Charlie, thanks for trying. If you ever come across Waggers, please let me know. Good memories of him at BRNC.
Arriva, my bro-in-law's story below, written just over 12 months ago. He prefers to remain un-named.
Mike
In the years before the Falklands war, following the demise of the fixed-wing carriers and the introduction of the “through-deck cruisers” (as I think they were called), the RN had assumed that they would always be working in NATO sea areas, where long range air cover would be provided by land-based Nimrod MR2, Shackletons or AWACS (or Hawkeye E-2C AEW aircraft on the US carriers).
Organic AEW for the RN was not seen as a priority and they had no capability to fly fixed-wing AEW, such as Gannets or Hawkeye. At that time EMI had proposed a plan for an airborne surveillance radar on a Sea King helicopter, but the necessary funding (£0.5M to £1M) for a prototype demonstration could not be found by the MoD.
The RN went to the South Atlantic with no organic AEW. On 4th May 1982, HMS Sheffield was sunk. On 10th May EMI had an outline agreement with MOD (PE) to proceed with the development of a surveillance radar on the Sea King, based on the Searchwater radar.
On 25 May EMI received a contract for the radars, modified to provide true AEW capability. On 2 August, two completed systems took off from Yeovil to join HMS Illustrious, only 11 weeks after initial instructions to undertake a feasibility study!
The radar was based on prototypes held by EMI, previously developed for the Searchwater radar in the RAF Nimrod MR2, which had done into service in 1980. The Mk2 Sea King AEW (LAST) involved a new radar scanner, new transmitter waveforms and a new two-operator console in the Sea King.
The deployable arm with the scanner was completely new and the radome, still used today, must be the world’s only inflatable airborne radome! The radar was non-coherent, as was the AN/APS 20, but greatly more sophisticated, with a travelling wave tube transmitter, pulse compression, frequency agility, digital signal processing and computer data processing (target tracking etc.).
It detected aircraft beyond the clutter horizon, with maximum range against low flying aircraft limited by the Sea King’s maximum operating height, which was typically about 5,500 ft, giving a clutter horizon of about 90 nmi.
Higher flying aircraft could be detected at longer ranges. Sea skimming missiles at, say, 20 nmi would probably not have been detected by the radar, but it was not designed for that role.
AEW would not have been much help then to protect against a sea-skimming missile once launched. However, the radar had a range of up to 200 miles and the purpose of the AEW as a command and control platform would have been to direct the Harriers on Combat Air Patrol to intercept incoming hostile aircraft at long range.
Exocets were not the only threat and much of the damage to RN ships was done by iron bombs – the Argentinians had a limited supply of Exocets.
The Mk 2 Sea King AEW never saw hostile action, arriving in theatre just as the war ended. However, in 1984 the RN subsequently reformed 849 Naval Air Squadron with two flights of Sea King Mk2 AEW and in the year 2000, the system was updated to a fully coherent look-down AEW and ground surveillance system (the Searchwater 2000 radar) for the Sea King Mk7 ASaC, which has seen considerable active service in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In 2006, 849 NAS A Flight was re-badged as 854 NAS, and B flight as 857 NAS, both flying the Sea King ASaCS Mk7. There are lots of excellent pictures on the RN NAS websites, such as
http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/The-Flee.../Sea-King-ASaC .
The RN certainly believed they needed organic AEW in the Falklands and the system has subsequently been very successful. The Mk2 system was also exported. The replacement system for the new RN carriers is the subject of a procurement competition at present.