Forum: Air Power

Just to back up Snypa, the aircraft carrier deal is believed to have been carrier only. The idea was given some thought as there are rumours taht the RAF actually got some ex-Fleet Air Arm guys to start briefing RAF crews flying the Bucaneers and Phantoms, all carrier capable former RN aircraft, on carrier based operations!

In the end it was turned down, mainly because of logistics like Snypa said, but also because of the conditions in the South Atlantic being unfavourable for conventional carrers most of the time (The argies were surprised to encounter the Sea Harrier as they believed theyw ere flying in conditions that a carrier couldn't operate in!).

As a small aside on Black Buck only one 1000lb out of the 20 odd carried by the Vulcan actually hit the runway, not bad considering the Vulcan was designed to drop nukes which were a bit more forgiving in accuracy! It served its purpose though, the Mirages and Etendards would operate off the mainland for the rest of the war and suffer greatly because of it.

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Forum Veteran Joined: Aug 29, 2004 - 01:05 AM Posts: 659

Safety Stick, actually how many hours of flight per Vulcan was this mission, do you (or anyone else) know that? It must have been a helluva long haul...

There were 7 Vulcan missions in total during the campaign. One had to be aborted because of a refueling probe failure. 11 Victor tankers were used during each mission. One Victor tanker nearly ran out of fuel and another one had to be scrambled from Ascension island to refuel it!
Each Vulcan mission was a 16 hour round trip. The longest bombing missions in history until the BUFF beat that in 1991 during ODS.

The Vulcans even did a couple of SEAD missions carrying AGM 45 Shrike anti radar missiles. On one mission carrying one Shrike under each wing on hastily fitted pylons. These were covertly supplied by the US. On one such mission, a Vulcan approached the islands at 300 feet and then popped up above 16,000ft to aquire the Westinghouse AN/TPS 43F radar which has been supporting enemy operations against the task force. The Vulcan used passive and active systems to locate the radar. The radar crew kept switching their radar on and off. Eventually the radar crew left it on long enough for the Vulcan to salvo fire the Shrikes, one hit 10 metres from the target damaging the waveguide assembly. The crew shut down the radar! This allowed Harriers to attack Port Stanley un-opposed. This was the longest mission of 16 hours, with a 40 minute loiter.

The same crew flew another SEAD run, this time with 4 Shrikes. Two Shrikes were programmed for an attack against the TPS 43 radars, two for a strike against mobile Sky guard Super Oerlikon AAA batteries. The crew spent 40 mins looking for the radars over the islands. The radars went quiet. The crew decided to descend below 15,000ft to get into the triple A envelope, the sky guard crews lit the Vulcan up, the crew used an ALQ-101 pod to prevent a lock on. The Vulcan fired two Shrikes, one got a direct hit on the radar unit killing its crew. On this mission on the return trip, the refueling probe broke! The brief was to ditch the plane into the sea in the event of something like that happening. The crew didnt fancy that. They climbed to 43,000ft, de-pressurized and threw secret documents and photographs out of the crew entrance doors. Dropping down to 20,000ft they evaded a pair of Brazilian F-5s sent up to intercept them. They managed to jettison one Shrike but the last one "hung up".

They eventually landed in Brazil with just a few hundred pounds of fuel where they were held for seven days and returned to Ascension with their plane! To avoid embarressment to both us and the Brazilians. The crew got some gongs for that one.

The final mission, Black Buck 7,dropped some air burst bombs on Port Stanley. To quote Safetystick, it forced the opposition to keep fighters back from the Falklands to defend the mainland.

You can read some more on the Vulcan and it`s missions from this page where I have quoted from...

http://www.thunder-and-lightnings.co.uk ... story.html

Forum Veteran Joined: Aug 29, 2004 - 01:05 AM Posts: 659

Thank you very much, Snypa... Cheers

I get approximately the same from my books.

Man, imagine if the Vulcans had been sent against the Argentitian land bases and the Etendard fleet. Maybe Sheffield and Atlantic Conveyor (and its cargo of Chinooks) would have made it through the war.

The evading of the F-5's was one of the greatest demonstartions of the VUlcan's handling. For such a big bird it could turn like a fighter of its period.

Still wouldn't work on the bottom deck if you paid me though Razz

I would love to have the full story of the Vulcan getting away from those F-5s!
The lower deck crew? Did they have to rely on chutes for survival rather than ejection seats for the flight deck boys?If the Vulcans went to the mainland they would have had to have faced the Mirages on their own. It would have been a Lo-Lo-Lo mission all the way!

Your damn right Safetystick, not a good prospect being in the lower deck. Didn`t the B-1 suffer from the same problem when it carried passengers? Extra instructors were carried when one was lost, only part of the crew got out, the instructors perished....

Well I have read some articles about the incident in 1982 when Sqn Ldr Neil McDougall's vulcan refueling probe broke off, but I never heard about the vulcan evading the f-5'[Link pending approval]

What happened is they had very little fuel and the had to fly at 12200m altitude to get the best range from the fuel they got. And after they where authorized to do so, they had to make a dangerous dip down to 254m to be on the right altitude do land at the airport, they had to this, simply because they did not have fuel to do another landing try if they missed that [Link pending approval]

And they where escorted all the way by two f-5, inside the brazilian's territorial space, since they where picked up by the defense radar'[Link pending approval]

Anyway I have several informations about the "Black Buck" operation done by RAF, if you guys want to ask. It was an incredible achievement on it's own, I think it is probably one of the most distant bombing campaigns ever done.

Forum Veteran Joined: Aug 29, 2004 - 01:05 AM Posts: 659

Well, you'v got me interested... I guess Snupa and Safetystick are too.

