Handbrake!

“Handbrake!”: the codeword that was shouted aboard Royal Navy ships upon the detection of an emission from the Thomson-CSF/EMD Agave radar of the Argentine Super Étendard, which carried the dreaded AM-39 Exocet missiles.

Argentina had bought these aircraft and their weapons from France in 1980, assigning them to the re- established 2nd Naval Air Fighter and Attack Squadron. Like most Argentine military units, the 1982 conflict over the Falklands/Malvinas conflict surprised the squadron, which was in the process of incorporating the aircraft and missiles, arriving only a few weeks beforehand from France.

Hastily, under the leadership of its commander, Capitán de Fragata Jorge Luis Colombo, the squadron finished its training and developed tactics for anti-ship attacks, deploying to the south of Argentina.

The effort paid off.