The Royal Navy Lynx, page 16
‘We had probably just slipped away on leave as the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands got underway – which was pure coincidence as neither side knew that to be the case!
‘Over the following days, along with many other war fighting spares, vehicles, equipment and personnel, XZ 730 was shipped out to the Falkland Islands with the Task Force. Back at Yeovilton, Penelope Flight was given a much more tired aircraft (XZ 691) in its place. Our ship underwent a very much foreshortened period of sea training, which for X Z691 was a period punctuated by persistent fuel leaks, electronic component failures and radio problems. Nevertheless, the Flight maintainers, led by the hugely experienced Senior Maintenance Rating, CPO Tony Loveday, dug deep to make the aircraft serviceable, enabling us to play our part in the sea training whilst also joining a number of anti-ship missile countermeasure trials of “Chaff H” and with an alarmingly large radar reflector bolted onto the left-hand side of the aircraft. We were then tasked to go to Leeon-Solent and had an active I band jammer fitted, the same that was fitted to the Lynx of HMS Andromeda. We were lucky in that we went home for the weekend, whereas Andromeda’s crew headed up to Aberporth in Wales to prove the system against a live missile. Together, all these bits of kit reflected the depth of concern about the threat from Argentinian Exocet missiles.
‘The Flight embarked on 10 May for the dash south with the “Bristol Group” – a deployment that was going to call on all of the experience that Nick and I, the maintainers, and the ship’s company had under our belts. Although I was not to know it at the time, the two distinct phases of my past naval experience were going to be of great help in the coming weeks.
‘Before my flying career began, I had specialised as a direction officer, serving in two carriers and an air defence frigate. The job involved a significant amount of radar control of fighters and helicopters working at a radar console in the operations room; and ‘blind pilotage’ – which entailed navigating the ship solely by radar when entering and leaving harbour or confined waters in poor visibility.
‘My flying experience prior to Lynx, was firstly as a ‘Junglie’ pilot, flying Wessex Vs – specialising in mountain, arctic, and low flying, carrying troops and lifting underslung loads, with embarked periods in HMS Hermes and operational flying in Northern Ireland. Secondly, I had spent two years as a flying instructor on the Gazelle helicopter at RNAS Culdrose – an experience that honed my own flying techniques and instrument flying. The need to “believe your instruments” and the ability to fly at very low-level at night, in poor visibility and foul weather with precision, was going to be vital in the coming weeks, not only for the completion of missions, but also for survival in an unfriendly environment!
‘Nick Last, on his first tour as an observer, already had an excellent understanding of the aircraft’s systems, a firm grip of his role in the crew and most fortunately, given the challenges we were about to face, a strong and flexible intellect and an analytical and mathematical mind. In a Lynx, the observer takes the lead in navigation (particularly at sea), operates communications systems and active and passive sensors from the left-hand seat. There are consoles of weapon and systems controls along the centreline, with shared or allocated responsibility amongst the crew. The pilot flies the aircraft from the right-hand seat. Because of this each can see the ability and performance of the other, and that close proximity also allows effective crew cooperation to take place – built on experience and trust – and Nick was an easy man to like and to trust.
‘Penelope’s departure from Devonport on 10 May took place in a very different context from the exuberant mood surrounding the departure of the main task force some five weeks earlier. The General Belgrano and HMS Sheffield had both been sunk – and although peace initiatives were still being proposed by third parties, war fighting had begun in earnest. As Nick and I flew from Yeovilton to Devonport that morning to embark in Penelope, a delay in the ship’s readiness to receive us presented an opportunity to fly over my home on the edge of the Cornish village of Mullion to wave a final farewell to my wife and three young daughters.
‘To deny the Argentinians any intelligence about our group, the passage south was a fairly covert affair, conducted under radar and radio silence with ships darkened at night. As we carried out night surface searches ahead of the group this “cloak of silence” around the ships put a premium on Nick’s ability to keep an accurate plot of our position with particular reference to Penelope’s progress down her intended track. The Lynx helicopter’s passive ESM and visual searches for surface contacts would allow the group to alter course to avoid contact with neutral shipping, some of whom may have been from nations well-disposed towards Argentina. They might give away details of the composition and location of our ships. Success would be measured by the thoroughness of our sweep ahead of the group – and critically for us, by finding and getting back to a “silent” Penelope in order to land safely back on board at the pre-briefed recovery time. This was not a good time to lose important helicopter assets by getting lost in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, so Nick set to with some very accurate, good old fashioned navigation carried out with plotting chart and pencil in an already very cramped observer’s side of the cockpit to get us back to the ship – and then there was the business of getting back on deck!
‘Under normal circumstances at night, the helicopter controller in the ship, or the observer in the aircraft, would use radar to position the helicopter at the right range and position in relation to the flight deck, taking account of the ship’s course and speed. He would then talk the aircraft down a glide path while the pilot flew on instruments monitoring an illuminated glide path indicator until at a 1/4 mile from the ship. At that point, the pilot would be guided and assisted by the flight deck lighting. But with radio and radar transmissions disallowed, and all the ships darkened, it was up to the aircrew alone to identify their own ship from the others in the group, assess her course, and set themselves up for an approach to the flight deck – as opposed to any other less useful part of the ship – all in the inky darkness of an Atlantic Ocean night. There would be no ship’s navigation lights to help to orient ourselves with her course, no glide path indicator light down which to fly the approach and no illuminated horizon bar on the hangar roof to judge the pitch and roll of the ship.
