Falklands 35 ~ Captain Andy Legg

William and Joan Legg married in 1943 on the Isle of Wight and had their first child in 1946. It was to be almost 10 years later in 1954 that Andrew was born.

Andy was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Hampshire Regiment on 3 October 1976 and served in Northern Ireland and Oman. At the time of the Falklands invasion he was a Captain in B Squadron 22 SAS (6 Troop).

There were many aspects to the Falklands War and some less talked about than others. Operation Plum Duff has been described as the most audacious missions the Regiment ever did. If one watches Bear Grylls one could expect that these crack men who are the elite of the elite in the SAS could do anything, anywhere, but they are still humans and its never quite that simple.

Operation Mikado planned by Brigadier Peter de la Billière was a plan to destroy the  country’s three remaining Exocets, five Etendard strike fighters that carried them  and to kill the pilots in their quarters. The idea was to land approximately 55 SAS soldiers in two Lockheed C-130 Hercules  on the runway at Rio Grande. One of these had destroyed HMS Sheffield. It was thought that if another aircraft Carrier was taken out that Britain would surely lose the War. The C-130 aircraft were to be kept on the tarmac with their engines running ready to pick up the SAS men once their mission was accomplished. If the aircraft did not survive then the troops would tab it to the Chilean border about 50 miles away.

Operation Plum Duff was led by Andy and consisted of eight men from this crack regiment.  Sounds good in theory doesn’t it? The plan was to find out as much as possible about the enemy airbase at Rio Grande on Terra del Fuego as preparation for the main assault.

The crew of the Sea King they travelled in were trained to fly with night vision goggles. They set off from HMS Invincible on the night of 17/18 May in a stripped down helicopter that was to be sunk in deep water once the men were dropped, a one way mission as they would have to get so close to the base.

Winter in the South Atlantic is brutal. It was not going to be that simple however well trained these men were but a series of events led to not only the mission being aborted but the safe return of the men so all was not lost. Andy should be so proud of that.

As it approached the Argentinian coast after four hours, fog reduced flying visibility to less than a mile. On approach just twelve miles from the planned SAS drop-off point, visibility was further reduced and the pilot was forced to land. Andy was convinced they had been spotted by an Argentine patrol and he disagreed with the pilot as to their exact position. The SAS team was dropped off on the south coast of  Bahía Inútil (Useless Bay) the plan to sink the helicopter in deep water went awry and after it crashed on the beach, the crew set fire to the helicopter and detonated explosive charges before leaving the scene.

According to Argentine sources the helicopter was tracked by the radar of the destroyer ARA Bouchard, they were rumbled and the news was fed back to the base at Rio Grande. Lack of intelligence meant that British forces did not have a clear idea of how Rio Grande was defended,  no information on how the base was organized, nor where the Exocets were stored or even where the pilot’s mess was. They also had no guarantee that the missiles were even stored there. Operation Mikado was seen by experienced SAS men to be a suicide mission and impossible to pull off. The Argentines had better radar equipment than was thought.

Dropped 40 miles away from Argentina, in Chile, the men had just 4 days rations. Not fully dry from an earlier parachute drop into the sea, the fog was replaced by sleet that was already bringing a dampness of its own. They had just 3 hours of darkness left to make their way  and the troops were covering less than 1½ miles an hour. Ive tabbed that terrain and unsure of how any of our men managed to tab its uneven unforgiving land at all in the dark. I carried a bottle of water these men carried nearly 80 lbs, including explosives and timers, the standard issue M15 Armalite, and a Browning 9mm pistol.

They had two maps, one was a flimsy sheet which appeared to have been removed from a school atlas of 1930s vintage. The second was the 1943 edition of an Argentinian map stamped ‘Cambridge University Library 1967’. Despite a sick man with a high temperature and lack of intelligence & rations, once they managed to get through to Hereford incredibly they were ordered to continue! By this time Andy and his team had come to the conclusion that Hereford had been always prepared to write them off.

Eventually the mission aborted they were given a rendezvous  and waited in anticipation on May 22 but 3 days later there was still no pick up in sight. On May 26 Andy and another trooper set off for  Porvenir the nearest town, more than 50 miles distant. That evening he was to bump into the SBS men who were supposed to be rescuing his troop. No one to this day knows why there was no attempt actually made to pick those men up.  On May 30, the eight men – now dressed in civilian clothes, and in the strictest secrecy  boarded a light aircraft for Santiago. On June 8, they were ordered to return home. Andy left the Army not long after.

There are many questions being asked of this War some still coming to light. The 30 year rule protects much but as with all things in life the truth will always out, no matter how much people try to suppress it. From what I have read, Andy seems to have suffered ‘Survivor Guilt’ like many men I know from that time. His medals left in the attic collecting dust until they went up for auction this year. We should not assume that makes him any less proud of what he tried to achieve and fate is the only things that decides who lives and who dies………..Andy survived and lives on with his wife and children.

Thank you for your service Sir!

© Jay Morgan Hyrons

NB Each blog text is copyrighted. Each blog is individually researched and written by the author, unless otherwise stated as personal quotes. Every care is taken to ensure that the information in each blog is accurate though occasionally public records are incorrect. If you have any further information or would like to add to this story please contact the author…