11307/5 Commander Raymond Adams
Shortly after six o'clock we had news that there was an attack coming out and we were steaming at that point in an easterly direction on our patrol line when two Skyhawks came very quickly off the land and were obviously coming to us. We attempted to engage with Sea Dart. Broadsword's Sea Wolf didn't fire for one reason or another and we engaged with our gun. I'm not sure whether they actually dropped any weapons but nothing hit us. What must have been about two or three seconds later, two more Skyhawks came very low off the land at about ninety degrees to the first lot and because Broadsword's weapons didn't fire the first time, we decided to open our weapon arcs by altering course and we came hard round to starboard to engage and that put ourselves between Broadsword and the aircraft. We engaged with the gun but also with Sea Dart but with land in the background it was very difficult to get a good target and also with close range weapons systems i.e. our 20mm guns. These other two aircraft came in and dropped four bombs, three hit us and one went through Broadsword's flight deck. We were also apparently strafed with 30mm canon fire, which we weren't aware of at the time. We believe we hit the aircraft with a number of rounds of 20mm fire. As we finished the turn and steadied up there was a sort of dull thud. We had already hit the deck and taken cover on this. But within thirty seconds or so, standing on the bridge, the bridge was full of smoke, despite the fact that the bombs hit four or five decks below us. Two I believe went off immediately and one went off very shortly afterwards by sympathetic detonation. It was quite obvious at that stage that we had a major problem.