Exocet Falklands

The Untold Story of Special Forces Operations

Ewen Southby-Tailyour

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Maritime
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781473872103
• eBook ISBN: 9781473835139
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

"A fascinating account of three SAS missions to counter the Exocet missile . . . from ill-thought out ideas to near suicidal one-way trips onto enemy soil."— Soldier Magazine
 
This is a revelatory account of three un-tabulated special forces operations, PLUM DUFF, MIKADO and KETTLEDRUM, that were tasked to destroy Argentina's Exocet missiles during the 1982 Falkland's campaign.
 
Interviews with the SAS officer commanding Operation PLUM DUFF, members of the reconnaissance patrol for Operation MIKADO, plus the navigator of the helicopter that flew eight troopers into Tierra del Fuego, has allowed the author to describe the tortuous events that led, instead, to a significant survival story.
 
The RAF pilots ordered to conduct an "assault-landing" of two Hercules onto Rio Grande air base during Operation MIKADO have spoken of the extraordinary procedures they developed: so have the commander of the SBS and the captain of the British submarine involved in Operation KETTLEDRUM.
 
The Super Étendard pilots who sank HMS Sheffield and MV Atlantic Conveyor and then "attacked" HMS Invincible, plus a key member of the Argentine special forces and the brigadier defending Rio Grande, add credence, depth and gravitas to the saga: as does an equally revealing interview with the SIS (MI6) officer who led the world-wide search for Exocets on the black market. Disturbing over-confidence by commanders at home was finely counter-balanced by stirring accounts of inspiring physical and moral courage across the South Atlantic.
 
Exocet Falklands is a ground-breaking work of investigative military history from which many salutary lessons can be learned.
 
"Between politics, diplomacy and barbouzeries, this well-documented work will lead you in the arcane of what should have changed the course of this war."—Air Fan

Chapter 1

RAF Laarbruch, West Germany

15 March 1982, 2030 hours GMT – RAF Lyneham, Wiltshire, England

Flight Lieutenant ‘Harry’ Burgoyne¹ glanced out of the port cockpit window of his four-engined Hercules C Mk1, known worldwide as the RAF C-130 K. Although Burgoyne was a member of Special Forces Flight, 47 Squadron RAF, his aircraft ‘belonged’ officially to the Royal Air Force’s Hercules Transport Wing of RAF Lyneham. 47 Squadron’s Special Forces Flight did not ‘own’ aircraft, and if the air marshals could have had their way the Flight itself would not have existed.

The Squadron has enjoyed a distinguished history, starting with its formation in the East Riding of Yorkshire on 1 March 1916 as a home defence unit of the Royal Flying Corps, attacking marauding German Zeppelins. In early 1919 the Squadron moved to southern Russia in support of White Russian forces facing the Bolsheviks. On return it was disbanded, only to be re-formed in Egypt twelve months later. Perhaps with a nod to the future, in 1925 the Squadron carried out the first of many long-distance flights, when three aircraft pioneered the route between Egypt and Nigeria. During the Second World War, and following peacetime operational service with, among others, the Sudan Defence Force, the Squadron supported Field Marshal Slim’s 14th Army (including Orde Wingate’s Chindits), until it was disbanded at Butterworth in March 1946.

Following its re-formation in September of that year, and equipped with the Blackburn Beverley for the Berlin Airlift, the Squadron embraced the role of air transport, but was disbanded again in 1947. Its final metamorphosis occurred at RAF Fairford on 25 February 1968, when it was re-formed to fly the Lockheed Hercules, which since September 1971 had been based at RAF Lyneham. Pending the closure of Lyneham, 47 Squadron moved to Brize Norton in 2011.

Apart from the hazy blue glow from the lines of taxiway lights that led from the floodlit apron, RAF Lyneham was dark on that March evening in 1982. Brief wintry squalls were fading away, leaving a few last wisps of snow to eddy across the tarmac. Above the cockpit’s upper windows the unseen cloud base was reported at 2,000 feet. A 10-knot wind was blowing from the west, and the temperature, already a chilly 5°C, was forecast to drop three more degrees by the time Burgoyne turned his aircraft on to Lyneham’s 7,000-foot ‘Runway 25’ for take-off. There were less than twenty minutes to go.

Burgoyne had always wanted to fly. Now aged thirty-one and a C-130 pilot since 1973, he was the longest serving pilot in the RAF’s Special Forces Flight. Despite knowing that it was rare for a transport pilot to reach the higher ranks, he had volunteered to fly the Hercules. (Not until January 2013 was it announced that a former helicopter pilot, the first non-fighter pilot in the RAF’s 95-year existence to reach the top, would become Chief of the Air Staff.) Burgoyne’s ‘boss’, Squadron Leader Max Roberts,² who was joining the Special Forces Flight as its new Commanding Officer that very day, had not always wanted to fly transport aircraft, but had taken the practical view that one should ‘never fly in an aeroplane without a loo!’

