The 155 mm Howitzer Opens Fire for the First Time
At about 8 p.m. on Friday, 14 May, the commanding officer of Artillery Group 2 — under whose command the guns of Artillery Group 101 sent to the Malvinas had been placed — called a meeting at his command post. Second Lieutenant Pérez and Sergeant Major Garnica attended. The discussion dealt mainly with the types and quantities of ammunition available. During the meeting, however, an alert was received: echoes detected by the RASIT radar appeared to be British frigates approaching the coast at high speed.
Both men were ordered to return to the gun position and prepare it to fire. They had to walk the four kilometres separating them from the command post. It was very dark, and crossing open ground at night carried the risk of being fired upon accidentally by a sentry. Halfway back, the danger increased when British shells began falling around them, something that had already become routine. They instinctively threw themselves to the ground and waited for the bombardment to stop. As soon as there was a pause, they hurried to the position, arriving at about 11 p.m. The gun commander and his soldiers were ready to fire this Argentine-built weapon’s first shot in anger.
Once the firing data had been received, Corporal Juan Manuel Figueroa entered it into the sight and turned the handwheels to lay the gun on the designated target. The rest of the gun crew — soldiers Aguilera, Benítez, Brangeri, Fanín, Ferrer, Potes, Sandoval, Saralegui, Tempio and Velozo — prepared and loaded the ammunition. Fanín was given the honour of pulling the firing lanyard.
According to the records kept by Sergeant Major Garnica, who meticulously logged every round fired by the gun, three rounds were fired that night. Charge 9 was used, and the firing range was 17 kilometres, towards a point south of Elisa Cove. The radar reported the following observations: the first round was ‘400 metres over’, the second fell short and the third landed ‘on the ships’ radar return’.
The best account of the accuracy of this fire came from British naval officer David Tinker (*), who served aboard one of the ships that carried out harassing bombardments on most nights. In letters to his family, Tinker described the accuracy of the Argentine fire, stating that shells had landed within 50 metres of his ship and forced it to leave the area at full speed to avoid being hit.
Firing upon the British ships was made possible by an ingenious fire-control method. The precise locations of the Argentine radars and guns were plotted on a 1:25,000-scale map, with all of them aligned to the same grid north. When a radar detected a target (**), its echo provided the range and bearing required to lay the guns.
The ship’s speed and the shell’s estimated time of flight were also taken into account to improve accuracy. A 155 mm shell, for example, took about 50 seconds to reach an impact point 18 kilometres away. Using this manual and largely improvised method, several rounds landed within 100 metres of the ships — inside what artillerymen considered the ‘effective zone’. In any event, the intended result was achieved: whenever the 155 mm guns replied to the enemy ships, the vessels quickly moved away from the coast.
As Sergeant Major Garnica had observed when he first set foot on the Malvinas, the presence of the 155 mm SOFMA guns also raised the troops’ morale. Seeing these weapons and hearing their powerful muzzle blast had a positive effect on the soldiers in their trenches. Despite the enemy’s technological and numerical superiority, many now felt that the Argentine forces also possessed powerful weapons with which to confront them.
At night, whenever the guns answered the frigates’ fire, the soldiers from Corrientes would celebrate each 155 mm round with a thunderous sapucay, their province’s traditional cry.
Second Lieutenant Esteban Vilgré Lamadrid of the Infantry later described his impressions:
‘The 155s were in a class of their own. The distant sound of them firing and the tremendous force of their shells landing gave us the feeling that “my big brother has arrived”. It lifted our spirits and made us feel that the British were having just as hard a time as we were. During the final two days, it seemed as though the sound of our guns was overpowering the British fire.
‘We also heard that they had opened fire on the British. From the hill, we even saw ships that had been shelling us turning away and heading out to sea.’
On Sunday, several enemy aircraft carried out raids. From the position, the unmistakable sound of an Argentine Tigercat surface-to-air missile could be heard. It had been launched by Air Defence Artillery Group 601 from Mar del Plata. A large explosion was seen in the air, although nobody knew whether the aircraft at which the missile had been fired had been hit. War sometimes provided spectacles of this kind — grim ones, since the men involved were ultimately fighting to save their own lives and those of their comrades.
It was cold. That was the one constant. Throughout the day, the crew of this first gun worked to reinforce and camouflage the position, using local materials to conceal it as effectively as possible and blend it into the surrounding terrain. Keeping busy was the best way to fight the low temperatures, although physical exertion also made them hungrier. One of the soldiers, Miguel Potes, used his ingenuity to build an improvised brazier inside the shelter, burning peat as fuel.
During the afternoon of Sunday, 16 May, several soldiers from Infantry Regiment 3 came over to visit. They occupied neighbouring positions. The artillerymen welcomed the chance to meet other comrades and enjoy a brief period of harmless relaxation.
Everyone was awake by 7 a.m. on Monday, 17 May. The sunrise was particularly beautiful: the sky was clear and, for once, there was no rain. For tactical reasons, the gun had to be moved that morning, a difficult operation that took it about 1,000 metres farther to the rear. The rest of the day was spent improving the new position.
Their new accommodation was a semicircular corrugated-iron shed supported by iron arches and wooden beams. They shared it with Staff Sergeant Raúl Orcasitas and five soldiers from Artillery Group 3 who operated the RASIT radar. As at the previous position, Miguel Potes and Walter Ferrer built an improvised stove from a 200-litre drum, fitting it with a length of pipe that served as a chimney. They burned locally gathered wood and the now familiar Malvinas peat.
They knew how fortunate they were to have a shelter of this kind, particularly compared with the soldiers living in trenches on the front line and enduring the full force of the weather. Their good fortune would not last, however. Later, the artillerymen would also have to sleep in the open.
On Wednesday, 18 May, the radar operator detected another echo on his screen. It was a frigate approaching to within 18 kilometres. The gun fired a round in response, once again using Charge 9. The pressure generated by firing at maximum charge caused a nut to break loose, blowing out the firing pin and its safety spring. The round nevertheless left the barrel and the mission was accomplished: the enemy ship withdrew towards the open sea.
An initial attempt was made to repair the damaged gun at Logistics Battalion 10, the support unit based in Puerto Argentino, but the work could not be completed there. The gun was out of action. Sergeant Major Garnica later recalled:
‘Unfortunately, we had no experience of firing with the maximum charge. I remember that, before the war, during an exercise in La Pampa, I requested permission to fire with Charge 9 so that we could gain experience for the future. We were unable to do so, and now we were suffering the consequences. As an artillery mechanic, I had always been concerned by our lack of information about how the weapon would behave when subjected to extreme demands.’
The gun would soon return to service. Fortunately, its twin was already on the islands and could continue fighting while the damaged weapon was being repaired.
(*) David Tinker was a member of the crew of the destroyer HMS Glamorgan. He was killed in action when the ship was struck by an MM38 Exocet missile launched from the shore. On the night of 12 June, Tinker was on duty on the flight deck, where the missile struck. He later became widely known after his father published a book about his life, The Life and Gallant Death of David Tinker, which included some of the letters the naval officer had sent home.
(**) Two radars were used: a Cardion air-surveillance radar belonging to Air Defence Artillery Group 601 and a smaller RASIT surveillance radar operated by Artillery Group 3. The latter was operated by the then Staff Sergeant Raúl Armando Orcasitas.