Forum Veteran Joined: Aug 29, 2004 - 01:05 AM Posts: 659

Sorry Snypa... Typing error, me Dutch me no good in English... Off Topic

Watching this topic I think that many of the information that I read of the Falklands War is fake. I mean, I read that the Argentinian Air Force shoot down 2 Harriers in a dogfight (One on May 21st, 1982, the other I don't remeber right now), I read that the HMS Invincible was hit by an AM-39 Exocet fired from a SUE (and the British information said that the Exocet hit the Atlantic Converyor), and then damaged by bombs dropped by two A-4C (other 2 A-4 were destroyed).
I read too that the Westinghouse AN/TPS 43F never was hit directly by an AGM-45 Shrike. (Only the waveguide assembly).
Finally, was the "A.R.A General Belgrano" on the exclusion zone???
Really I don't know which information is fake and which is true. Shrug

Quote:

By the way the Argentinian carrier Cinque de Mayo is the ex-Dutch Karel Doorman, which in turn was an ex-British (Illustrious-type) vessel.

The Argentinian Carrier was named "25 de Mayo"

Try and answer a few of those.

1. No harriers were lost to air combat. All were lost to ground fire (at least one to an Argentitian Blowpipe missile) or accidents (two collided IIRC). That's the official UK line and I have never seen anything that has caused me to question it. The Argentian aircraft were poorly placed to challenge the Harriers after long over water flights from the mainland and little in the way of fuel reserves to afford fuel sapping dogfights.

2. The carriers were sunk several times over by Argentitian aircraft* Wink

. There has always been a story that one of the carriers was hit by an Exocet but as the story keeps changing the name of the Carrier (one article even named the Carrier as 'Illustrious' which would be a hell of a shot) I take it with a pinch of salt. Bomb damage would be more believable as most of the ships in the task force took fire. The Argentitian bombs were often dropped with insufficient time for the fuzes to arm and near misses peppered the ships.

3. Dunno. Most accounts I've seen have indicated that it was taken out. maybe shredding the wave-guide was enough.

4. Yes it was, and sailing away from the islands. But it was still an enemy military vessal and one that could have caused huge damage during the landings. Sinking it also concerened the argentian navy enough to pull back the 25 de Mayo (luckily, apparently a second RN sub was closing down on it but couldn't arrive before it was in port).

Hope that helps.

*Having said that, the UK also exaggerated the numbers of kills gained by the SHAR during the conflict. Not by much, but certainly the figures presented at the time have been reexamined over the years and found wanting. But then again, so has just about every other war's air campaign!

Yep, that helps me very much, thanks Smile

Quote:

the UK also exaggerated the numbers of kills gained by the SHAR during the conflict

And my country exaggerated the number of killed ships during the FW (I'm talking about the attack against the Invincible, the Brilliant and others)

Hiya fella`s!!!

Another "rumour" I heard at the time and one that resurfaces...An Argentine navy submarine scoring a "hit" on Invinsible but the torpedo didn`t explode, another wartime myth?
The Argentine subs were diesel electric and quieter then SSNs of the era, difficult to detect. The Argentine sub`s had pretty much free reign in the conflict and were hard to find. There were no reported Argentine navy sub` success reports?

Another RN sub` was directed to the co`ordinates of the carrier "25 de mayo", which was detected by unspecified means, but there was a "fubar" and the sub` was sent to the wrong piece of ocean.

Shredding the waveguide assembly of a mobile radar system is enough to put it out of business, so job done. Another TPS 43 got a direct hit killing some of the crew from what I have read.

Safetystick, I think 7 harriers were lost in total, not including the ones in storage on the Atlantic Conveyor. two in accidents as you have said in appalling weather when no aircraft should have been flying, the other 5 to ground fire. ( 1 possibly as the result of a major mechanical failure?). The Harrier is more vunerable to this kind of fire more than most!

Ggoedert, the F-5 story seems just a bit of folklore! Over-enthusiasm form Thunder and Lightnings web site I think!
The Vulcans weren`t trying to attack RIO! They would have gone in on the deck and used ECM to confuse your radar if they were serious! Wink

Hey Peter! My Dutch is crap so don`t worry too much about spelling mistakes!! Laughing

snypa777 wrote:

The Argentine subs were diesel electric and quieter then SSNs of the era, difficult to detect. The Argentine sub`s had pretty much free reign in the conflict and were hard to find. There were no reported Argentine navy sub` success reports?

IIRC No, there weren't, because after the sunk of the "A.R.A General Belgrano", the Argentine Navy prohibited the navigations on the exclusion zone for the battleships and submarines. IIRC the "A.R.A Santa Fe" was in the exclusion zone, and was attacked (but not sunk) by 2 Lynx loaded with SEA Skua anti-ship missiles.

Yes Ryan, that is the official line. Some of my work colleagues are not so sure...I will leave it at that!. It would have been silly millitarily for Argentina to exclude sub` operations from the exclusion zone. ARA surface ships would have been very vunerable to SSNs, not so much subs`.
The Santa Fe was moored up in South Georgia Island I think and put out of action by as you said, Lynx helicopters. She did not sink as she was moored up.

Officially, the Royal Navy carried no nuclear weapons to the South Atlantic, ie nuclear depth charges, which the RN had in it`s inventory. Who knows. When Sheffield was hit, a LOT of "stuff" went over the side of the ship, Sea Dart, Sea Skua or Slug, etc...After the conflict the RN did a lot of "fishing" in the South Atlantic over the attack site...What were they looking for????
There are some things you and I will never be told about my friend Wink

Forum: Air Power

Aerial Combat during Falkland Campaign 1982