From Jets magazine
Just found this thread and thought the following might be of interest, from Jets magazine, Summer 2000 edition:
Neill Thomas had just taken off on CAP with Lt Dave Smith. The British had received intelligence from the mainland that Skyhawks had taken off from Rio Gallegos. "Generally these reports were quite reliable. They couldn't be specific about when the attack would arrive, but we knew something was on," says Thomas. "So when we were told, by Hermes, to go and have a look for a Pucara north of Port Stanley, I queried it - and afterwards stormed down to the ops room, pretty angry. But it was their call.
"We had a look, perhaps not as low as we should have done because I didn't think the Pucara was all that important at that stage, and then had to climb up and go off north-west towards our CAP position to the north of Falkland Sound.
"As we started to let down we got a call - it was Broadsword - that they'd picked up an aircraft coming out from the coast." The 'missile trap' picket had been working well: just that morning it had accounted for two 4 Grupo Skyhawks with Sea Dart, while the day before Andy Auld and Dave Smith of 800NAS had been vectored by Coventry onto a flight of Daggers and shot down three of them. Now the ships were about to come under attack by two flights of two A-4Bs of 5 Grupo, which had been sent out to find them. Thomas and Smith were still ten miles from their CAP area, heading north-west. The first two Skyhawks were already over the sea at low level, heading north at high speed on their bombing run.
"It was touch and go whether we'd get there in time; we just opened the taps and went for it," Thomas remembers. "But I still hadn't seen the A-4s when we were called off by Coventry because we were approaching their missile engagement zone."
But on board the Type 42 the Sea Dart's 909 radar was confused by echoes from the distant shore of Pebble Island and couldn't lock on to the Skyhawks. Broadsword's Sea Wolf saw two aircraft, but flying very close together, and that didn't look like a recognisable target. Coventry opened up with her 4.5-inch gun. While Neill and Smith in their Sea Harriers executed a wide 360 to keep clear of Coventry's Sea Darts, two 1000-lb bombs skipped over Broadsword, a third fell short, and the fourth ploughed through the flight deck without exploding and demolished the nose of the Lynx.
By the standards of that day, Broadsword was lucky. The next pair of Skyhawks was already committed to its run over the sea. Again Smith and Thomas were desperately searching for their small, fast, low-level targets when David Hart Dyke, Coventry's captain, again called on them to clear the MEZ. Sea Wolf was back on line, although Sea Dart still couldn't make out its targets. Then as Broadsword prepared to despatch the A-4s her guidance system was suddenly masked by Coventry crossing in front of the frigate: the missiles were blindfolded. "By the time we came in the second time, we were in exactly the same position," said Thomas. With the Sea Harriers in no position to stop him Primer Teniente Mariano Velasco put three bombs into the destroyer's starboard side. "As we started to turn I saw the bombs go off. It was dreadful." Nineteen men were killed, and within minutes the ship had turned over. Overhead Thomas and Smith could only watch.
"Inevitably, you start thinking about whether you did the right thing," says Thomas. "For years afterwards David Hart Dyke, whenever I saw him, would ask: 'Did I call you off too soon?' It was obviously very much on his mind. But tactically he was exactly right, unless he knew we were right in behind the aeroplane - and at that stage I hadn't seen it.
"If we had been there a few minutes earlier, it might have been different. It only took five minutes to look for that Pucara, but that might have been enough."