‘Flying over the ship with our instrument panel lights dimmed as low as possible, at a height of about 200 feet above the sea (staying sensibly above the tallest mast in the group!) afforded us the best chance to make out a ship “shape” in the blackness of the sea surface.
‘To a very limited degree, we were assisted by a rudimentary and blurry handheld night vision scope that Nick was peering through. However, the light from the scope’s screen served mainly to destroy his own night vision!
‘As we flew over the ship, the distinctive noise from the tail rotor of the Lynx would be the only signal to the flight deck team that we were about to position for an approach and landing. If those on watch in the ops room and on the bridge stuck to the brief, the ship would be turned onto the pre-planned flying course. Realising the near impossibility of a “blind” approach to an unlit flight deck at night, the flight deck team would raise the hangar door to head height and five of them would prepare to put a “Pusser’s Right Angled Torch” against its bottom edge. The torch lenses were heavily daubed with blue permanent felt tip ink so as to give just a faint glimmer of light. In the cockpit, the task was to open out to a position on the port quarter of the ship, using “dead reckoning”, flying accurate speeds and timed turns until rolling out on the approach heading – then begin a slow and steady approach to – not very much!
‘Accurate heading, steady rate of descent, easing back the closing speed, watching the radar altimeter, then washing off the speed as the passage of time and the unconscious tightening of your grip on the controls told you that the deck was now very close…
‘On the flight deck, as the noise of the Lynx grew louder and the flight deck team assessed the aircraft to be very close, their torches were switched on and a rudimentary blue horizontal line appeared, giving some hint as to what the deck was doing. As the aircraft was brought to a hover alongside the deck at some twenty feet above the sea, a warm glow of red “night lighting” just discernible from deep within the partially shuttered hangar gave further clues to the heaving of the deck, allowing a swift and sure landing. As ever, the firm pull of the harpoon engaging with the flight deck grid marked the conclusion of the sortie.
‘For the flight, much of the journey south and the first days with the carrier Task Group 100 miles east of the Falklands was spent either at “Alert” (at fifteen or thirty minutes notice to fly), or airborne, moving personnel and stores between ships or recovering stores parachuted into the sea by Hercules aircraft that had flown south from Ascension Island.
‘On 30 May, after taking a medical evacuation (MEDEVAC) to the sick bay of HMS Hermes, we were sitting with rotors running on her vast flight deck as an approaching air raid was detected. We were told to launch and take up a “Guard” position astern of the carrier. We launched in the midst of a fusillade of Chaff rockets as she carried out countermeasures to defend against possible Exocet attack.
‘In the otherwise peaceful setting of the South Atlantic ocean we hovered over the wake of the carrier, pointed our sensors and jammer towards the threat and mused as to whether our box of Chaff H skillets, with the deceptive capability to transform our position into the biggest radar contact around, or whether our electronic countermeasures suite, which would invite an incoming missile to turn towards us rather than the high value ships of the Task Force, might have the desired effect. In the event, the action took place thirty miles to the south of Hermes.
‘Back on board Penelope later that night, the ship went to action stations as another air raid was detected and the Flight personnel optimistically took up defensive positions on the flight deck armed only with SLRs and a sense of humour!
‘Keeping a helicopter serviceable and available for tasking in the isolation of a frigate or destroyer requires some extraordinary effort from a team of engineers who need to be at the top of their game to meet all the complex challenges a helicopter can throw at them. And so it was that the following day a signal from the Naval Aircraft Materials Laboratory informed us that the results of routine oil samples taken from our engines required them both to be removed and we were grounded until that was done. Some might wonder why we didn’t just press on and accept the risk of an engine failure – after all, there was a war on… However, that was the very point – the Lynx was far too valuable an asset to lose to a predictable engine failure in flight while there was a war still to be fought, but it was also too valuable an asset to have it sitting unserviceable in the hangar for long.
‘So, although the weather was cold and wet and the ocean swell was significant, and despite all the difficulties that the ship’s movement created, the Flight’s engine change team, led by CPO Pete Cronshaw, worked throughout that night and into the next day. Unless you have seen the myriad pipes, cables, nuts and bolts that are involved in the fitting of a gas turbine engine into the confined space of a small helicopter, the scene on the windswept flight deck would be too hard to imagine. The Flight maintainers worked on precarious platforms fifteen feet above the heaving deck in the dark of night, with hugely expensive, rare and vital spare engines suspended from hoists waiting for that quiescent moment in the ship’s movement to take the next step in an operation that would not forgive any miscalculation or inattention. Yet, by the afternoon, after less than twentyfour hours, the replacement engines had been successfully fitted and “ground run” on deck. Then typically, in a display of confidence in his team’s work (and very likely for the sheer enjoyment of getting off the ship and airborne, if only for half an hour), Pete Cronshaw strapped himself into the back of the aircraft to accompany us on our check test flight. A perfect result, and within hours XZ 691 was once again heaving air-dropped stores out of the South Atlantic. “Bravo Zulu, boys! – very well done!”
