Greetings everyone!
I was invited to this forum by Enrique (reydelcastillo) as he told me somebody was researching the incident involving Argentine Air Force Captain García Cueva being engaged and shot down over Port Stanley by friendly anti-air defences on May 1, 1982. I'm not a professional historian but I could find a few accounts on various publications and submited them to cross-referencing. I posted my findings on
Militaryphotos.net but I'll post them again here, in case they could prove useful to anyone.
The following is part of an article titled "
Dagger en Malvinas" (Dagger in the Falklands) that I got from "
Aeroespacio" magazine (an Argentine aviation-related publication). It contains recollections by Argentine Air Force pilots involved in the incident. The article is in Spanish but I did a quick translation to English, so here it is:
Testimonies by:
Torno Flight:
- Comandante Roberto Rubén Dimeglio
- Comandante César Fernando Román
- Vice-comandante Gustavo Aguirre Faget
Fortín Flight:
- Brigadier Guillermo Adolfo Donadille
- Comandante Jorge Daniel Senn
DARDO IN COMBAT
Over isla Borbón (Pebble Island) at low-level flight, callsign Torno II, Lt Aguirre Faget, watching the right sector of the formation, relays to his flight leader - Attention! Harrier at 3 o'clock! - Captain Dimeglio observes in the indicated direction as he spots a Harrier climbing toward the clouds. He figures that it should be one of the British aircraft engaging Escuadrilla Dardo (Dardo Flight) integrated by Cap García Cueva and 1st Lt Perona. Ignoring whether the enemy pilot had spotted them or not, they continue flying.
Com Senn - on the CIC (Centro de Información y Control/Combat Information Centre) frequency, all of us, Torno and Fortín flights, could listen García and Perona yelling instructions at each other as they engaged the Sea Harriers.
Brig Donadille - on the events of that day, I could forget many details, but what happened to García Cueva, I will never forget.
(by that moment, Capt Cueva's aircraft had been damaged by a near-detonation of an AIM-9L Sidewinder missile. His wing man, 1st Lt Perona, had been shot down and managed to eject safely. Captain Cueva's Mirage is damaged and low on fuel...)
Captain García Cueva reports to CIC the shooting down and ejection of 1st Lt Perona as well as the safe opening of his parachute and his descent over Pebble Island. CIC advises immediately to Cueva a vector for for his egress and return to base, but he does not answer; he's low on fuel and plans to land at BAM Malvinas (Port Stanley airport). CIC reports back to him:
- Negative; Base is currently under enemy naval bombardment
The vessels bombarding the airport were precisely those Cap Dimeglio is tasked to attack. García Cueva insists on his current status, saying that he cannot return to base given his aircraft being low on fuel, as he is presented by CIC with the opportunity of ejecting. Confronted by the possibility of losing his aircraft, García Cueva replies:
That's too bad. It's a brand new aircraft, spotless
After a brief interchange of assessments, CIC allows Dardo I to approach BAM Malvinas.
Meanwhile, for Torno flight, the first uncertainty for them is presented north, right at the mouth of Falkland Sound. There, straight ahead, a faint sillouhette of what seems to be a large vessel appears to their eyes. It turns out not to be such a thing but the impressive Roca Remolinos (Eddystone Rock), which they overfly safely. They fly over the Sound at 420 knots, between 50 and 100 feet in altitude, having a cloud cover at about 2000 and 3000 feet, altitude that they must keep an eye on without help of a radio altimeter, coming around north of Isla Soledad (East Falkland) about 3 miles off shore.
Meanwhile, Dardo I, Captain Cueva's aircraft, prepares to land. The lookout at the control tower, helplessly and without radio communications to warn the artillery positions, witnesses a drama of war: anti-aircraft defences open fire uppon Dardo I and, hit by a barrage of fire, the Dagger, turned into a flaming wreck, plummets out of the sky and hits the ocean. Pilot never manages to eject.
Vcom Aguirre Faget - Flying north of East Falkland, before reaching our target area, I could hear desperate cries from BAM Malvinas' control tower: - Don't shoot! It's one of ours! Hold your fire! - I figured that happened when the lookout saw our anti-aircraft artillery opening fire upon García Cueva's Mirage while he was trying to land. We could see, farther away, tracer rounds streaking through the cloud cover.
Com Senn - When García Cueva indicated his intentions to attempt to salvage the aircraft, I was about to ask him to eject, but for the sake of discipline, I didn't. It was his personal decision; we all knew the dangers existing around BAM Malvinas: they were on red alert, receiving heavy enemy naval bombardment and there was no communication between the control tower and the anti-aircraft artillery positions. The runway was 1500 metres long and it was difficult to perform an emergency landing there, but García Cueva was an experienced and highly skilled pilot and he could have been able to land and slow down his Mirage in 700 metres using the aerobraking parachute.
Brig Donadille - the last words of García Cueva, as Senn and I heard them, were textually: ¡Me están tirando a mi... carajo! (They are shooting at me... damn it!)
Now, this account renders Captain Cueva's aircraft as a Mirage Dagger, whereas other sources claim it to be a Mirage IIIEA. In "
Air War over the Falklands 1982", the encounter is related by the two British pilots (Flt Lt Paul Barton and Lt Steve Thomas) who engaged Perona and Cueva. Lt Thomas recollection on the events follows:
"I was continuing my turn and the enemy leader was doing quite a hard descending turn to the left, going down very fast to the top of the solid cloud cover at 4000 feet. I'm not sure if he knew where I was. I rolled into a vertical descent behind him, locked one of my missiles and fired it. The missile streaked after him and just before he reached cloud I saw it pass close to his tail. Then both the aircraft and missile vanished".
The author, Christopher Chant, describes the shooting down of Cueva as follows:
(after being damaged by the missile and approaching Stanley airport for landing) Losing fuel rapidly from his machine's ruptured tanks, Cueva released his drop tanks and Argentine gunners, believing that these were bombs, opened fire and destroyed the Mirage IIIEA, in the process killing Cueva.
Again, British pilots seem to have identified the aircraft as a
Mirage IIIEA while Argentine pilots said it was a
Dagger. That's the only significative discrepancy I found while cross-referencing the stories on both sides.
I cross-checked with "
The British Aerospace Sea Harrier" by Andy Evans and the
Harrier Special Interest Group (SIG) and both of them acknowledge García Cueva's bird as a
Mirage IIIEA (registration number I-019 of Grupo 8 de Caza, damaged by an AIM-9L Sidewinder missile lauched by Sea Harrier XZ453 flown by Lt Steve Thomas on the 1st of May) and recognise the loss of the aircraft due to friendly fire by Argentine air defences.
Hope this helps
