Ewen Southby-Tailyour - Exocet Falklands

Other books by Ewen Southby-Tailyour

Military Histories and Biographies

Falkland Islands Shores

Reasons in Writing: A Commandos View of the Falklands War

Amphibious Assault Falklands: The Battle for San Carlos

Blondie: A Life of Lieutenant-Colonel HG Hasler DSO, OBE

The Next Moon. A Special Operations Executive Agent in France

HMS Fearless: The Mighty Lion

3 Commando Brigade, Helmand

Commando Assault, Helmand

Nothing Impossible. A Portrait of The Royal Marines 16642010 (ed.)

Fiction

Skeletons for Sadness

Reference

Janes Amphibious Warfare Capabilities (ed.)

Janes Special Forces Equipment Recognition Guide (ed.)

Janes Amphibious and Special Forces (ed., bi-annual publication)

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by
PEN & SWORD MILITARY
An imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS

Copyright Ewen Southby-Tailyour, 2014

HARDBACK ISBN: 978-1-78346-387-9
PDF ISBN: 9781473836891
EPUB ISBN: 9781473835139
PRC ISBN: 9781473836013

The right of Ewen Southby-Tailyour to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying,
recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission from the Publisher in writing.

Typeset by Concept, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, HD4 5JL.
Printed and bound in England by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY.

Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the imprints of Pen & Sword Archaeology,
Atlas, Aviation, Battleground, Discovery, Family History, History, Maritime,
Military, Naval, Politics, Railways, Select, Social History, Transport, True Crime,
and Claymore Press, Frontline Books, Leo Cooper, Praetorian Press,
Remember When, Seaforth Publishing and Wharncliffe.

For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact
PEN & SWORD BOOKS LIMITED
47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England
E-mail:
Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk

Contents

List of Plates

Introduction

This is the story of the French AM 39 Exocet: an air-launched, sea-skimming, anti-ship missile deployed by Argentina against the British during the Falklands campaign in 1982. This missile was a clear danger to the Task Force aircraft carriers, the loss of just one of which would have seriously prejudiced the outcome. By its mere presence the Exocet affected much of the strategic and tactical thinking of the British commanders at sea and in the United Kingdom.

It is also a narrative of three British Special Forces operations designed to destroy those missiles on the Argentine mainland before they could be launched by the Super tendard fighter-bombers that carried them. Operation Plum Duff was a reconnaissance and, if the opportunity arose, a direct action operation by eight men of 6 Troop, B Squadron, 22 Special Air Service Regiment against the Argentine Navys Rio Grande air base in Tierra del Fuego. It was aborted three days after it began. Why it was aborted has been the subject of much imprecise speculation.

Operation Mikado, also against Rio Grande, depended on the intelligence obtained during Operation Plum Duff. It would have been conducted by two Hercules C-130 aircraft of the Royal Air Forces 47 Squadrons Special Forces Flight, landing sixty SAS troopers directly into the Argentine air base. It never took place. Why it never took place also forms much of the material that is between these covers.

Then there was the hitherto unknown, submarine-launched, Special Boat Squadrons Operation Kettledrum against the northern naval air base at Puerto Deseado. That the operation was cancelled just a day after HMS Onyx sailed from San Carlos is instructive enough; but the circumstances surrounding the decision to execute this attack, made in the United Kingdom some weeks before the executive order was given, remain baffling.

This, therefore, is the account of three mainland assaults that might have changed the nature of the Falklands conflict militarily and diplomatically. The political aftermath of such attacks on the South American continent would, too, have had international consequences. The SAS, and to a lesser extent the SBS, would have struggled to recover from the large loss of life they would inevitably have suffered, while the RAF (and thus the dependent Royal Navy) would have certainly lost the use of the only two heavy-lift, long-range aircraft capable (thanks to hastily fitted air-to-air refuelling apparatus) of supplying the Task Force deep in the South Atlantic ocean. As will be described, this became particularly relevant after the loss of the MV Atlantic Conveyor.

Others come into this story: the Secret Intelligence Service (more popularly known as MI6) with its successful war within a war played a crucial part, together with the Royal Navys aircraft carriers and their embarked helicopter crews, plus the nuclear submarines, destroyers and frigates. Argentine warships and marines defending Rio Grandes air base also appear, as do, most notably, the Super tendard pilots themselves.

In many respects (and this is not what I was expecting when I embarked on this project) this is also the story of the Hercules aircraft: those who kept them flying and refuelled in the air as well as their would-be passengers on Operation Mikado the men of B Squadron. Markedly, too, it is the tale of one officer and seven men of 6 Troop during Operation Plum Duff and of the three Fleet Air Arm aircrew that flew their lone Sea King helicopter on a one-way mission into Tierra del Fuego during that austral autumn.

* * *

No one is clear when the code words Plum Duff, Mikado and Kettledrum were first used; some people involved in one or the other claim that they did not know the name of their operation at the time. For the sake of clarity I have referred to them by these names from the beginning. For instance, Commodore Alan Bennett, who, as a Royal Navy lieutenant and helicopter pilot played a pivotal role in Operation Plum Duff, was not aware of its name until long after the Falklands campaign was over. At the time he was to regard it as Just another sortie albeit with a dropping point in a different country and a walk home, behind enemy lines just like all the others we had been doing for special forces since 1 May.

It might appear that I have occasionally strayed from the central subject the Exocet war into the world of submarines and other special forces operations. This has been to add flavour, depth and context to the main theme, so that a feeling for the overall atmosphere might be gained through the use of what a Highland piper would call the grace notes.

While other published accounts have alluded to Operations Plum Duff and Mikado, not one has yet mentioned Kettledrum. As I am privileged to be in contact with primary sources on both sides of the Atlantic (and have visited Buenos Aires, Puerto Madryn, Rio Grande, Rio Gallegos, Ushuaia, Santiago, Punta Arenas and Puerto Montt, and flown across the pampas between these southern towns and cities), the best way forward is to ensure that this account stands on its own. I have therefore not compared my findings with those of others except where significant matters of fact needed to be unpicked and re-examined.

There are, inevitably, criticisms of a few sacred cows it would be unrealistic to expect otherwise in any war. There is, though, a culture of maintaining the myth within some sectors of British special forces that is not always conducive to good military practice. The SAS, for instance, are supremely efficient in counter-insurgency operations and, because of that capability, are often asked to attempt near-impossible conventional operations for the wrong reasons: Operations Plum Duff and Mikado are prime examples. As Major General Jeremy