Westland Wessex HU.5 & HAS.3 - Operation Paraquet

I'm ending my current helicopter builds with a flurry of Westland Wessex Junglie and Pinger whirly birds. Last month, I posted how the rarity of the Wessex, in scale modelling form, had resulted in a very unsatisfactory build. Then, just a few weeks later, like busses, two turn up together in exactly the configuration I was originally looking for; such better quality ones too! My approach to constructing this pair was exactly the same as with my earlier Junglie and Pinger Sea King duo, but with so many lessons learned from that experience, I think enjoyed these more and must say that the Pledge Floor Gloss worked so much better than Vallejo's gloss varnish!

As it's been a good few weeks since my first Wessex build, here's a reminder of the helicopter's pedigree. It was the Westland Wessex that replaced the Westland Whirlwind, first being used by the Royal Navy, in the form of the anti-submarine Wessex HAS.1, in 1961. The HAS.3 was brought onto service in 1961, with improved avionics and radar equipment; the sound of which gave the anti-submarine force the nickname of Pingers. 

1964, saw the Wessex HAS.1, operating from bases in Sarawak and Sabah, assisting Army and Marine detachments fighting guerrilla forces in Malaysia. Having removed much of the anti-submarine equipment to lighten the aircraft, during the subsequent campaign in Borneo, the Wessex was typically operated as a transport helicopter, capable of ferrying up to 16 troops or a 4,000-pound payload of supplies directly to the front lines. It is from these operations the Commando Helicopter Force gets its nickname of the Junglies and the commando assault variant, the Wessex HU5, was developed.

Italeri, Wessex HAS.3, as Humphrey

Matchbox, Wessex HU.5, as Yankee Alpha

In 1982, around 55 Westland Wessex HU.5 and 2 HAS.3 participated in the Falklands War, and it is 3 Wessex helicopters from this conflict that my scale models have been based on. 

The models and their intended Falklands War identities are:

• Ark Models' Wessex HAS.1 as the HU.5 Yankee Foxtrot flown by Lt Mike Tidd
• Matchbox's Wessex HU.5, as Yankee Alpha flown by Lt Ian Georgeson
• Italeri's Wessex HAS.3, as Humphrey flown by Lt Cdr Ian Stanley

These 3 helicopters were key players in the opening days of Operation Paraquet, the code name for the attempt to recover South Georgia from Argentine military control using SAS elite troops, one of the first British acts of the War.

I recount below, much of their story discovered in the pages of Harry Benson's excellent book Scram! This is thrilling first-hand account of what it was like to be a helicopter pilot during Falklands War; from dodging Pucara attack aircraft, to landing special forces behind enemy lines, as told from the seat of his Westland Wessex. 

Operation Paraquet was an SAS planned mission to take control of South Georgia by the most unlikely and unexpected route. Inserted by two Royal Navy commando Wessex helicopters, of 845 Squadron, onto the Fortuna Glacier, the largest tidewater glacier on South Georgia, the plan was for these troops to march across the mountains and take the unknown Argentine force at the Leith whaling station by surprise.

Against the strong advice of a scientist, from the British Antarctic Survey team, who had only recently been extracted from the island himself, 22 mountain troops of D Squadron SAS were landed on the glacier. Overnight, on 21/22 April 1982, and as the Antarctic expert warned, the weather was to "defy human reason". A violent storm, the wind gusting to 100 knots and producing squalls of driving snow, stopped the SAS in their tracks. With frostbite and exposure a real concern, the SAS troop commander, Captain John Hamilton, radioed for the helicopters to return and rescue them.

Lieutenant Commander Ian Stanley in Humphrey, the single engined Wessex 3, but the only Wessex equipped with radar, acted as pathfinder for the 2, radar-less twin-engine, troop-carrying, Wessex 5s. Stanley guided Lieutenant Mike Tidd in Yankee Foxtrot and Lieutenant Ian Georgeson, flying the second Wessex 5, Yankee Alpha, in a close formation up to the top of the glacier.

