On this day - Falklands

British 2nd battalion, Parachute Regiment (2-Para), take Darwin and Goose Green in what was arguably the longest and toughest battle of the War.

We had sent a couple of guys down with a jammer to support the attack but they got bogged down and couldn't get there in time. They also became of interest to an Argentine pilot but thankfully he missed and was chased away by a Harrier.

Meanwhile we had dropped in to a routine of sorts in San Carlos and weren't being effective because we were in a basin and weren't getting mush intercept traffic. Our boss was agitating for us to get forward but we didn't have enough helicopters and was available was being used for ammunition distribution and casevac. Our plan was to get on a boat to the soon to infamous Teal Inlet.

One memory that still sticks is listening to a World Service discussion about the war. It had become well know that the Argentinian bombs weren't exploding but we weren't publishing I, however it was the discussion on the world service. One expert described what was happening - they were dropping the bombs too low and the screw that armed them wasn't given enough time to engage the mechanism.

Being an expert this clown then went on to explain that the pilots needed to go higher, which was very dangerous, or sort of tilt up just as they dropped the bomb, so that it would be lobbed. This was inaccurate and finally they could put a parachute on the bomb to slow its descent. The Argentine Air force chose the latter option so we then had to live with more bombs exploding.

Isn't it good to have such a neutral and informative national broadcaster?