They say time spent on reconnaissance is never time wasted. When San Carlos had been chosen as the area that 3 Commando Brigade would land on the Falklands a lot of time had been spent carrying out the detailed reconnaissance that would be vital to ensuring the success of the operation. Some photo reconnaissance overflights had taken place but these had been deliberately limited so as not to give the game away. Most of the information had come from a six man SBS team that had been inserted into the area more than two weeks before.
The enemy forces in the area were comprised of a company sized unit made up of elements from the 12th and 25th Infantry Regiment’s located at Fanning Head with smaller 4 man squads located a good distance away in small observation positions.
Operation Sutton as the landing operation had been named began with a series of air and Special Forces operations. The SBS team that been keeping watch on the Argentinians in and around San Carlos were to their great relief finally able to move from the hide that they had occupied for some days now and to them most go the credit for beginning the nights proceedings.
The Argentine observation positions in the opinion of the SBS men were far too spread out meaning that they weren’t in a good position to support each other. Splitting up and slowly crawling across the open ground on their bellies in almost complete darkness they went about their business with the alarming effectiveness expected of men who had spent days observing their targets and planning their every last move. Some of the Argentines were found sound asleep. They never woke up again. The ones who were awake were so focused on watching the blackness out to sea that they never saw or heard what was coming from inshore behind them. They quickly and quietly joined their comrades in permanent sleep.
While dealing with the outlying OP’s had been simple enough the force at Fanning Head required a rather more overt approach. A force of 24 SBS men and one Naval Gunfire Support specialist from 148 Commando Observation Battery were helicoptered in from the destroyer HMS ANTRIM. The SBS men carried a fearsome array of weaponry including no less than 12 GPMG’s and a portable sound unit with which they hoped they could persuade the Argentinians to surrender.
Unfortunately, even for the extremely fit special forces soldiers all that equipment still felt just as heavy as it would to any normal person and had made for a rather fatiguing march from the LZ to their preplanned starting points. In order to cover their approach to Fanning Head HMS ANTRIM opened fire with here twin 4.5 inch guns. After calling out corrections Captain McManners of 148 Commando Observation Battery requested an additional 20 salvos. In the time it took for this unusually long fire mission to be carried out the SBS force was able to advance to firing positions.
The loudspeaker was set up and one of the Spanish speaking SBS men began trying to persuade the Argentines to surrender. In an unfortunate oversight however, it was later discovered that most of the Argentines who had survived the initial bombardment had been rendered temporarily deaf by the explosions and were unable to hear the call to surrender. Things took a turn for the worse when one of the GPMG’s fired a burst of tracer as a warning shot. Unable to hear the broadcast but able to see the tracer flying over their heads the Argentinians began to return fire against what they assumed was an assaulting enemy force. Thinking that the Argentines wanted to do things the hard way the 12 GPMG gunners opened fire while more 4.5 inch shells were called down from HMS ANTRIM. The firefight lasted for approximately two hours with predictable results. Of approximately 60 Argentines that had been located at Fanning Head just over half were dead or wounded and the rest had been taken prisoner except for a handful. Unfortunately for the British this “handful” was made up of embers of the 601st Commando Company who being more able than the average conscript to recognise an unwinnable battle when they saw one had grabbed some of the radio equipment and made themselves scarce in order to report what had happened.
The firefight at Fanning Head wasn’t the only British SF action that night. To try to deceive the Argentines about the real invasion plan other diversionary operations were carried out. Yet again the three airfields on the islands found themselves on the receiving end of airstrikes curtesy of the Buccaneers of HMS EAGLE. These strikes were mainly intended to try and deny the Argentines the use of these airfields during the critical early hours of the landings. Following the Buccaneer strike on AFB Condor (Goose Green) D Squadron SAS carried out a diversionary raid against the Argentine garrison at Darwin. The use of large numbers of mortar’s, GPMG’s, Anti-Tank missiles and the use of naval gunfire support from HMS ARDENT had the effect of convincing the Argentinians that they were facing a much larger force than they actually were. The Sea Kings that had dropped off the SAS men proceeded to land at various points to the north of Darwin and Goose Green. This further added to the Argentines initial perception that an amphibious assault was taking place in the Goose Green area.
