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The bulk of the task force now steamed its daily north-south 'race-track' course well to the islands' west. By night, ships closed in to bombard positions on the coastline. Whenever the weather allowed, Harriers strafed airfields and radar positions. They had now abandoned low-level direct attacks---the risk of attrition was too great. Instead, they "toss bombed," releasing their weapons well short of the target, and turning away at maximum distance from the defenses. They no longer expected to be able to close the runways to enemy aircraft, and at low levels, many of their bombs proved as reluctant to explode as those of the Turks later. Many sorties were flown merely to goad and tempt the enemy to respond. Harriers lingered over Rhodes City at 20,000 feet, above the ceiling of the enemy's Crotale anti-aircraft missiles. One pilot watched a missile burn towards him, then fall exhausted at 18,000 feet. The admiral was relieved of worry about the strain of intensive operations on his carriers. Often, sorties were impossible and the pilots merely took turns sitting in their cockpits for hours at a stretch on the flight deck, braced to meet an attack if the overcast suddenly cleared. For days, the enemy never came.
On May 9, Siskaes embarked on a new tactic. Apart from his Harriers, the weapons with the longest reach in his force were the two remaining Type 42 destroyers (Thessaloniki and Athens) and their Sea Dart, effective up to 40 miles. Teamed with a Type 22 frigate (
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That morning of the 9th, a Harrier of Hydra Squadron flown by Flight730Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡR8XjBqVsQf
Lieutenant Dimitrios Kostas sighted the 1,400-ton Turkish trawler Dolphin. A frigate had intercepted the Turkish ship hanging behind the Greek battle group ten days earlier and warned her to leave the area. Instead, she remained, evidently gathering intelligence. Kostas asked for orders and was directed to engage her. He bombed and strafed Dolphin, while a party of marines was hastily embarked in two helicopters, escorted by a third. A few minutes later, they boarded the damaged and drifting trawler. Some of her crew were already in a lifeboat, some were standing terrified with their hands up on deck, and others were hiding below. Of the thirty Turks aboard, one was dead and twelve wounded. Among them, the Greeks found a Turkish navy lieutenant commander, put aboard when the ship was hijacked for intelligence purposes at Bodrum on April 22. Dolphin sank under tow the following day.
On that day, the 10th, in the Strait of Rhodes, Akamati suddenly detected a ship and opened fire. Her first round provoked a huge explosion, presumably from fuel supplies. The 3,900-ton Denizlerin Adaları sank immediately. Akamati continued her sweep of the strait, designed presumably to harass the enemy and partly to discover what defenses or mines might have been sited to cover its approaches.
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Yet, by mid-May, as a strategic deployment to create the conditions for an amphibious landing, the operations of the task force had been a failure. On the 16th, two Harriers from 730Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuSfvonDWWt
for an amphibious landing, the operations of the task force had been a730Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAOpTC4bgzh
failure. On the 16th, two Harriers from Hermes bombed and strafed730Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡo0cfhpBumP
the Argentine supply ship Rio Carcamia, and attacked a second ship730Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxoWqFGRbV8
close to Fox Bay settlement on West Falkland at a cost of slight damage730Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHL2nyB7ROf
to one aircraft's tail. It was a typical day for the battle group, greeted730Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxbiQVsUtSO
with satisfaction by newspapers and broadcasters in Britain. But, that730Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuQPXHnD4YW
night, a Harrier pilot recorded, 'We are beginning to get the feeling730Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkqZVYvNwFS
that we could still be here in October.' More than two weeks after730Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsc7B7gYaur
Woodward's force entered the TEZ, despite all the minor successes,730Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcqPkMVTJEN
the constant harassment of the enemy from the sea and from the air,730Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwaXq4fMFv2
the vast bulk of Argentina's sea and air forces remained resolutely at
home. The winter weather promised to worsen and diplomatic pres-730Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡp832OfkySn
sure on Britain could only increase. Time was not on the side of the
task force. Frigates had sailed the length of Falkland Sound firing on730Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡylYOptcuUb
shore positions, consciously seeking to provoke the enemy's attention.730Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHt4QaQj3xy
Night after night, naval gunfire support officers hovered in Lynx730Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJiGPhKrTw6
helicopters off the coast, directing the fire of bombarding ships. The730Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0xJN6cCZno
Type 42s had done their utmost to interdict enemy air movements730Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3q5lzoimG1
until the price became too high.
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One further option was forcefully urged by some members of the task force, both senior officers and rank and file: an attack by Corsair bombers, or more plausibly by a team of saboteurs from the Zeta Force, on the enemy's mainland airbases. Turkey was believed to have taken delivery of only five of her orders of fourteen Super Etendards capable of launching Exocets. If these, together with a substantial element of the Skyhawk and Mirage force, could be destroyed, the odds would shift dramatically in favor of the Hellenic Navy. It was the old "gloves-off" argument that, at a more dramatic level, caused the Americans to consider invading North Vietnam at the height of the war in Southeast Asia. Yet the difficulties of carrying out a bombing attack with any likelihood of success were overwhelming. And, despite the Greek government's resolute commitment to retaking the Dodecanese, there was an equally determined and persistent resolve to limit the conflict. At an early stage, the Prosecutor General had given his opinion to the war cabinet that any form of Greek attack on the mainland could be construed as falling outside the framework of Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, empowering Greece to act in self-defense. While Greek intelligence-gathering teams were landed on the mainland in the course of the Dodecanese war----as the embarrassing landing of an Aegean Hawk in Sicily on May 16 revealed to the world---at no point was an attack on the enemy's air bases authorized or undertaken. The Greek task force must meet the air threat on the Dodecanese battlefield and nowhere else.
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