Historically, Argentine accounts seem to be particularly prone to exaggeration and deliberate falsehood anyway… hence the aforementioned Invincible attack.
Yes, the ‘legendary’ Invincible attack. It is a great pity that many incidents during the Falklands war seem to have been grossly exaggerated by ‘official’ Argentine sources for propaganda purposes.
The ‘facts’ would suggest that four of the six pilots who set out on this mission did so in the certain knowledge that they would be attacking a British carrier battle-group sailing in open water in an obsolete A4 armed with two 500lb free-fall bombs.
If they managed to survive the Sea Harriers, the Sea Dart of the escorts and HMS Invincible herself, the Sea Wolf (of the goalkeeper frigate) and the close range guns to drop their bombs they would still have to make it back out through all that to get to their air-to-air refuelling C-130 (assuming they could find it) to have any chance of reaching the mainland.
Of course there would be no chance of rescue for any pilot forced to abandon his single-engine aircraft due to damage, fuel exhaustion or technical failure even if he did manage to eject into the freezing winter South-Atlantic.
IMHO that mission profile amounts to little short of suicide…
…but that’s what mission these pilots set out on. Nobody can dispute that.
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