Unusually, the aircrew had been cleared to fly through Germany and Holland ‘at low level if required’, so Burgoyne was determined not to miss this unique opportunity. From the Dutch coast inland the weather would be as cold as in southern England, sharpened by the same 10-knot wind. It was probable that Hercules XV196 would be overtaking the light showers that had just moved on from the Wiltshire countryside. Thus visibility could be a problem, especially once they had ‘coasted in’ over Holland. Lovely, flat Holland with nothing solid above 1,059 feet, nothing to force XV196 up into the low cloud. The moon, if it could be seen at all, would be in its last quarter. The sun had long since set. It was a Monday.

Burgoyne’s mission, in conjunction with the troopers from ‘R’ Squadron, SAS (later, renamed L Detachment, SAS) now settling into the cargo bay, was to conduct an airfield assault against RAF Laarbruch³ as part of the station’s workup for its annual NATO Tactical Evaluation or TACEVAL. (Since the 1990s these exercises/operations have been known as a Tactical Air-land Operation or TALO.) But Laarbruch was no run-of-the-mill air base, for it was a major contributor to Britain’s Cold War fighter-bomber force. Central to NATO’s air defence of Europe, it was host to a number of RAF squadrons, two of which possessed a nuclear capability. Thus it was essential that this RAF station should be alert for the unexpected, 24 hours of every day of every year. Annual TACEVALs were designed to test this vigilance and the station’s ability to conduct wartime operations. A station-generated exercise was vital to ensure that when the real test came no aspect would be found wanting. To ensure surprise, and for safety and deconfliction reasons, only a handful of Laarbruch’s staff were ‘in the know regarding the evening’s activities’.

No. 15 Squadron, assigned to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, had been stationed in Laarbruch since 1970. Equipped with twelve Blackburn Buccaneer S.2B bombers, the Squadron’s role was to support the British Army against a Russian advance. If subsequent events so dictated, the Squadron would deploy WE.177 tactical nuclear weapons, two of which could be carried by each aircraft. Number 2 Squadron, flying Jaguar GR1s in the ground attack and reconnaissance roles was at a similar state of readiness.

Each squadron’s ground crew worked alongside their aeroplanes, which were housed in hardened aircraft shelters (HASs): 2 Squadron to the south and east of the centre of the runway and 15 Squadron to the south and west. Positioned close to the HASs, the squadrons’ pilots lived in their own equally-hardened Pilot Briefing Facilities. Here lay the operation rooms and administration offices, the planning rooms and limited sleeping accommodation for those duty pilots waiting to fly. The PBFs, as they were known, were proofed against nuclear, chemical and biological attack, and thus pressurized through an air conditioning and ventilation system. To the SAS this was their Achilles heel. The shelters’ air conditioning and air filtration systems, protecting the inmates from a chemical attack, were precisely the weak points that had been sought by the attackers’ inventive minds and had then become the subject of many realistic rehearsals at Hereford. In the real thing, petrol would have been poured into the systems’ intake vents, followed by a phosphorous grenade; but this time it was going to be fresh water and a stun grenade. Had this been a genuine attack, no one in either of the PBFs would have survived.

Although Burgoyne had never conducted an airfield assault, the principle was similar to the numerous strip-landing operations, on to and from unprepared landing zones, that he had flown in many of the world’s trouble spots: work that was central to the Special Forces Flight’s existence. Up to the moment he brought his aircraft to a stop 3,000 feet down Laarbruch’s runway it was to be a normal night ‘strip-landing’ practice, albeit on to a lit and hard surface. After that it would not be quite so ‘normal’.

If his passengers (known affectionately and with justified admiration by the Special Forces Flight as ‘The Hooligans’) succeeded in ‘killing’ the fighter pilots, then not only would the SAS and the Flight have proved the effectiveness of their embryo procedures but, conversely, the air base would have failed its pre-TACEVAL practice and lessons would need to be re-learned very quickly. If, later, it failed the real test, then senior RAF heads would be scalped. In NATO’s ideal world it would, of course, be better if the air base ‘won’; indeed, the air base simply had to win. Yet if the SAS failed … well, that option was not considered by the ‘ground troops’.

There was, though, a real possibility that the aircraft would be ‘shot down’ by the base’s air defence unit, and Burgoyne was well aware that this was the weak point of the plan; if the Hercules went down then the SAS, rather obviously, went with it. The success of this mission relied entirely on the survival of Hercules XV196 – either in the air or on the ground – until after the troops had disembarked. If Laarbruch’s radars managed to pick him up on the way in, then the ground defences would be alerted, and that, too, would be just as fatal.

