Operation Tidespring, Part 10/1
Rapier Able Red Actual, No.805 NAS, approaching Station Yoke-three-seven, 26th April 1983, 07:30 local (11:30 GMT)
The two massive Rolls-Royce Spey Turbofan engines pushed the aircraft of the Flight Commander of Ark Royal westwards towards the approaching Argentine strike. His Observer[1] had shut off the RDF in the nose of the plane, like the rest of the British Fighter Force they were guided towards the enemy with wireless cues from the AEW aircraft that orbited just outside the missile envelope of the Battlegroup.
“Able Red Actual, this is Chain Home Seven, we have bogeys bearing zero-zero-five from your current position, two-zero-three miles out, move to intercept. You have permission to engage.”
“Roger that, Chain Home Seven. Able Red is moving to intercept.”
With that No.805 Naval Air Squadron turned slightly and engaged the afterburners. Sixteen Supermarine Rapiers raced forward to meet twenty-four Argentine F-4s. After several seconds they disengaged afterburners and closed the range at Mach 1.5[2] as both sides were in a race to get within range of their Sparrow 9 or Red Flash missiles respectively as these missiles were the maximum-range weapons in either inventory. Whoever fired first always had the edge in a missile engagement. While the British Red Flash was somewhat slower than the American Sparrow (having a nominal speed of Mach 3.8 instead of Mach 4) it's larger size was due to an active RDF seeker head, hence the original 'Active Red Flash' project name.[3] This cruise was the first operational deployment the missile and it was a true fire-and-forget system.
Both sides engaged their Fighter RDF systems almost simultaneously and here the advanced age of the basic F-4 Airframe began to tell, as the Raytheon UK F-1991 set in the noses of the Rapiers had a longer effective acquisition range than the American-made AN/APQ-72 Radar and due to this the British detected their enemy first.
“Ahh Skipper, we have them on our scopes. Twelve of them, coming straight for us.”
“Thanks, Mike.” Captain McAllister replied. “Able Red Actual to Squadrons, select your targets Gents, and fire at will.”
No acknowledgements were needed for McAllister but soon he heard the 'Hotel Two' messages, and as he himself followed suit he could see the white smoke trails from the missiles streaking towards their target. Within seconds the threat receivers on the Argentine F-4s showed that they had been locked and fired onto. They engaged their Radars and fired off a salvo of two Sparrows in return. The Missiles crossed each other's path mid way and undeterred by ECM efforts chased the counterparts of the aircraft that had fired them. The British had turned away immediately after firing their missiles, but the Argentines had to keep a Radar lock on their targets in order to guide the missiles in. If some of them were puzzled that the British did not follow the usual tactics for missile engagements they did not show it, instead they continued to follow them as they now thought that the British missiles had lost guidance. A short amount of time later they learned the hard way that the game had been fundamentally changed as twelve of their number were instantly destroyed, with four more damaged to some degree, destroying the forward CAP and opening the way for the British to the outer ring of missile defences on the escorting Destroyers.
The FAA formation did not get off scot free either. While most of the missiles lost lock when their guiding aircraft were either shot down or turned away, three missiles got close enough to trigger before guidance was lost, blotting their targets out of the sky. Three planes short the vengeful British aircraft engaged their Afterburners again to finish off the remnants of the Argentine Fighter screen.
Battle Area, south-east of the Falklands, 26th April 1983, 11:33 to 12:11 GMT
The first engagement had broken up the forward Argentine fighter screen. 805 NAS fired several more missiles at range, but the now warned Argentines managed to evade all but one of them. The British let them go, they were after bigger game. Joined by an additional Squadron off the KG VI, they prepared to engage the 'close' escort and the Argentine Intruders coming in five miles behind them. Both sides were under pressure, the British had to clear at least most of the enemy fighters before the twenty-two Green Eagle carrying Buccaneers got to the projected launch point while the Argentines had to prevent that and at the same time escort their own strike in.
In the CIC the Argentine Admiral was aware that the effective loss of the distant escort had thrown all his plans out of the window. The idea had been to have both forces weaken each other enough so that the smaller escort could break through the remaining British defences and towards the IP, but the appearance of a long-range Fire and forget missile had radically shifted the situation. Now the surviving British Fighters had joined up with more of them from their Carriers and were ready to pounce on the almost twenty A-6 and the eight F-4 escorting them. The British bombers were nowhere to be seen, but that much he had expected. The Blackburn Buccaneer was just as able to fly down below as the A-6 his own men flew, but Argentine Carrier pilots had far less experience in doing so and instead the doctrine was to fly at medium height instead. But instead of searching for the elusive British, his fighters were hard pressed to defend themselves, and that exactly was the reason why neither side particularly liked the idea of everyone launching at the same time. The Battle had tipped for the British and was about to go even farther their way when the Rapiers opened fire on the incoming Argentine strike. 805 NAS was nearly out of Red Flash, but the four missiles that were fired between them were enough to throw the close escort into complete disarray even though no hits were scored.
