Hawkyard, staring at the picture on his big, flat table screen, switches to the UHF radio announcing to all ships: ‘Flash! This is Glasgow, Agave .. . bearing two three eight.. . correlates track one two three four ... bearing two three eight... range four zero ... Invincible, over.'
Invincible: 'Roger, out.'
Then Rose calls again: 'Agave regained - bearing two three eight.'
His Electronic Warfare Supervisor, sitting next to him, confirms the second detection. The ship's radar operators, watching their air and surface warning radar screens, also confirm contact; 'Two bogeys. Bearing two three eight. Range three eight miles. Tracking zero seven zero. Four-fifty knots.'
And now Glasgow’s Ops Room really comes alive. They are one hundred per cent prepared for just this event. It was, after all, precisely what they were there for.
'chaff'' calls Hawkyard. 'This is Glasgow ...' As he starts to speak he suddenly remembers he ought to have been saying 'Handbrake', our codeword for Agave radar. Hawkyard now corrects himself, hurriedly. 'handbrake!' he exclaims, 'bearing two three eight.'
Simultaneously the fingers of the Air Picture Supervisor, Leading Seaman Nevin, are clattering away trying to release the full picture of the incoming raid, tracks 1234 and 1235 on the inter-ship computer circuit, Link 10.
Hawkyard switches back to UHF and tries to convince the Force Anti-Air Warfare Commander in Invincible that this is real. But he is not succeeding. Hoddinott hears with alarm Hawkyard's voice rising in frustration, desperately trying to convince the FAAWC that this is deadly serious and not just another nervous 'ghost'.
Again he calls: 'This is Glasgow. Track 1234 - bearing two three eight - range three five - strength two - closing fast. Track 1234 correlates handbrake bearing. Invincible, over!’
FAAWC, who has dealt with three or four such ‘panics’ that very morning, wants more evidence. As far as he is concerned, the cry 'Handbrake' has been heard more often than 'Good morning’ today, and he isn't going to commit the entire Group to expenditure of our rapidly diminishing chaff stock without solid reason.
But at least he must know that Glasgow was sure of her own warning. Anyone listening on the Air Warfare net can hear Glasgow's chaff rockets launch with that ‘Whoosh' which is to become uncomfortably familiar to all of us.
Rose calls again: ‘Handbrake in lock-on mode.'
Bedacarratz is on the point of releasing his missile and Paul Hoddinott feels the chill dread that hits you when you have incontrovertible evidence that a big missile is on its way towards you.
At 1402, the pilots release their missiles and bank left. The Exocets fall away, locked on to their targets. Neither pilot has the least idea what ship he has aimed at, nor are they going to hang around to find out. They know only that a radar contact has appeared on their screens in roughly the right bit of ocean. And they get out fast, diving back down, close to the water, beneath our radar beams, heading West.
Almost simultaneously, two amber dots, so small they can only be seen intermittently, appear on the radar of Glasgow, tracking their way fast across the screen. 'zippo one! bruisers! Incoming. Bearing two three eight. Range twelve miles.'
Hoddinott orders his Sea Dart surface to air missile system into action to shoot them down. Hawkyard calls again to Chief Ames, his Missile Gun Director: ‘Take Track 1234 and 1235 with Sea Dart.' But it does not work. Unsuccessfully - nightmarishly - the fire control radar can not lock on to the small fleeting targets at that range. They keep trying, but the dots keep disappearing. Frustration mounts and the Captain fumes. Hawkyard again calls Invincible advising them to clear two Sea Harriers from the line of fire. But the Ops Room in the little carrier answers that they believe the raid is spurious.
Glasgow's AWO now desperate, almost shouts on the radio circuit: 'NEGATIVE! THE FORCE IS UNDER ATTACK! RAID 1234 AND 1235 BEARING AND RANGE CORRELATES WITH HANDBRAKE.'
Invincible still does not agree.
It is Captain Hoddinott himself who first realizes, with enormous relief, that Glasgow is safe. One of the missiles is heading towards Sheffield, and the other is going well clear.
Sheffield, with Captain Salt not in the Ops Room, has, for whatever reason, not got her chaff up yet.
Twenty miles away, things were moving to a tragic conclusion in the small destroyer. Problem number one was that she had been transmitting on her SCOT satellite communications system at the critical time when the Etendards' radars were used. This blotted them out in Sheffield.
The second problem was that the significance of the reports from Glasgow was not appreciated. There was some kind of a gap in her Ops Room and no action was taken. It is tempting to conclude that if the Glasgow's warning of the Etendard radar had been accepted in Sheffield’ Ops Room, chaff would have been fired and might have proved effective; or that Sheffield’s own radars might have detected both the Etendards and the incoming missiles.
For whatever reason, at 1403 Sheffield’s chaff was not launched. Up on her bridge, Lieutenant Peter Walpole and Lieutenant Brian Layshon, looking out over the starboard bow, spotted a trail of smoke six feet above the sea, about a mile away and coming straight for the ship. There were only seconds left. One of them grabbed the broadcast microphone and shouted: 'MISSILE ATTACK! HIT THE DECK!'