Somebody had to lose, but the SAS and the Special Forces aircrew were determined it wasn’t going to be them …

Two days earlier (Saturday), the SAS troopers had arrived at Lyneham for rehearsals with Burgoyne and his crew. The aircraft had been taxied to a position away from the runway for slow-time drills, followed by more taxiing and faster drills, until the SAS Squadron Commander and the RAF Flight Lieutenant were happy to undertake a full night-time dress rehearsal.

After supper in the airmen’s mess everyone met again by the rear of Hercules XV196. The sun had set at one minute past six, and with low cloud and fine, nearfreezing rain it was already dark. Harry Burgoyne and Master Air Loadmaster, Pete Scott, conducted a confirmatory brief that emphasized the precise stopping point of the aircraft in relation to the targets. This was followed by comprehensive orders from the SAS officer commanding R Squadron, who pointed out the simulated targets at Lyneham that mirrored the real ones at Laarbruch. The drills on reaching 15 and 2 Squadron’s Pilot’s Briefing Facilities had been practised, rehearsed and perfected at Hereford, where, understandably, there was less concern about the apparently indiscriminate spraying of petrol into mocked-up copies of Laarbruch’s air conditioning units and ventilation systems.

With the night rehearsal a success, Burgoyne brought XV196 back to its stand, allowing everyone to disperse for what was left of the weekend. In R Squadron’s case this involved a second night at RAF Lyneham’s familiar Route Hotel.

The weather was no better when, on Monday afternoon, Burgoyne rejoined his co-pilot, Flight Lieutenant Don Macintosh,⁴ and navigator, Flight Lieutenant Jim Cunningham,⁵ in Lyneham’s flight planning room. Although this was regarded as an exercise, it was being conducted as an ‘operational’ sortie, so the team had arrived four hours before the estimated time for ‘brake release’ rather than the more usual ninety minutes.

Knowing that the SAS needed to be on the ground at Laarbruch at 2315 GMT, or 0015 local, the time that the SAS felt was best to begin their nefarious deeds at Laarbruch, the pilots and navigator needed to work their flight plan backwards from then in order to calculate precisely when to take off.

Burgoyne, Macintosh and Cunningham had discussed all aspects of the mission some days earlier with Hereford’s counter-terrorism wing, and from this an outline plan had evolved. With the help of a squadron leader who had recently left Laarbruch, the SAS identified the two PBFs that they needed to attack, then decided that the best way to reach those targets was with their specially adapted, ‘desert-pink’ Land Rovers.

The Hercules would stop at a specific point on the runway that not only suited the SAS but would ensure enough room ahead to take off without having to turn through 180 degrees in order to return to the beginning of the runway. The precise stopping point was alongside the 5,000-foot ‘distance to go’ marker, one of seven such boards on the side of the 8,000-foot runway. When the SAS troopers drove out of the aircraft they would know exactly where their starting point was and thus the direction of and distance to their targets, one of which was at ten o’clock to the aircraft south of the runway, the other, also south of the runway, at seven o’clock.

By consulting the aircraft’s performance graphs Burgoyne knew that if he approached the runway’s threshold at the tactical landing speed of 96 knots, about 15 knots below a normal approach speed, he could stop at the required spot comfortably. He often landed in far shorter distances, but that involved putting the four-bladed Hamilton Standard 54H60 propellers into reverse thrust, and if his aircraft had not been heard before its arrival it certainly would be then. This time, with 3,000 feet in which to stop, he had plenty of distance to use just his brakes. Things would be pretty quiet at Laarbruch at that time of night, and they wanted to keep it that way for as long as possible. A westerly wind was forecast, so Burgoyne’s stopping point would leave him a clear 5,000 feet to take off on completion of the ‘dirty work’.

To add realism, the plan was for the Hercules to remain on the ground with engines running while the men carried out their attack. On their return, the ‘Pink Panthers’ (as the Land Rovers were known) would (for real) be dumped and the men, in Burgoyne’s words, ‘would trot up the ramp so we could eff off in fine pitch within five seconds of the last person running on board’. There was to be no time for the returning troopers to strap in, for the final part of this Laarbruch exercise was a fast exfiltration. As soon as the ramp was closed, the brakes would be released. The door that comes down out of the Hercules’ roof did not need to be shut, and often was not, but the ramp had to be raised, since it formed part of the ‘tail plane’s structural integrity’. Nor was it a good idea to allow it to scrape along the runway when the control column was pulled very firmly – almost wrenched – back into the pilot’s stomach to ‘rotate’ the aircraft into the night air.