The scene was now set for the real invasion.
During the night of the 20th/21st of May the amphibious force slipped into San Carlos Water. The carrier group and HMS HERMES remained just to the north of the Islands to provide air cover.
As with any complicated plan nothing ever goes completely according to plan. The LPD’s HMS FEARLESS and HMS INTREPID between them carried a total of 16 landing craft. These craft would as well as carrying the embarked troops from the LPD’s be doing the rounds of the other ships in the amphibious force to ferry men and equipment ashore. The first landing craft left FEARLESS’s dock at 0230 an hour behind schedule. One of the pumps in her well deck had failed meaning that Captain Larken had been forced to flood the dock by opening the ships dock gates and allowing the sea to rush in. Next had come another delaying incident when the crew of the requisitioned RORO ferry SS NORLAND carrying 2 PARA had failed to switch on any of the small marker lights meant to guide the landing craft towards her. This resulted in the landing craft being for a time unable to find her in the darkness. As the Royal Marines and Paratroopers packed together in the open top landing craft made their way towards the shore the men waited in nervous anticipation. The ongoing firefight on Fanning Head was making quite a spectacular sound and lights show but made some of the men worried about something similar potentially awaiting them ashore.
The first men waded ashore onto an eerily quiet beach at 0430. To the men of 40 COMMANDO this was just like another of the amphibious landing exercises that they had carried out so many times before. The men of 2 PARA unused to amphibious warfare had a somewhat different opinion of the experience. After spotting a torchlight signal from on the SBS men already ashore indicating all clear the landing craft containing the paratroopers had approached the beach and dropped the ramp. The Para’s were not happy that they had to wade ashore waist deep in freezing water and more than a few indicated their feelings to the landing crafts Royal Marines crew.
Neither the Para’s nor marines encountered any kind of resistance on the beaches. They stumbled ashore to be greeted by a small number of grubby, bearded and slightly wild looking SBS men. As they moved off the beaches 2 PARA came across a foxhole containing the handiwork of the SBS men and the reason why there had been no resistance. A few men were very unnerved by what they saw but it helped reinforce the fact that they were now taking part in a real war with all that entailed. Furthermore, it served as a reminder of the importance of staying alert on guard duty.
With 40 COMMANDO and 2 PARA ashore, the landing craft returned to the ships to embark the next wave. From RFA STROMNESS came 45 COMMANDO which who landed ashore just before first light. Next came 42 COMMANDO from HMS INTREPID which along with 4 Troop from the Blues and Royals was ashore by 0930. 3 PARA had remained onboard HMS HERMES ready to act as a reserve if needed. Though they hadn’t yet been needed these men wouldn’t be going ashore just yet as the Sea Kings began to ferry ashore the higher priority 105mm field guns of 29 COMMANDO Regiment RA and the vital Rapier SAM systems of 12 Air Defence Regiment. Much to their irritation for 3 PARA it was for now yet another case of hurry up and wait. They wouldn’t be waiting for too long.
In Port Stanley Brigadier Menendez was conferring with his staff and with Brigadier Jofre of 10th Mechanised Infantry Brigade which comprised the majority of the forces on East Falkland. They knew that this was it but the question now was exactly where was it?
Reports came in throughout the night of heavier than usual bombing from carrier aircraft and alarmingly that heavy firefights were taking place in the Goose Green and San Carlos areas. All of these factors when combined were enough to convince Menendez that the British were going to be landing imminently or were possibly already doing so. Therefore, he was trying to work out exactly where the landings would occur and how he should respond to it. At first it was thought that Goose Green was the main landing with Fanning Head being some sort of diversionary action. This assessment was based on the reports of comparatively heavier fighting, sightings of helicopter landings and the assessment by a naval amphibious warfare expert that the beaches at Goose Green would be an easier proposition for landing craft. This had changed after daybreak however when the British force attacking Goose Green had seemingly withdrawn and the garrison based there reported no more sightings of aircraft nor of being able to see any ships. Radio contact had been established with a forward air control party from 601st Commando Company attached to the force at Fanning Head. They reported not only having come under sustained infantry assault during the night but gave a detailed description of ships anchored in San Carlos water and of British troops ashore.
