Here goes - took a bit longer than I planned but I thought you might like some of the detail.
On the 9th June I was asked by Jack Lomas if I thought I could attack a target in Stanley with AS12s – ‘Tell me more’ I heard myself say! Intelligence had established that General Menendez was having morning briefings in an upstairs room in the Town Hall in Stanley and the powers that be decided it would be a cunning plan to park a missile on his desk whilst the coffee was brewing thereby hoping to shorten the war.
The concept was conceived by Col Mike Rose and his team on Sir Lancelot and as I had the only Wessex gunship deployed from Conveyor to assist if needed with the landings it was ideally suited for the task with 2”RP, fixed fwd and cabin mounted GPMG’s and most importantly AS12’s with a range of 7000yds.
Jack and I flew to Lancelot for a fulsome briefing and we fleshed out the plan, two concerns prevailed; anti-aircraft systems around Stanley harbour and artillery. It was reckoned that two or three twin-barrelled Oerlikons (20/30mm) anti-aircraft cannon systems were somewhere along the foreshore giving protection to the harbour complex and the Artillery was scattered but predominantly to the west shelling us during the early mountain battles. The Oelikons had an MER just below my 7000yds and the artillery, at best guestimate if they were good, couldn’t acquire and get the first rounds down in less than four minutes – just enough time for me to fire 2 AS12’s and depart.
To give some understanding of the targeting and firing solution for AS12s; the a/c has to arrive at the firing position (max 7000yds from target) in a stable hover as low as possible commensurate with camouflage etc and in line-of-sight. The target then has to be acquired by the aimer through a gyro-stabilised sight which is itself joystick driven, the firing mechanism selected and 1st missile fired with a very loud bang (solid fuel propellant) trailing two thin copper wires through which the aimers control (another joystick) commands are sent – true fly-by-wire in the strictest sense, no sticking the crosshairs on the target and fire-n-forget here!! Flares at the rear of the missile aid visually in keeping the missile just above the target for most of its flight and dropping it down onto the target just before impact – control becomes increasingly difficult with distance (signal time delay) and the change in missile centre of gravity as the propellant burns giving an increasing nose-down attitude. After impact, roughly 30secs, the wires are cut and the second missile can then be selected and fired. After the wires are cut the a/c can then vacate the firing position. Practically a two missile attack should be accomplished in less than 3mins!
With all the difficulties and risks seemingly covered and minimised I concurred the mission could be done. I was a missile aimer but felt that taking two pilots, one flying and me as aimer, might be too risky as we could ill afford to lose 2 pilots, I therefore selected Arthur Balls, a fine aimer with much experience particularly at night and in twilight conditions, and considered by me as a better aimer. After briefing he agreed (I gave him the choice) to accompany me and we set about ‘tooling up’ the Wessex. The a/c systems had been checked but had yet to fire anything and as this was a fairly risky one-off I felt a practise shoot would benefit us both and prove the a/c.
10th - moving to Teal Inlet settlement was as close as we could get to the front without risk of observation. The practice shot went well knocking a chunk out of a tiny unnamed island somewhere in Teal Inlet and we returned to prep the a/c and brief an accompanying a/c that was to observe from a distance and come in to hopefully pick us up if we were shot down.
Early on the 11 June we set off flying NOE routeing past Long Island then south towards our IP in the lee of Beagle Ridge and 12 o’clock Mountain. Arthur said the sight was misting up and I briefly parked in a gulley and he managed to clear it and we carried on to our planned firing point of approximately north of the Town Hall in the lee of Beagle Ridge giving us a good backdrop and en-route making contact with the SAS up in the hills to establish that nothing was airborne and no activity to disturb our approach. It was a grey and very misty morning and we had real difficulty in finding the target and had to keep going until Stanley came out of the gloom and Arthur had a workable view of the target. I reckon we ended up at around 4-5000yds in a very high hover to get the line of sight over Cortley Hill and as all was quiet we proceeded to engage the target. The launch was uneventful but lit up the gloom like a beacon and made a seemingly greater racket than usual.
Arthur called ‘impact’ and as far as he could tell it was on target; as nothing had moved and with no activity ahead of us we fired the second missile at the secondary target a Chinook parked by Government House that apparently was grounded but we needed to make sure. Just as it left the rail our comfort zone was rudely interrupted as the world and his dog started throwing all sorts in our direction luckily none too accurate but definitely well within range and traversing back and forth towards us as though searching the gloom for us.
Arthur couldn’t see what was going on from behind the sight but keeping still in a hover for 30secs is a bit unnerving in a regular fireworks display including tracer. At about 20secs he called ‘lost control’ and ‘fallen short’ and he cut the wires and upon stowing the sight let out few choice words at the illuminations outside which by this time were all around. With the collective now under my armpit we shot out of there like a grouse on the Glorious Twelfth just as the first artillery rounds started coming down. We made it back to Teal Inlet for a cup of tea (terribly British) and a wind down with the realisation we had got away with it. Eventually the other a/c pitched up, they had seen the shelling and had been trying to get close to our position which was obscured by smoke and debris from the artillery to ascertain our status and were much relieved to see us back.
We heard that we had missed the Town Hall with the 1st missile and were somewhat deflated but cheered by a report from the BBC (and the NY Times on the 12th) reporting that the Argentines were complaining that their hospital ship, the Bahia Paraiso alongside in Stanley, had been attacked by a missile from a British a/c. Our 2nd AS12 had either snagged its wires over the ridge or been cut by explosion and given the default command is down and right it went into the harbour just short, a pity really as it opened fire the following night on an SBS patrol – so much for Red Cross immunity.
Stanley fell on the 14th and I went to see the results of our attack. The Town Hall looked in rude health but the Police Station was not so, although the walls were intact with a small entry hole the interior was trashed – typical of an AS12 designed delayed detonation after piercing the outer shell. I spoke to a lady living down the street who went out to investigate the bang to see a cartoon-like scene of smoking people staggering out of the Police Station – and she said it certainly raised morale as the story went around.
I discovered that the fireworks were caused by the artillery using the 105 mm OTO-Melara Mod 56 field guns and the anti-aircraft cannons were the Rheinmetall 20 mm Twin-barrelled Anti-Aircraft Cannon using HEI-T(High Explosive Incendiary with Tracer) and SAPHEI (Semi-Armour Piercing High Explosive Incendiary) sporting eh!!
I paced out the track of the missile and it missed the Town Hall by as little as a yard and went down a side street crossed the main road and into the Police Station. It turned out Menendez did not have a meeting that morning, fortuitously and more importantly the hall was used as valuable accommodation in the aftermath and crucially the Post Office remained intact – can’t have mail interrupted in times of crisis! Moreover the Police Station was occupied by the Military Intelligence with a particularly nasty piece of work (can't remember his name) who delighted in hassling the civilian population.
We understood that the attack had given them a real shock in that we could seemingly pick off a target in the middle of town with such accuracy and thus placed doubt in their minds and had indeed helped to hasten the end.