Now that they knew where and when they were aiming to stop, Burgoyne’s team moved back a few minutes in time to consider their final approach. It was this that concerned the crew most, for they had to take into account Laarbruch’s three radar systems, detection by only one of which would give the game away.

The first electronic hurdle was the Precision Approach Radar. This radar looked up the runway centre line to guide aircraft down in poor visibility. It ‘saw’ out to about 15 miles and normally swept 10–15 degrees either side of the centre line. Providing XV196 kept outside that sweep area it would not be seen until the last moment, by which time the pilot had to be lined up. Burgoyne needed to keep XV196 clear of the runway’s centre line until he was less than one mile out.

Of greater concern was the Area Search Radar used by the air traffic controllers to identify and control aircraft within the airfield’s surrounds, since it was also able to identify low-level targets at less than 500 feet above the ground up to ten miles out. This range, though, could be reduced by ground clutter, hills and buildings or, quite simply, by bad weather. It could also be reduced further if Burgoyne conducted a ‘terrain flying’ approach at a ‘seriously’ low level. To minimize his exposure he planned to come in as low as possible, yet still expected to be spotted 8 miles away. His success would then depend on the speed of reaction at the airfield.

The third system was the one that worried the crew most, for in a real war it could literally be fatal. Specifically designed to detect, track and destroy low-flying aircraft, the British manufactured Rapier Air Defence System was, and remains, a world leader and is considered virtually impossible to defeat.

The Rapier’s radar acquired targets much as the Area Search Radar did, but then used its missile fire-control element to remain ‘locked on’ while measuring the height, speed and direction needed to provide a firing solution. The Rapier could kill virtually any threat within 3 miles of it. If detected, an attacker had two options: take immediate evading action, or abort the mission. Yet the only really effective evading actions were either to turn hard away or to fly at an even lower level, maybe as low as fifty feet, in the dark, over land. The Rapier was also designed to resist Electronic Counter Measures, but for Burgoyne and his crew this was not a consideration. Thanks to their ‘underdog’ status when compared with the fast jet fraternity, the Hercules of 47 Squadron’s Special Forces Flight did not even have a Radar Warning Receiver or any Electronic Counter Measures. They would never know if they had been seen, electronically, by anything. If they were targeted by the RAF Regiment’s 26 Squadron’s surface-to-air missile teams when 3 miles out, then that would be the end of the mission. If the missiles missed, and someone was thinking quickly enough, the runway would be blocked by the defending forces.

This was an approach to an airfield whose defences Burgoyne knew, yet he doubted that, despite meticulous planning, he would arrive at Laarbruch unannounced. The need to fly low, especially at night, was vital to avoid detection and so was practised as often as possible with the best aeronautical charts available. Such an approach helped to ensure, but could not guarantee, that the elements of shock and surprise were exercised to the full.

For general navigation, the standard 1:1,000,000 aeronautical chart⁶ sufficed but, with a lack of detail, these publications were unsuitable for low-flying sorties. For the en route section of a normal, low-level flight the crews used 1:250,000 or even 1:500,000 charts. However, for the final run in to a Dropping Zone or Landing Zone, where pinpoint accuracy was essential, they would shift to a 1:50,000 chart or an even larger scale ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Plates
• Introduction
• Acknowledgements
• Timeline
• Prologue: Operation Thunderbolt, Entebbe
• Chapter 1: RAF Laarbruch, West Germany
• Chapter 2: Opening Shots
• Chapter 3: Super Étendard fighter-bombers and Exocet missiles
• Chapter 4: Base Aeronaval Almirante Quijada, Rio Grande, Tierra del Fuego
• Chapter 5: ARA General Belgrano and HMS Sheffield
• Chapter 6: RAF Lyneham
• Chapter 7: Deliberations: South Atlantic, Northwood and Hereford
• Chapter 8: Ascension Island
• Chapter 9: Operation Plum Duff – Phase One: Hereford and the Mid-Atlantic
• Chapter 10: Operation Plum Duff – Phase Two: South Atlantic
• Chapter 11: Operation Plum Duff – Phase Three: Tierra del Fuego
• Chapter 12: Operation Mikado – Outline Plan: Rio Grande
• Chapter 13: MV Atlantic Conveyor
• Chapter 14: Operation Mikado – Detailed Plan: Rio Grande
• Chapter 15: Operation Plum Duff – Mark Two: Tierra del Fuego
• Chapter 16: Operation Kettledrum – Puerto Deseado
• Chapter 17: HMS Avenger, HMS Fearless, HMS Intrepid and HMS Glamorgan
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography