Operation "Uka-Uka'
(Part 1)by Guillermo Poggio
How an improvised coastal battery almost sank a British destroyer in the Malvinas
The following is an excerpt from the Bulletin of the Argentine Naval Naval Center. Written by Rear Admiral (R) Julio M. Pérez, it was published in April 2008 and Naval Power translated and adapted for readers.
After my graduation as a midshipman in the 'Promotion of 85', I studied Electronic Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Buenos Aires. Later, in 1967 and 68, he was assigned to graduate in Missile Guidance and Guidance at the "Scuola d'Ingegneria Aerospaziale" of the University of Rome (Italy). At the beginning of 1969 I was appointed again by the Navy to work at the Scientific and Technical Research Institute of the Armed Forces (CITEFA), working on missile development, where I had the opportunity to do several projects.
Later, he was assigned to the Libertad building (High Command of the Navy), where, joining the Special Study Commission, headed by Navy Captain Juan Jiménez Baliani, he developed in 1975, among other projects, the studies carried out up to the installation on the Fletcher class destroyers the MM-38 Exocet missiles that we had at that time (actually the Alte Pérez used the term 'Fletcher' to designate the different classes of destroyers, but which share great similarities, such as Gearing and M Allen Summer).
In 1976 I was staying in Puerto Belgrano, to finish, having already completed the previous studies, the installation of the MM-38 Exocet on the destroyers Py, Bouchard and Seguà and then on the Piedrabuena, a task that was carried out with great success.
In 1981, the Navy assigned me to join a committee in France, where I oversaw the approval of the AM-39 for the Super Etendard aircraft, as well as a new Exocet missile test control bench, much more advanced than the installed one. in the Central Missile Workshop of Puerto Belgrano, and which allowed us to verify the entire Exocet family (MM-38, AM-39 and MM-40) available in the Navy.
Preparation before and during the South Atlantic conflict
In February 1982, at the time of the recovery of the islands, a new control bank was installed in the Central Missile Workshop in Puerto Belgrano (it returned to Buenos Aires in mid-March). Despite there being many colleagues exercising command functions in Operation Rosario, it was only on April 2 that I had information about the landing through radio news.At the end of April 82, after a failure occurred in the Central Missile Workshop bench, I traveled to Puerto Belgrano and managed to resolve the problem through the efforts of an excellent team of technicians working there. At that time, the corvette ARA Guerrico, led by my friend, the then Lieutenant Commander Luis Carlos Alfonso, was docking at the base with one of the Exocet containers damaged during the intense fighting in Grytviken.
The container had been hit with a bullet that passed through the outer shell and hit the joint between the two missile boosters. Another bullet hit the "sleeve" of the cables that send the ship the information obtained by the missile, causing the entry of sea water, the insulation with the consequent loss of around 15 power cables that were connected there. Fortunately, in less than a week the Exocet could be resolved and the corvette system was operational again.
At that time the Argentine Air Force had received the R-550 Magic missiles. At that time we had not unpacked the Magic test bed (the Super Etendard acquisition program) and like the contract, it would be carried out with the participation of French experts in its application. Taking into account the emergency situation, we were able to put them into operation only with the support of the personnel of the Missile Technical Office.
In mid-May, I received a call from Vice Admiral Walter Allara, then commander of the squadron, who asked me about the possibility of removing one of the Exocet missile systems from one of the ships in our fleet to be transported to the Malvinas Islands and act as a coastal battery. The idea was to respond to the incessant fire of the British navy that attacked Argentine positions on the islands, which could not respond with adequate weapons on land (and especially by the incessant demands of Rear Admiral Edgardo Otero, the highest naval authority in the Malvinas, since "famous" in the orders sent).
My response to the request was that the task would take about 45 days and it was also believed that the system would be cumbersome for transportation. To get an idea of the magnitude of the installation of the mission system on the spacecraft it includes approximately seven racks (like cabinets) with a height of 1.8 meters each, 50 cm deep and 80 inches wide approximately, not to mention hoses, cables (15 to 30 individual cables).
Admiral Allara said he couldn't wait that long, so I told him to try to do something quicker and in case of emergency, but he couldn't guarantee it would work. To this end, the head of the Puerto Belgrano Arsenal, sea captain Julio Degrange y la Guerra, took charge of coordinating the work, being informed of the progress of the project.
I met with the young arsenal technicians Antonio Shugt and José Luis Torelli, who had worked with me in the bank control center and missile facilities on the old destroyers, and began working on an interim system, the game call of ABI, the Instalación de Tiro Berreta or Shabby Fire Facility, due to the precariousness of the system and, paraphrasing the official name of the system board, called ITS (Standard Fire Facility).
So we created a few "boxes" that were actually home computers, with which we began measuring the currents and signals received and transmitted by the missile with the ITB.
We used a simulation of the missile guidance system known as a "ghost vector" to determine what the signals were and how they reached the missile. The simulator is a copy of the missile canister vector, with a window where you watch the television to compare the signals that the missile receives and the missile that you actually "see", in order to check the signals in the final analysis you receive ( It also has an electronic system where the missile receives the parameters that measure it).
These measurements were made on a destroyer replacing the entire installation of three onboard boxes, and a series of electronic circuits were designed. Our ultimate goal is to make the missile believed to obtain the information produced by a fire control system is not complete and some precarious and manual elements.
In operation, once the missile is "armed" (running and directing its transmitting gyroscopes, etc.), the ship sends a "word" (data string) of 64-bit content that was already pre-established, which are not the real data of the missile launch. Depending on the information received by the missile, it activates some circuits and sends word to the back of the ship, where the system buys what was sent to what was received and sent. All things being equal, the ship sends a second "word", which already contains some actual parameters of the release. Once again, the missile returns the data and compares the system. If there are no incompatibilities, a final 64-bit string is sent, but this time with all the actual data (target distance, opening of the missile guidance system search window, flight altitude, etc.) And the missile return the data correctly, the firing occurs automatically.
The time required for the exchange of these three bit strings and their comparisons is a fraction of a second.
Since designing more complex circuits than carrying out installation actions would involve much more time, I decided to have the "boxes" send three times the actual data (the third "word" is a normal trigger sequence).
Finally, after fifteen days of work, we simulated the entire release process and checked the "simulation vector" that the missile was receiving the desired information. Thus we began to look for a generator that could deliver a three-phase voltage of 400 cycles and 60 cycles. At that point, I was confident that I could make shape changes to the ITB, but to ensure that the system worked, we had done about 15 "simulated" shots with the "vector simulator" which, in theory, worked correctly. In theory, we solved the problem and showed it was possible to launch the MM-38 missiles from our precarious installation.
Furthermore, the Puerto Belgrano Arsenal workshops, directed by the then frigate captain BenjamÃn Dávila, also my partner, were built on the basis of a pair of trailers. The first was built to support two Exocet MM-38 missile containers (the launch platform) and the other took the electrical generator and the "boxes" that form the ITB. This was the entire system, which uses an old generator of Siemens technology from 30 years ago, used by the Marine Corps at that time for aircraft searchlights (each of these two trucks had a weight of 5,000 kg ).
Finally everything was ready. At that time, Captain Degrange had appointed an officer to be sent to the Malvinas with the installation, and I replied that I would be the one who would go because I was the only one who knew the system in detail, and had designed the circuits that They performed the ITB operation. Everything was coordinated and the cargo was transported by a C-130 Hércules of the Argentine Air Force.
To be continued in Part 2
Poder Naval
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