HMS EAGLE in the Falklands
- Thread starter flasheart
- Start date
Not by the early 80s. The USN still had a frankly stupid amount of large decks in that era. They just had the money to pay for large crews.
Just out of curiosity: how far into the 60s/70s could the RN have deployed 2 carriers at the same time? Full CVs with conventional planes, not helis? I find that era so confusing, RN-wise, that I can't really pin point this... 65? 75?
Throughout the 60s and 70s the RN was always desperately short of warm bodies. Crewing an aircraft carrier often meant stripping crews from other vessels.
With certainty? Somewhere between 1967, when Victorious decommissioned & 1970, when Hermes began fitting out as a commando carrier.
Of course, that's not to say that Ark & Eagle couldn't be 'surged' together up until the latter's paying off, although this would require both exceptional circumstances and exceptional effort.
The Realities of War
During the night of the 5th/6th of May the Argentinians on the Falklands once again found themselves playing host to some unwanted guests. Four Buccaneers were launched from HMS EAGLE during the night. This time they flew unescorted. Now Argentine fighter opposition had been encountered thus far on previous sorties over the islands and the intelligence staff were adamant that the Argentines didn’t have the ability for night combat flying. Therefore, it had been judged an acceptable risk for the Buccaneers to fly unescorted on this mission. Besides if the Argentines reacted as hoped then it had been judged better to conserve the Phantoms for the day ahead. The Buccaneers flew in two pairs towards Argentine ground positions identified by the Sea Harrier sorties the previous day.
Coming in from the east they launched a combined total of 288 SNEB 68mm rockets at Argentine positions on Mount Harriet and Two Sisters before proceeding to return to the carrier. Some small arms fire was encountered but nothing in the way of SAM’s or heavy AA fire.
The 4th Infantry regiment occupying these two mountains suffered grievous losses but was in a way more affected by the phycological impact of waking to find themselves on the receiving end of such a barrage. The geology of the mountains had made actually digging in near impossible due to their inability to dig into the bedrock leaving them exposed. Therefore, they had built bunkers and fighting positions from the seemingly inexhaustible supply of loose rock in the area. While these had certainly saved a lot of lives they had also contributed to the number of flesh wounds and broken bones when the force of nearby impacts had blown the unsecured rocks that made up a lot of these positions in every direction creating a lethal wall of shrapnel.
For a few hours after the Buccaneers had departed nothing happened. This caused some on the islands to breathe a sigh of relief thinking that that was it for tonight. They were soon proved premature in their assessment in the early hours of the morning. 6th Infantry regiment dug into various positions along the coast to the east and south of Port Stanley and on Stanley Common found themselves under attack. However, this time the more switched on officers and men quickly deduced that this wasn’t another air attack but artillery shelling. Unless the British had already landed without anyone noticing (Very unlikely seeing as the regiment was positioned to defend what were felt to be the most likely landing locations) the shells could only be coming from ships at sea.
When this information reached the Argentine commanders in Port Stanley a warning order was sent out to all Argentine forces on the Malvinas in case this bombardment was a prelude to an actual landing.
Though the 6th Infantry Regiment did sustain some casualties as with the unfortunate men of the 4th Regiment the effect was again mainly psychological.
The young conscript soldiers who made up the bulk of these units mostly hailed from the warmer and more arid parts of Argentina. Many of them had never really been cold before and had rarely experienced rain. They had now spent many weeks living outdoors in fox holes and had been really suffering at the hands of what to them was a strange barren, cold, drenched and windswept land. The generally poor quality and quantity of the average Private’s cold weather gear meant that some had started to develop frostbite and trench foot among other things. Until now the conscripts had been more concerned with avoiding the wrath of their NCO’s and officers more than anything. In the Argentine armed forces of the time the officers often owed their positions more to their political connections than leadership ability and the NCO’s were mostly conscripts who had stayed in the army simply because they lacked the necessary skills or personal qualities to make a living in the civilian world. These factors had resulted in a leadership style across the army that to in a western military would most likely see the individual quickly removed from any position of leadership. Physical assault was viewed as an acceptable form of discipline and a common punishment was for the offender to be staked out on the ground exposed to the elements. In some of the more outlying positions simple geography and to a degree a lack of care within the logistics organisation meant that it wasn’t unknown for men to go hungry.
All of these factors combined resulted in a severe drop in morale and now the men along the coast found themselves cowering in their fighting positions waiting for this latest nightmare to end. At least an air attack is over quickly but even though it lasted for less than 20 minutes to the men on the receiving end of the naval bombardment every minute felt like an hour and they all knew that they could not fight back against this. All they could do was press themselves as low to the ground as they could and ride it out while praying that there wasn’t a shell with their name on it.
One of the Argentine costal observation positions further to the North that wasn’t under fire had based on the frequency and number of artillery impacts and faint flashes on the horizon out to sea estimated that there were at least two British warships within 25km of the coast. As the sun began to peek over the horizon they began to very faintly make out the silhouettes of the ships. This Information had been passed on to Brigadier Menendez in Port Stanley who had passed it on to Buenos Aries when he had reported in the night’s events.
SOUTHERN AIR FORCE COMMAND, RIO GALLEGOS AFB
Brigadier Crespo was fast learning that the first casualty in war is usually sleep. Once again, his hopes for an uninterrupted sleep had been dashed when an aide had awoken him with a report of an air attack on the Malvinas. Later the reports of the naval bombardment had come in and that was when things had started to kick off as it were.
He had received a phone call from Brigadier Dozo in Buenos Aries ordering him to prepare a strike against the British Ships. No one in mainland Argentina really thought that an invasion was imminent as they expected that if and when one came it would be preceded by a much larger naval and aerial bombardment. However, the junta still desperately needed some success against the British to try and pacify an increasingly restless population and the British had been good enough to provide them with a perfect opportunity. That was what was worrying Crespo. He already had a plan in place and aircraft held at readiness for this kind of eventuality and probably could pull something off but there was something not right about this. The British must have worked out by now that they were safe from air attack during the dark so it did not make any sense that having completed their bombardment the British had dragged their hung around for a while until they it was light enough that they were clearly visible from the shore and were only now heading back out to sea.
Being an airman, he wasn’t quite sure what the naval logic in doing this was so he had spent a good while analysing the information he had with his naval liaison (a “survivor” from Vice Admiral Lombardo’s staff). The naval officer had concluded that there was no clear reason why the British would do this when they could have so easily slipped away in the darkness. There were in his opinion two possibilities. One, that the British were so confident in their ability to protect themselves or that they had such a low estimation of Crespo’s forces that they simply didn’t feel the need to withdraw with any urgency. Given how effortlessly they had destroyed the navy it wasn’t perfectly possible that they would be feeling overconfident but this would be confidence to the point of major negligence.
Two, that they wanted the Argentinians to see them. Either to intimidate them or possibly even as a come on.
It was this last possibility that was worrying Crespo and his staff. No competent commander (and the British commanders had thus far certainly shown themselves to be so) would expose his command to any more danger than he was avoidable unless he was trying to achieve something. It all just seemed to convenient that the British ships were hanging around just long enough for his aircraft to get to them. Crespo was pretty much certain that they had to acting as bait to lure his aircraft into something. His aircraft would be operating at nearly the limit of their endurance to be able to pull this off and the British carriers could be anywhere (Though if they were as close as Crespo feared this could in itself present an opportunity) meaning that their Phantoms may not be constrained by such issues.
With only minutes to go before the first aircraft were due to start taxiing to the runways Crespo had phoned Brigadier Dozo in Buenos Aries and recommended that the strike be called off. He explained that he thought the British were trying to lure his aircraft into an ambush but he ended up feeling that Dozo wasn’t really listening.
Dozo explained that what was important right now was to inflict some kind of loss on the British. The Junta had been worried for days now about the possibility of some kind of uprising and desperately needed a victory in what had thus far been a very one-sided conflict. To a degree they were hoping that if they could inflict a large loss of life on the British fleet then they would shake the confidence of the British and maybe make them think twice about bringing ships so close to the shore. Yes, there would most likely be losses amongst Argentina’s airmen but that was war and the imperativeness of destroying the British ships before they disappeared overrode these concerns. Besides from a political point of view after the loss of nine vessels and over a thousand sailors not yet a week ago would a few aircraft losses really matter that much to the people?
When Crespo tried to argue Dozo (whose military judgment in Crespo’s opinion was becoming clouded by the political considerations of his position) reminded him of what had happened to Lombardo.
The first aircraft to take off was the ELINT equipped Boeing 707 of 1st Air Brigade which launched from Ezezia International Airport just outside Buenos Aries. With the danger of intercept by British fighters demonstrated on the 2nd it was considered to dangerous for such large aircraft to approach the potential location of British forces. Therefore, this aircraft would fly in a racetrack pattern in an area to the North West of the islands and provide intelligence based on radar emission intercepts. It wasn’t ideal by any stretch of the imagination but with the recent loss of most of Argentina’s maritime patrol aircraft it was all they could manage. Still it was better than nothing.
