Page 108 - Demo

108The campaign was not without losses. This was XZ989 after it hadsuffered a loss of power on approach to the San Carlos strip.However, what hit us most frequently was small arms fire and in thelater stages of the campaign, when most missions took us close toStanley, of every four aircraft launched one would return with holes in it.Apart from one aircraft which had a massive fuel leak and just failed tomake it back to the carrier, all the others returned safely. This was veryencouraging, as it had been thought that the aircraft might be somewhatvulnerable to battle damage. Not only did this prove to be incorrect but,once back on board, my engineers were able to effect some ingeniousrepairs and no aircraft spent longer than 48 hours in the hangar before itwas flying again.As a result of our losses, which by 8 June had totalled four (the fourthbeing a crash landing at the FOB) replacements were flown fromAscension to the Task Force using in-flight refuelling; long andapprehensive flights indeed for pilots who, without diversions en route,had 8%u00bd hours to prepare for their first ever deck landing.Following the ceasefire, a full site was built ashore at Port Stanleyand on 4 July the GR3 Detachment went ashore, armed with Sidewindersin the air defence role. Despite atrocious conditions early on, thisdetachment remained at RAF Stanley until May 1985, when the purposebuilt airfield at Mount Pleasant was opened. At that stage, the task of theHarriers was complete and their involvement in the Falklands was ended.That has been a much abbreviated version of a presentation I gavefrequently in the year or so immediately after the end of the FalklandsWar. I used also to make the point that we had clearly sent the wrongsignals to Buenos Aires in the lead up to their invasion and that a similar