Menendez considered it vital that confirmation be obtained of this reported landing. The problem was the Fanning Head force had been largely isolated by simple geographical distance from other forces and apart from the person claiming to be a survivor of the engagement at Fanning Head no one else could be reached via radio.
It was decided that a reconnaissance sortie should be flown over the area. Unfortunately, the latest British air strikes had once again damaged the landing strips meaning that for now fixed wing operations from the airfields on the islands were impossible. Therefore, a UH-1 Iroquois from Army Aviation had been despatched from Port Stanley Airfield. Flying as low as possible to try to stay under the radar of the now much feared British carrier aircraft the helicopter was able to close with San Carlos water and confirm Brigadier Menendez’s worst fears when it came under sustained small arms fire from troops on the ground. Despite taking damage the aircraft was able to limp back to base.
The fact that the British were invading at San Carlos initially took the Argentinians by surprise. It was a long way from any potential British objectives and had even been assessed by a now red faced navy liaison team as being unsuitable for an amphibious landing. However, based on what they knew of their own situation and what the British likely knew there was a certain logic to their actions. There were no argentine ground forces that would be capable of intervening in that area. A company sized air mobile force had been on standby at Goose Green ready to react to any British landing. However, this force had been intended more to act as rapid reinforcement to the forces around Port Stanley where the British had been expected to land rather than taking them on alone. The expected size of any landing force based on the number of amphibious vessels known to be in the British fleet meant that the air mobile force would have nowhere near the strength necessary to drive them back into the sea. Even if this disadvantage was overlooked there was still the fact that having just been in contact with what was now assessed as a British special forces group the air mobile force were in no condition to go into action right now and needed time to get themselves sorted out.
Sending a force overland from one the regiments based around Port Stanley was also a non starter as they could not realistically reach San Carlos before nightfall and would be hopelessly exposed to the threat of being mauled by British aircraft.
This meant that unless the air force could pull something out of the bag the British could establish and expand a beachhead completely unmolested and move to engage Argentine ground forces at their leisure.
Regarding the probability of having to carryout airstrikes against the British landing force it was clear to even the army men present that the high ground and enclosed geography of San Carlos water would make this a harder proposition.
Menendez took a moment to think about the overall strategic situation. His analysis was that any air attacks against San Carlos represented the last opportunity to defeat the British in a decisive engagement. Should that not come to pass however then it would be a case of trying to make them bleed as much as possible and hold them at bay until the weather became worse and affected their ability to operate. The last few weeks for the Malvinas Garrison had been something of a waiting game with the British. Operating so far away from home with elderly ships and supply lines stretching thousands of miles there surely must have been a limit for how long the British could operate down here meaning that their land campaign would have to begin sooner rather than later.
Of course, Menendez’s force wasn’t immune from the same issues. Since the destruction of the navy on the 2nd the forces on the Malvinas had been cut off from the outside world. The threat of British nuclear powered submarines meant that any attempt at seaborne resupply would be suicidal and the constant attacks on the airfields meant that an airbridge wasn’t something that was going to last. While the possibility of para dropping supplies had been looked at it was felt that transport aircraft would be too vulnerable to intercept by the British supersonic Phantoms. Besides even if it did work this would have been a one way only thing anyway. There were in fact a number of Exocet SSM’s sitting on the tarmac at Comodoro Rivadavia AFB waiting to be flown out to the Malvinas where it was hoped that they could be used as an area denial weapon to fend off British ships. Such a weapon would be in the opinion of the assembled officers extremely useful right about now but there was sadly no way of actually getting them out here in one piece.