Puerto San Julian Airfields 6th Air Brigade would be launching eight Dagger interceptors. These aircraft were tasked with dealing with the expected British CAP or at the very least drawing them away from the British ships to give the following Skyhawks a clearer run. The Dagger’s would be operating at very nearly the limit of their range during their sorties and so would approach the Malvinas flying at a higher altitude partially for fuel economy but also in the hopes that they would be more visible which would aid their mission to draw away British interceptors.
The Dagger’s would be followed by a total of twelve A4-C Skyhawks belonging to 4th Air Brigade also operating out of Puerto San Julian Airfield. These aircraft were partially the reason why the launch of the whole operation was being hurried. Like the Mirages these aircraft would be at the limit of their range when they were expected to intercept the British ships and any delay could easily allow the British to slip beyond the range of the Skyhawks. These aircraft would fly over the islands at low level and approach over the sea at as lower altitude as possible. It was hoped that the British radar operators and missile seeker heads would find it difficult to pick out the aircraft against a background of radar clutter from the mountains and sea.
The final part of the operation was the pair of Super Etendard’s that would be launching from NAS Almirante Quijada and would each be carrying an Exocet missile. These aircraft unlike their air force counterparts had been allocated the services of the single currently available KC-130. Due to the geography of where these aircraft were located (The Super Etendard’s were launching from the Southern part of the country while the KC-130 was based at Comodoro Rivadavia AFB a few hundred miles to the North) the AAR would have to take place only after the Super Etendard’s had completed their mission. These aircraft were tasked to search for and prosecute any targets of opportunity to the east of the ships already targeted taking advantage of the longer range provided by their Exocets. If it became necessary they would use their weapons to support the Skyhawks.
HMS GLASGOW Operations Room, 1000
Captain Hoddinott was a now very concerned man. Part of him had hoped that his mission would be a failure but the signal in his hand had dashed those hopes. He was leading a force consisting of his own Type 42 Destroyer HMS GLASGOW, the Type 22 frigate HMS BROADSWORD and the TYPE 21 Frigate HMS ALACRICITY. Their mission to carry out a shore bombardment of Argentine positions ashore had been completed and his force was now retiring east towards the Task Force at his forces maximum speed of 30 knots. Hoddinott wasn’t sure how successful the bombardment had actually been. Although he knew that Special Forces teams were now on the islands none had been available to provide any kind of artillery spotting support. Between them HMS GLASGOW and HMS ALACRICITY had fired nearly 50 4.5 inch shells and he was certain that with that many at least one of them must have hit something worth hitting. However, he hadn’t been ordered to bring his ship that close to shore just to put on a very expensive fireworks display. The whole reason Admiral Woodward had ordered him to carry out this op was to draw out Argentine aircraft so they could be engaged on terms favourable to the Task Force as part of a longer term strategy of sapping the strength of the Argentine military before 3 Commando Brigade could land ashore. To this end the fire missions had been timed to take place just before dawn and afterwards his ships had remained in a box close enough to the Falklands to be just about visible from shore. Fortunately, his fears regarding Argentine artillery units ashore hadn’t come to fruition. Unfortunately, his fears that the Argentines would actually respond to his deliberate provocation had.
The signal in his hand was from Northwood stating that the SSN HMS SPARTAN positioned off the coast of the Argentine mainland (Her exact position was naturally not something he was felt to have any business knowing) had reported multiple jet aircraft flying east towards the Falkland Islands.
The ships of his force were in line abreast formation with his own GLASGOW in the centre, HMS BROADSWORD to port and HMS ALACRICITY to starboard both at a distance of just under 1nm. HMS GLASGOW with her long range air search radar and Sea Dart missiles would be providing area defence while HMS BROADSWORD’s shorter range Sea Wolf missiles would be providing point defence. The weak link was the TYPE 21 Frigate HMS ALACRICITY. She had been brought along to provide the services of her 4.5 inch gun for the shore bombardment. The problem was in terms of air defence her only defence was the short range and sub sonic Sea Cat missile system which was pretty much obsolete.
Admiral Woodward hadn’t wanted to remove anymore of the Sea Dart or Sea Wolf equipped ships from the defence of the Carriers in case the worst should happen.
His force wasn’t not alone however. A pair of Phantoms from HMS EAGLE had been allocated to his control for fighter support and had just come on station. Further to the East were a second pair of Phantoms providing outer CAP screening for the carriers which would if it became necessary be redirected to provide further cover to his group. There was also a third pair of Phantoms in the air on inner CAP station which would move to outer CAP if required and a forth pair on the flight deck at alert 5 status. HMS INVINCIBLE also had a pair of Sea Harrier’s in the air on CAP and another pair on deck at alert 5.
As well as the normal Gannet AEW aircraft providing early warning to the carriers a second Gannet was airborne and tasked to provide early warning to Hoddinott’s group.
Though he was certain that this force would be able to give the Argentinians something to think about he could not get the thought out of his head that what was happening was a replay of the Battle a few before only with the roles reversed. The worrying thing about that was that the Buccaneer’s had made it look so easy!
With the air threat warning now red the radar operators in the operations room and on the Gannet were ordered to keep a good look out on a bearing to the west of the force. The ship had been at action stations all night but Captain Hoddintott had allowed this posture to be relaxed ever so slightly to try and stave off crew fatigue. But now the general alarm was again sounded and the crew warned to expect to receive an air attack imminently. Anti flash hoods which had been relaxed were now ordered to be pulled up again.
As the Daggers flew over the Malvinas the pilots got their first glimpse of the land they were fighting to protect. They didn’t really have time for anything more than a fleeting glimpse however as another update came in from the ELINT Boeing 707. It had reported detecting radar emissions consistent with the TYPE 965 air search radar known to be carried on British (and until very recently Argentinian) destroyers and possible emissions from an AN/APS-20 air search radar known to be carried on British AEW aircraft. If the 707 was detecting radar emissions that far away the flight leader thought then the British most likely knew about his flight of Daggers.
With his endurance limited by the lack of AAR capability his aircraft would not be able to engage in air combat manoeuvring otherwise they wouldn’t have the fuel to make it back home. In fact, as soon as the aircraft had cleared the coast the flight leader had begun a stopwatch. As soon as it reached 10 minutes he would have to call bingo fuel and turn for home. His plan was to launch a barrage of infrared Shafrir-2 air to air missiles as soon as targets had been identified. He gave the order for his aircraft to switch on their radars to locate such a target.
The Argentine Daggers had indeed been spotted by the Gannet AEW aircraft but were still just too far away to show up on the screens of the operators aboard HMS GLASGOW. All the same the Gannet had taken operational control of the pair of Phantoms and guided them to an intercept. The Observers in the rear seats of the Phantoms had identified eight contacts ahead of them and proceeded to launch Skyflash air to air missiles at a distance of 42km just under their maximum range. The Shfrir-2’s carried by the Daggers only had a range of 5km and so could not reply. The result was predictable with six of the Daggers being shot out of the sky and the others running for home while the Phantoms gave chase. They broke off rather than fly over the islands and potentially expose themselves to any Argentine SAM’s. Though the Daggers had taken heavy losses the three two had succeeded in drawing the Phantoms away from the British ships.
Many commentators and scholars would later ask why the air force had employed Daggers when the Mirage’s with their more advanced weapons and countermeasures would have had more of a chance of survival and of bringing down the Phantoms. The answer was mostly based on the Daggers availability for this short notice operation and that the Mirages would also have been handicapped by their shorter range. It would later emerge that the Mirage’s were at this stage being held back to protect the mainland from the increasingly feared possibility of Chilean aggression or if the British suddenly became extremely bold.
The A-4C Skyhawks that came next had divided themselves into three flights of four aircraft each and came in from different angles (all still generally from the west though) at low level visually scanning for their targets. While none of their occupants had ever seen action before the aircraft themselves certainly had. They were second hand American aircraft and many had flown combat sorties during the Vietnam war. The plan to use the radar clutter from the sea and shore worked and it wasn’t until they were flying over water that the Gannet was able to detect them. Even with the information from the Gannet the Type 965 radar operator on HMS GLASGOW struggled to identify them against the backdrop of radar clutter.
The Phantoms that had been on outer CAP for the carriers had been instructed to move west to provide fighter cover to the GLASGOW group when the original pair had moved off to engage the Daggers. This new pair of Phantoms now engaged their afterburners in an attempt to intercept the incoming Skyhawks being directed towards the southernmost group. Like the those onboard the ships and Gannets the observers in the rear seats of the Phantoms struggled to pick out the radar signature of the Skyhawks against the sea clutter.
Unable to achieve a lock on for their Skyflash missiles the Phantoms rapidly lowered their altitude in the hopes that the new angle relative to their targets and the sea would give the radars an easier job. By this point the two groups of aircraft were now hurtling towards each other head on at nearly supersonic speeds. With the distance rapidly closing the Phantoms elected to use their AIM-9L Sidewinder missiles that one of the crews had witnessed being delivered by the Americans when they had been forced to make an emergency landing on Ascension Island a few weeks ago.
