There were niggling little problems with the Victors, but on the whole they were bearing up well. While Jeremy Price concerned himself with trying to ensure that Ascension’s creaking infrastructure could support them, the men from Marham were bedding in well. The CO of 57 Squadron, Alan Bowman, had been drafted in as head of the Victor detachment, while the man he replaced, Marham’s cultured OC Ops, Wing Commander David Maurice-Jones – who’d once been disappointed to have to describe another officer as a man who thought Vivaldi was a drink – returned to the Norfolk base to hold the fort in Price’s absence. Before going he left the detachment on Ascension with an important bequest. Realizing the difficulty there was in reproducing complete sets of flight plans for every tanker in the growing formations, he’d sent a signal to Marham asking them to send out a photocopier. The brand-new Thermofax was flown in on one of the incoming Victors. The machine was worked hard, duplicating flight plans, frequencies, Met reports and air traffic information for diversion airfields. It was a crucial asset to the Victor Ops team under Squadron Leader Trevor Sitch.
The aircrew, too, were proving adaptable. Ignoring protests about fire regulations, they were squeezing six to a room in the American barracks. Three got beds, the other three slept on the floor. Tux’s wheeling and dealing AEO, Mick Beer, had even managed to blag an old Ford Cortina from the locals. It meant the whole crew could escape their cramped billets for trips to English Bay in the north-west. Despite the crashing surf, this fine white sand beach was the only one on the island deemed sufficiently free from dangerous currents to swim from.
The close-knit atmosphere that served them so well back home paid dividends on Ascension. Planning, Engineering and aircrew had been picked up as a unit and relocated somewhere new. It made little difference to the way they approached things – they were a genuine team who worked together well.
Every morning Alan Bowman would chair the daily meeting, but it was often informally that ideas and problems were talked through. Tux sat on stacked cases of beer as he discussed with the navigators the problem of large formations joining up before flying south. With ten aircraft taking off at one-minute intervals, they realized the first would be 120 miles away by the time the last was leaving the runway. It sounded as harmless as a GCSE maths problem, but without forethought it could have serious repercussions.
In the evening, they’d offload over a beer in the Georgetown Exiles Club, the best way of shedding the pressure that, however reluctant they were to acknowledge it, was growing with each passing day.
As he travelled south, Admiral Woodward reflected that the loss of either of the aircraft carriers, particularly his flagship, HMS Hermes, would effectively end British hopes of retaking the Falkland Islands. The greatest threat to the two capital ships and the rest of the British task force came from the attack jets of the Comando Aviación Naval Argentina, the Argentine Naval Air Arm. They were the specialist ship killers. While the Super Étendards of 2 Escuadrilla Aeronaval de Caza y Ataque had rehearsed air-refuelled Exocet missions, the A-4Q Skyhawk pilots of 3 Escuadrilla had done their best to impart what they knew to their Air Force colleagues. But as they were only too aware, it was difficult to pass on years of hard-won experience in a couple of weeks. Like their colleagues, they too had explored the possibility of operating their jets out of BAM Malvinas, and, in early April, had actually flown one of their Skyhawks in and out of the islands’ airport to put the theory to the test. Since 17 April, though, they’d been back where they belonged, catapulting from the deck of Argentina’s only aircraft carrier, the 16,000-ton Veinticinco de Mayo, to refine the art of sinking enemy ships with 500lb Snakeye bombs.
The carrier steamed south towards the naval base at Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego. She stayed close to the coast, just inside the limit of Argentina’s territorial waters. Just outside the twelve-mile limit, HMS Splendid shadowed her. For the submarine’s captain, it was going to be a long, frustrating night. For while an attack on the pride of the Argentine Navy may have been against the spirit of the Rules of Engagement, Roger Lane-Nott was sure that, as long as he was in international waters, it was within the letter of the law, providing, that is, he could visually identify the ship. He needed to see her with his own eyes. That day, Admiral Woodward had been given authority by Northwood to shoot down the Argentine Air Force Boeing 707 that had been flying daily reconnaissance missions to track the fleet’s progress, providing it could be positively identified. There was no doubt at all in Lane-Nott’s mind that he would receive the same authority. If the Veinticinco de Mayo was in torpedo range, he was going to sink her. But he had to wait until daybreak. Through the night, in Splendid’s control room, men concentrated on their individual roles, tense with anticipation. Sonar reports kept them updated.