This lack of resupply capability combined with the persistent British bombing campaign over the last few weeks had severely sapped the strength of the garrison. As well as repeatedly clobbering the airfields the British had also made liberal use of rockets and cluster munitions against the infantry regiments positioned on the mountains around Port Stanley and had been going after artillery positions and supply depots. While only a handful of the actual guns had been destroyed the artillery group commander had been forced to disperse his assets meaning that before they had even set foot on the islands the British had already significantly degraded the garrison’s artillery capability. With regards to supplies water was one thing that they most definitely were not short of on this rain soaked rock and if it came down to it the large sheep population would mean that food would not become to much of an issue (reports had already been reaching Menendez of hungry troops being caught poaching the animals). Ammunition, spare parts, medical supplies, fuel and other essentials were a problem as without the possibility of resupply as these were now a finite resource. The same went for men. The British bombing had unsurprisingly taken a toll in human lives. The number of men killed or maimed as a result of these raids would likely break the 500 mark once the casualties from the previous night had been counted and that was before the losses at Goose Green and Fanning Head were taken into consideration. As well as these casualties over time more and more men were becoming debilitated and unable to fight as a result of things like trench foot and frost bite that were a by product of men from the arid regions of Argentina being made to live outside in conditions as harsh as found on the Malvinas. Without the possibility of being able to receive replacements from the mainland once a man was killed, wounded or became ill that was one the garrison permanently a man weaker. There was also the fact that however it turned out until this conflict was resolved there was no possibility of anyone being able to leave this increasingly nightmarish place and return home.
Understandably morale had suffered considerably. Knowing that there were highly likely British SF observation posts and artillery spotters (the British naval shelling had a little over a week ago become markedly more accurate) Brigadier Jofre had ordered his infantry forces to conduct periodic sweeps of likely areas to root them out. As expected they hadn’t come across a single British soldier. Not that Jofre had actually been expecting them to but in his opinion, it was better for the men’s morale to have them doing something rather than just sitting on the mountains waiting to be bombed again. It also gave the officers the opportunity (for those smart enough to recognise it) to scout likely angles of attack against their defensive positions and for the more senior officers to get an idea of their unit’s present capabilities as time went on. A marked and worrying decline had been noted.
SOUTHERN AIR FORCE COMMAND, RIO GALLEGOS AFB, 1100
The phone call from Brigadier Dozo had been somewhat pointless. Brigadier Crespo knew that today was the day that the Fuerza Aerea Argentina would finally execute its long-planned operation to strike at the British fleet. With British ships now known to be static in a known position this was the opportunity that he had been waiting for to carry out the massed attack. He had been in direct communication with Brigadier Castellano commanding the air component (or remnants thereof) on the Malvinas and so had been kept fully appraised of the developing situation. Though it was within his power to launch strike missions on his own authority Dozo likely due to internal politicking had still felt it necessary to call him and order him to do something that he was doing already doing anyway. As is the way of military life.
Crespo had been shocked that Castellano had ordered a helicopter to conduct such a risky sortie and more so that the crew had survived the experience. The “Confirmation” that they had provided however just turned out to be little more than coming under ground fire and seeing large numbers of figures on the ground. They hadn’t been able to provide such useful information as the number, types, formation or even presence of ships. His pilots would be flying into the unknown. Examining the maps of the San Carlos area the planners present in his headquarters began to immediately spot problems and obstacles. If the British ships were in the bay labelled San Carlos water then the attacking aircraft would be forced by the terrain to perform higher level bombing runs potentially resulting in greater exposure to British air defences. On the flip side however, the size of the bay relative to the speed of the aircraft meant that the bombing runs and exposure would only be a matter of seconds.
Despite the heavy losses suffered on the 6th extensive debriefs of the pilots sometimes bordering on interrogations had revealed a number of important pieces of information. British radars it seemed had struggled to identify aircraft flying low over land and based on Argentina’s experience with her own now sunk Type 42 destroyers it was known that the radars on British destroyers at least had issues with radar clutter caused by proximity to land. During the attack on the British ships a pair of Sea Dart SAM’s had been observed by pilots passing straight over them. This combined with the failure of Argentina’s Sea Dart equipped destroyers to defend their carrier on the 2nd indicated that Sea Dart struggled with low flying targets.
The aircraft launching against the British landing would therefore stay as low as possible and make their approach towards the British from overland initially coming from the west and then turning north for their actual attack run in order to make maximum use of the natural cover protection from British naval SAM’s provided by the terrain.
