Battle of Wireless Ridge

Battle of Wireless Ridge
Part of Falklands War
Date 13 June 1982 – 14 June 1982 Location Wireless Ridge, Falkland Islands Result British victory
Belligerents
Argentina	United Kingdom
Commanders and leaders
Lt.Col. Omar Giménez	Lt. Col. David Chaundler
Strength
500	600
Casualties and losses
25 killed 125 wounded 37 captured	3 killed 11 wounded
Location within Falkland Islands

The Battle of Wireless Ridge was an engagement of the Falklands War which took place on the night from 13 June to 14 June 1982, between British and Argentine forces during the advance towards the Argentine-occupied capital of the Falkland Islands, Port Stanley.

Wireless Ridge was one of seven strategic hills within five miles of Stanley at 51°40′14″S 57°55′55″W / 51.67056°S 57.93194°W / -51.67056; -57.93194 (Wireless Ridge)Coordinates: 51°40′14″S 57°55′55″W / 51.67056°S 57.93194°W / -51.67056; -57.93194 (Wireless Ridge) that had to be taken in order for the Island's capital to be approached. The attack was successful, and the entire Argentine force on the Islands surrendered later that day.

The British force consisted of 2nd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment (2 Para), a troop of the Blues & Royals, with two FV101 Scorpion and two FV107 Scimitar light tanks, as well as artillery support from two batteries of 29 Commando Regiment Royal Artillery and naval gunfire support provided by HMS Ambuscade's 4.5-in gun. The Argentine force consisted of the 7th Infantry Regiment and detachments from other units. The first Argentine unit to arrive in the sector was that commanded by José Rodolfo Banetta that took up residence inside the Moody Brook Barracks,^[1] but this unit had to evacuate the area on 11 June when British fire struck the building, killing three conscripts and wounding the Argentine major. At first, the 7th Regiment on Wireless Ridge was relatively comfortable, shooting sheep and roasting them on an old bed frame the soldiers had found nearby.^[2] Private Guillermo Vélez maintains that he personally shot and killed 50 sheep during his time on Wireless Ridge.^[3]

Background

After heavy losses during the Battle of Goose Green, including their commander, Lieutenant Colonel 'H' Jones, command of 2 Para passed to Lieutenant-Colonel David Chaundler, who was in England at the time of the battle. Chaundler flew to Ascension Island on a Vickers VC10 and then to the Falklands on a C-130 Hercules that was dropping supplies by parachute. Chaundler jumped into the sea, where he was picked up by helicopter and eventually delivered to HMS Hermes for a briefing with Admiral Sandy Woodward and then to Major General Jeremy Moore's headquarters.

Four days after Goose Green, Chaundler joined 2 Para. After debriefing the battalion's officers about Goose Green and the events following, he vowed that the unit would never again go into action without fire support.

From Fitzroy, 2 Para were moved by helicopter to Bluff Cove Peak where they were held in reserve. The first line of hills: Two Sisters, Mount Longdon and Mount Harriet, were taken. Three other hills were then slated to be captured: Mount Tumbledown by the Scots Guards, Mount William by the Ghurkhas and Wireless Ridge by 2 Para. The final phase of 3 Commando Brigade's campaign, the battle for Stanley, would follow the capture of these hills.

On the morning of 13 June, it became clear that the attacks on Tumbledown had been successful, so 2 Para marched around the back of Mount Longdon to take up their positions for the assault on Wireless Ridge. As the action was expected to be concluded quickly, they took only their weapons and as much ammunition as possible, leaving most other gear behind in the camp. On Bluff Cove Peak, the Battalion's mortars and heavy machine guns were attacked by Argentine A-4 Skyhawks, which delayed their planned move forward, although they suffered no casualties.

Initial assault

Final Actions, 13 to 14 June 1982

In the closing hours of the 13 June, D Company (Coy) began the attack sequence, advancing upon 'Rough Diamond' hill north-west of Mount Longdon. It had been hit by an intense barrage from British guns, from land and sea.

