'Kamikaze' Argentine pilots flying into 'wall of lead’

Press, 29 May 1982, Page 8

'Kamikaze' Argentine pilots flying into 'wall of lead’

NZPA London “Kamikaze” Argentine pilots attacking the task force fleet face a “wall of lead” from British guns, according to Michael Nicholson, an Independent Television News reporter with the British task force yesterday.

In a report he was asked by ITN's duty foreign editor. Vernon Mann: “You have been in the region of the Falkland Islands for five days now, what is your personal impression of how things are going. Nicholson: “I like the way you say ‘in the region of’, you make me sound if as I’m some distance from it. we are right in the middle of it.

“You know San Carlos water is a kind of horseshoe bay with a river leading off the southern tip of it, surrounded by land, and we are surrounded by our own troops on either side. “They are well dug in. My impression is, as I said earlier, that the British military command on their own admission seem to admit that they seriously underestimated the deterimination of the Argentinians to take casualties.” Nicholson went on: “I

mean, we can certainly confirm that — the daring — and I don’t want to put a sort of ‘Biggies’ attitude to it. “But the daring of some of these pilots who came into our air defences, hugging the water, as they did today, coming along the line of the river even, to get into us before we can detect them, they have been daring, they have been courageous.

"One senior officer described it as sometimes approaching kamikaze, but they have done their damndest to come in on us and bomb us and sometimes they have succeeded but most times they haven’t.”

“I gather that one of the figures that is being bandied about here as a daily average of casualties is that out of every 10 of these aircraft that are sent in rom Argentina, only four manage to get back to their base. “Six are knocked out of the air either by the combat air patrol Harriers from the carriers Invincible and Hermes, or if they manage to escape the combat air patrols, they are hit by our own missile systems, here, and the machine-guns of course. Let us not forget them.”

Vernon Mann: “I was going to ask you about the machine-guns. It all sounds, not exactly a naval term, a little old-fashioned, with all these chaps running around with guns. . .” Nicholson: “I thought that. I thought it might be a little old-fashioned.

“But when I saw them in action, there is nothing oldfashioned about 24,000 rounds of ammunition going into the air from 18 guns alone, and our ship has that. “I mean that’s not taking into account all the machineguns throughout the fleet here, I mean on our ship alone the 18 guns are putting out 24,000 rounds of ammunition.

“I imagine what it must feel like, if you were a pilot in a Mirage or a Skyhawk coming in and suddenly seeing this wall of lead. “I mean there is no escape from it. you either go through it or not.” “You either go under or over, but at that speed and by the time you’ve seen it, there’s no escape.

“One of these lieutenants today, one of the Royal Marine commandos behind one of these guns, directing his other guns at this aircraft

making this barrage of lead, actually saw the underbelly of one of these Mirages ripped open and it caught fire and crashed into the hill a mile on. “He claims it as his own, but it is a Royal Marine commando kill. “Old-fashioned or not, they’re doing the job.” Vernon Mann: “What about conditions on the ship, obviously you are on alert for quite a large part of the day. I am sure that the wives at home would.be keen to hear that their husbands are getting well fed into the bargain. Nicholson: “Well, you couldn’t have said a better thing. I have been at sea now for well over seven weeks, and all of a sudden we transfer to a ship in San Carlos water and believe it or not they have Chinese cooks, and we have had some of the best food I have ever had in my life in these last few days. “And over the last couple of days there has been some transfer of troops to this ship, a kind of transit operation, and the men have come up with their top button undone because they couldn’t do it up, the food here has been superb.”