Account of a Young Second Lieutenant
Jorge Zanela, who was then a 23-year-old second lieutenant and head of the artillery section of GA 4 (4th Airborne Artillery Group).
Starting on May 24, Battery A, composed of four artillery pieces, took a position in the Darwin area, joining Task Force "Mercedes." They would face the British advancing toward that point after having landed in San Carlos Bay with harassing fire.
Two artillery pieces were sent by sea aboard the Río Iguazú. After being attacked by British aviation, and in a complicated rescue operation that took over a day to recover the pieces blindly from the ship's flooded hold, they reached Darwin. The other two Oto Melara pieces were transported by a Chinook helicopter on the afternoon of May 26.
That day, the artillery pieces began to fire. They also targeted a British frigate, which retreated after 16 shots.
May 28 was a day of intense combat. Zanela recalls that everything came down to loading and firing. Each howitzer was commanded by a non-commissioned officer and assisted by five soldiers. He estimates that 2,400 rounds were fired, "everything we had," he described.
Most of the activity took place at night. During the day, they would scout the terrain and transport ammunition. It was a constant back-and-forth carrying crates.
The Oto Melara had a range of ten kilometers and could not effectively reach the enemy positions. It had a shorter range, requiring a steeper firing angle. Even so, the soft peat soil caused both Argentine and British projectiles to sink too deeply, making the explosions less effective than expected.
It was two days of relentless combat. Some soldiers bled from their ears due to ruptured eardrums caused by the continuous thunder of the artillery. Many were temporarily deaf, and soldiers ended up with swollen fists from the force required to push the projectiles into the artillery pieces.
They did not have forward observers or a fire direction center, so they relied on highly accurate Kelper maps and information from advanced infantry units.
On May 29, at 2:00 a.m., combat ceased in Darwin. The artillerymen suffered no fatalities, only minor injuries from shrapnel, and one non-commissioned officer injured his arm after being struck by the recoil of a cannon.
The cannons were rendered unusable: the breech blocks and aiming scopes were removed and thrown into the sea along with other equipment. A Mercedes-Benz jeep, which had only 80 kilometers on its odometer, had its oil drained and was left running to seize the engine. When the engine held up, parts of it were broken with sledgehammer blows.
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