"...Climbing rapidly through 20,000 feet, I checked my engine and fuel gauges and realised that we were going to be very tight for gas. We used a figure of 2,000 lbs of fuel overhead Port Stanley as a good rule of thumb for returning to the ship and my gauges were reading less than 1,400 lbs. As I overflew the battered runway, climbing through 25,000 feet between the odd burst of anti-aircraft fire, my low-level fuel lights came on, indicating 1,300 lbs remaining. At 40,000 feet, I called the carrier and told them that I was returning short of fuel and they obliged by heading towards us to close the distance. Even so, when I closed the throttle to start a cruise descent from ninety miles out, I was still uncertain that I was going to make it before I flamed out and took an unwanted bath.
At 40,000 feet the sun was still a blaze of orange on the western horizon but as I descended, the light became a progressively worse. By the time I had descended to 10,000 feet, my world had become an extremely dark and lonely place. The adrenalin levels, which had been recovering to normal during the twenty minutes after the engagement, now started to increase again in anticipation of my first night deck landing. To compound the problem and to give final proof of 'Sod's law', HERMES had managed to find one of the massive thunderstorms and was in heavy rain. I realised that I did not have sufficient fuel to carry out a proper radar approach and asked the controller to just talk me onto the centreline, whilst I adjusted my glide so that I would not have to touch the throttle until the last minute.
With three miles to run, descending through 1500 feet, I was still in thick, turbulent cloud when my fuel warning lights began to flash urgently, telling me that I had 500 lbs of fuel remaining. At two miles, I saw a glimmer of light emerging through the rain and at 800 feet the lights fused into the recognisable outline of the carrier. I slammed the nozzle lever into the hover stop, selected full flap and punched the undercarriage button to lower the wheels. I picked up the mirror sight, which confirmed that I was well above the ideal glide path but dropping rapidly towards the invisible sea. With about half a mile to run, I added a handful of power and felt the Pegasus engine's instant response, stopping my descent at about 300 feet. The wheels locked down as I applied full braking stop to position myself off the port side of the deck and seconds later, I was transitioning sideways to hover over the centreline of the deck, level with the aft end of the superstructure. I knew that I had very little fuel remaining, so finesse went out of the window as I closed the throttle and banged the machine down on the rain-streaked deck. Once safely taxied forward into the aptly named 'Graveyard' and lashed in place, I shut down the engine and heard Dave's jet landing on behind me. My fuel gauges were showing 300 lbs, sufficient for a further two minutes flying!..."
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