Although dressed in white Arctic clothing, after exposure to a night of sub-zero temperatures, gale force winds and driving snow, the SAS troops were already in varying stages of hypothermia. Yankee Foxtrot, with Tidd at the controls and with half the frozen soldiers safely loaded, was the first to pull up into the icy but clear sky, when, without warning, it was enveloped in a tidal wave of a snow shower. In an attempt to return to the landing zone, the tail and left wheel of the Wessex hit the snow at about thirty knots, bringing the aircraft crashing down on its left side and sliding it onwards for fifty yards. The left side of the cockpit filled up with debris and snow as the windows imploded. Tidd slid open the cockpit window and clambered up onto the side of the aircraft to help open the rear cabin door.

Tidd slid open the flimsy cockpit window and clambered up onto the side of the aircraft

The snow shower passed as suddenly as it had appeared and visibility improved once more. Out on the snow, the soldiers were divided between the two remaining helicopters. With ten people now crammed into the Wessex 3 and fourteen in the Wessex 5, the depleted formation rose to the hover once again. As Stanley navigated over the ridge of the glacier with the use of Humphrey's Wessex 3 radar, Georgeson in Yankee Alpha followed a few rotor lengths behind. Then, another ferocious snowstorm hit the formation just at the wrong moment, barely ten seconds after launch. As Humphrey dropped down over the ridge-line of the steeply descending glacier, Georgeson lost sight of it in the now near blizzard conditions. Yankee Alpha's starboard wheel caught in a hidden and small ice crevasse and the aircraft toppled over onto its side. While it was amazing that no one was severely injured, Yankee Alpha was not so lucky, the second and last troop carrying Wessex was out of action.

Out on the snow, the soldiers were divided between the two remaining helicopters

With no radio contact, an overloaded helicopter and appalling weather conditions, there was nothing Stanley could do but to return to HMS Antrim, the County-class destroyer from which they had launched two hours earlier. After Humphrey received a thorough safety check by the engineers, Stanley decided to have another go at rescuing the survivors. As if taking to the air in arctic conditions which would ground any peace time flight, with only one engine to support them, was not bad enough, Stanley also had the added problem of how to fit fourteen large passengers into Humphrey's tiny cabin, already full of radar equipment! During the earlier rescue flight, Humphrey's rear cabin had been cramped with just two crew and six passengers and would now have to find room for an additional eight! Even if they could somehow cram everyone in, the Wessex would be dangerously overloaded way beyond the design limits of the rotor gearbox and the capacity of the single engine. 

Stanley and Humphrey have another go at rescuing the survivors

Stanley radioed ahead for the ship to get onto a heading that gave maximum wind, and thus maximum lift, over the deck. His final approach was judged to perfection. The helicopter descended straight towards the deck unable to maintain the usual careful hover due to its excessive weight. The air speed indicator showed around sixty knots at the moment they touched down. A controlled crash would have been good enough. Instead it was as close to as smooth a landing as you could get! Against the odds, Humphrey had brought all helicopter crews and SAS troops safely home.

Ending the day with one failed mission by the SAS and two crashed helicopters, this near disaster on Fortuna Glacier was a worrying start to Britain’s campaign to reclaim South Georgia and the Falkland Islands. But for the astonishing skill of Lt Cdr Ian Stanley and his Wessex 3 crew, it could have been so much worse. 

Julian Thompson, Commander 3rd Commando Brigade in 1982, has an insightful and somewhat amusing thought in his forward to Scram! ... What the SAS thought they were doing up there is another matter, and my opinions on the matter are best left unsaid! 

Imperial War Museum’s copy of an original photo taken from Humphrey

On 25th April, with a sense of reality restored, a more traditional helicopter assault by Special Forces and Royal Marines, with two Royal Navy vessels (Antrim and Plymouth) conducting a naval bombardment, brought a successful conclusion to Operation Paraquet with the surrender of the island's two Argentine garrisons. And this was just the start .... !