The AIM-9L was the first “All Aspect” version of the missile meaning that it could engage a target from any angle unlike the older missiles that the RN aircrews were used to that had to be fired from behind the target. Though they had been able to do a bit of ad hoc training for conducting head on missile attacks during the transit south from the UK this was the first actual firing of this newer model of the Sidewinder for the RN and the results were impressive. Whereas previous models of the Sidewinder had only had a hit rate of 15% out of the total of four missiles fired three found their mark. The forth aircraft now alone and without having found a target jettisoned its bombload and keeping as low as possible (The pilot would later claim that he was low enough that his vision was affected by sea spray) made for shore. The Argentine Skyhawks when made aware by their ECM panels that they had been locked up had been completely unable to respond. The only Skyhawks in Argentina with air to air capability had been those that were configured to carry the AIM-9B Sidewinders. Unfortunately, these Skyhawks had been the navy’s A-4Q’s that had all been lost when their carrier had been destroyed on the 2nd. The air force Skyhawks were only able to carry air to ground weapons.
The pair of Phantoms that had intercepted the Daggers now found themselves redirected to intercept the central flight of Skyhawks from astern. The Phantom crews were in a way excited. If they could bring down these Skyhawks then not only would they be the first British aces since the second world war but would also have obtained that most revered of titles “Ace in a day”.
Having expended their compliment of Skyflash’s against the Daggers they were forced to use afterburners to close with the subsonic Skyhawks. Having had to close to a distance of just under 30km the Phantoms launched four Sidewinders. The IR seeker heads on the missiles this time had a much easier time of identifying their targets from the heat signature of the jet blasts. Despite again being warned that they were under attack and jettisoning their ordinance to give them an extra turn of speed the Lima version of the Sidewinder proved its worth. The Phantom crews had in the space of less than 30 minutes earned themselves a place in FAA history.
The third and final group of Skyhawks was the northern most group. HMS GLASGOW was maintaining intermittent radar contact with them while still struggling with the clutter caused by the land backdrop. Gathered around the Type 992 target indication radar plot with his PWO’s and AAWO it was clear to Hoddinott that there wasn’t going to be time for an intercept of these incoming hostiles before they would be on top of his group. Therefore, it would be down to the ships own weapon systems to protect them. In rapid succession he gave orders for the Phantoms and the Gannet to be kept clear of the area in order to give his missiles an unrestricted field of fire, ordered the ships of his group to make a 90 degree turn to the north to allow HMS GLASGOW and HMS BROADSWORD to bring their missiles to bear and for the upper deck weapons crews to be ready to engage targets to port.
As the Skyhawks closed to approximately 35 km GLASGOW launched a pair of Sea Dart missiles. The Sea Dart was a semi active missile that had to be guided to its target by its target by an operator on its launch platform and would only activate its own seeker head for the final phase of its flight. Unfortunately, this system had been designed to engage soviet bombers flying at medium to high altitude and not small sea skimming fast jets. The Type 909 fire control radars like the Type 992 had trouble distinguishing the aircraft from the background radar clutter meaning that the Sea Darts unable to achieve a lock on passed over the top of the Skyhawks. With the Skyhawks now closing to 10km HMS GLASGOW had not yet completed the process of reloading her Sea Dart launcher and so HMS BROADSWORD launched a salvo of four missiles from her forward Sea Wolf launcher achieving two hits. The upper deck weapons crews on all three of the ships now able to visually spot the incoming aircraft now opened fire along with the 4.5 inch guns on the GLASGOW and ALACRITY which started firing AA shells. HMS BROADSWORD and HMS ALACRITY each found themselves the target of a Skyhawk. As the aircraft approached they opened fire with their 20mm cannons impacting the ships hulls and superstructure causing some minor damage.
The Argentine air force had never seriously thought that they would have ever been called upon to conduct maritime strikes and so had never actually trained for it. When the crisis began the naval Skyhawk pilots who were trained in this role had begun a crash course for their air force brethren which had given them a basic idea of how to conduct such a strike but little else. Unfortunately, the Naval Pilots and their Skyhawks had all been lost only a few days ago meaning that Argentina’s maritime air strike capability had plummeted.
This showed when the Skyhawk pilot targeting HMS BROADSWORD still inexperienced in engaging moving shooting targets at sea released his ordinance a fraction of a second too late. This resulted in the bombs passing just astern of the ship with crewmen onboard the ship witnessing one weapon passing just feet over the flight deck before impacting the water to starboard.
HMS ALACRICTY was less fortunate and was impacted by one bomb on the port side just above the waterline slightly astern of amidships. The bomb however did not explode and passed through the ship creating another hull breach on the starboard side. The argentine weapons had been set up with a delayed reaction fuse to allow them to penetrate into a ship before detonating. While this had worked well in the second world war against the heavily armoured ships of the time when used against a modern thinner skinned ship the weapon had simply passed through it without impacting anything heavy enough to stop the bomb and cause a detonation.
Commander Craig was now forced to order a reduction in speed to reduce the sea spray generated by his ship while damage control teams raced to conduct leak stopping and prevent the ship from being flooded by the two significant hull breaches. While HMS ALACRICTY had had a lucky escape, she was by no stretch of the imagination out of danger yet.
While the Skyhawks and Daggers had been engaging the British the two Exocet equipped Super Etendard’s had been to the south searching for any other British ships. They flew low hoping to stay underneath any British radars. Having the benefit of being allocated the services of the KC-130 they had the fuel to conduct a bit of searching. Occasionally they would “pop up” to see if their ESM suites detected any British radar emissions and to do a quick surface scan with their AGAVE radars. So far, they had detected strong emissions to the North which they assessed was the British surface force that the Skyhawks had been sent to attack and fainter emission to the east north east which could potentially be the British carrier group or ships screening for it.
Listening in on the radio communications from the surviving Skyhawks and Daggers it became apparent that they had been unable to complete their objective and seemed to have taken some losses. The Super Etendard’s pilots’ orders in this eventuality was to rather than seek out the British carriers move instead to finish the job that the air force hadn’t been able to do. Inwardly the pilots breathed a sigh of relief. They knew that the British carriers would likely have been very heavily protected meaning that even if their missiles both claimed a scalp they would have been much less likely to survive the experience.
Flying north at just 50 feet above the waves the two aircraft were able to avoid detection through a combination of being able to stay below the radar for the majority of their approach and through the operators on the ships struggling with information overload as they attempted to deal with the Skyhawk attacks and not having much spare capacity to keep an eye out for a threat coming at them from a completely different direction. In fact, this allowed the Super Etendard’s to come within a distance of 20 miles before they rose up to 120 feet to conduct another AGAVE sweep. Upon seeing three large white blips on their radar screens both aircraft launched their Exocet missiles. One missile dropped straight into the sea as a result of the only partially trained Argentine ground crews being unable to properly integrate it with the aircraft after the French technicians had departed. The other missile flew straight and true while the Super Etendard’s turned away for their rendezvous with the KC-130n and home.
Onboard HMS GLASGOW the electronic warfare specialists suddenly shouted out that the ship was being scanned by an AGAVE radar associated with the Exocet missile. Captain Hoddinott realised to his horror that the missile would be approaching him from astern. His Sea Dart missile system was located forward of the superstructure and had a large blind arc astern. HMS BROADSWORD had a stern mounted Sea Wolf point defence missile launcher but she was located ahead in the formation meaning that her shot would be blocked by HMS GLASGOW. HMS ALACRITY still struggling to deal with the damage from the Skyhawks would be almost completely unable to defend herself.
Captain Hoddinott’s next move has been the subject of much scrutiny over the years. He ordered his ship to turn to port in order to give his own Sea Dart a chance of being able to engage the incoming threat (The Type 909 radars were unable to pick out the small and fast moving missiles) and to give the Sea Wolf on HMS BROADSWORD a clear field of fire. However, in doing this he presented his broadside to the threat and created a much larger radar signature. While chaff was launched it was later deduced that this had happened a few seconds too late to allow the chaff to spread and create a large radar return and that the Exocet had likely already locked on to HMS Glasgow by that point.
The Exocet struck HMS GLASGOW on the port side amidships on 2 deck with the warhead detonating upon impact. The resulting fireball caused significant casualties to the men on the port upper decks. Within the ship though the spread of the fireball had been to a degree limited by the compartmentalised nature of the ship and that all the hatches were already locked down a major fire still broke out and began to spread rapidly. Burning PVC cable coverings and foam cushions along with other things created a thick cloud of toxic black smoke that spread around the ship before the ventilation system could be shut down which began to incapacitate many men. The impact of the missile had knocked out both of the main generators in the engine room and in a cruel twist of fate the emergency generator further forward in the ship had been stripped down in the process of undergoing maintenance which had been put on hold when the orders to carryout a shore bombardment had come in the previous day. This left the burning GLASGOW completely without power. Without power there was no way to ventilate the ship meaning that the fire fighting parties were often finding themselves unable to actually reach the fiercely burning fires due to the thick toxic clouds of smoke that it was generating that now had nowhere to go. The ships personal firefighting equipment proved itself to be lacking in both quality and more disastrously quantity.
