ARXW.
Concur.
I have sent off a few questions to my Argentinean sources regarding this one. Perhaps someone over there can remember the radio conversations at the time and what Ardiles may have said before he got splashed by Tony Penfold.
From memory, Tony initially thought there were two (possibly four) bogies out there to begin with and communicated this to Martin. 'Intelligence suggested' at the time we were up against the Mirage III's armed with Magic and Matra so it was a very reasonable assumption for Martin to make.
There is no doubt, however, that Ardiles was on his own in a Mirage V with no radar guided missiles (or radar).
Using a monumental amount of conjecture I suppose it is possible Martin saw the tank release from Ardiles and thought it was a missile release. He turns his climb into a vertical dive and thereby presents Ardiles with a rear hemisphere shot. Ardiles manouevres for the shot and fires and in doing so gets shot by Tony.
Sounds like the picture was pretty confused. (As usual) The conspiracy theorists could have a field day, could they not? Tony had the only other air to air radar in the area that could have locked Martin.
ES