Texto original de la 1ra edición de los Cien Días (1992 - la de 2012 no tiene agregados en estos párrafos):
On 30 May, however, the scene changed. The Argentinian High Command decided to fire what was their last remaining Exocet and again they made a firm decision to try to aim it at Hermes or Invincible. At their present Exocet strike rate they had an even-money chance of hitting something, but longish odds against hitting a carrier.
In our favor, apart from the lessons of the last two Exocet attacks, we now had the very latest version of the Sea Dart system in the Royal Navy –the one in Exeter, the Type 42 commanded by Hugh Balfour. He was a rather smooth chap really, a bit of a dandy, but a very modern thinker and, as a communications officer, he was an expert in satellites and electronic warfare. He was the type of man you associate with clean white handkerchiefs in the breast pocket, a bit upmarket, perhaps even a dilettante, and quite the opposite of the traditional “grimy submariner”. That said, however, Hugh Balfour was also the opposite of a dilettante –he was a sharp, professional warfare specialist and the master of that brand-new Sea Dart system in Exeter. It actually saved about fifteen vital seconds in engagement time compared with the best that Glasgow and Coventry could do due to brilliant new software.
Anyway, the Args elected to send up two Etendards, one with the missile, another for additional radar assistance. They would be accompanied by four Skyhawks of 4th Air Brigade, each armed with two five-hundred-pound bombs. Their brief was to use the Exocet as their guide to the carrier while the Etendards turned away for home. I of course was entirely ignorant of this “Good night, Woodward” scenario of theirs. I was also unaware of the route they planned, which was to run due east for four hundred miles from Rio Grande and then turn north-west, hoping to catch us in the rear. As a serious attack mission, it was not badly thought out, even though it did require a very long round trip.
They took off and made their air refueling rendezvous and then headed on in towards the British Battle Group, in which Cardiff and Exeter were out on the easterly picket line, with Captain Hugo White’s Type 21 frigate Avenger, largely by chance, steaming twelve miles south-south-east of them. Twenty miles further back to the east were ranged the fleet auxiliaries and three and a half miles behind them were the two carrier, Hermes seven miles due north of Invincible. The Argentinians flew as usual below the radar, until they “popped up” at 1631Z for the Etendards to scan the sea with their radars, looking for the British Fleet.
As they did so, the most attention-getting Ops Room call in the South Atlantic was broadcast from Exeter: “Handbrake!” Two-Two-Five”.
Within seconds Exeter had a warning on the networks and Cardiff, Avenger and Exeter all swung around to face the attack from the south-west. The two Etendards “popped up” once more three minutes later. All three British ships saw them on their radar screens and they all knew that an Exocet missile, fired at twenty-one miles range, was on its way –and that there were four aircraft coming in right behind it.
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Captain Balfour ordered his first Sea Dart away. The missile travelled close past Avenger and, five miles later, obliterated the lead Skyhawk, killing the pilot Primer Teniente Vázquez. The other three pilots pressed on, but either Exeter’s second Sea Dart or Avenger’s 4.5-inch gun blew another of them away, killing that pilot too.
Meanwhile the Exocet, either poorly aimed or unserviceable, passed harmlessly mid-way between Exeter and Avenger, with several miles to spare on either side. With immense gallantry, the other two Argentinian pilots, feeling extremely lonely by now, continued to race forward, determined to press home their attack. They went for Avenger, now surrounded by smoke from the gun which was still blazing away at the Skyhawks. Their bombs, however, missed as they overflew the frigate and they shot through the smoke at over four hundred knots, banking away for home, the hair on the back of their necks doubtless standing on end as they imagined the Sea Harriers lancing down from the rear, Sidewinders at the ready. As it happened they made it home safely, to regale their commanders with just about the least accurate story of the whole war: that they had bombed Invincible, which had already been struck by the Exocet, that they had seen the smoke, witnessed the damage.
Still young men as brave as that deserve their fantasies and in the coming days I did not even begrudge them from the front-page picture, deftly dressed up by an artist, in the Arg newspapers which showed Invincible burning fiercely in the South Atlantic. Actually she was a good twenty miles from the action and nearly as pristine and spotless as Captain Balfour’s white handkerchief.
Personally, I ended the day with a smile of relief. As you will by now have realized, I try to deal only in “facts” and my facts looked good to me. The Args started this game with five Exocets –five aces- and they had now, incontrovertibly, played them all, on 4, 25 and 30 May. Each time they let them loose at the first radar blip they saw –a set of three incompetent blunders which may very well cost them this war.