With HMS ALACRITY still crippled by her own damage control issues HMS BROADSWORD began to manoeuvre to a position alongside the burning GLASGOW in the hopes of providing some external firefighting support. Despite BROADSWORDS fire fighting hoses attempting to douse the flames from the outside and her Lynx helicopter flying nearly her entire stock of breathing apparatus and other firefighting equipment over to GLASGOW while transferring off some of the wounded it just wasn’t enough. In places the decks were becoming so hot that the soles on the men’s boots were beginning to melt. Worse the manmade fibres in the men’s shirts and trousers often melted in the heat sticking to the skin hideously disfiguring many of the survivors.
Having moved to the damage control centre in HQ1 Captain Hoddinott found himself in an increasingly impossible predicament. In places the bulk heads were beginning to glow white hot causing combustibles in the adjacent compartments to burst into flames and forcing his fire fighters back again and again. There simply wasn’t enough firefighting equipment in particular breathing apparatus to equip sufficient men and even if there were between the casualties sustained and then men being used to evacuate the wounded to the upper decks where they could be taken off by helicopters he didn’t have enough men left to fight such a large fire. With the fire gradually making its way towards the Sea Dart and 4.5 inch magazines forward and his apparent inability to stop it Hoddinott felt that he had no choice. With a heavy heart he gave the order to abandon ship.
By this point most of the wounded (and there were not a small number of them) had been evacuated by helicopter by helicopter to the medical facilities aboard HMS HERMES so most of the crew packed themselves into inflatable life rafts and were picked up by HMS BROADSWORD and helicopters sent from the Task Force. To the surprise of many HMS GLASGOW did not explode nor did she immediately sink. She continued to burn for nearly another 24 hours before she was finally overcome by rough weather a few days later and sank after taking on water through her gigantic hull breach amidships.
In Britain the battle of the 2nd of May had brought home the realities of war now the news of the loss of HMS GLASGOW along with 40 of her crew hammered home the consequences of war.
The news of the first loss of a British warship in battle since the second world war came as a terrible shock to the country which like Argentina experienced first a sense of bereavement then as desire for answers.
As the Task force had sailed from Britain the PM had been proclaimed “Defeat? The possibility does not exist” yet here was a chilling demonstration of what was possible the age of missile warfare.
The news broke in a statement delivered by the MOD’s Chief of Public Relations Ian McDonald. His slow, deliberate and measured delivery of this statement and others meant that for many he became the voice of the Falklands conflict. He stated that British warships had come under air attack earlier during the day and despite having brought down 15 argentine aircraft (The government went to great lengths to emphasis this) the destroyer HMS GLASGOW had had to be abandoned after being struck by an Exocet missile and that next of kin were being informed. This last part caused some upset as families either had near heart attacks whenever the doorbell or phone rang or harassed the MOD demanding to know if their sons or husbands were amongst the casualties. After this it was decided that in any future mass casualty events no public announcement would be made until the next of kin had been informed.
in later weeks photographs and footage found its way back to Britain of the burning HMS GLASGOW and of interviews with Royal Marines aboard HMS HERMES helping to unload burned men from helicopters and rush them down to sickbay. Some of these marines who normally had a mocking and dismissive attitude towards their navy counterparts were visibly shocked by what they had seen and this was captured in photographs.
In Whitehall Admiral Lewin found himself having to fend of a near interrogation from members of the war cabinet. These politicians I thought couldn’t quite grasp the military logic and implications behind what had happened and seemed to unable to see past the newspaper headlines. He had called a meeting here in Whitehall partly to keep them all away from Admiral Fieldhouse in Northwood so they could not interfere with the recovery efforts. They were asking why had Admiral Woodward deliberately provoked the Argentinians? Why had the ships seemingly made it easy for them? Was this seemingly deliberate sacrifice of British lives worth it?
Lewin brought them up to date on the situation of the ships involved. HMS GLASGOW was abandoned but still burning and clearly beyond recovery. HMS ALACRITY had stopped her flooding but would be unable to take any further part in the operation and so would be heading for home.
He reminded the assembled members that they had all been aware of the risks at the start of this operation and that the GLASGOW group had been successful in drawing out the Argentine air force. In his opinion overall, the operation was a success as it had resulted in the destruction of 15 Argentine aircraft and so had completed its objective of sapping Argentine strength. He then proceeded tom outline the Task Forces next move.
Tonight, the Task Force would be carrying out more Buccaneer raids and he wanted another surface group to carryout a shore bombardment (This time withdrawing immediately under the cover of darkness) in order to demonstrate to the Argentinians and to the world that British resolve had not been shaken. Or so he hoped.
In Argentina the Juntas propaganda machine went into overdrive. The sinking of a British destroyer somehow became the driving off of an invasion force. In the streets of Buenos Aries, the anger for now had subsided and become jubilation. Argentina could fight back. Many artists impressions would be produced of often extremely dubious quality. In one notorious incident not only did a newspaper claim that the aircraft carrier HMS EAGLE was the ship that had been sunk but the photograph claiming to depict the burning EAGLE was actually a recycled image from the second world war of the American aircraft carrier USS HORNET.
No mention was made of the Argentine aircraft losses. As far as the public was concerned the only aircraft on the mission had been the Exocet carrying Super Etendard’s. The military however knew better.
Brigadier Crespo was utterly appalled at what had happened. Out of three ships his pilots had only been able to sink one and in doing so they had suffered a near 75% loss rate. Upon being made aware f this he had immediately telephoned his superior Brigadier Dozo in Buenos Aries and reiterated his position that deploying their aircraft against the British in piecemeal fashion was the quickest way to lose them. Understandably Dozo now seemed to share his opinion that what they had left would be better preserved for a mass attack against the British landing if and when it came.
Afterwards a chilling thought crossed Crespo’s mind. Given what they had just learned about the British air defence capability whether or not his pilots were successful in destroying the British landing fleet when it came given the loss rates he had just suffered even if it became a victory for Argentina there probably wouldn’t be an air force left to see the fruits of it.
One unusual place where the impact of the Falklands conflict was being felt was Australia. The Royal Australian Navy’s single aircraft carrier HMAS MELBOURNE had been due for replacement by the purchase of the British built HMS INVINCIBLE which was now involved in the conflict. HMAS MELBOURNE had been due to begin a refit but this had been postponed the previous year when the British had offered the INVINCIBLE to Australia and she was now sat in dock at Garden Island facing an uncertain future. The very expensive question was would HMS INVINCIBLE survive the conflict and if so would the British still be willing to sell her. Many had been arguing that the MELBOURNE should be reactivated until this question could be adequately answered.
The MELBOURNE a second world war vintage British built ship formerly known as HMS MAJESTIC and being her half sister was in many ways identical to the ill fated ARA VEINTICINCO DE MAYO. Like the DE MAYO her air group was also made up of A-4 Skyhawks and S-2 Trackers.
The destruction of the DE MAYO group had come as a horrifying shock to the RAN as it instantly showed up just how vulnerable their own flagship would be. A debate was now raging over whether when compared to the supersonic jet operating fleet carriers would INVINCIBLE and her Sea Harriers really be that much more survivable than the MELBOURNE and was she going to be worth the money?
Some argued that they should look to acquire something more capable and some that the RAN should invest more in air defence ships.
Many argued that small carriers were proving of little value in a modern war. The RAAF wanted the purchase of INVINCIBLE cancelled and the money instead spent on a larger fleet of the new F/A-18 Hornets being purchased from the US. Some argued that rather than a carrier INVINCIBLE should be instead operated as an LPH with some Harriers for Close Air Support.
Some argued that a replacement for HMAS MELBOURNE was unaffordable anyway and should be cancelled. The debate raged on.
What had been made abundantly clear was that whatever if any replacement was procured the RAN’s A-4G Skyhawks had had their day. Quietly and approach was made to the RNZAF to see f they would be interested in acquiring the Skyhawks.
Coming in from the east they launched a combined total of 288 SNEB 68mm rockets at Argentine positions on Mount Harriet and Two Sisters before proceeding to return to the carrier. Some small arms fire was encountered but nothing in the way of SAM’s or heavy AA fire.
The 4th Infantry regiment occupying these two mountains suffered grievous losses but was in a way more affected by the phycological impact of waking to find themselves on the receiving end of such a barrage. The geology of the mountains had made actually digging in near impossible due to their inability to dig into the bedrock leaving them exposed. Therefore, they had built bunkers and fighting positions from the seemingly inexhaustible supply of loose rock in the area. While these had certainly saved a lot of lives they had also contributed to the number of flesh wounds and broken bones when the force of nearby impacts had blown the unsecured rocks that made up a lot of these positions in every direction creating a lethal wall of shrapnel.
