Scram! (36 page)

For the next two hours, I was on my own, King of San Carlos, darting at low level, flying between
Engadine
and the FOB with people, equipment and loads. The flying was straightforward enough. Even deck landings were easy with the flight decks not moving around. It felt brilliant, an extraordinary responsibility given to a twenty-one-year-old fresh out of training. The temptation to sing out loud Wagner's
Ride of the Valkyries
was too much to resist. Smyth had to put up with it.

Job done, we were told to shut down in a valley just behind the farm buildings and come in for a brief. Port San Carlos is a remote settlement of a few farmhouses and trees amidst the bleak grasslands and hills of East Falkland. Not far away from the settlement was a temporary short runway made of steel mesh for use by the Sea Harriers. Bobbing in the sea a few yards down the hillside was a long black tube containing aviation fuel.

Smyth and I wandered back through the settlement, glad to be wearing wellies in the oozing mud. The ops tent was hidden amongst some trees and gorse in the garden of one of the farms. Jack Lomas had just begun to give us all a warm welcome when the makeshift alarm system announced yet another air raid warning. I ran for the nearest trench and leapt into the muddy pit under a piece of corrugated iron. Thankfully, it was another false alarm. As I returned to the briefing tent a few minutes later, I spotted a loose bergen in a hedge. It was mine.

Somehow, Jack Lomas managed to find floor space
around
the settlement for all the 847 Squadron new arrivals. Nine of us were crammed onto an upstairs attic floor. It was far better than I had expected. Frankly, anywhere dry would have been brilliant. Just before heading upstairs, Mike Booth called me over and told me to get a shave. My feeble contribution to the squadron beard-growing competition thus came to an undistinguished end.

Each of us kept our bergens fully packed for a quick getaway. The only items taken out were sleeping bags and rollmats. Jerry Spence managed to find a pile of blankets that meant he wouldn't need to take anything out at all. It was a decision that would come back to haunt him later when he acquired a nasty dose of the lice. Norman Lees had brought an inflatable mattress with him and inevitably found himself on the receiving end of a torrent of abuse. The first night ashore would have been peaceful but for Ray Colborne's periodic snoring interspersed with pleas of ‘Shut him up somebody, will you?' It made sleep all but impossible.

I was well primed for the early morning call to breakfast, two mess-tins worth. We then walked over to the ops tent in the freezing darkness, two hours before dawn, for our briefing.

With Mike Tidd's flight, who joined the fray later that morning after sailing in overnight on the supply ship
Fort Grange
, there were now thirty-two Wessex pilots and twenty-three Wessex aircrew to fly the twenty-five Wessex helicopters.

Briefing was a complete melee with about forty of us crammed into the small ops tent. It was great to catch up with old friends, such as Sparky Harden and Jerry Thomas. I couldn't see my closest friend Hector Heathcote, who I learnt was at FOB Teal. As one of three baby pilots fresh
out
of training – along with George Wallace and Dave Kelly – there were several faces I didn't recognise. But there was a tremendous feeling of comradeship, of being in it together. This was what we'd trained for. It was both warm and intimidating at the same time.

Jack Lomas once again welcomed us newcomers and then ran through the flying programme, including a brief on threats. In particular he warned us to watch out for a possible SAM (surface-to-air-missile) site on the south side of Mount Kent. A Gazelle had been shot down. He suspected it was most likely a ‘blue on blue' – friendly fire – but to watch out anyway. He also mentioned the dreaded Pucaras.

Everybody worried about Pucaras. All of us had trained to evade fighters. We reckoned we could handle an attack from a high-speed fighter jet. We had practised evasion techniques back in the UK. But that was with fast jets. Helicopters would never be more than an opportunity target. The slow-speed Argentine Pucaras, with their cannon and rocket pods, were something else. A Pucara would not overshoot. It would simply sit on our tail and ripple off a salvo. Pucara was a common topic of conversation amongst all helicopter pilots.