In the preceding 12 to 14 hours, British artillery had fired 6,000 rounds with their 105 mm pieces, and as they began their push, they were further backed by naval fire and the 76 and 30 mm guns mounted on the light tanks. The approximately 80 casualties sustained by 2 Para two weeks earlier at the Battle of Goose Green (including the loss of their commanding officer), had induced them not to take any unnecessary chances the second time around. The Argentine commanding officer, Lt.Col. Omar Giménez, says that three or four times he was nearly killed by a direct hit during the softening-up bombardment.^[4]

When D Coy reached the hill, they found that the Argentine compañía C of the 7th Infantry Regiment had withdrawn due to the heavy bombardment. As Major Philip Neame's D Coy started to consolidate their position, the Argentine 7th Regiment launched a series of heavy recoilless rifle, rocket and mortar attacks on Mount Longdon, causing casualties to the 3rd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment (3 Para).^[5]

With this massive fire support, A and B Coys were convinced the enemy on the 'Apple Pie' feature had been defeated, and began to advance confidently, but they met fierce resistance when they left their trenches. They came under heavy machine-gun fire; massive retaliation was initiated by the British machine-gunners and the guns of the Blues and Royals light tanks.

One Mount Longdon survivor from 3 Para recalled the British attack which was initially repulsed by the Argentines:

They tried going over the top first, but the incoming fire was too heavy so they went back behind the peat and waited for more artillery to soften them up.^[6]

The Argentine defenders there eventually withdrew in the face of such withering fire and A and B Coys took their objective. By this stage of the battle, there were not many experienced Argentine officers left. The Forward Artillery Observation Officer (Major Guillermo Nani), the Operations Officer (Captain Carlos Ferreyra) and the compañía A and C commanders (Captains Jorge Calvo and Hugo García) and at least three senior platoon commanders (First Lieutenants Antonio Estrada, Jorge Guidobono and Ramon Galíndez-Matienzo), were wounded. C Coy then moved down from their northern start line to advance to a position east of Wireless Ridge where they found a platoon position to be unoccupied.

By about 4.30am, Lieutenant-Colonel Gimenez knew that the 7th Infantry Regiment had been decisively defeated; Communications are lost, my whole regiment is finished,^[7] but other attached units continued to fight.

Final assault

D Coy then began the final assault from the western end of Wireless Ridge, under the cover of heavy fire from HMS Ambuscade's 4.5 inch gun, tanks, twelve 105 mm artillery pieces, several mortars and anti-tank rockets. Earlier Argentine GHQ had sent the dismounted 10th Panhard AML squadron to make a reconnaissance foray into the western rocks of Wireless Ridge.

Captain Rodrigo Soloaga was particularly effective in persuading his men to engage the British light tanks, Milan Platoon and the Machinegun Platoon on 'Apple Pie' while the 7th Regiment's HQ sorted themselves out. In two hours the cavalry unit suffered five dead and about 50 wounded.

Major Neame's D Coy took the first half of the objective after a hard fight with Argentine paratroopers from Second Lieutenant Gustavo Alberto Aimara platoon of the 2nd Airborne Infantry Regiment, with ex-Para Tony Banks later writing about the engagement:

The word was given to advance and we scrambled through peat bogs and what we later learned was a minefield. We reached the first enemy trenches, but there was nobody there. They’d bolted. But as we started out along the ridge, a scene from Star Wars erupted with tracer rounds flying everywhere. We were up against well armed, well disciplined and highly motivated enemy soldiers in good positions.^[8]

Neame's company suffered two killed (Privates David Parr and Francis Slough) before being able to overrun Aimara's men, but then came under fierce attack from Major Guillermo Berazay's compañía A of the 3rd Regiment which had tried to move forward to Mount Longdon during the fighting two nights earlier but had only reached Moody Brook valley. With Lieutenant José Dobroevic's 81mm Mortar Platoon providing fire support, the company, in the form of the platoons of Sub-Lieutenant Carlos Javier Aristegui and 2nd Lieutenant Víctor Rodriguez-Pérez advanced to contact. Private Patricio Pérez, who had just left school, recalled the unnerving experience of 66 mm rockets coming straight at them like undulating fireballs.^[9] He believed he shot a British Paratrooper, possibly 12 Platoon's commander, and became enraged when he heard that his friend, Private Horacio Benítez from his platoon, had been shot.^[10]

The platoon of 2nd Lieutenant Rodriguez-Pérez in fact closed with the British 12 Platoon, under the command of Lieutenant Jonathan Page (following the death of Lieutenant Barry at Goose Green). The fight surged back and forth. Lieutenant Page managed to hold the line, but only just.

