Falklands Commando by Hugh McManners

Author:Hugh McManners
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Nightstrike Publishing
Published: 2014-01-09T23:00:00+00:00

On the night of 30 May, Avenger left the Hermes group and steamed south on her own to put us ashore. We had on board the Lynx and crew from another Type 21 HMS Ambuscade, as Avenger's helo had become unserviceable. They unfortunately had no PNG (Passive Night Goggles) for flying in pitch darkness, so strictly speaking would have to turn on lights to land. As it was an enemy-occupied area I wasn't happy about this.

As we steamed down the coast of East Falkland, I decided to bombard the suspected enemy on Macbride Head and the radar on Dutchman's Island. This had been done by gunships on previous nights, so if Avenger continued down the coast shelling sporadically, she could also fire on Mount Brisbane without exciting any particular suspicion. This fire on Mount Brisbane would be very carefully timed to come down as the helo got close to the landing-site, and so mask its delivery runs.

It was interesting for me to be in the ops room during operational firing without any of the safety restrictions of peacetime. Without having one of us on the ground adjusting the fire onto the target, a ship's radar could instead be used to plot the line along which the shells were going and roughly where they were landing. This was inaccurate, and like the philosophical debate about whether the cannon fired in the desert actually makes a bang if there is nobody there to hear it, there was no way of telling if you were hitting anything at all – but I'm bound to say that...

The whole ship shuddered as each round crashed off into the night. The darkened room was hushed, with only the gunnery orders being audible. The green glow from the radar screens illuminated the white-hooded figures crouched over them. Andy and I stood, rifles in hand, faces completely blackened, watching the scene. The computer-operator on a Type 21 frigate punches in the coordinates and the type of ammunition, then the gun trains onto the target, holds itself on target by constant adjustment despite the heaving of the ship and the imprecision of its course, then fires itself off. When the man on ground sends back a correction over the radio, the operator punches it into his console, while the gun reloads itself and fires again.

Accuracy depends on keeping the highly mobile firing system at sea locked onto a known position on the land, a serious problem that field artillery does not have to address. This is done by using a 'Beacon MIP' radar fix on that known position (beacon radar map indication point), then ensuring that the fix on this known point doesn't slip. The navigator has to calculate his position very carefully, monitor it and calculate his tidal drift, as a check on the computer which should be taking it all into account automatically.

Maintaining this Beacon MIP fix was to become a problem during the last week of the war, with tragic results.

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