For a few hours after the Buccaneers had departed nothing happened. This caused some on the islands to breathe a sigh of relief thinking that that was it for tonight. They were soon proved premature in their assessment in the early hours of the morning. 6th Infantry regiment dug into various positions along the coast to the east and south of Port Stanley and on Stanley Common found themselves under attack. However, this time the more switched on officers and men quickly deduced that this wasn’t another air attack but artillery shelling. Unless the British had already landed without anyone noticing (Very unlikely seeing as the regiment was positioned to defend what were felt to be the most likely landing locations) the shells could only be coming from ships at sea.
When this information reached the Argentine commanders in Port Stanley a warning order was sent out to all Argentine forces on the Malvinas in case this bombardment was a prelude to an actual landing.
Though the 6th Infantry Regiment did sustain some casualties as with the unfortunate men of the 4th Regiment the effect was again mainly psychological.
The young conscript soldiers who made up the bulk of these units mostly hailed from the warmer and more arid parts of Argentina. Many of them had never really been cold before and had rarely experienced rain. They had now spent many weeks living outdoors in fox holes and had been really suffering at the hands of what to them was a strange barren, cold, drenched and windswept land. The generally poor quality and quantity of the average Private’s cold weather gear meant that some had started to develop frostbite and trench foot among other things. Until now the conscripts had been more concerned with avoiding the wrath of their NCO’s and officers more than anything. In the Argentine armed forces of the time the officers often owed their positions more to their political connections than leadership ability and the NCO’s were mostly conscripts who had stayed in the army simply because they lacked the necessary skills or personal qualities to make a living in the civilian world. These factors had resulted in a leadership style across the army that to in a western military would most likely see the individual quickly removed from any position of leadership. Physical assault was viewed as an acceptable form of discipline and a common punishment was for the offender to be staked out on the ground exposed to the elements. In some of the more outlying positions simple geography and to a degree a lack of care within the logistics organisation meant that it wasn’t unknown for men to go hungry.
All of these factors combined resulted in a severe drop in morale and now the men along the coast found themselves cowering in their fighting positions waiting for this latest nightmare to end. At least an air attack is over quickly but even though it lasted for less than 20 minutes to the men on the receiving end of the naval bombardment every minute felt like an hour and they all knew that they could not fight back against this. All they could do was press themselves as low to the ground as they could and ride it out while praying that there wasn’t a shell with their name on it.
One of the Argentine costal observation positions further to the North that wasn’t under fire had based on the frequency and number of artillery impacts and faint flashes on the horizon out to sea estimated that there were at least two British warships within 25km of the coast. As the sun began to peek over the horizon they began to very faintly make out the silhouettes of the ships. This Information had been passed on to Brigadier Menendez in Port Stanley who had passed it on to Buenos Aries when he had reported in the night’s events.
SOUTHERN AIR FORCE COMMAND, RIO GALLEGOS AFB
Brigadier Crespo was fast learning that the first casualty in war is usually sleep. Once again, his hopes for an uninterrupted sleep had been dashed when an aide had awoken him with a report of an air attack on the Malvinas. Later the reports of the naval bombardment had come in and that was when things had started to kick off as it were.
He had received a phone call from Brigadier Dozo in Buenos Aries ordering him to prepare a strike against the British Ships. No one in mainland Argentina really thought that an invasion was imminent as they expected that if and when one came it would be preceded by a much larger naval and aerial bombardment. However, the junta still desperately needed some success against the British to try and pacify an increasingly restless population and the British had been good enough to provide them with a perfect opportunity. That was what was worrying Crespo. He already had a plan in place and aircraft held at readiness for this kind of eventuality and probably could pull something off but there was something not right about this. The British must have worked out by now that they were safe from air attack during the dark so it did not make any sense that having completed their bombardment the British had dragged their hung around for a while until they it was light enough that they were clearly visible from the shore and were only now heading back out to sea.
Being an airman, he wasn’t quite sure what the naval logic in doing this was so he had spent a good while analysing the information he had with his naval liaison (a “survivor” from Vice Admiral Lombardo’s staff). The naval officer had concluded that there was no clear reason why the British would do this when they could have so easily slipped away in the darkness. There were in his opinion two possibilities. One, that the British were so confident in their ability to protect themselves or that they had such a low estimation of Crespo’s forces that they simply didn’t feel the need to withdraw with any urgency. Given how effortlessly they had destroyed the navy it wasn’t perfectly possible that they would be feeling overconfident but this would be confidence to the point of major negligence.
Two, that they wanted the Argentinians to see them. Either to intimidate them or possibly even as a come on.
It was this last possibility that was worrying Crespo and his staff. No competent commander (and the British commanders had thus far certainly shown themselves to be so) would expose his command to any more danger than he was avoidable unless he was trying to achieve something. It all just seemed to convenient that the British ships were hanging around just long enough for his aircraft to get to them. Crespo was pretty much certain that they had to acting as bait to lure his aircraft into something. His aircraft would be operating at nearly the limit of their endurance to be able to pull this off and the British carriers could be anywhere (Though if they were as close as Crespo feared this could in itself present an opportunity) meaning that their Phantoms may not be constrained by such issues.
With only minutes to go before the first aircraft were due to start taxiing to the runways Crespo had phoned Brigadier Dozo in Buenos Aries and recommended that the strike be called off. He explained that he thought the British were trying to lure his aircraft into an ambush but he ended up feeling that Dozo wasn’t really listening.
Dozo explained that what was important right now was to inflict some kind of loss on the British. The Junta had been worried for days now about the possibility of some kind of uprising and desperately needed a victory in what had thus far been a very one-sided conflict. To a degree they were hoping that if they could inflict a large loss of life on the British fleet then they would shake the confidence of the British and maybe make them think twice about bringing ships so close to the shore. Yes, there would most likely be losses amongst Argentina’s airmen but that was war and the imperativeness of destroying the British ships before they disappeared overrode these concerns. Besides from a political point of view after the loss of nine vessels and over a thousand sailors not yet a week ago would a few aircraft losses really matter that much to the people?
When Crespo tried to argue Dozo (whose military judgment in Crespo’s opinion was becoming clouded by the political considerations of his position) reminded him of what had happened to Lombardo.
The first aircraft to take off was the ELINT equipped Boeing 707 of 1st Air Brigade which launched from Ezezia International Airport just outside Buenos Aries. With the danger of intercept by British fighters demonstrated on the 2nd it was considered to dangerous for such large aircraft to approach the potential location of British forces. Therefore, this aircraft would fly in a racetrack pattern in an area to the North West of the islands and provide intelligence based on radar emission intercepts. It wasn’t ideal by any stretch of the imagination but with the recent loss of most of Argentina’s maritime patrol aircraft it was all they could manage. Still it was better than nothing.
Puerto San Julian Airfields 6th Air Brigade would be launching eight Dagger interceptors. These aircraft were tasked with dealing with the expected British CAP or at the very least drawing them away from the British ships to give the following Skyhawks a clearer run. The Dagger’s would be operating at very nearly the limit of their range during their sorties and so would approach the Malvinas flying at a higher altitude partially for fuel economy but also in the hopes that they would be more visible which would aid their mission to draw away British interceptors.
The Dagger’s would be followed by a total of twelve A4-C Skyhawks belonging to 4th Air Brigade also operating out of Puerto San Julian Airfield. These aircraft were partially the reason why the launch of the whole operation was being hurried. Like the Mirages these aircraft would be at the limit of their range when they were expected to intercept the British ships and any delay could easily allow the British to slip beyond the range of the Skyhawks. These aircraft would fly over the islands at low level and approach over the sea at as lower altitude as possible. It was hoped that the British radar operators and missile seeker heads would find it difficult to pick out the aircraft against a background of radar clutter from the mountains and sea.
The final part of the operation was the pair of Super Etendard’s that would be launching from NAS Almirante Quijada and would each be carrying an Exocet missile. These aircraft unlike their air force counterparts had been allocated the services of the single currently available KC-130. Due to the geography of where these aircraft were located (The Super Etendard’s were launching from the Southern part of the country while the KC-130 was based at Comodoro Rivadavia AFB a few hundred miles to the North) the AAR would have to take place only after the Super Etendard’s had completed their mission. These aircraft were tasked to search for and prosecute any targets of opportunity to the east of the ships already targeted taking advantage of the longer range provided by their Exocets. If it became necessary they would use their weapons to support the Skyhawks.
