BENSON Harry. Scram! The gripping first-hand account of the helicopter war in the Falklands. Preface Publishing 2012. 390 pages, 46 photographs, 6 maps. ISBN 978 1 8480 9362 1. Price 18.99.
Former Naval Aviator LIEUTENANT Harry BENSON RN and Falklands war veteran was reunited with Commander Ric FOX RN a fellow Falklands veteran at RNAS Yeovilton to present him with his recently released book Scram! The book is an acclaimed account about the experiences of fellow “Junglie” aircrew who risked their lives during this brief but ferocious war.
Speaking of his experiences, Harry explained,
“When the conflict started in 1982 I was a 21 year-old Royal Navy commando helicopter pilot, fresh out of training and one of the youngest helicopter pilots to serve in the Falklands. These pilots nicknamed ‘Junglies’ because of their piloting skills and can-do approach in the Jungles of Borneo flew most of the land-based missions in the Falklands in their SEA KING and WESSEX helicopters”.
Much of what happened in the war – the politics, task force ships, SEA HARRIERs, landings, Paras and Marines – is well-known and documented. But almost nothing is known of the young commando helicopter pilots and aircrewmen who made it all happen on land and sea.”
Of his experience during the Falklands conflict, Ric FOX, explained,
“Harry’s book is an excellent collection of factual accounts from my fellow Junglies who took part in the Falklands war. Whilst 30 years ago have now passed my memories and imagines from the Falklands war are still sharp and this book is a cracking read that will no doubt stir emotions for many as it has for me. It is absolutely right that the exploits of the Fleet Air Arm crews and engineers, most of whom will say they were only doing their job, are now recounted. It shows that the training is right and also a stark reminder of the flexibility provided and ability to apply influence from the sea thousands of miles from home in hostile sea, land and weather conditions under a determined enemy threat”.
During Harry’s visit to Yeovilton, COMMANDER Jim NEWTON RN Commanding officer 845 NAS took time out to discuss his experiences in Afghanistan and to show him around one of his SEA KING helicopters. Jim is also a best selling author whose book Armed Action about his tank busting experiences in Iraq was critically acclaimed added, “The whole ‘Junglie’ community ethos is based on the experiences of our colleagues who risked their lives to protect our nations interests over many years, the ferocious conflict in 1982 is brilliantly told by Harry and clearly demonstrates that the exploits of the Fleet Air Arm and in particular the ‘Junglie’ force were in the finest traditions of the service and without doubt continue to be exhibited to the present day”.
Harry interviewed forty of his former colleagues for the book creating a tale of skill, initiative, resourcefulness, humour, luck and adventure. This is a fast-paced, meticulously researched and compelling account written by someone who was there, in the cockpit of a WESSEX helicopter.
None of these pilots has spoken before about:
• The two helicopter crashes and eventual rescue following a failed SAS mission high up on an inhospitable glacier in South Georgia.
• The harrowing story of the EXOCET strike that sunk the Atlantic Conveyor.
• The daring missile raid on the Argentine high command in Port Stanley.
• The constant mortar fire faced while supporting troops and evacuating casualties.
• The hair-raising head-on attacks by Argentine jets on British helicopters.
• The extraordinary courage shown during the evacuation of the bombed landing ship Sir Galahad.
The word ‘Scram’ was used by Falklands helicopter pilots to warn other Junglies to go to ground or risk being shot down as Argentinean jets blasted through ‘bomb alley’.
Following two tours as a Royal Navy pilot, Harry moved to Asia in 1988 with his wife Kate to work in finance. He returned to the UK in 1997, gained a first class degree in Psychology from Bristol University and started what has become Britain’s most successful local relationships project.
Daily Mail review of SCRAM by Harry Benson, a Junglie pilot with 845 in the Falklands.
Harry Benson was just 21 years old, ‘a baby pilot, fresh out of training’ when his own war erupted. It was 11 June, 1982, and out in the Falklands the fight to take back the islands from the Argentine aggressors was reaching its climax.
Four days earlier, the landing ships Sir Tristram and Sir Galahad had been attacked and set on fire. A cache of fuel had ignited and a ball of flame had rolled through the tank deck of the Sir Galahad. Helicopter pilots were shuttling out men in shock with blackened, hairless faces. Inside, their cabins reeked with the stench of burning flesh.
Shortly after breakfast, in the freezing darkness before dawn on his first day, Harry was called to the hangar. He was stopped in his tracks by the thunderous noise around him: the seven tons of roaring machinery above his head, the whirling blades of the helicopter, the deep growl of the gear-boxes, the high-pitched whine of the engines, the hot blast of the exhausts which burnt you if you didn’t duck in time.
