Branch Meeting.
36 people sat down with another 15 logged in via Zoom for the June 2025 branch meeting.
The recap of activity for May recorded the VE Day service in Poole Park, the VE Day church service in Parkstone, the VE Day boat trip in Weymouth Bay, the Not Forgotten Buckingham Palace Garden Party, the visit to Arras, and the US Memorial Day service at Weymouth.
Forthcoming activity announced was the D Day memorial wall cleaning in Poole on 5th June followed the next day by the D Day service at the same location and the additional service at the US Coastguard D Day memorial also on Poole Quay. Members were reminded of the Falklands conflict memorial service in Falkland Square Poole on 14th June 2025. There are still two places available for the branch visit to the Houses of Parliament in London on 17th June 2025. Three “Not Forgotten” functions in the Southwest were announced but due to distance and the short notice there were no takers. Finally, members were reminded about Armed Forces Day in Weymouth on Sunday 22nd June 2025.
2 x copies of the latest Regimental Journal were available for members to view.
The meeting then closed, and the guest speaker introduced. Richard Hutchings gave an utterly fascinating, enthralling, informative and at times amusing account of his experiences in the Falklands Conflict. Richard, a former officer in the Royal Marines not only flew Sea King “Commando” troop carrying helicopters, but he flew the special forces on their missions in the conflict. He revealed that he wrote a book about his exploits in the South Atlantic which to date has sold over 450,000 copies. It has been translated into several languages including Spanish which resulted in people who were on the other side but involved in the same actions as Richard contacting him and giving their accounts of those actions.
He began with an overview of the conflict, the build up of the task force and revealed some of the difficulties encountered on the journey south, difficulties that very few of us had heard about. There was so much new information to take in it was mind boggling. I am going to give details of two of the operations Richard was involved in. Before I start let me state that I asked Richard if anything he was going to say was for “our ears” only? He reassured me and said everything he was going to tell us was in his book, was over 40 years old and not secret anymore.
The first is the raid on Pebble Island where the Argentines had a force of Pucara strike aircraft. Richard explained how the appalling weather played havoc with their plans causing a serious delay. The plan was to fly the SAS to the airfield, blow up the aircraft and destroy the entire military garrison, presumably to strike terror into Argentine forces everywhere on the Falklands, then fly back to the ships and let the naval vessels retreat before daylight invited air attack. The very late arrival on Pebble Island meant that there was only time to deal with the aircraft and so the Garrison at Pebble Island was not pursued and those Argentine soldiers never knew how close they came to meeting the grim reaper that night.
The second operation is the famous insertion of SAS into Argentina itself. Richard was the pilot on this mission. The plan was to drop a SAS recce team almost on top of the air base housing the Exocet carrying Super Etendard strike aircraft. The recce team was to assess if they alone could destroy the aircraft or whether a larger strike force was needed. The second option if selected would have entailed an entire SAS Squadron based at Ascension Island flying to the air base in C130 Hercules (being air refuelled) landing “Entebbe style” on the runway, running riot blowing up the aircraft and escaping again in a swift total surprise operation. The weather once again caused chaos. They had to change course causing them to hit very thick fog which caused all sorts of problems, they had night vision goggles but as Richard said they don’t allow you to see through fog, all you see is a mass of green cotton wool. He was hovering just a few feet from the ground with a crewman hanging out of the helicopter shining a torch to try to see the terrain.
They had to abort and land in Chile. Richard was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for his actions in the conflict. As I said there was so much more, it was breathless, it was exciting, it was fantastic. As a finale, Richard had brought along one of the original copies of the Falklands surrender document “ as you do” The presentation can be summed up in one word WOW!
Fear Naught
