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.
Indeed it was. Otherwise I doubt an R550 Magic or (even Israeli-supplied) Shafrir 2 carrying Dagger (Mirage V) would have had the seeker capability to lock on frontally to a burner-less SHAR. Both of these missiles were older than the AIM-9L which failed to lock on to a Mirage with afterburner (even though they apparently throttled back before the merge with Steve Thomas' SHAR).
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.
Well it's been reported by Sharkey Ward among others and probably on other engagements too on 1 May that drop tanks have been confused for air to air missiles
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.
By all accounts this was a long shot (3 miler IIRC?) and Ardiles having launched what appeared to be a decent shot I think was hauling back to get outta dodge!
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.
Hmm... you are not suggesting Tony Penfold locked his wingman up to scare him away so that he could get the kill are you?
Only joking although having said that that guy on the Dogfights series (Giora Epstein of the Israeli air force with 17 kills) was known to report bogus missile firings so that his wingies could p*ss off for a few seconds enough for him to get a kill! All part of the legend I am sure but I do remember reading one of his wingmen going on record that both he and Epstein were headed for the same Mig one day and he had to break off because Epstein shot at everything (he actually shot past his wingman to get the kill, which I think is similar to Mike Blissett's kill on an A-4 while shooting past Neil Thomas on 21 May!) History repeats itself! Ironically Epstein shot 12 egyptian aircraft in the 1973 while flying the Nesher which was later sold off to Argentina and many of which did not survive the encounters with the SHAR and AAA/SAMs at San Carlos and elsewhere!