Continuing alone from the final refuelling bracket, John Elliott allowed his Victor to cruise-climb gently to 43,000 feet. As the first burnt orange of dawn appeared on the horizon, he pulled back on the throttles and descended to 18,000 feet and into the search area, ninety miles east of South Georgia. From this point, Elliott flew west towards the centre of the island, before turning north for 120 miles. At the top of the next leg he again turned west for ninety miles before turning on to the next southerly one. Like a groundsman mowing parallel stripes into a football field, the up-and-down search pattern was precise, ensuring that each leg met the edge of the one adjacent to it. In just under an hour and a half, after completing two of these giant doglegs, Elliott’s Nav team had mapped over 150,000 square miles of sea to the north and north-west of South Georgia – an area the size of the whole of the United Kingdom. From the bridge of HMS Antrim, the ship leading the small naval Task Group, officers saw white contrails streaming from behind the Victor through a break in the clouds.
Progress was needed. The Defence Secretary John Nott’s worry that a news vacuum would develop was shared by colleagues in the War Cabinet. The long wait while the Task Force steamed south had, from the outset, been one of Sir Michael Beetham’s concerns. As long as it continued, the initiative lay with the enemy. The recapture of South Georgia could fill the void. There was still the faint hope that decisive action here would weaken Argentine resolve over the Falklands themselves. But if it came to war, South Georgia, with its deep fjords and natural harbours, might provide safe haven for British ships – especially those merchant ships that had been pressed into action to support the military effort.
At ten o’clock in the evening, the phone rang in Michael Beetham’s London flat. He picked up to hear news of the RAF contribution. Beedie and Cowling, the radar team on board Elliott’s Victor, hadn’t discovered a single ship or iceberg that might threaten operation PARAQUAT. It was negative intelligence, certainly, but it was good and welcome information.
Beetham acknowledged the news and placed the phone back on to its cradle, satisfied and relieved that his old V-bombers had made their first move without incident. Soon, perhaps, they would really make their presence felt.
The next morning the War Cabinet would give the order to retake South Georgia – a decision that was to provide all concerned with some of the most worrying moments of the entire South Atlantic campaign.
When they had arrived in Stanley many Argentinians had done so with high hopes. Flyers carrying a kitsch picture of Jesus and the Virgin Mary were distributed to ‘The People of the Malvinas’ celebrating the islands’ liberation from illegal colonial rule and inviting them to ‘join us in forging a great future for the islands’. Whatever some of the invaders may have imagined, it was no liberation and it was becoming increasingly clear to even the most optimistic of them that they were going to have to fight.
Two more expatriate families were flying out of the islands that morning. On a wet, grey day, a convoy of nearly ten Land-Rovers drove them and their luggage to the airfield, escorted by military vehicles carrying Argentine guards. It was the first glimpse John Smith had had of the quiet local airfield since it had been transformed into BAM Malvinas. It was now a high-security military zone, overrun by troops and stores. The windows of the passenger terminal below the control tower were blacked out with newspaper. Anti-aircraft batteries lined the perimeter of the airfield and its approach road. The Canache – the narrow isthmus linking the airfield on Cape Pembroke to the rest of the East Falkland mainland – was lined with minefields and barbed wire.
The announcement that greeted Smith on his return to town was equally depressing. The Argentine authorities, perhaps alerted by reports of the RAF bombing of Garvie Island, were issuing air raid instructions to the civilian population.
At the sound of the siren, Stanley’s residents were advised to turn off the lights and hide under the table. All car headlights were to be covered up leaving only a thin two-inch letterbox for light to shine through. Only the fire brigade were allowed to be on the streets. Smith’s dining table didn’t look like it was up to the task. At all.
The Argentinians weren’t alone in their concern about the effect of RAF bombs. The RSPB, The Times reported, worried about disturbances to nesting puffins, guillemots, fulmars and kittiwakes around Cape Wrath, wanted to see a moratorium on exercises with live ammunition during the April to early July breeding season. In the same edition of the paper, a cartoon depicting the unhappy birds joked, ‘It’s not the noise I mind so much as the droppings.’
An MoD spokesman tried to explain, tactfully, that the situation was ‘critical’.
Chapter 19
Of the three helicopters that would make the insertion, only one was equipped to fly in the extreme South Georgia weather. ‘Humphrey’, as HMS Antrim’s ageing Westland Wessex HAS3 was affectionately known, was fitted with a Flight Control System that allowed the pilot to keep track of his movement over the ground without any other visual references. Lieutenant-Commander Ian Stanley, RN, Humphrey’s pilot, could fly blind.
It therefore fell to him to act as shepherd to two, more basic, troop-carrying Wessex HU5s. Without sight of either Humphrey or the horizon, the pilots of the HU5s would become disorientated quickly. With the capriciousness of the conditions 3,000 feet high up on an Antarctic glacier, a white-out was a definite possibility.
Aboard Endurance, Nick Barker had tried to point out that only Shackleton and one other expedition had ever made it across the Fortuna Glacier and both had been exceptionally lucky. But the SAS had made up their minds. Before any attempt to retake South Georgia they needed to establish observation posts to gather intelligence on Argentine positions in Leith and Stromness. And they wanted to go in from the isolation of the glacier to avoid any possibility of unplanned contact with the Argentinians. Barker, the man who best knew local conditions, was sure they were making a mistake.
The signal to go arrived from Northwood during the night. From on board Antrim the next morning, just fifteen miles from her near 10,000-foot peaks, South Georgia couldn’t be seen. And the barometer was dropping.
At 9.30, Humphrey took off from Antrim’s deck. Ian Stanley wanted to see for himself if it was going to be possible to fly in the SAS men. Maps hadn’t prepared him or his crew for the awesome sight of South Georgia’s sheer black cliffs rising intimidatingly out of the dark sea to heights of 2,000 feet and more.
‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ they asked after their return.
The truth was that Endurance’s officers had tried, but nothing really conveyed just how spectacular a sight it was. Stanley reported back that the Fortuna Glacier, as massive and uninviting as it looked, seemed clear of enemy troops, with conditions much as had been described by the crew of Endurance. Rain squalls and unpredictable winds strafed across it, but Stanley believed they could do the job.
At 1300 on the 21st, the SAS were flown in aboard the three Wessex helicopters. As Stanley descended towards the ice he focused on his instruments. Snow, ice and cloud all blended into one. White-out. The three other members of his crew craned their necks and strained their eyes to provide a running commentary on Humphrey’s progress towards the glacier’s surface. Stanley slowly descended into the murk as gusts of 60 knots buffeted the cab and snow whipped up from the downdraft of the main rotor.