Tales from the South Atlantic
It was early April 1982, and I was just back at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire from a glorious six weeks in Cyprus with my Phantom Squadron, number 29, on our annual air-to-air gunnery deployment. We had enjoyed some great flying in glorious weather, firing our 20mm Gatling gun that had an astonishing rate of fire of 6000 rounds per minute. The news and our minds suddenly turned to a far more remote part of the world – the Falkland Islands. As a keen philatelist, at least I knew the location of these islands but it never occurred to me that the Argentinean invasion was to change my life completely. A few days after the invasion my station commander called me to his office and said my squadron was to be the one to become involved in any operations. But how? The runway at Stanley, the island’s only airport, was a mere 4,000ft long, and way short of anything the Phantom could cope with. Over the next few weeks, a number of urgent modifications were made to the aircraft including the fitting of chaff and flares for self-protection. Early in May we had the call to deploy one half of the squadron to Ascension Island, an island in the Atlantic just south of the equator. The experienced crews were kept behind to be ready for operations further south. On 3 May 1982 three aircraft, two having been re-painted at RAF St Athan in South Wales over the weekend, deployed non-stop to Ascension Island on a nearly ten-hour non-stop flight using Victor tankers. That in itself was remarkable as few such long legs had ever been flown by RAF fighters. Their role was to defend the island from possible air attack, most important since, at the time, it was the busiest base in the RAF and was a key to success in operations further south.
With the conflict over by mid-June, plans then focussed on how to get Phantoms flying over the Falkland Islands. The runway was the big problem, partly because the very first 1000lb bomb on the first Vulcan raid on Stanley had hit the runway at about the one third point, but also, as already explained, because it was so short. The Americans, or more precisely, the US Marine Corps, came up with the answer – make a runway out of aluminium planking! So, at a vast cost to the taxpayer, we bought a portable runway that was promptly shipped to Stanley for the Royal Engineers to get to work on.
Four months later, the `new` and extended portable runway (now 6000ft and just sufficient for use by a Phantom) was ready to accept us. I had the privilege to fly the first aircraft down to the new RAF Stanley on Sunday 17 October 1982. Seven Victor tankers were in support of my one aircraft, and after six personal air-air re-fuellings and nearly ten hours of flying I was safely on the ground at Stanley, having been stopped on the runway by one of the five arrestor wires newly installed at various positions along the runway. Aircraft carrier type landings were to be the norm as the runway was not only too short for comfort, it was also very narrow with ditches either side. Over the next few days, the entire squadron deployed South. This was a distinct surprise to those who had been on Ascension Island since May, as they were told to go South the night before they thought they were going back home! Such are the problems that arise from political decisions.
With a change to a full squadron for our deployment, the natural division of responsibility was between the two flights that already existed. The routine was that one flight would spend 24 hours on alert, varying from ten to thirty minutes while the other took any opportunity to fly, with no more than two aircraft at any one time being allowed to get airborne unless a threat arose. Thus, it was a seven-day working week. We had one or two false air attack alarms, and on one of these we had six aircraft airborne in a very short time and four more waiting to take off. Fortunately, the weather was good and when things quietened down, all landed safely into the arrestor wires. This, in itself, could be a limiting factor as it usually took about ten minutes to get the cable reset for the next landing, although with experience we got this down to about six.
Sortie lengths were generally about 3.5 hours each, extended by refuelling from one of our C-130 tankers especially converted to the tanker role for our use off the short Stanley runway. Usually, we would do some mixed intercept work with our sister aircraft at Stanley, the Harrier, by now especially converted to carry Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, but there was an occasional visit by Buccaneers from the UK. Initially, most of the radar direction came from RN air defence ships but, as time went by, radar stations were built around the islands including one on top of Mount Longdon adjacent to Stanley. This was built entirely by helicopter supplied items, including ready mixed concrete being underslung a Chinook in three separate buckets at a time.
Most of our flying was done by day, but some night flying was essential to demonstrate the capability to the Argentineans. It was early days for such as night vision goggles, but we used them to help identify any target. They were also excellent at picking up aircraft lights at long range, since there was practically no lighting to be seen anywhere except the town of Stanley or its airfield. With no moon, it was the blackest place on earth by night. After flying, and when not on alert (when of course one slept at the squadron) our initial accommodation was on a former New Zealand ferry ship, the Rangitira. She was located in the middle of Stanley harbour which meant an extended commute by rough road to Stanley and then a small LSL to the ship and vice versa. If one was lucky, one might get a lift from a passing helicopter which would obligingly take one ashore to the airfield in double quick time.
At RAF Stanley, improvements to life and operations were daily events but it nevertheless took over six months to get the airfield up to an acceptable standard for daily operations, and for some accommodation to be a short drive away from the airfield on a newly constructed road to a vessel called a Coastel, purpose built to house hundreds of people and brought to the Falklands from the Caribbean.
The only diversion airfield was in Chile, some 400 miles away around Cape Horn, and invariably our C-130 tanker was up, not only to extend our loiter time but also help us get to Chile if the need arose. It never did but we had some narrow squeaks. The weather in the South Atlantic can be most unpredictable; one minute you are in sunshine and nil wind, and ten minutes later the wind is 25 knots and sea fog has rolled in. On one occasion, I had to land into the arrestor wire with a 55-knot crosswind, 20 knots more than the Phantom’s official, and very respectable, 35 knot safe limit! It was exciting and challenging stuff, and we were fortunate not to lose an aircraft. The nearest we came to disaster was about a week after we had arrived. The Secretary of State for Defence, Mr John Nott, was visiting and it was decided that we would lay on a demonstration of an arrester landing. The weather was a bit doubtful but one aircraft was launched to carry out the demonstration; the weather got worse with a cloud base of around 100ft. Not surprisingly the pilot did not see the runway on his first radar directed approach at minimum height and he then made another approach, this time letting himself down to 100 feet over the sea and then flying in for a visual landing. Because of the bad weather the pilot had decided that, whatever happened on landing, he would stay on the ground. In the event this was a very wise decision. It so happened we elected to use an arrestor wire that had not been used before. When the cable was caught by the massive Phantom arrestor hook (designed for use on an aircraft carrier) the cable drum refused to unwind and the cable simply snapped, flailing about like a demented cat. This had three unanticipated consequences; first, the two-inch cable would have reaped havoc on anyone in the way (John Nott was only a few yards clear!), second the Phantom’s port stabilator was ripped off by the said cable. The third and inevitable consequence of this was that the aircraft was in no fit state to fly. The bad weather had in fact saved a valuable aircraft and even more valuable crew. The pilot just managed to stop before reaching the end of the runway. Subsequent to this experience, the braking parachute was always deployed just before landing to aid stopping in the event of a cable failure. This was something the Israelis had done in the past with their Phantoms.
One other aspect of operations that was very different to the UK was that we always flew with a full load of 8 live missiles and the 20mm gun. Clearly, pulling the trigger (as we were used to doing with unarmed aircraft) in day-to-day training could have most unfortunate results. Fortunately, McDonnel Douglas had thought of everything and there was a convenient hole in the trigger to insert a safety pin. This was duly done with a locally supplied pin. The one thing one had to do, in the event of a real threat, was to remember to remove the pin!
In all, I was to spend eight months in those remote, yet beautiful, islands. The experience gave me some of the most challenging and exciting flying I have ever undertaken.
Air Marshal Sir Ian Macfadyen
