentary contact on the Blue Fox 12 miles to the southwest. He adjusted his heading and accelerated after it until his RWR sounded an urgent warning. Adrenalin surged through him. Illuminated by a 909 fire control radar from either Cardiff or Exeter, he threw the SHAR into immediate evasive action while at the same time broadcasting his identity on as many radio frequencies as possible. But breaking off from his pursuit would cost him dear. He’d never now get within range of his Sidewinders.
Invincible’s ‘D’ was relying on Morts, still around 80 miles distant to the west on his way back to Mother from CAP station 33. ‘Fired out’, as Sandy Woodward had recommended following the attack on Conveyor, along the raiders’ escape route he might be able to cut them off as they were ‘scampering out’.
801’s AWI was descending to low level for the last leg of his transit back to the carrier when the call came. Invincible had trade for him: a contact detected 27 miles southwest of the carrier. Morts was vectored on to a bearing of 130°. He rolled into a hard descending turn to starboard and poured on the coals.
Barely fifteen seconds after they’d first appeared on Invincible’s search radar, the two Super Etendards turned sharply to port to reverse their course. Half a minute later they were gone. At exactly the moment the Armada jets dropped below the carrier’s radar horizon, the UAA1 RWR aboard HMS Exeter had already picked up the 5000Hz pulse repetition frequency transmission of an AM.39 Exocet radar homing head. Bearing 166°.
‘Exocet locked on to us,’ reported Balfour over the ship’s broadcast, ‘hit the deck!’
The Captain paid no heed to his own directive.
Alongside his Anti-Air Warfare Officer and two electronic warfare operators he remained at his station, calmly providing his ship’s company with a commentary on the fight. As the men prayed that the Sea Dart would do its job, the clock ticked down to impact. The missile had one minute to run.
But Exeter was not its target.
A little over 7 miles to the south, the Type 21 frigate HMS Avenger steamed slowly upthreat, the skies around her thick with blooming clouds of chaff delta. She’d detected six inbound bogeys at a range of 40 miles. After the two SuEs turned away, a close formation of aircraft continued to streak towards her at a speed of over 500 knots. The Skyhawks. Avenger’s gun controller was waiting until he could see the whites of their eyes before he opened up with the ship’s 4.5-inch gun. He set the range for 9,000 yards.
Exeter shuddered as a second Sea Dart blasted away from the launcher.
Thirty-four seconds later a fireball 50 feet above the sea surface completely engulfed the Skyhawk on the port flank of the Fuerza Aérea Argentina formation.
When he fired his third missile, Exeter’s Sea Dart controller did so from underneath his desk, braced for the imminent arrival of the Exocet they knew was still spearing north at 600mph.
Between them, HMS Avenger was spitting 4.5-inch high-explosive shells at the three surviving A-4s, her semi-automatic GSA4 gun pumping out eight rounds in twenty seconds.
At 1734Z another explosion blew the tail off the Skyhawk to starboard sending what was left cartwheeling violently into the sea in a huge geyser of white water and spray just 50 yards to starboard of Avenger. The two remaining A-4s passed ultra low to port of the frigate, now wreathed in her own gunsmoke, where their bombs dropped harmlessly into the sea.
The Exocet had already swept through twenty seconds earlier, seduced by the patterns of chaff delta fired by the ship. Still armed and dangerous, the big missile lanced northeast on a bearing of 051°, low over the sea and unseen by British radars, searching for a new target.
This time, though, there was no Conveyor or any other ship in its path.
Unable to find a new target that lay within the narrow beam width of the radar homing head, it could do no more than fly on until its rocket fuel was expended. Nearly 30 miles north-northeast of Avenger, a missile with a high crossing rate was seen by her sister ship HMS Ambuscade. Still 7 miles distant, it splashed harmlessly into the sea.
Now Exeter had the two retreating Skyhawks in her sights. The Sea Dart’s 909 fire control radars locked on to them both as they sped away towards the southwest. The Captain considered whether or not to take them down. It was sorely tempting, but his thoughts turned to the hours and days ahead. Exeter now had just seven Sea Dart missiles left in her magazine with no immediate prospect of replenishment. The two Skyhawks no longer posed any immediate threat to him or any other British ships. And the Direction Officer on Invincible had vectored the SHARs towards them. As the distance between the Exeter and the Argentine jets opened up, it made sense to leave them to the CAP to preserve what remained of his depleted arsenal for whatever action lay ahead. Balfour ordered his AAWO to stand down to leave them to the Sea Harriers.
It wasn’t to be, though. Ian Mortimer got within 10 miles of the raiders but never caught sight of them. With no more hope of closing to within range of his Nine Limas than Charlie Cantan, Morts was hauled off the pursuit. There had been no more than thirty seconds in it. Had either of the two 801 pilots been just a little closer when the SuE’s Agave radar was first detected they might have been in with a chance, but as Cantan continued to his CAP station, a frustrated Mortimer returned to Invincible empty-handed.
On board Exeter there was elation as crew members picked themselves up off the deck and emerged from wherever they’d taken cover. Their Captain had remained apparently unruffled throughout. Balfour was a leader in the mould of JJ Black, projecting a calmness and composure from which his crew drew strength.
Six minutes after the first Spanish RT chatter had been detected, it was all over. Balfour ordered his steward to bring him a large single malt whisky to the Ops Room. As he sipped from the tumbler as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he spoke to his ship’s company over the broadcast. ‘Bravo Zulu,’ he told them. Well done. And he suggested that they all treat themselves to a similarly well-earned drink too.
It was a clever and ambitious plan, conceded JJ Black of the Argentine attack as he reflected on the success of the Battle Group’s response. And he knew that he’d been right to stand his ground over the SHARs’ low-level, fuel-hungry ingress and egress from the carriers. The pilots hated it, but today, he thought, that measure probably saved our lives. During the attack on Conveyor, the position given to the SuEs, based on tracking the Sea Harriers in and out of the CAP stations, had been within 5 miles of Hermes. Today, the coordinates given to 2 Escuadrilla were 20 miles away from Invincible and nearly 30 from Hermes. When the raid turned north hoping to come in from behind the Battle Group’s unprotected rear quarter to the east, it met only the defensive screen of escorts steaming west ahead of the carriers. Black was delighted at having forced an error from the enemy.
Aboard Hermes, Lin Middleton was unimpressed. ‘I’m getting bored with this fellow,’ he announced later. ‘It’s not the nervous strain so much as the inconvenience. It’s time we took him out.’
To all intents and purposes, they already had.
Subsequent analysis by Northwood examined the attack in detail. There remained some uncertainty about who had shot down what and how, but, they pointed out, ‘One important overall conclusion must be remembered: ARGENTINA launched an attack against the high value units of the Task Force. IT FAILED. The Task Force countered the attack SUCCESSFULLY.’
And with its failure, Argentina’s last realistic hope of winning the war was gone.