An Answer to a PM from PN
A very good idea and very brave attempt at Force Multiplication. Use your aircraft fitted with a radar to find the target ships at long range, fire a Exocet and the non radar equipped aircraft flying in formation with the radar equipped aircraft open the taps and follow the missile smoke trail in to bomb what ever they find. The reason I say infamous is that after 30 years of all of information that has come out about the war, people still believe that on 30th May HMS Invincible was hit by an Exocet and bombed by 2 Skyhawks on the evidence of two pilot's who had just flown a very hazardous mission, seen two of their best mates killed and then had their debrief filmed for National TV. What where they going to say?? Oh we bombed a Type 21 frigate and missed??? Not good for national morale!!! One point to note is that the Avenger was transiting to the gun line at the time, though the area where the SHAR / GR 3 climb out point was. Explains the reason for the Black Buck ARM sorties.
cosmiccomet
2 Skyhawk pilots say they bombed Invincible. The whole ships company of Avenger say they were attacked by 2 Skyhawks and avoided an Exocet. The whole ships company of Invincible say they got hit by nothing. Numbers don't stack up well for the Skyhawk pilots.
HMS Exeter was a batch 2 Type 42 with a new long range search radar (10cm Type 1022 with much better signal processing than the 1.5 metre band sets used on the rest of the Type 42's) plus a load of upgrades to other systems and the engagement was in open water.
HMS Coventry was not far off Pebble Island when she was attacked, ground clutter from the land made picking up the Skyhawks that attacked her almost impossible with the equipment she was fitted with, thus she couldn't lock the Sea Dart radar's on target in time to engage them. Coventry's captain wanted to operate further out to sea to counter this problem, but He was overruled by the Flag Staff.
HMS Sheffield didn't take any action whatsoever (there could be a lot of controversy about this if the full story ever comes out, but basically one of the Ops room staff went public on a TV Programme in blaming the ship's PWO for dereliction of duty (Captain was in his cabin asleep as he had been on duty for 48 hours solid), Whether this is an axe grind or the truth, I've no idea) HMS Glasgow on the other hand detected the radar of the SUE's, got radar returns on the aircraft which correlated on the ESM bearing, called a raid warning, fired a chaff patten, tracked the Exocet's in and tried, but failed to engage them with Sea Dart. Coventry heard the raid warning and fired a chaff patten.
HMS Glasgow got a bomb though the engine room after the Sea Dart launcher malfunctioned while trying to engage the Skyhawks that were attacking her. The 909 radar that would have guided the missiles did have a good lock on the aircraft at the time.
and yes we did believe that Rapier had shot down 18 aircraft at the time as well.
Last edited by MAINJAFAD; 24th Mar 2012 at 00:04.