Mark Evans had already had a head-to-head. Oily Knight thought he'd seen a pair of Pucaras a few miles away. The solution was not to get spotted. If you did, land, jump out and run. Or head for the clouds.

I was down to fly with Evans, my future flight commander when I returned later to the UK. ‘Jayfer' was wonderful to fly with. He inspired confidence because of his laid-back manner that concealed a consummate professionalism. He seemed to think I'd enjoy today's aircraft, Yankee Tango. I was about to find out why. We both signed for the aircraft because after a quick introductory flight he was going to get out and let me get on with it on my own.

Yankee Tango was at the far end of a whole hillside full of Wessex helicopters. We walked out with our aircrewman Chris Eke and one of the maintainers. It was still dark as we finally found the right helicopter 200 yards from the maintenance tent. Evans and I had a good look around the aircraft. Great, I thought. The front left windscreen was cracked and covered in fablon from Oily Knight's bullet hole. We couldn't open the top platform to check the gearbox oil because it had been wire-locked shut. The engineer with us said he
thought
it had been filled. Evans and I looked at each other.

As I strapped myself into the left seat, I found my vision further obscured to the side. Yankee Tango was one of the few aircraft fitted with armour plating in the cockpit seats and side windows. I strained hard to pull up the heavy window plate and lock it beside me. For a moment I thought I couldn't lift it and would have to deal with the embarrassment of asking for help. The seat armour under my bottom was definitely a good idea. But I would have preferred to do without the window armour for the extra visibility and lighter weight. After all, it hadn't stopped Oily's bullet.

Our maintainer plugged a battery into the ground supply socket and we pressed the start button on the port engine. Provided you could get the engines started, the Wessex would usually keep going all day. Their incredible reliability was down to two factors. First, our maintainers were superb, both pragmatic and creative. All of their field maintenance had to be done in the pitch dark and numbing cold of the Falklands night. If the pilot could accept certain faults and limitations, the aircraft would be signed off as flyable. If the fault was too serious, the aircraft became a source of spare parts to be robbed – a ‘Christmas tree'.

The additional faults we had to accept on Yankee Tango
were
a dud oil pressure gauge and a dud fuel gauge. At least the other fuel gauge was working. Provided we kept the fuel flows to each engine the same, we could reasonably assume that both tanks held roughly the same amount of fuel. The list of assumptions was beginning to build up. My first mission of the war was to be in an aircraft with limited visibility, a main gearbox that might grind to a violent halt at any moment, and a fuel system that might run out without warning. Apart from that, Yankee Tango was great.

We wound up the rotors, completed our final checks and, with Chris Eke in the back armed with his machine gun, we launched into the South Atlantic dawn. Flying over the Falklands terrain in the early morning light was beautiful. Glorious blue skies, stunning rugged scenery, no wind. It was hard to believe there was a war on.

Our task was to head straight to Goose Green and help move the remaining Gurkhas forward to Fitzroy. We departed due south at low level from Port San Carlos climbing up over the Sussex Mountains. We spent as little time as possible on the skyline as we rolled downhill into a narrow valley that offered some concealment. The flying was exciting and fabulous. Rarely did we climb much more than twenty or thirty feet above the ground. Whilst keeping his eyes on the scenery around us, Evans managed to pull out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter from the side pocket of his combat trousers. ‘Light one for me, would you Harry? And help yourself.' Most aircrew smoked. I'd given up on the way down south to get fit. ‘What the hell,' I thought. ‘This is war' – although we were not supposed to smoke in the aircraft.

It felt good having Evans show me the ropes. But I couldn't wait to boot him out and have the controls to myself. As we approached the grassy airstrip next to the
settlement
, I could see two damaged Argentine Pucara and the remains of Lieutenant Nick Taylor's shot-down Sea Harrier. It was a sobering sight.