‘After these first few days with the carrier group, the Flight’s tasking began to develop a more war-like feel. A pre-dawn ESM search and barrier patrol in support of a “Black Buck” (RAF Vulcan) anti-radar missile strike; an ESM and visual search along the north coast of Pebble Island, followed by a later visual search around its airfield. These sorties were flown at 3000–5000 feet, probably not a good place to be if fighters or shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles were about.
‘With that minor concern in mind, it was at about this time that it struck Nick and I that we really didn’t know very much about the military situation on the ground and yet we were being tasked to fly close to, as well as over, land that had been in enemy hands. Reassured by Penelope’s ops officers that we knew all there was to know, we pressed on dutifully, but kept a weather-eye out for the unexpected. Much later, after the fighting was over and once the pace of life allowed some reflective discussion in the wardroom about the war, one of the ops officers told us that, as we were thought to be at risk of capture and interrogation if shot down, or if we had to make a forced landing in the vicinity of Argentine forces, we were only to be told what we “needed to know”.
‘Nick and I did discuss some “tactical” issues which might have had a bearing on the ops officers’ assessment of our vulnerability to capture. We were each armed with a 7.62mm SLR, with one magazine apiece. We concluded that after a forced landing, the rifles would simplify the survival situation considerably as there were plenty of sheep on the Falkland Islands (though not much seasoning), but we never really came to a definitive answer as to what we would do with the weapons if an Argentine platoon was to appear over the horizon. In light of this, their assessment of how much we should be told might appear quite sensible, but as you will see, the lack of information was soon to cause us one or two problems!
‘Very often, Penelope would be in San Carlos during the day. She would then sail at night to escort merchant “Ships Taken Up From Trade” (STUFT), carrying vital supplies for the force. Their route to the Falkland Islands took them past the potentially hostile shores of Pebble Island, which lay just beyond the northern entrance of Falkland Sound, then south into the Sound and east into San Carlos Water by daybreak. To support the ship in this task, the Lynx was employed to search the coast and coastal waters from where the risk to these vital supplies was at its greatest. Despite the uncertainty as to what Argentine forces were still in that region and what their capabilities might be, the mere possibility that they may be able to launch an attack against STUFT convoys, perhaps with trailerbased Exocet missiles from ashore, was too great a risk to ignore. Not being privy to the staff assessment of that risk, we were left to draw our own conclusions from such information as we might glean from third parties.
‘On our very first pre-dawn patrol to the north of Pebble Island, as first light illuminated the area around Pebble settlement, we could see fixed wing aircraft on an obvious airstrip with what looked very much like two helicopters off to one side. These observations were reported by radio to a “controller” who had clearly been in the Falkland Islands ahead of us with the initial Task Force. Our report was dismissed out of hand. We new boys were informed that the aircraft we could see were those that had been destroyed on the ground by Special Forces before our arrival in theatre. Somewhat crestfallen, we continued our sortie and discussed what we had seen on our return to the ship. Not convinced by the put down we had received, we decided to take another look next time we were in the vicinity and, sure enough, this time the helicopters were nowhere to be seen.
‘The coast on the north of Pebble Island around Elephant Bay, and near to the settlement, is low lying with beaches and sand dunes, whereas to the south just behind the settlement are cliffs, though I can’t remember quite how high they were. Descending to sea level to the east of Pebble Island, we turned back and flew westwards at very low-level beneath the cliffs until just adjacent to the settlement, we pulled up over the cliffs and flew past the few buildings. There was no sign of military activity, indeed no sign of any activity at all as we pressed on towards the airstrip. We circled once, counted the Argentine aircraft for future reference and satisfied ourselves that they were indeed damaged, then headed north and out to sea. So far so good we thought.
‘The following day, our tasking specifically required a visual search for trailerbased Exocet along the north coast of Pebble Island, perhaps based on some form of intelligence received, but if so we were not aware. On this occasion, we searched along the north coast from east to west, flying at low-level, with one eye on the broken cover offered by the sand dunes. Approaching Elephant Bay, the view through the overhead Perspex screens of the cockpit was suddenly filled with the intermittent, brilliant trails of tracer fire which arced over us and out to sea.
‘Nick later told me that in the instant that he saw the tracer and was processing what he was seeing, the fact that the aircraft, still at thirty feet, was now in a ninety degree angle of bank turn away from the island, reassured him we were carrying out a text book “running away” manoeuvre appropriate for an unarmed helicopter under anti-aircraft fire. Once clear of danger, Nick reported the contact and we returned to the ship to take up the jammer station, showing Chaff H in case the Argentine follow-up was to launch a missile at Penelope or the convoy. Eventually, we landed back on board relieved to see that there were no holes in the aircraft.
