Chapter Two Thousand Forty-Five
23rd February 1971
Over Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego
The Chilean Army might have made rapid advancements elsewhere, the Main Island of the Tierra del Fuego Archipelago had been a very notable exception. The Army had hit the Argentinian defenses on the island and had been stopped cold. Then after weeks of heavy fighting, they had been pushed back hard, Cerro Sombrero and Campo Cerro Manantiales had swiftly fallen under Argentine control giving then control of much of the southern shore of the Strait of Magellan.
Now Porvenir, the largest Chilean holding on the Island was being threatened and if it fell then holding on to any remaining settlements would become untenable. At that point, Punta Arenes would be within easy striking distance.
That was why the Chilean Air Force was shifting all available resources available to support the Army. The trouble was that this was coming at a time when the President had been grabbing everything that he could to defend the Capitol thousands of kilometers to the north. Reinaldo couldn’t tell if that had been an ingenious move by the Argentinians or a happy coincidence for them. His own Squadron had been slated to move north except things had heated up down here before that could happen.
That was how Reinaldo found himself doing air-to-mud bombing runs in his Super Tiger. There had been some grumbling during the mission briefing about how this was hitching a thoroughbred up to a plow because the pylons that held the Mark 82 500-pound bombs tended to fall off if the plane pulled more than five or six gravities. If they got jumped by Mirage Fighters while they were on a bombing run, then they would be sitting ducks. Fortunately, the FAA didn’t seem to be around this afternoon. Reinaldo saw it as a chance to beef up his numbers with FACh Brass in Santiago. Like pencil pushers everywhere else, they tended to see how things looked on paper to the exclusion of everything else. The others in the Squadron wondered why Reinaldo was up for decorations and promotion, well that was the answer.
Taking off from Base Aérea Chabunco, Reinaldo began his third sortie of the day. Flying the thirty miles across the Strait in minutes. As he had practiced in Pensacola, he flew parallel to the lines on the enemy side. Here and there, green tracers flew up towards him, but whoever was on the ground wasn’t particularly good at leading a fast-moving target. He wasn’t planning on sticking around long enough for them to get lucky though. Dropping the bombs on what he thought was a cluster of advancing armored vehicles, Reinaldo turned back to base.
This time, he was surprised to see a large amount smoke coming from Aérea Chabunco as he entered the traffic pattern. He was advised to make a crosswind landing on what should have been the wrong runway. Taxying towards the flight line he was directed to park his plane at an alternate location. From the cockpit, he could see the flaming wreckage of airplanes and hangers that had been intact just an hour earlier when he had left. Just what the Hell had happened?
Strait of Magellan
The 12.8 Centimeter guns of the SMS Z66 “Schwertwal” had lobbed high explosive shells at the assigned targets. Now, the Schwertwal was racing north for the Second Narrows at flank speed as the Captain, who was never pleased with anything, looked extremely happy this afternoon. She was just one ship among the Destroyer flotilla that had set out from Puerto Belgrano days earlier. The working theory had been that if they made their way north from the Drake Passage without getting identified, they could catch the Chileans flatfooted. The ships had run parallel to the coast, bombarding high value targets including the Army Barracks and the Airforce Base. The raid had gone largely unopposed and that was something that no one was anticipating would happen again.
For Louis Junior, this was the anxious part of the entire journey, far more than the high seas and foul weather of the Drake Passage. As he made his way down from the Bridge to the Combat Information Room, he could feel that the others watching the radar scopes felt much the same way. It was anticipated that this operation would draw an immediate response, just it was unclear what form that would take. What was clear as day however was that it would take the Flotilla several hours to get clear.
So, the crew of the Schwertwal remained in General Quarters with the Anti-Aircraft guns and the Missile Launchers primed to go at a moment’s notice. It was unknown just what the Chileans might have dug in along the North Shore of the Strait. Louis didn’t want to find out by having a Damage Control Party trying to fix a hole in the side of the ship, so he was making sure that everyone was on their toes.
Making his way aft, he saw that the men manning the AA Guns were looking warily at the Missile Launchers and he really didn’t need to say anything to them. If the Launchers sprang to life, then it meant that enemy aircraft were within thirty to forty kilometers. The radar guided 37-millimeter guns had an effective range of six kilometers, so that meant that they would have seconds to get a targeting solution on the aircraft racing at them over the speed of sound.