Interesting article with some great photos. 

http://airpressman.com/air-forces/pucara-el-fortin-charrua/

Interesting article with some great pics. That sort of deployment is more suited to the intended role of the Pucara, where it is not up against some fairly capable opposition in the air in the shape of the Harrier. As such, historically the type tends to get somewhat maligned for not really doing too much in what was probably its most well-publicised deployment during the Falklands conflict.

However, I think the fact that the British SAS risked some ground sabotage missions to knock them out tends to indicate how serious a threat they were regarded to be; they could really have posed much more of a danger to the British troops than they did if they'd have been employed in close air support with greater frequency, something which was stopped owing to several having been sabotaged at Pebble Island as well as others being strafed, shelled and bombed at Goose Green.

Certainly when we consider the things were armed with four 7.62 mm machine guns, two 20 mm cannons, plus rockets, CBUs, napalm, bombs and torpedoes, they could have made things really bad for the British land and sea forces. Even as it stands with their limited use in that conflict, and although not widely reported in Britain for obvious reasons at the time, we know for sure that one of them did shoot down a Royal Marines helicopter. Pucaras did also carry out several successful strike missions against British ground forces including knocking out a British forward O.P. so they did reasonably well when they were employed in combat against what were undeniably high quality British troops.

At the time of that conflict, I can recall the British red top tabloid papers were quite keen on pushing the idea that the Argentine pilots and their weaponry were not up to much, but the conflict itself demonstrated this to be nothing more than jingoistic nonsense; many of the Argentine pilots had in fact been trained jointly alongside UK pilots. When they were attacking ships in Falkland Sound, the Argentine aeroplanes were flying so low on their attack runs that the British Rapier missile defences on the surrounding hills couldn't even track them against the ground clutter, and it takes real guts and skill to go in that low on an attack.

Edited June 30, 20205 yr by Chock

Thanks for the Pucara info!  Can't get enough of that.

If that one recently released by Aeroplane Heaven had a VC I'd get it.

It kind of has a VC... kind of.. 

22 hours ago, Chock said:

....pushing the idea that the Argentine pilots and their weaponry were not up to much, but the conflict itself demonstrated this to be nothing more than jingoistic nonsense; many of the Argentine pilots had in fact been trained jointly alongside UK pilots....

Precisely! In fact Sharkey Ward (Sea Harrier pilot credited with shooting down a Pucara) issued instructions to send his regards to the Pucara pilot - it wasn't exactly a turkey shoot as the Pucara soaked up a lot of cannon shells!

Note sure if you can let fly with both cannons and Brownings at the same time, but that amount of lead would create a problem for most helicopters, and the Pucara seems to be an effective anti heli platform. Of course any drug trafficker's Beechcraft Baron (other planes are available!) would be mincemeat...

7 hours ago, HighBypass said:

It kind of has a VC... kind of.. 

Precisely! In fact Sharkey Ward (Sea Harrier pilot credited with shooting down a Pucara) issued instructions to send his regards to the Pucara pilot - it wasn't exactly a turkey shoot as the Pucara soaked up a lot of cannon shells!

Note sure if you can let fly with both cannons and Brownings at the same time, but that amount of lead would create a problem for most helicopters, and the Pucara seems to be an effective anti heli platform. Of course any drug trafficker's Beechcraft Baron (other planes are available!) would be mincemeat...

On the subject of Sharkey Ward, his is another good book which is well worth a read, as is this one if you like Harriers and reading about them in combat.