Swinging his legs into the cockpit and taking care not to knock the flying controls, he strapped into the Wessex helicopter for his first flight, a training sortie. It was, as he would observe two days later, by then an old hand, ‘a beautiful day to be at war’.
For now, as they headed round the coast, he was sitting in the back, recalling the words of his training officer — ‘You’re a man, so get a grip, live with the fear and show some gumption’. The next thing he knew, a red warning light flashed up.
It meant SCRAM — fighter alert, hit the ground as fast as you can — and with that the Wessex rolled into a tight turn and took cover in a low valley. Harry followed the others as they jumped out and ran for cover. He lay in the grass with his pistol cocked, ready to fire. ‘This was good stuff,’ writes the young Harry.
Even I can imagine some of his excitement. My only helicopter flight, over Surrey and Sussex, was sheer exhilaration from start to finish. But this was the real deal. Harry’s training had been gruelling enough, including being rolled upside down in a helicopter under water and having to find a way to escape.
But in the Falklands war, he learned on the job. Helicopters evaded fighter jets by seeking cover in folds in the ground or by flying straight at the enemy jets, forcing them to tighten their turn and overshoot. And there were deck landings to conquer. Wessex helicopters, being a bit lopsided, tended to bounce from one wheel to the other: this tap dancing, if not checked, could make the helicopter topple over.
This extraordinary war, conducted 8,000 miles away, was much fiercer and more evenly fought than people at home were allowed to know at the time. Harry Benson fumed at missing so much of the action – the sinking of the Belgrano and the Atlantic Conveyor, and the victory at Goose Green all took place before he was deployed – but he was still to see plenty of combat.
For a machine which was activated by plugging a battery into a ground-supply socket and pressing the start button, the Wessex was a famously agile workhorse, equipped with underwater sonar and capable of torpedoing ships and submarines.
When Lieutenant Colonel Mike Rose of the SAS famously asked if an air-to-surface missile could be parked on the desk of his adversary General Menendez, two miles away in Port Stanley, it was a Wessex he turned to – although on this occasion Who Dares didn’t quite win. The missile missed the enemy headquarters by a yard and demolished the roof of the nearby police station.
By the time Harry arrived, the ground war was reaching its climax and the priority was to supply the front lines. All day, as every day, helicopters moved men and supplies around the bleak grasslands and hills of the islands, rarely flying more than 30 feet above the ground.
Their worst enemy, dreaded by all the pilots, were the little Argentine Pucaras, twin turboprops, slow enough not to overshoot like the fast jets and able to pick off any passing helicopter.
By mid-June, the Falklands autumn was already giving way to hail, snow showers and dense fog. In this mostly featureless terrain, visibility, even with night-vision goggles, was hazardous. An hour after Harry had been admiring the blue skies over San Carlos Bay, a sudden snow-storm struck, burying his port engine in a deluge of snow. He just managed to make a landing.
When he was still in his first week in the Falklands, Harry was flying rescue missions right up to the front line battle area to ferry back the wounded from both sides. On a typical day, while the ground erupted around him, Harry’s Wessex was balanced on one wheel, under artillery fire, with Argentine soldiers a few hundred yards away. When a doctor finally signalled they could take off to hospital, Harry notes laconically that he didn’t wait for another invitation.
On another sortie they followed instructions to set down in front of Mount Tumbledown. From their incredibly exposed position on the ground – ‘little more than a minute but it seemed like an eternity’ – they could clearly see the heads of enemy soldiers moving around in their trenches. Puffs of smoke told them they were being fired upon. Only when they reached the debriefing tent were they told there had been an operational error: they had been sitting in full view of the Argentine front line.
It was a sign of how hard fought this was was that by 13 June, with British forces apparently poised for their final strike, servicemen on the ground still did not believe that victory at Port Stanley was a foregone conclusion. Not until Argentine troops melted away out of range of the advancing (and disappointed) Gurkhas could victory be assured. The firing had stopped but huge practical hurdles remained. For the helicopter crews, these were their busiest days of the war – 16 hours over two days in the cockpit for Harry. Thousands of British soldiers still lay in the hills around Port Stanley, at risk of exposure were it not for the helicopter crews.
As a young pilot, arriving late in the war, Harry felt cheated not to have seen more action. At home, for most of the rest of us who remember, there was a mingling of pride and relief.
Harry Benson’s book is immensely readable as a lucid, exciting account of the entire Falklands conflict, and valuable too, as written by a combatant, not a historian. With a Falklands commander warning us only this week that Britain without aircraft carriers can never again send a Task Force to the other side of the world, this book reminds us that we may need more Harry Bensons.