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The Models

 Brand:      Italeri

 Title:        Wessex HAS.3
 Number:  1258
 Scale:       1:72
 Released: 2007 | Rebox (Updated/New parts)

 Brand:      Matchbox

 Title:        Westland Wessex HU.5/HAS.31
 Number:   PK-133
 Scale:       1:72
 Released: 1987 | Initial release - new tool

  Brand: Ark Models

 Title: Westland Wessex HAS Mk.1/31 Anti-submarine helicopter

 Number: 72032
 Scale:      1:72
 Released:2009 (Originally 1963 Frog)

Westland Wessex Mk1/31 anti-submarine helicopter

When I accepted the challenge to add helicopters to my Scale Modelling Projects, I had assumed I'd build a couple and then return to my favoured winged aircraft. It is therefore, a great surprise to me for this build to be my 6th helicopter and to have a further 4 in progress! 

Just as the First World War opened the military mind to the use of air power, the post war conflicts in Malaya, Borneo, Korea and Vietnam did the same for helicopters. If you've been following my builds, you'll have accompanied me through these early days of helicopter flight. My scale model builds of the Sycamore, Whirlwind, Sioux and Hueys have covered the years 1950-1975, and while my next model, the Westland Wessex, enters its finest hour in the early 1980s, it actually first saw service, replacing the Westland Whirlwind, in 1960.

The conflict of the 1980s, where helicopters proved undeniably critical to military success, was the 1982 Falklands War. When Argentina invaded the disputed and distant British territory in the South Atlantic - unknown by many at home at the time as the Falklands Islands and South Georgia - Britain was to undertake probably last and most audacious overseas military engagement of modern times. It was a conflict in which equally matched forces were to face each other in a fight for all out victory, the like of which we have not seen since.

The Wessex helicopters which participated in the Falklands War, were the improved variant of the Wessex Mk3/HAS3, which succeeded the 1960s Mk1 in the anti-submarine role, and the 'commando assault' variant, the Wessex Mk5/HU5, which was developed as a battlefield transportation helicopter. 2 Wessex Mk3s and 55 Mk5s were shipped out to the Falklands, which together with even newer Sea King, which I will cover in a later build, performed the vital role of moving troops and supplies between ships and across a battlefield unsuitable for vehicles.

Wessex Mk1/3/5? In commando assault Falklands War colours of 848 RNAS

There is currently no quality scale model company producing the Wessex as a 1/72 kit and so finding just one, if not the three that I have in mind for my Falklands War project, has been challenging to say the least! The first kit I was able to lay my hands on, at a sensible price, was a scale model of the original Mk1. While this variant had been replaced by the Mk3 some years before the Falklands War, it was visually similar to both the Mk3 and Mk5 with the exception of just two fundamental details: it lacked the Mk3’s radar dome and had a second exhaust jet to the Mk5’s single one. 

The model kit itself, although released in 2009 by the Russian manufacturer Ark Models, looks very dated, which is not surprising when one learns that it is basically Frog's 1963 kit re-released in Novo's 1970s box! Although production of most of Frog's kits passed to the Soviet Union manufacturer Novo in the 1970s, neither they nor Ark Models, the new owners, appear to have made any effort to improve the kit, and goodness, with the age of the tooling, it needs improving! 

One of the smallest kits I have constructed to date

With only around 21 individual pieces, this is one of the smaller kits I have constructed to date. The poor quality in moulding and fit required copious amounts of plastic filler, which at least gave me opportunity to practice this new modelling technique. While the model came with 2 figures, which made a nice change, the cockpit detail was woeful when compared to the real life helicopter and even some models produced in the larger scale. So I improvised adding scratch built control panels and a fire extinguisher. The after view look better in the 'flesh' than in the photos!

Before & after adding scratch built cabin 'furniture'

Once completed, I had to make the decision on colour scheme: blue/grey for the anti-submarine Mk3, or green for the commando assault Mk5. The finished build, irrespective of its Mk1 origins, was far too poor to have as a display model and after coincidentally locating both a Mk3 and Mk5 kit, the decision was easy; it would play a central role in a diorama depicting Royal Navy 845 Squadron commando Wessex helicopters in one of the key missions of the War. 

and ... my Wessex Mk1 more at home over the Borneo Jungle 1964!

More from the Falklands War next week.

Brand: Ark Models
Title: Westland Wessex HAS Mk.1/31 Anti-submarine helicopter
Number: 72032
Scale: 1:72
Released: 2009 (Originally 1963 Frog)