At two o’clock in the morning, Lane-Nott told them he was going to action stations at 5.30. And then they counted the minutes. The captain never had to mention it again, it just happened, as planned, at dawn.
‘Periscope depth,’ Lane-Nott ordered and, with torpedoes in the tubes, the 4,000-ton attack boat rose through the water to let the captain identify his target. Nothing. He could barely see a hundred yards ahead of the boat. After days of gales and thirty mile visibility, he was gazing into thick fog. Can’t see a bloody thing, he cursed to himself. He continued his pursuit as best he could, but it was pointless without a positive ID. Veinticinco de Mayo and her crew had been extremely lucky. Splendid had to let her go.
The number of Argentine troops in and around Stanley was now approaching 10,000 and any house which they thought was unoccupied – especially one on the outskirts of town – was likely to become a shelter to them. Liz Goss hated the thought of her home being violated. Every day she would leave her children Karina and Roger with their grandparents and return to the house she’d left on the first day of the invasion. Autumn had been mild so far and, despite the occasional snow flurry settling on the ground, the carnations growing in her garden were probably the best she’d ever had. A welcome splash of colour. She’d pick a fresh bunch on each visit and put them in a vase inside, replacing the flowers from the previous day. If the soldiers came in, she hoped there would at least be the appearance that the house was still occupied. This time, as she walked to the garden to pick the carnations she felt herself being watched. She tried to ignore it. Then, as she approached the flowerbed, she saw that severed ducks’ heads had been scattered around the stems. Just, she thought, distressed at the cruelty and ugliness of such a senseless act, to see my reaction.
Chapter 21
Monty was worried about his friend. During RED FLAG in January, he and Martin Withers had become close. Now, in the ten days since they’d begun training for CORPORATE, Withers had lost over half a stone in weight – his nervous loss of appetite compounded by the relentless pace of the training schedule. The friendly, unassuming glow that had made such an impression on Monty, just a few months earlier, was in danger of being worn away.
When the Vulcan crews weren’t flying – they sometimes flew twice a day – or sleeping, they were in briefings: long afternoons in uncomfortable chairs in the Ops block. Much of what they were told was straightforward and no more or less than was expected. But increasingly it was starting to paint a stark picture of what lay ahead. The crews were briefed on the capabilities of Argentine fighters and anti-aircraft defences. There were lectures on South American politics which left none of them in any doubt about the bloody campaign waged by the Argentine junta on its own citizens; on the disputed history of the Falkland Islands; on the Geneva Convention – and on survival. All of them had some training in that. Week-long courses were held during deployments to Goose Bay, its bleak landscape chosen to simulate the Russian tundra. There was a bit of cooking on the campfire and shelter building, but nothing too severe. For that you had to volunteer. Then you got escape and evasion and resisting interrogation too. It was the interrogation that put Withers off. It’s just not the sort of thing, he thought, that you’d want to volunteer for! Others on his crew had been through it. Posted to Singapore in 1963, Hugh Prior had been chased by one of the Highland regiments through dense jungles and rivers that seemed more like open sewers. He’d been caught, stripped and hooded, before a female voice told him, ‘That’s a very small prick you’ve got there.’ He only discovered later that the tape recording didn’t discriminate. Gordon Graham had volunteered for winter training. The Scot was a keen skier and that was the carrot. It didn’t do it for Withers, but at least he understood the motive: A week’s skiing, a week’s torture. But it’s free!