British fighters however were unfortunately a threat that could not be so simply negated. The engagements on the 6th had showed just how dangerous they were. The problem was simply that the Skyflash missiles carried on the British Phantoms out ranged the short range air to air missiles in Argentina’s inventory by a considerable margin. The losses suffered by the Daggers t the hands of the Phantoms had given Crespo the leverage to convince Dozo to order Brigadier Hughes to release some of the Mirage’s from their local air defence duties to this mission. While the Mirage’s were more advanced and judged to be more survivable in combat against the British than the Daggers they still suffered from the same issue.
Crespo did have one ace card up his sleeve which he was going to play for all it was worth. In the air environment it was actually him who held the initiative. The British not knowing when an attack would come would be forced to maintain a constant CAP meaning that with aircraft having to cycle through for refuelling they would only be able to keep a portion of their force in the air at one time. Crespo on the other hand could surge everything he had into the air at once and was banking on sheer numbers meaning that though there would be losses some aircraft would make it past the British CAP.
While his staff began to work on the final details of the various flight plans (As with the 6th due to distance fuel would again be a very limiting factor) Crespo reviewed the status of his aircraft.
Thus far in this conflict Argentina had lost an alarmingly high number of aircraft and most of these had not even been airborne at the time. When the ARA VEINTICINCO DE MAYO had been sunk she had taken with her 8 A-4Q Skyhawks and 6 S-2 Trackers and a number of helicopters. The air battle on the 6th had resulted in the loss of 6 Daggers and 9 A-4C Skyhawks. The constant British Strikes on the airfields on the Malvinas had resulted in the loss of 15 Pucara’s and 2 MB.339A light attack aircraft and the rest had been effectively trapped on the ground by the damage done to the landing strips.
Despite these losses Crespo was still able to muster a strong enough force to in his opinion do the job and was now waiting for reports from the various squadron leaders on how many aircraft would be ready to fly today. At his disposal he had 17 Mirages from 8th Air Brigade, 24 Daggers of 6th Air Brigade and a total of 41 A-4 Skyhawks from 4th and 5th Brigades. The Daggers had proven themselves as inadequate in the air defence role and so the majority of them would be operating in the strike role.
The navy still had 4 Super Etendard’s and 3 Exocet missiles available. While the technicians had been very careful in their choice of words and stopped just short of stating that they had worked all of the bugs out of the missiles they were confident that there would not be a repeat performance of the incident when one of the precious missiles had malfunctioned and dropped into the sea. Knowing that the British carrier group would highly likely now be much closer then previously in order to provide air cover the Super Etendard’s would be going after these ships. As with last time they would be supported by 1st Air Brigades ELINT equipped Boeing 707.
Their briefings complete Crespo watched the pilots walk out to the Mirages and Skyhawks on the flight line from his office window. Some looked nervous and were walking towards their aircraft with a certain grim determination while some were almost running either out of enthusiasm for taking the fight to the British invaders or out of a desire to avenge the empty chairs in the officer’s messes. As the first aircraft began to taxi towards the runway Crespo felt a certain sense of despair. He knew that not all of these men would be coming back and hoped that he wasn’t sending his own men to the same senseless slaughter that had resulted in so many naval officers being unable to show their faces in their own dockyards let alone public. As the last aircraft flew out of sight Crespo had nothing to do but go into the operations centre and wait. He had done his part and now it was in the hands of the pilots. Speaking of pilots there were a very small number who would not be flying today or indeed possibly ever again and for that Crespo felt positively ashamed of himself almost bordering outright disgust at his own actions. The survivors from the 6th had been debriefed for every last scrap of information before they had really had the chance to process what they had witnessed happen to their comrades. Crespo had ordered them to visit each and every combat squadron in order that they could brief the other pilots on their first hand experience of attacking British ships and the lessons to be learned. Unfortunately, it seemed being forced to replay and relive the same traumatic experiences and same feeling of helplessness over and over again had ultimately resulted in nervous breakdowns to the point where those particular officers were not of much use to anyone.
The only person who had come out well from that day was Frigate Captain Bedacarratz who now proudly sported the silhouette of a destroyer on the side of his Super Etendard. He was flying again today and no doubt hoping to add another silhouette to his aircraft. Crespo hoped that many of his pilots would be able to come back and do the same.
