Sunday, September 4, 2011

Scooter!

As I said, I'm very pleased with the publication quality of my history of the A-4 Skyhawk, Scooter!, which should be shipping from Amazon, among others, in a couple of weeks. One small disappointment, however, was the reproduction of the picture of Capt Pablo Carballo and Lt Carlos Rinke's attack on Broadsword on 25 May 1982. It wasn't a very high resolution picture to begin with and this regrettably resulted in it being too small in the book to provide the impression that I wanted to convey. Here it is as big as I can make it (click on it for a larger size) and annotated as well:

Both Carballo and Rinke survived the attack (as did Broadsword), reportedly because the Sea Wolf missile system could not choose between their A-4s in the short time that they could be engaged.

Noted Argentinian aviation and maritime artist and illustrator Carlos A. Garcia created the following painting of the action, The Volcanos, based on this picture and interviews with Capt Carballo:
More of Senor Garcia's work can be seen at his website, http://www.aviationart.com.ar/Carlos_Adrian_Garcia_eng/Welcome.html.
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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousSeptember 4, 2011 at 5:26 PM

    I was stationed in Charleston, SC when the HMS Broadsword came in. I arrange for repair work and etc. I have a couple of pictures that the MO gave me. One piece of info now usually known is the the IIRC 1000# bomb went into the engine room, hit a I beam and deflected up thru the helo deck. Where it took off the nose of the helio parked there. Afterwards, it arched over the side and went off. The explosion sprang EVERY watertight door open. They at the time had the quickdogs. After the battle they switched to individual dogs. On the night Broadsword came into port, Broadsword had a little get together for us. They were the best bunch of guys ever.

    Wayne Funderburk
    Lt USNR-ret

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  2. AnonymousOctober 10, 2011 at 10:37 PM

    On the right side of the picture, just barely visible in the middle of the mist, you can see Pebble Island / Isla Borbon. The fact that the planes were attacking with the island behind them had a vital impact on the failure of the defense system of the British 64 combo during this mission.
    Pablo Calcaterra

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