HMS GLASGOW Operations Room, 1000
Captain Hoddinott was a now very concerned man. Part of him had hoped that his mission would be a failure but the signal in his hand had dashed those hopes. He was leading a force consisting of his own Type 42 Destroyer HMS GLASGOW, the Type 22 frigate HMS BROADSWORD and the TYPE 21 Frigate HMS ALACRICITY. Their mission to carry out a shore bombardment of Argentine positions ashore had been completed and his force was now retiring east towards the Task Force at his forces maximum speed of 30 knots. Hoddinott wasn’t sure how successful the bombardment had actually been. Although he knew that Special Forces teams were now on the islands none had been available to provide any kind of artillery spotting support. Between them HMS GLASGOW and HMS ALACRICITY had fired nearly 50 4.5 inch shells and he was certain that with that many at least one of them must have hit something worth hitting. However, he hadn’t been ordered to bring his ship that close to shore just to put on a very expensive fireworks display. The whole reason Admiral Woodward had ordered him to carry out this op was to draw out Argentine aircraft so they could be engaged on terms favourable to the Task Force as part of a longer term strategy of sapping the strength of the Argentine military before 3 Commando Brigade could land ashore. To this end the fire missions had been timed to take place just before dawn and afterwards his ships had remained in a box close enough to the Falklands to be just about visible from shore. Fortunately, his fears regarding Argentine artillery units ashore hadn’t come to fruition. Unfortunately, his fears that the Argentines would actually respond to his deliberate provocation had.
The signal in his hand was from Northwood stating that the SSN HMS SPARTAN positioned off the coast of the Argentine mainland (Her exact position was naturally not something he was felt to have any business knowing) had reported multiple jet aircraft flying east towards the Falkland Islands.
The ships of his force were in line abreast formation with his own GLASGOW in the centre, HMS BROADSWORD to port and HMS ALACRICITY to starboard both at a distance of just under 1nm. HMS GLASGOW with her long range air search radar and Sea Dart missiles would be providing area defence while HMS BROADSWORD’s shorter range Sea Wolf missiles would be providing point defence. The weak link was the TYPE 21 Frigate HMS ALACRICITY. She had been brought along to provide the services of her 4.5 inch gun for the shore bombardment. The problem was in terms of air defence her only defence was the short range and sub sonic Sea Cat missile system which was pretty much obsolete.
Admiral Woodward hadn’t wanted to remove anymore of the Sea Dart or Sea Wolf equipped ships from the defence of the Carriers in case the worst should happen.
His force wasn’t not alone however. A pair of Phantoms from HMS EAGLE had been allocated to his control for fighter support and had just come on station. Further to the East were a second pair of Phantoms providing outer CAP screening for the carriers which would if it became necessary be redirected to provide further cover to his group. There was also a third pair of Phantoms in the air on inner CAP station which would move to outer CAP if required and a forth pair on the flight deck at alert 5 status. HMS INVINCIBLE also had a pair of Sea Harrier’s in the air on CAP and another pair on deck at alert 5.
As well as the normal Gannet AEW aircraft providing early warning to the carriers a second Gannet was airborne and tasked to provide early warning to Hoddinott’s group.
Though he was certain that this force would be able to give the Argentinians something to think about he could not get the thought out of his head that what was happening was a replay of the Battle a few before only with the roles reversed. The worrying thing about that was that the Buccaneer’s had made it look so easy!
With the air threat warning now red the radar operators in the operations room and on the Gannet were ordered to keep a good look out on a bearing to the west of the force. The ship had been at action stations all night but Captain Hoddintott had allowed this posture to be relaxed ever so slightly to try and stave off crew fatigue. But now the general alarm was again sounded and the crew warned to expect to receive an air attack imminently. Anti flash hoods which had been relaxed were now ordered to be pulled up again.
As the Daggers flew over the Malvinas the pilots got their first glimpse of the land they were fighting to protect. They didn’t really have time for anything more than a fleeting glimpse however as another update came in from the ELINT Boeing 707. It had reported detecting radar emissions consistent with the TYPE 965 air search radar known to be carried on British (and until very recently Argentinian) destroyers and possible emissions from an AN/APS-20 air search radar known to be carried on British AEW aircraft. If the 707 was detecting radar emissions that far away the flight leader thought then the British most likely knew about his flight of Daggers.
With his endurance limited by the lack of AAR capability his aircraft would not be able to engage in air combat manoeuvring otherwise they wouldn’t have the fuel to make it back home. In fact, as soon as the aircraft had cleared the coast the flight leader had begun a stopwatch. As soon as it reached 10 minutes he would have to call bingo fuel and turn for home. His plan was to launch a barrage of infrared Shafrir-2 air to air missiles as soon as targets had been identified. He gave the order for his aircraft to switch on their radars to locate such a target.
The Argentine Daggers had indeed been spotted by the Gannet AEW aircraft but were still just too far away to show up on the screens of the operators aboard HMS GLASGOW. All the same the Gannet had taken operational control of the pair of Phantoms and guided them to an intercept. The Observers in the rear seats of the Phantoms had identified eight contacts ahead of them and proceeded to launch Skyflash air to air missiles at a distance of 42km just under their maximum range. The Shfrir-2’s carried by the Daggers only had a range of 5km and so could not reply. The result was predictable with six of the Daggers being shot out of the sky and the others running for home while the Phantoms gave chase. They broke off rather than fly over the islands and potentially expose themselves to any Argentine SAM’s. Though the Daggers had taken heavy losses the three two had succeeded in drawing the Phantoms away from the British ships.
Many commentators and scholars would later ask why the air force had employed Daggers when the Mirage’s with their more advanced weapons and countermeasures would have had more of a chance of survival and of bringing down the Phantoms. The answer was mostly based on the Daggers availability for this short notice operation and that the Mirages would also have been handicapped by their shorter range. It would later emerge that the Mirage’s were at this stage being held back to protect the mainland from the increasingly feared possibility of Chilean aggression or if the British suddenly became extremely bold.
The A-4C Skyhawks that came next had divided themselves into three flights of four aircraft each and came in from different angles (all still generally from the west though) at low level visually scanning for their targets. While none of their occupants had ever seen action before the aircraft themselves certainly had. They were second hand American aircraft and many had flown combat sorties during the Vietnam war. The plan to use the radar clutter from the sea and shore worked and it wasn’t until they were flying over water that the Gannet was able to detect them. Even with the information from the Gannet the Type 965 radar operator on HMS GLASGOW struggled to identify them against the backdrop of radar clutter.
The Phantoms that had been on outer CAP for the carriers had been instructed to move west to provide fighter cover to the GLASGOW group when the original pair had moved off to engage the Daggers. This new pair of Phantoms now engaged their afterburners in an attempt to intercept the incoming Skyhawks being directed towards the southernmost group. Like the those onboard the ships and Gannets the observers in the rear seats of the Phantoms struggled to pick out the radar signature of the Skyhawks against the sea clutter.
Unable to achieve a lock on for their Skyflash missiles the Phantoms rapidly lowered their altitude in the hopes that the new angle relative to their targets and the sea would give the radars an easier job. By this point the two groups of aircraft were now hurtling towards each other head on at nearly supersonic speeds. With the distance rapidly closing the Phantoms elected to use their AIM-9L Sidewinder missiles that one of the crews had witnessed being delivered by the Americans when they had been forced to make an emergency landing on Ascension Island a few weeks ago.
The AIM-9L was the first “All Aspect” version of the missile meaning that it could engage a target from any angle unlike the older missiles that the RN aircrews were used to that had to be fired from behind the target. Though they had been able to do a bit of ad hoc training for conducting head on missile attacks during the transit south from the UK this was the first actual firing of this newer model of the Sidewinder for the RN and the results were impressive. Whereas previous models of the Sidewinder had only had a hit rate of 15% out of the total of four missiles fired three found their mark. The forth aircraft now alone and without having found a target jettisoned its bombload and keeping as low as possible (The pilot would later claim that he was low enough that his vision was affected by sea spray) made for shore. The Argentine Skyhawks when made aware by their ECM panels that they had been locked up had been completely unable to respond. The only Skyhawks in Argentina with air to air capability had been those that were configured to carry the AIM-9B Sidewinders. Unfortunately, these Skyhawks had been the navy’s A-4Q’s that had all been lost when their carrier had been destroyed on the 2nd. The air force Skyhawks were only able to carry air to ground weapons.
The pair of Phantoms that had intercepted the Daggers now found themselves redirected to intercept the central flight of Skyhawks from astern. The Phantom crews were in a way excited. If they could bring down these Skyhawks then not only would they be the first British aces since the second world war but would also have obtained that most revered of titles “Ace in a day”.
Having expended their compliment of Skyflash’s against the Daggers they were forced to use afterburners to close with the subsonic Skyhawks. Having had to close to a distance of just under 30km the Phantoms launched four Sidewinders. The IR seeker heads on the missiles this time had a much easier time of identifying their targets from the heat signature of the jet blasts. Despite again being warned that they were under attack and jettisoning their ordinance to give them an extra turn of speed the Lima version of the Sidewinder proved its worth. The Phantom crews had in the space of less than 30 minutes earned themselves a place in FAA history.
The third and final group of Skyhawks was the northern most group. HMS GLASGOW was maintaining intermittent radar contact with them while still struggling with the clutter caused by the land backdrop. Gathered around the Type 992 target indication radar plot with his PWO’s and AAWO it was clear to Hoddinott that there wasn’t going to be time for an intercept of these incoming hostiles before they would be on top of his group. Therefore, it would be down to the ships own weapon systems to protect them. In rapid succession he gave orders for the Phantoms and the Gannet to be kept clear of the area in order to give his missiles an unrestricted field of fire, ordered the ships of his group to make a 90 degree turn to the north to allow HMS GLASGOW and HMS BROADSWORD to bring their missiles to bear and for the upper deck weapons crews to be ready to engage targets to port.