Now however British reinforcements arrived. With the Fighters from HMS King George VI escorting the main strike, the fighters from Ark Royal had been sent ahead in two groups twenty miles apart to damage and weaken the incoming Argentine Carrier strike which unexpectedly had not come on at the same time as one launched from Port Stanley, while the remaining fighters from Formidable conducted Standing Air Patrol over the fleet. No.806 Naval Air Squadron (HMS Ark Royal) now approached the Argentine strike from the North-East and fired from almost maximum distance, savaging the Argentine fighters that never saw them on the narrow detection ark of their on-board Radars, while at the same time the ground controllers on the Falklands were too busy with other things. Quite predictably none of the Argentine Fighters survived for long, and the British increased speed, heading for the A-6 and A-4 bombers like wolfs to the lambs, having defeated the crop of Argentina's Naval Aviation with superior technology and tactics. Threat receivers all over the Argentine Strike lit up, even as the survivors of the first engagement who had taken over the close escort turned towards the British and fired their missiles. Amazingly enough no hits were scored on either side, and everything de-generated into a dogfight, with neither side noticing that a mixed force of eight A-6 and three A-4 who still had bombs slipped away and continued on to the British fleet.
At the same time as the first missiles were fired from Ark Royal's fighters, the two Squadrons off Ark Royal intercepted the smaller strike coming from the Falklands. Due to the shorter distance and the need to maintain a CAP over the Carriers, the mixed A-4/A-6 force was considerably smaller due to the lack of escorts, only the 1st Squadron of the Air Force escorted them, and they were totally and utterly outnumbered. Many of the A-4s quickly jettisoned their anti-ship ordinance and turned towards the British even though they lacked any anti-air armament except for their guns, while the A-6 increased speed and raced towards the British fleet, hoping to fire their Harpoons before the Rapiers fell on them. The outcome of this part of the battle was never in doubt, even though four British fighters were shot down, with two more damaged.
In less than three-quarters of an hour the balance of power in the South Atlantic had shifted, but several A-6 and A-4 had slipped through the net.
HMS Devonshire, outer escort ring around Force Z, 26th April 1983, 12:14 GMT
The cruiser was at action stations since the incoming strike had been detected. There was no point in EMCON as the Cruiser and the other Destroyers needed all the detection they could get. Missile attacks by two fighters kept back for local defence felled another A-6 before they were hidden in the clutter of the sea surface. Now the reason why Devonshire was here in the first place came into play, she was one of the few ships that hat yet been fitted with MIDAS[4], and she carried the most powerful and sophisticated RDF sets afloat anywhere in the world. The ultra-low flying of the Argentines on their final approach run was meant to defeat this, but to actually fire their missiles they would have to pop up to height and expose themselves. The A-6 was capable of firing the Harpoon from as much as 60 miles away, but the battle and the weather had prevented this, and even if they had they would have been well within the engagement envelope of the Sea Dart, the actual range of which was a closely guarded secret. When the Argentine planes popped up, they instantly appeared on the scopes of Devonshire and the two Destroyers in her Task Group. All British aircraft had withdrawn from the vector, so their location and their flight profile marked them as A-6 bombers. The Argentine bombers still closed in, these early model Harpoons did not have the long-range accuracy of the later models that were specifically designed to counter MIDAS. They had to close in to fifty miles before having more than 50% chance of achieving a hit.
However, the Sea Dart upgrades that had been part of MIDAS and the same upgrades that had been installed on HMS Coventry included an added, if somewhat limited, capability against sea skimming targets, and roughly 30 seconds before they fired their Harpoons, the A-6 entered the engagement envelope.
The first Sea Dart was launched at 12:19 GMT, quickly followed my three more.
The missile rose into the air with it's booster and accelerated to Mach 1.9 before ejecting the first stage and engaging the ramjet cruising engine. It lowered itself down to twenty metres altitude before racing towards the Argentine inbounds, guided by constant cues from Devonshire's fire control computers. Soon the RDF guidance told it that it was very close, and it initiated the terminal dive until the proximity fuse triggered, incidentally taking out the CAG of ARA Veinticinco de Mayo. Not that it mattered. One of the missiles in the first British salvo had failed to detach from it's booster and continued straight upwards until it ran out of fuel, and one of the others simply missed, but two more unsuspecting A-6 were taken out.
