The air in Bluff Cove was cold and carried the smell of salt and diesel. The two landing ships, RFA Sir Galahad and RFA Sir Tristram, sat heavy in the shallow water, their holds crammed with men, vehicles, and ammunition. They were exposed. A feeling of precariousness had settled over the Welsh Guards aboard; they were infantrymen, out of their element on a static ship, waiting for orders to disembark that never seemed to come.
Then came the sound—a low, growing drone that sharpened into a shriek. Argentine A-4 Skyhawks, flying so low they seemed to skim the waves, erupted over the ridgeline. There was no time. The first bomb hit Sir Galahad’s open stern door. The explosion was not a single sound but a cascade—the detonation of bombs, the sympathetic cook-off of stored ammunition, the roar of ignited fuel. Men were thrown into the frigid water, coated in burning oil. On Sir Tristram, the blast wave punched through steel. The cove filled with black smoke, the cries of the wounded, and the frantic shouts of those trying to pull comrades from the water. In minutes, fifty-six men were dead. The attack was not a clash of armies, but a brief, violent application of force against vulnerability. The ships burned for days.