Black Buck 6: or when the US was discovered “With the mouse in the mouth”

Today we talk about the collaboration of the USA, from an informative point of view, with Ukraine, with the accusation of having favored the elimination of several Moscow generals who were in the front lines. Washington denied it, but it is obvious that it was not a bird that told the Ukrainians where they were in Russian leadership.

However, the USA are quite used to making these figures bordering on ridicule, and one of the most famous cases occurs during the Falklands war between the United Kingdom and Argentina in 1982. We recall that the conflict saw Argentina in the Videla military junta opposite. and Mrs Thatcher's United Kingdom. When the Argentines occupied the Falklands (or Malvinas) and therefore New South Georgia, the British government, contrary to what they expected in Buenos Aires, decided to respond militarily, despite the enormous logistical challenge constituted by a theater of action in tens of thousands of km from the motherland.

Part of the mission were the “Black Buck” missions, conducted by strategic Vulcan bombers, jewels of the fifties born for nuclear bombing, for which it was a swan song. The mission included at least 5 refueling in flight carried out by Handley Page Victor using dozens of tankers to refuel them on the very long route from the Atlantic island of Ascension and back, almost 13,000 km in total.

The Black Buck missions were an organizational jewel made with very limited means (the Vulcans were being decommissioned and the in-flight refueling probes had been decommissioned or sealed), but they managed, in the first editions, to put the Port airport out of use. Stanley, which was never operable by the Mirages of the Argentine Air Force. So it was a question of putting out of use the radar system that the Argentines had brought to the island.

The only effective anti-radar system compatible with the Vulcans were the US AGM-45 Shrike missiles, state-of-the-art for 1982, as the British Martel had proved unsuitable. But the US tried to keep, at least apparently, a neutral position between the two sides: the UK was a long-time ally, but Videla, who had attended a US-branded military school, was an iron anti-Communist and, until a few months earlier, a faithful ally of Washington. Again, the US provided intelligence to the UK, but did not want to enter further. Despite this, they agreed to supply a number of Shrikes to London in the hope that no one would notice.

But the devil makes the pots and not the lids. During the Black Buck 6 mission the Vulcan serial number 597 had a problem: after destroying an anti-aircraft radar in the Falklands, while it was refueling in flight, it broke the probe used for this purpose. The plane found itself in the middle of the Atlantic with little fuel and no possibility of refueling. The only salvation was to reach Rio de Janeiro with very little fuel. But the plane still had two US Shrike missiles attached to the pylons, as well as carrying a lot of compromising documentation on board. Brazil was neutral and would have interned crew and aircraft, but the scandal of seeing the US missile linked to the British aircraft, and of finding plans and manuals, would have been enormous. The commander then quickly decided: he would contact Rio in an emergency, unpack the plane, throw the documents out of the window and launch the missiles into the sea. There was a heated negotiation with the Rio tower, but a Shirke missile refused to leave. The plane that practically flew with the fumes of the fuel, landed in Rio with a nice US missile attached and visible to the outer pylons!

Of course, both the UK and the US set out to hide what had happened. The plane was interned, as were the crew, and was returned only after a supply of spare parts for the Brazilian aviation (and we suspect some awards to some generals). But Brazil, while not making the matter immediately public, refused to return the Shrike missile, which probably ended up disassembled in some Brazilian factory.

Now if the US managed to keep such a thing under wraps in 1982, do you think they have trouble hiding information about Russian command centers from Ukrainians? Do you think the ships hit by Ukrainian drones are just the result of luck?

For those wishing to know the whole history of Black Buck we recommend this site.

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The article Black Buck 6: or when the USA was discovered "Col mouse in mouth" comes from ScenariEconomici.it .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/black-buck-6-ovvero-quando-gli-usa-vennero-scoperti-col-sorcio-in-bocca/ on Sun, 08 May 2022 16:14:48 +0000.