Ghost Force by Patrick Robinson

Author:Patrick Robinson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2006-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

0300, SATURDAY, APRIL 16

RIO GRAND AIR BASE

TIERRA DEL FUEGO

Argentina’s Aviation Force Two, the Second Naval Air Wing, in concert with the Second Naval Attack Squadron, had virtually evacuated from Bahia Blanca, the sprawling air station that sits at the head of a deep bay 350 miles southwest of Buenos Aires, sharing its geographic prominence with Puerto Belgrano, the largest naval base in the country.

These two bastions of Argentina’s air and sea power are situated exactly where the South American coastline swings inward, and begins to narrow down, running south-southwest, 1,200 miles all the way to the great hook of its granite southerly point of Cape Horn.

The fighter aircraft from Bahia Blanca had been flown a thousand miles south to Rio Grande, the mainland base from which Argentina would conduct its defense of its newest territory, Islas Malvinas, which lay 440 miles to the east.

Admiral Oscar Moreno, Commander in Chief of Argentina’s naval fleet, a devoted, lifelong Malvinista , had been instrumental in planning the entire naval attack strategy. And now he had his substantial squadron of fourteen Super-Etendards, with their Exocet missiles, in position on the huge airfield.

It was curious, but in the last conflict against the British, the success of this missile had taken some people by surprise. Today Admiral Moreno was not quite so sure. He knew the Royal Navy had spent years perfecting an antimissile shield against the Exocet.

And he was well aware the British ships carried an excellent chaff system and top-class decoys, all designed to seduce an incoming missile through a large cloud of iron filings, which the stupid missile recognized as bigger than the warship and therefore representing a more desirable target.

But the Argentine Navy had a very large Exocet inventory and they were obliged to use them, unless it became obvious they were a total waste of time against Admiral Holbrook’s ships.

Nonetheless, Oscar Moreno considered if you hurled enough Exocets at the Royal Navy, some may get through, and when one did, the damage would be colossal, as it had been in 1982.

With this in mind, he had flown four Super-Es into Mount Pleasant Airfield, hoping that an assault that began on land would initially confuse the British warships’ radars, as they scanned the horizon and ran into the customary difficulties all search radars encounter while looking across the water to a coastline.

Admiral Moreno understood these matters. And he understood he was facing the possible failure of his Exocet attack. Which was principally why he had removed the entire Third Naval Air Wing down the coast from their east coast base of Trelew, a distance of 650 miles, to the new operations center at Rio Grande.

With them the Third Wing brought their entire squadron of twelve Dagger fighter aircraft, an Israeli-built, cheap and cheerful, no-radar copy of the magnificent French Mirage jet. With a few minor adjustments, the Dagger was capable of carrying two thousand-pound iron bombs, slung underneath in place of the 1,300-liter centerline fuel tank.

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