As the Skyhawks closed to approximately 35 km GLASGOW launched a pair of Sea Dart missiles. The Sea Dart was a semi active missile that had to be guided to its target by its target by an operator on its launch platform and would only activate its own seeker head for the final phase of its flight. Unfortunately, this system had been designed to engage soviet bombers flying at medium to high altitude and not small sea skimming fast jets. The Type 909 fire control radars like the Type 992 had trouble distinguishing the aircraft from the background radar clutter meaning that the Sea Darts unable to achieve a lock on passed over the top of the Skyhawks. With the Skyhawks now closing to 10km HMS GLASGOW had not yet completed the process of reloading her Sea Dart launcher and so HMS BROADSWORD launched a salvo of four missiles from her forward Sea Wolf launcher achieving two hits. The upper deck weapons crews on all three of the ships now able to visually spot the incoming aircraft now opened fire along with the 4.5 inch guns on the GLASGOW and ALACRITY which started firing AA shells. HMS BROADSWORD and HMS ALACRITY each found themselves the target of a Skyhawk. As the aircraft approached they opened fire with their 20mm cannons impacting the ships hulls and superstructure causing some minor damage.
The Argentine air force had never seriously thought that they would have ever been called upon to conduct maritime strikes and so had never actually trained for it. When the crisis began the naval Skyhawk pilots who were trained in this role had begun a crash course for their air force brethren which had given them a basic idea of how to conduct such a strike but little else. Unfortunately, the Naval Pilots and their Skyhawks had all been lost only a few days ago meaning that Argentina’s maritime air strike capability had plummeted.
This showed when the Skyhawk pilot targeting HMS BROADSWORD still inexperienced in engaging moving shooting targets at sea released his ordinance a fraction of a second too late. This resulted in the bombs passing just astern of the ship with crewmen onboard the ship witnessing one weapon passing just feet over the flight deck before impacting the water to starboard.
HMS ALACRICTY was less fortunate and was impacted by one bomb on the port side just above the waterline slightly astern of amidships. The bomb however did not explode and passed through the ship creating another hull breach on the starboard side. The argentine weapons had been set up with a delayed reaction fuse to allow them to penetrate into a ship before detonating. While this had worked well in the second world war against the heavily armoured ships of the time when used against a modern thinner skinned ship the weapon had simply passed through it without impacting anything heavy enough to stop the bomb and cause a detonation.
Commander Craig was now forced to order a reduction in speed to reduce the sea spray generated by his ship while damage control teams raced to conduct leak stopping and prevent the ship from being flooded by the two significant hull breaches. While HMS ALACRICTY had had a lucky escape, she was by no stretch of the imagination out of danger yet.
While the Skyhawks and Daggers had been engaging the British the two Exocet equipped Super Etendard’s had been to the south searching for any other British ships. They flew low hoping to stay underneath any British radars. Having the benefit of being allocated the services of the KC-130 they had the fuel to conduct a bit of searching. Occasionally they would “pop up” to see if their ESM suites detected any British radar emissions and to do a quick surface scan with their AGAVE radars. So far, they had detected strong emissions to the North which they assessed was the British surface force that the Skyhawks had been sent to attack and fainter emission to the east north east which could potentially be the British carrier group or ships screening for it.
Listening in on the radio communications from the surviving Skyhawks and Daggers it became apparent that they had been unable to complete their objective and seemed to have taken some losses. The Super Etendard’s pilots’ orders in this eventuality was to rather than seek out the British carriers move instead to finish the job that the air force hadn’t been able to do. Inwardly the pilots breathed a sigh of relief. They knew that the British carriers would likely have been very heavily protected meaning that even if their missiles both claimed a scalp they would have been much less likely to survive the experience.
Flying north at just 50 feet above the waves the two aircraft were able to avoid detection through a combination of being able to stay below the radar for the majority of their approach and through the operators on the ships struggling with information overload as they attempted to deal with the Skyhawk attacks and not having much spare capacity to keep an eye out for a threat coming at them from a completely different direction. In fact, this allowed the Super Etendard’s to come within a distance of 20 miles before they rose up to 120 feet to conduct another AGAVE sweep. Upon seeing three large white blips on their radar screens both aircraft launched their Exocet missiles. One missile dropped straight into the sea as a result of the only partially trained Argentine ground crews being unable to properly integrate it with the aircraft after the French technicians had departed. The other missile flew straight and true while the Super Etendard’s turned away for their rendezvous with the KC-130n and home.
Onboard HMS GLASGOW the electronic warfare specialists suddenly shouted out that the ship was being scanned by an AGAVE radar associated with the Exocet missile. Captain Hoddinott realised to his horror that the missile would be approaching him from astern. His Sea Dart missile system was located forward of the superstructure and had a large blind arc astern. HMS BROADSWORD had a stern mounted Sea Wolf point defence missile launcher but she was located ahead in the formation meaning that her shot would be blocked by HMS GLASGOW. HMS ALACRITY still struggling to deal with the damage from the Skyhawks would be almost completely unable to defend herself.
Captain Hoddinott’s next move has been the subject of much scrutiny over the years. He ordered his ship to turn to port in order to give his own Sea Dart a chance of being able to engage the incoming threat (The Type 909 radars were unable to pick out the small and fast moving missiles) and to give the Sea Wolf on HMS BROADSWORD a clear field of fire. However, in doing this he presented his broadside to the threat and created a much larger radar signature. While chaff was launched it was later deduced that this had happened a few seconds too late to allow the chaff to spread and create a large radar return and that the Exocet had likely already locked on to HMS Glasgow by that point.
The Exocet struck HMS GLASGOW on the port side amidships on 2 deck with the warhead detonating upon impact. The resulting fireball caused significant casualties to the men on the port upper decks. Within the ship though the spread of the fireball had been to a degree limited by the compartmentalised nature of the ship and that all the hatches were already locked down a major fire still broke out and began to spread rapidly. Burning PVC cable coverings and foam cushions along with other things created a thick cloud of toxic black smoke that spread around the ship before the ventilation system could be shut down which began to incapacitate many men. The impact of the missile had knocked out both of the main generators in the engine room and in a cruel twist of fate the emergency generator further forward in the ship had been stripped down in the process of undergoing maintenance which had been put on hold when the orders to carryout a shore bombardment had come in the previous day. This left the burning GLASGOW completely without power. Without power there was no way to ventilate the ship meaning that the fire fighting parties were often finding themselves unable to actually reach the fiercely burning fires due to the thick toxic clouds of smoke that it was generating that now had nowhere to go. The ships personal firefighting equipment proved itself to be lacking in both quality and more disastrously quantity.
With HMS ALACRITY still crippled by her own damage control issues HMS BROADSWORD began to manoeuvre to a position alongside the burning GLASGOW in the hopes of providing some external firefighting support. Despite BROADSWORDS fire fighting hoses attempting to douse the flames from the outside and her Lynx helicopter flying nearly her entire stock of breathing apparatus and other firefighting equipment over to GLASGOW while transferring off some of the wounded it just wasn’t enough. In places the decks were becoming so hot that the soles on the men’s boots were beginning to melt. Worse the manmade fibres in the men’s shirts and trousers often melted in the heat sticking to the skin hideously disfiguring many of the survivors.
Having moved to the damage control centre in HQ1 Captain Hoddinott found himself in an increasingly impossible predicament. In places the bulk heads were beginning to glow white hot causing combustibles in the adjacent compartments to burst into flames and forcing his fire fighters back again and again. There simply wasn’t enough firefighting equipment in particular breathing apparatus to equip sufficient men and even if there were between the casualties sustained and then men being used to evacuate the wounded to the upper decks where they could be taken off by helicopters he didn’t have enough men left to fight such a large fire. With the fire gradually making its way towards the Sea Dart and 4.5 inch magazines forward and his apparent inability to stop it Hoddinott felt that he had no choice. With a heavy heart he gave the order to abandon ship.
By this point most of the wounded (and there were not a small number of them) had been evacuated by helicopter by helicopter to the medical facilities aboard HMS HERMES so most of the crew packed themselves into inflatable life rafts and were picked up by HMS BROADSWORD and helicopters sent from the Task Force. To the surprise of many HMS GLASGOW did not explode nor did she immediately sink. She continued to burn for nearly another 24 hours before she was finally overcome by rough weather a few days later and sank after taking on water through her gigantic hull breach amidships.
In Britain the battle of the 2nd of May had brought home the realities of war now the news of the loss of HMS GLASGOW along with 40 of her crew hammered home the consequences of war.
The news of the first loss of a British warship in battle since the second world war came as a terrible shock to the country which like Argentina experienced first a sense of bereavement then as desire for answers.
As the Task force had sailed from Britain the PM had been proclaimed “Defeat? The possibility does not exist” yet here was a chilling demonstration of what was possible the age of missile warfare.