This was my first view of a dreaded Pucara, thankfully with its wings clipped. The combination of slow speed and a couple of rocket pods made the Pucara the biggest threat to our helicopters. These two at Goose Green airstrip were put out of action by the very first Sea Harrier raid on 1 May.

Our cabin was filled up with the first load of stores and equipment. We headed east towards the front line, flying close to the ground and steering a couple of miles south of the suspected SAM site. Well before we reached the inlet at Port Pleasant, the two landing ships
Sir Galahad
and
Sir Tristram
stood out starkly against the flat grasslands and sea. They were both still smoking and horribly charred. The reality of war was shocking. Our normal in-flight running commentary and jokey banter turned to silence. There was nothing to say. As we flew past the ships in the now dull morning sunshine, I slid my window open and took a photo. With the image scarred in my mind, we flew on to the grid reference we had been given to deposit our load.

The burning hulks became an all too familiar landmark that day. I flew past them many times. Fortunately, there was little opportunity to linger over such thoughts. Completing our tasking took our full attention, not just in working out how to get from A to B, but how to manage our fuel and load. We were constantly calculating the minimum and maximum fuel needed to complete the next few trips. Too little and we ran out. Too much and we couldn't do the job. Although FOB Fitzroy was established that day, Tim Stanning's forward refuelling station had not yet been set up. Our only sources of fuel were the dozen or so flight decks and the airstrip thirty miles away in San Carlos Water. Even with fifty helicopters airborne, competition was never fierce. However we would occasionally have to wait on a hillside for a few minutes until cleared to come in. All pilots, including me, had their own scare stories of getting perilously low on fuel. Amazingly, nobody ever actually ran out.

After an hour and a half of lifting and shifting equipment between the ships at San Carlos, Goose Green and the southern end of the front line, Evans said he was happy for me to do the rest of the tasking on my own. It felt good. We landed in an open area next to Goose Green airfield so that he could get out. He would catch a ride back to Port San Carlos and get another aircraft for himself.

The usual routine for swapping seats, since I needed to be in the right seat, would be to shut down. However, with an old helicopter in a cold wet climate there was always the chance that the Wessex wouldn't start again. So as we kept the rotors turning, I got out and Chris Eke got in. While Eke held on to the stick for dear life, Evans climbed gingerly out making sure not to knock any of the flying controls. I then climbed very quickly into the empty right seat, hauling up the heavy armour plate in my
window
. My non-pilot crewman seemed strangely reluctant to relinquish his temporary and highly unofficial command of a large Royal Navy commando helicopter. ‘Sorry Chris, my turn now,' I grinned. ‘I have control.' I couldn't wait.

Our first task was to ferry Gurkhas. As the first group of men approached Yankee Tango, all I could see were these enormous bergens with boots sticking out of the bottom of each, an array of weaponry on the side, and a huge set of gleaming teeth near the top. Having walked over the Sussex Mountains, the Gurkha troops were clearly thrilled to be given a lift for the next stage.

Although we were supposed to take a maximum of twelve troops, Eke kept on waving them in. I'm sure I counted sixteen men disappear into the cabin behind me. Take-off with such a heavy load was hard work. At full power, I could just about make a low hover. By gradually drifting forwards across the grassy airstrip, I eventually achieved the fifteen knots or so needed to escape from the recirculating air and into the clean air that gave us translational lift. We were away.

Every few miles we passed another Wessex or Sea King coming back from the front line, flying just a few feet above the barren grassland. It was a good game to radio a hello to the other aircraft without using names and see if we could guess whose voice it was.

In our introductory brief on arrival, Jack Lomas had explained the various warning codes to us. ‘Air raid warning red' meant an incoming attack. ‘SCRAM, SCRAM!' meant hit the ground fast. My adrenalin levels shot up the first time I heard that radio call and the final crackled words on the HF radio that may or may not have been ‘SCRAM!' All I knew was that I didn't want to be in the air. I reacted accordingly.