The second salvo was a race between the British AAMs and the Argentine pilots, and the Argentine pilots won. Seconds before two of the four remaining A-6 were blotted out of the sky, they launched their two Harpoons each.
Battle area around HMS Devonshire, five seconds later
“Red Dog! Red Dog! Red Dog! We have missile separation on contacts Sugar six, seven, four and three!”
The yell resonated through the Battlebridge that some had likened to the control room of the TARDIS.
Devonshire's Captain instantly gave the order to increase speed to maximum and the Destroyers were ordered to do the same. The massive British Cruiser increased speed even as the CIWS turrets and the two main gun turrets swept around and faced the vector the Missiles were expected from, while the Sea Wolf launcher up forward prepared to fire. Both the Destroyers and the Cruiser fired as fast as they could, but the Sea Wolf could launch only so fast, resulting in only one missile being destroyed, by a Sea Dart from HMS Sheffield. As a thanks for this, three of the missiles decided to go after the unfortunate Type 42. The other ships were too busy defending themselves, Devonshire's CIWS managed to knock down one of the Harpoon, with the other being destroyed by a snap-shot from the Sea Wolf just outside minimum engagement range, while the third Destroyer, HMS Singapore destroyed the one attacking Harpoon at very close range, loosing her helicopter hangar to burning fuel, also missile fragments put all her RDFs and a lot of other equipment out of action while the second one suffered a critical fault in the electronics and thus raced past the stern of the Destroyer without hitting anything.
HMS Sheffield on the other hand was not as fortunate. One Harpoon impacted in the superstructure just forward of the helicopter pad, setting the aviation fuel ablaze and another one blew her bow off. It was the third missile that sealed her fate, as this one hit her on the side, penetrating into the missile magazines with predictable results.
[5]
What the British ships had missed in the confusion was the formation of six A-4s that now raced towards the Carriers, escorted by three Destroyers and two Frigates, and no one knew they were coming.
HMSs Ark Royal, King George VI, Formidable, 12:18 GMT
The first warning the three Carriers got was a flash warning from Devonshire that they had engaged enemy bomber Aircraft, and then a sighting from one of Bristol's helicopters. The problem was, by the time the report reached Kaveney aboard Ark Royal, the A-4s had already begun to climb and every gun that could be brought to bear on them opened up. The Bofors guns on the Destroyers didn't have any hope of hitting the nimble and fast climbing Argentine Aircraft, but as the youngest of the Carriers present, KG VI happened to carry the new Dutch-designed Goalkeeper CIWS[6], and two of the turrets were able to fire on the rising aircraft. One was shot down when a burst of 30mm shells literally cut it in half, and another one was damaged and had to aboard, later crashing into the sea. The other four managed to release their bombs before they were forced to beat hasty and in the face of the Alert-Five Rapiers hovering overhead also futile retreat. Each of the planes had carried three 1000 pound bombs, so twelve were flying through the air on ballistic arcs, all but four only impacted on the ocean without harming anyone. The Argentines had aimed as well as they could at the Carriers, so they suffered all the damage. One bomb slammed into the side of HMS Ark Royal, leading to a fire that would burn for several hours and shock damage all over the ship, putting her out of action for a while so that the other hit on her that glanced of a beam on the flight deck and exploded when it hit the surface of the ocean didn't matter.
The third hit was suffered by HMS Formidable, but the WW2 vintage armoured flight deck and the emptiness of the same prevented more than a small dent and superficial damage.
As bad as the loss of one Destroyer, heavy damage to another and a Carrier seemed, the strike by the Fleet's Buccaneers was yet to come...
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Comments, questions, rotten tomatoes? *puts up tomato-repellant screen * I am not at all comfortable with this one. Multi-Division combat in the steppes of Russia? Fine. Battleships shelling the buggery out of each other. Perfect. Air Combat? Not at all. Also guns are still very much part of the RN's doctrine.
[1] RIO in this case.
[2] Rapier performance is similar to the F-14B Tomcat.
[3] Neither side has something equivalent to the Phoenix, as neither side really needs it. The Active Red Flash is in essence the Active Skyflash proposal from OTL that wasn't developed.
[4] Multiple Intercept Direction Air defence System, TTL Aegis. Devonshire was the first ship equipped with it, having been launched in 1979 and getting the upgrade to the standard developed in the meantime back in 1981.
[5] In reality HMS Antelope, but there aren't many pictures of cold-war era ships blowing up.
[6] True!
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