The news broke in a statement delivered by the MOD’s Chief of Public Relations Ian McDonald. His slow, deliberate and measured delivery of this statement and others meant that for many he became the voice of the Falklands conflict. He stated that British warships had come under air attack earlier during the day and despite having brought down 15 argentine aircraft (The government went to great lengths to emphasis this) the destroyer HMS GLASGOW had had to be abandoned after being struck by an Exocet missile and that next of kin were being informed. This last part caused some upset as families either had near heart attacks whenever the doorbell or phone rang or harassed the MOD demanding to know if their sons or husbands were amongst the casualties. After this it was decided that in any future mass casualty events no public announcement would be made until the next of kin had been informed.
in later weeks photographs and footage found its way back to Britain of the burning HMS GLASGOW and of interviews with Royal Marines aboard HMS HERMES helping to unload burned men from helicopters and rush them down to sickbay. Some of these marines who normally had a mocking and dismissive attitude towards their navy counterparts were visibly shocked by what they had seen and this was captured in photographs.
In Whitehall Admiral Lewin found himself having to fend of a near interrogation from members of the war cabinet. These politicians I thought couldn’t quite grasp the military logic and implications behind what had happened and seemed to unable to see past the newspaper headlines. He had called a meeting here in Whitehall partly to keep them all away from Admiral Fieldhouse in Northwood so they could not interfere with the recovery efforts. They were asking why had Admiral Woodward deliberately provoked the Argentinians? Why had the ships seemingly made it easy for them? Was this seemingly deliberate sacrifice of British lives worth it?
Lewin brought them up to date on the situation of the ships involved. HMS GLASGOW was abandoned but still burning and clearly beyond recovery. HMS ALACRITY had stopped her flooding but would be unable to take any further part in the operation and so would be heading for home.
He reminded the assembled members that they had all been aware of the risks at the start of this operation and that the GLASGOW group had been successful in drawing out the Argentine air force. In his opinion overall, the operation was a success as it had resulted in the destruction of 15 Argentine aircraft and so had completed its objective of sapping Argentine strength. He then proceeded tom outline the Task Forces next move.
Tonight, the Task Force would be carrying out more Buccaneer raids and he wanted another surface group to carryout a shore bombardment (This time withdrawing immediately under the cover of darkness) in order to demonstrate to the Argentinians and to the world that British resolve had not been shaken. Or so he hoped.
In Argentina the Juntas propaganda machine went into overdrive. The sinking of a British destroyer somehow became the driving off of an invasion force. In the streets of Buenos Aries, the anger for now had subsided and become jubilation. Argentina could fight back. Many artists impressions would be produced of often extremely dubious quality. In one notorious incident not only did a newspaper claim that the aircraft carrier HMS EAGLE was the ship that had been sunk but the photograph claiming to depict the burning EAGLE was actually a recycled image from the second world war of the American aircraft carrier USS HORNET.
No mention was made of the Argentine aircraft losses. As far as the public was concerned the only aircraft on the mission had been the Exocet carrying Super Etendard’s. The military however knew better.
Brigadier Crespo was utterly appalled at what had happened. Out of three ships his pilots had only been able to sink one and in doing so they had suffered a near 75% loss rate. Upon being made aware f this he had immediately telephoned his superior Brigadier Dozo in Buenos Aries and reiterated his position that deploying their aircraft against the British in piecemeal fashion was the quickest way to lose them. Understandably Dozo now seemed to share his opinion that what they had left would be better preserved for a mass attack against the British landing if and when it came.
Afterwards a chilling thought crossed Crespo’s mind. Given what they had just learned about the British air defence capability whether or not his pilots were successful in destroying the British landing fleet when it came given the loss rates he had just suffered even if it became a victory for Argentina there probably wouldn’t be an air force left to see the fruits of it.
One unusual place where the impact of the Falklands conflict was being felt was Australia. The Royal Australian Navy’s single aircraft carrier HMAS MELBOURNE had been due for replacement by the purchase of the British built HMS INVINCIBLE which was now involved in the conflict. HMAS MELBOURNE had been due to begin a refit but this had been postponed the previous year when the British had offered the INVINCIBLE to Australia and she was now sat in dock at Garden Island facing an uncertain future. The very expensive question was would HMS INVINCIBLE survive the conflict and if so would the British still be willing to sell her. Many had been arguing that the MELBOURNE should be reactivated until this question could be adequately answered.
The MELBOURNE a second world war vintage British built ship formerly known as HMS MAJESTIC and being her half sister was in many ways identical to the ill fated ARA VEINTICINCO DE MAYO. Like the DE MAYO her air group was also made up of A-4 Skyhawks and S-2 Trackers.
The destruction of the DE MAYO group had come as a horrifying shock to the RAN as it instantly showed up just how vulnerable their own flagship would be. A debate was now raging over whether when compared to the supersonic jet operating fleet carriers would INVINCIBLE and her Sea Harriers really be that much more survivable than the MELBOURNE and was she going to be worth the money?
Some argued that they should look to acquire something more capable and some that the RAN should invest more in air defence ships.
Many argued that small carriers were proving of little value in a modern war. The RAAF wanted the purchase of INVINCIBLE cancelled and the money instead spent on a larger fleet of the new F/A-18 Hornets being purchased from the US. Some argued that rather than a carrier INVINCIBLE should be instead operated as an LPH with some Harriers for Close Air Support.
Some argued that a replacement for HMAS MELBOURNE was unaffordable anyway and should be cancelled. The debate raged on.
What had been made abundantly clear was that whatever if any replacement was procured the RAN’s A-4G Skyhawks had had their day. Quietly and approach was made to the RNZAF to see f they would be interested in acquiring the Skyhawks.
Woooow... great update. What does ArgentIna have left now, apart from the Etendards? Can't be more than a handfull of A-4s and Daggers. Next time, they'll be down to using the Mirages as bait, to get anything past the air cover...
This battle truly hammers home the value of ASMs vs dumb bombs. Even if it's true that the Etendards had the A-4s "playing bait", it's still telling. If the Daggers had been used as their air cover, the Etendards would have been able to fire while the Daggers were being hunted...
edit: just checked; Argentina started the war with less than 60 A-4s (navy and AF), 30 Daggers and 20 Mirage III. What's left?...
This battle truly hammers home the value of ASMs vs dumb bombs. Even if it's true that the Etendards had the A-4s "playing bait", it's still telling. If the Daggers had been used as their air cover, the Etendards would have been able to fire while the Daggers were being hunted...
edit: just checked; Argentina started the war with less than 60 A-4s (navy and AF), 30 Daggers and 20 Mirage III. What's left?...
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Especially since they can't afford to commit their entire air force due to the possibility of Chilean attack.
Is there anything to be gained? The British Task Force remains firmly in the driving seat and the falsehood of driving off an invasion force will become apparent when the British actually invade and retake the islands.
Indeed. The UK just has to "Keep calm and invade", basically puting out simple situation reports, and done deal.
Great update.
Just one little niggle:
Just one little niggle:
30km is way beyond the max range for Sidewinders, particularly from astern - 10km (a bit less than 5 nautical miles) might be just about plausible if time is tight and the targets are not particularly evasive, but really they'd be looking to fire at less than 5km (2.5-3 nm).
6 Daggers were lost in the battle east of the Falklands, along with 8 of the Skyhawks. At least 8 additional of the most advanced Skyhawks were lost when the ARA Veinticinco De Mayo was lost, along with the 4 of the very valuable S-2 Trackers. So the Argies are down at least 16 of the A-4s. How many aircraft were caught on the ground in the first Buc strike?
Great update and it's wonderful to see the butterflies coming into play. Hopefully, ITTL the RAN continues operating a carrier, although what they end up operating is anyone's guess.
I'm sure Argentina would be interested, provided they are delivered immediately.
BTW, I don't remember, did the french also block the delivery of 60 additional Exocets at literally the last minute (ie in the airport warehouse, having already cleared customs and awaiting to be loaded on airplanes) ITTL or not?
The French techs were recalled and the Argentinians have been jury rigging again so I assume they must have done.
I don’t see why the RAN would be surprised at the results. The RN carrier was much larger, with more and larger combat aircraft.
And the RAAF actually borrowed Phantoms from the US for a few years between retiring the Canberra and getting the F-111.
HMAS Melbourne was basically used in the same role that HMS Invincible was designed to fill. Primary ASW with fast jets to knock MPA’s out of the sky.
What is scary is that HMAS Melbourne was the RAN’s only aviation capable combatant until the FFG’s arrived. They had nothing else aside possibly an AOR or two that could carry even light helicopters.
And the RAAF actually borrowed Phantoms from the US for a few years between retiring the Canberra and getting the F-111.
HMAS Melbourne was basically used in the same role that HMS Invincible was designed to fill. Primary ASW with fast jets to knock MPA’s out of the sky.
What is scary is that HMAS Melbourne was the RAN’s only aviation capable combatant until the FFG’s arrived. They had nothing else aside possibly an AOR or two that could carry even light helicopters.