Major-General John Dutton Frost of the British Army describes the resulting attack on 12 Platoon:

For two very long hours the company remained under pressure. Small-arms fire mingled with all types of HE [high explosive rifle-grenades] fell in and around 12 Platoon's position as the men crouched in the abandoned enemy sangars [a type of fortification] and in shell holes.^[11]

According to Major Neame:

Then from the east we got this counterattack. Jon Page, whose platoon I had left up that end did a really bloody good job. He managed to get hold of our artillery by flicking his radio onto their net, as we were still without our FOO. That broke up their attack.^[12]

Major Neame's officers and NCOs rallied the men to capture the final part of their objective and in the face of heavy fire, the Argentines having run out of ammunition, broke and retreated, covered by supporting machine gun fire, controlled by Lieutenant Horacio Alejandro Mones-Ruiz of Berazay's compañía. Privates Esteban Tríes and Lupin Serrezuela of Rodriguez-Pérez's platoon, volunteered to stay behind and rescue their wounded platoon sergeant, Manuel Villegas, laboriously carrying him to Port Stanley.^[13]

Private Michael Savage and other survivors from Compañía C were the first 7th Regiment troops to reach the relative safety of Port Stanley, only to be greeted with shock and disdain, he recalls, by immaculately dressed staff officers:

They had been sleeping in houses, in warm beds. They had shiny shoes, pristine ironed uniforms and waxed moustaches. They even had heating in their cars. I was so furious with them.^[14]

The battle was not over yet. One of the Argentine Army staff officers that Private Savage talks about, the 10th Brigade Operations Officer (Lieutenant-Colonel Eugenio Dalton), during the pre-dawn darkness of 14 June, was seen driving around in a jeep marshalling tired, panicky and dazed soldiers from various units into a company and led them into Stanley's western sector under heavy fire.^[15] Some 200 Wireless Ridge survivors had been rallied by Dalton to form, under heavy gunfire, a last-ditch defensive line in front of the now silenced guns of the 4th Airborne Artillery Group near the racecourse. Near the church in Stanley, intent on helping Berazay, Major Carrizo-Salvadores, Second-in-command of the 7th Regiment, helped by the chaplain Father José Fernández,^[16] mustered about 50 Wireless Ridge survivors and led them on a bayonet charge, with the soldiers chanting their famous 'Malvinas March', but were stopped by heavy artillery and machine-gun fire.^[17] The Paras were momentarily alarmed and watched surprised, with Major Philip Neame describing it as "quite a sporting effort, but one without a sporting chance".^[18] Major Neame later gave more details:

Then as daylight began we got another counter-attack, this time from the Moody brook side onto Sean Webster's platoon. I thought 'bloody hell, what's going on around here?' I wondered what we had got into and thought that this was most unlike the Argentinians. For a while they were quite persistent.^[19]

The 2 Para had suffered three dead and 11 wounded. The Argentines suffered approximately 25 dead and about 125 wounded, about 50 were taken prisoner. In the final stages of the battle, Brigadier-General Jofre had been offered the use of Skyhawks to bomb Wireless Ridge with napalm but declined in the belief that the British response would be commensurate.^[20][21]

Aftermath

Along with other key battles in the latter part of British activity under Operation Corporate, such as the Battle of Mount Tumbledown, the success at Wireless Ridge constituted one of the last major battles of the war before the subsequent surrender of Argentina. In the wake of the battle, British forces witnessed the Argentine soldiers pull back toward Stanley, before continuing to turn firepower onto them as they retreated, with one officer remarking “It was a most pathetic sight, and one which I never wish to see again.”^[22]

Not wanting to replicate the heavy losses of Goose Green, the British had focussed a heavy artillery bombardment onto the opposing troops before undertaking the main assault, an action that would strongly affect the morale of the Argentine soldiers. The barrage lowered their will to fight significantly, spreading a sense of hopelessness through the forces as they retreated.^[23]

With the opposing forces in retreat, and the successful capture of several key positions, including Wireless Ridge and Mount Tumbledown, the British obtained permission to advance on Stanley, with 2 Para leading the first troops into the town since Argentinian forces had first occupied the territory at the beginning of the war in April 1982.^[24] After its’ recapture, the Argentine surrender came into effect from 14 June.^[22]

For the bravery shown at Wireless Ridge, 2 Para was awarded three Military Crosses, one Military Medal and one Distinguished Conduct Medal. 29 Commando was awarded one Military Cross.

See also

• Falklands War

References

External links

• Anglo-Argentine Alan Craig tells of fight for Wireless Ridge
• recollections of Anglo-Argentine conscript Michael Savage of the 7th Infantry Regiment's C Company