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69was a great success and brought directness and clarity to a potentiallyconfused picture. I could not have been better served than I was by Flt LtAndrew Joy who served to oil the wheels of command and control inevery way. It is perhaps unsurprising that less direct relationships did notalways work as smoothly. MOD and Strike Command were inevitablyremote and, as viewed from the coal face, sometimes out of touch withreality. For example, their insistence on the station playing a part in anACTIVE EDGE generation exercise when it was generating aircraft forreal did not greatly impress management or workers. Later, after thecessation of hostilities, a three-ring circus %u2018arranged%u2019 by MOD, to allow aMinister %u2018to meet the troops%u2019, served only to prepare me for a laterappointment as DPR(RAF). It did little to enhance my opinion ofpoliticians!Perhaps inevitably, the noses most put out of joint by the hybrid C2arrangements of Operation CORPORATE were those of HQ 38 Group.Regular one-way communication with %u2018Indignant of Upavon%u2019 was afeature of the time. It is perhaps as well that lessons could be learnt inview of the operating posture of today%u2019s commands and groups in timeof live operations. Perhaps the most significant feature of all, in terms ofC2 %u2013 more accurately C3 %u2013 was the roll out and innovative us of ASMA,the Air Staff Management Aid. ASMA provided secure and timelycommunications at a time when even FLASH signals were arriving at thepace of second class mail. It was to the Royal Air Force of 1982 whatemail and mobile telephones are to most of us today.Only 48 hours after the Argentine invasion of the Falklands, we hadbegun, off our own bat, the generation of the Puma fleet against thelikelihood that No 33 Sqn would be called to join the Task Force. That,and the initially unauthorised modification of aircraft to deck-capablestandard, saw No 33 Sqn well placed to respond when the call to preparecame on 14 April. By the 25th, the day on which OC 18 Sqn embarkedhis aircraft in Atlantic Conveyor, the Pumas were in the thick of anexercise in Sennybridge with 5 (Infantry) Brigade, during which theyoperated from a %u2018flight deck%u2019 hastily painted on the parade square. Aweek later, they returned with their tails up, having done well in thework up.On 1 May, as bombs fell on Stanley Airport, came an astonishingvolte-face. The Pumas were not to go south but the Wessex-equipped No72 Sqn, resident in Ireland and without a deployment role, was to go