dangerous British frigate to come and go.
The Argentinian bombers, earmarked for the attack, had been flown down from the parent bases in Rio Gallegos, where the forward tactical command headquarters had been established.
And even as the Royal Navy's makeshift damage control units finally connected their hoses to quell the fires, two French-built delta-winged Mirage III Es, proudly displaying the livery of the Argentine Air Force, came sweeping out of the skies above the northern coast of East Falkland.
Each armed with 2-X-30mm cannon and two air-to-surface missiles, they flew fast at 20,000 feet, flashing over the settlement of Port San Carlos, which had scarcely echoed to the roar of fighter-bombers for twenty-eight years.
The Mirage jets swerved overland, high above the foothills of the desolate Mount Simon, and screamed over the landlocked end of Teal Inlet, crossing the lower slopes of Wickham Heights. And at that moment, Royal Air Force Sergeant Biff Wakefield picked them up on his Rapier missile radar system, on Mount Pleasant Airfield, twelve miles to the south.
He caught two 'paints' moving very fast, and he picked up a French radar transmission, precisely as Oscar Moreno knew he would. Sgt. Wakefield tracked the two 'paints' even though he knew they were well beyond the reach of his own missiles.
Outside, beyond his small concrete-built ops room the two big Rapier missile launchers stood at permanent readiness. But there was no point activating them yet; the two Mirage jets were over Berkeley Sound headed out to sea and off the screens. But Biff Wakefield kept them tracked as well as he could.
What he could not know was the real danger. And that suddenly burst out of the skies north of Falkland Sound, two more Mirage III Es, rocketing over the rocky granite coast, but not on the same easterly course as the other two. This pair was heading southeast.
And before Sgt. Wakefield's three-man team had even a chance to locate and identify, the Argentinian pilots unleashed two air-to-surface bombs each, all four of them aimed at the big short-range RAF Rapier launchers to the west of Mount Pleasant Airfield.
They came homing in at more than 500 mph, blasting both launchers to smithereens, followed by both Mirage jets, which opened up with their 30mm cannons, riddling the area with shells, smashing through the window of the ops room and killing Sgt. Wakefield and both of his duty operators. Their radar surveillance was still aimed to the northeast in search of Argentina's fleeing decoys.
In the space of five minutes, Great Britain's sea defensive unit, HMS
Ninety minutes before first light, five hundred Marines from Argentina's Second Battalion had disembarked from landing craft on the deserted coast just west of Fitzroy. They had been marching steadily for a little over two hours, and right now were positioned on a bluff overlooking the airport. They were late, cursing their luck at not making it in the dark, but nonetheless ready for their daylight assault on the British garrison.
Meanwhile, the garrison ops room on the airfield, which had been ignored in the air attack on the Rapier launchers, understood they were under some kind of attack. They could see the flames still leaping skyward from the harbor, and they of course knew they had been slammed by bombs or missiles in the past few minutes.
Captain Peter Merrill ordered his immediate response platoon stood to. They already had their weapons and ammunition to hand, and the duty officer had them deploy instantly, initially to man all prepared positions around the airfield buildings and control tower.
The Captain alerted the Company Commander, Major Bobby Court, who ordered every man in his 150-strong force to get up, dress, assemble, and draw their weapons from the armory, full scales of ammunition from the stores' color sergeant. The machine-gun section also drew their weapons, together with spare barrels, and 12,000 rounds of boxed ammunition packed into belts of 250.
Twenty minutes later, with everything and everyone loaded onto Army trucks, they began to move out of the garrison toward the airport buildings. And as they did so, they heard the opening bursts of gunfire erupt from the bluff to the west, as the Argentinian Marines began to rain down fire on the vehicles of the British immediate- response platoon.
Led by Lieutenant Derek Mitchell, they poured out of the trucks and went to ground, desperately trying to locate where the small-arms fire was coming from. They had taken nine casualties in that opening burst and the stretcher parties were not yet assembled.
It took five minutes to identify the positions of the Argentinian Marines, and Lieutenant Mitchell ordered his men to fire at will. The Argentinians could see they were up against a much smaller force, and began to advance.
The British infantry held them as best they could, but the Marines were well commanded by Major Pablo Barry, who split his force, ordering a separate company to move around onto the left flank of Lieutenant Mitchell's platoon.
That took fifteen minutes, and the moment they were in position, Major Barry ordered the Marines to fix bayonets, spread out in assault formation, and advance. By now Britain's immediate-response platoon had taken heavy casualties, and was reduced in numbers by approximately half.
Which left around twenty-five British infantrymen to face the oncoming five hundred from all directions, and right now they were still trying to fire at the first company that had engaged them.
With only fifty yards between the troops, the flanking Marine assault party began to close in, opening fire, gunning down the British troops from this unexpected direction. Alternately they used the bayonet to great effect. Overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers, not one British rifleman survived the battle. Lieutenant Mitchell died from bayonet wounds to his back and lungs. The Argentinians lost only twenty-three Marines.
Meanwhile Major Bobby Court had the rest of his infantry company thundering into position, the big Army vehicles transporting everyone to the airport and its surrounds. They knew things had already gone badly among the immediate-response group, but they still had two heavy machine guns, which they carefully sited on the flanks of their defensive position. They might have been surprised and outnumbered, and they might have been totally unprepared to withstand an assault on this scale, but the Brits were no pushover.
As the Argentine Marines began their second advance toward the airport buildings, Major Court's machine guns raked the area, the fire interlocking across the front of the company. The invading Argentinian Marines took over fifty casualties on their first assault, retreated, and gave the defenders time to organize a first-aid post and reserve stocks of ammunition.
Again the Argentinians attacked and were once more repulsed. And now they went to their mortars, laying down indirect fire and still trying to penetrate the wall of steel spitting from the British machine guns.
Once more they took many casualties, out there on that exposed ground, but they kept coming, using smoke bombs to disguise their advance, running forward, hurling grenades close in to the trenches, all under the cover of a barrage of mortars.
And, as before, they eventually overwhelmed the defenders by weight of numbers. Only seventeen British riflemen survived, eight of them badly wounded.
Major Pablo Barry immediately took charge, and called upon all civilians in the airport buildings to offer no resistance. The wounded were taken into the buildings, where British and Argentine medical staff administered first aid to casualties on both sides.
Major Court was badly injured in the attack and died that evening in the passenger terminal. And before he did so, the last element of British resistance was removed when a Special Forces troop of seventy-five flew in from Rio Gallegos and immediately overwhelmed the small naval garrison at Mare Harbor with one volley of light- machine-gun fire along the jetty. Only two of the seven sailors still on duty were hit, and Lt. Commander Malcolm Farley ordered his men to surrender.
Two hours later the big Argentinian C-130s began landing at Mount Pleasant, carrying troops and light vehicles of the Fourth Airborne Brigade based at Cordoba. Swiftly organized, they took it upon themselves to haul down every British flag on the airport and replaced them with the light blue and white symbol of the Republic of Argentina.
Then they turned north and drove into Port Stanley, using bullhorns to instruct the citizens to stay within their houses. As ordered, they were swift and brutal to any objections to their presence, clubbing down five islanders with rifle butts and booting in the doors of houses that seemed likely to shelter armed civilians.
