It´s exactly as you say. The first trio encountered the ships, received two SAM, of which one hit the Canberra leader in the end of the wing, being damaged but returning home making an emergency landing at Puerto Deseado. All three planes aborted making a wide turn right in order to avoid two air objects seen far away in a NE direction. This first trio took off around 20 minutes before the second trio. I think (not sure but almost 🙂 )the testimony was from captain Nogueira.

The second trio is intercepted 24 miles from Invincible by Curtiss-Broadwater, who shot one of them down with Sidewinder (González-De Ibáñez). They came in a similar course to the first trio but the escape route was northern.

Sharkey Ward talked about this interception in his book “Sea Harrier over Falklands, a maverick at war”.

According to Nogueira words, their target were suposed amphibious landing ships in Berkeley sound. They thought that the ship that fired at them was a Type 42 and was placed in the northern entrance of Falklands Sound. In my opinion he identiffied badly the kind of ship, the distance from them and the location where she was. They probably had any kind of navigation error cause ASW group (Brilliant and Yamouth) were suposed N-NE from East Falkland, so if they sorrounded this group in a right clock turn, they were probably flying northern than they tought or well, ASW group was closer to shore than I actually believe. Carballo has a map in his book that would be very interesting to be seen if anybody can download it here.

The second trio followed a northern route cause didn´t see any ship and scaped in the same route they came (with no wide turn at all as the first trio).

The first Canberra flight saw two far air aircrafts but didn´t engage them at all. In fact the presence of these two aircrafts conditioned the scape route.

Greetings