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Old 9th Jan 2009, 21:23
  #190 (permalink)  
MAINJAFAD
 
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I was going to post this before Navaleye put the 14 miles post on.

According to 'The Royal Navy and the Falklands War' by David Brown (Naval Historical Branch) which has a whole chapter on the sinking of the AC, the attack came from the north west of the carrier battle group. There was one T42 (Exeter) on picket duties, 25 miles west of Invincible. Hermes was 5 miles to the north of the other carrier, with Brilliant near to Hermes playing goalkeeper. AC was five miles from both carriers, in a screen with one or more LSL's. Glamorgan and Ambuscade were up threat of the AC and LSL's. SuE's picked up 3 contacts on their pop up (Brown thinks they were Sir Tristram, Ambuscade and AC) and the Exocets were actually fired at Ambuscade (Handbrake being called by both Exeter and Ambuscade on ESM detection of the raid). The missiles were tracked by Brilliant and seen to be decoyed by Ambuscade's chaff pattern. After flying though the chaff pattern, one of the missiles reacquired a target in the shape of AC.

I haven’t got access to the book at the moment, but the account does also cover the Sea Dart firings by Invincible and the consternation caused by the missile salvos to three other battle group assets. One of them was the Hermes, the second I cannot remember and the other was one of Invincible’s own Sea Kings on ASW picket duties to the north of the group.

By the way Navaleye, according to ‘Falklands, The Air War’ Yarmouth was in the Falklands Sound area during the 25th.
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