The next day Weinberger told me that President Reagan had approved our proposal without hesitation. His instructions had been simple: “Give Maggie everything she needs to get on with it.” Of the unity of purpose—and the real affection—between the president and the prime minister there was no doubt.
Early requests ran the gamut from fuel and logistical assistance to intelligence and Stinger surface-to-air missiles.8 Those were handled routinely until they involved assets outside the Navy, which then required bringing in the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Weinberger made it clear to them that he not only wanted British desires granted, but he wanted it done in a timely manner. Requests that would usually have to suffer through several tiers of bureaucracy were granted in days, sometimes hours.
(Source: (https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2012/september/reflections-special-relationship)
What has the assistant for Britain got to do with the Joint Chiefs of Staff?
The author of the article is John F. Lehman Jr., who was Secretary of the Navy under Reagan. He is explaining in the paragraph and a half before the bit that you cited that:
From the Pentagon’s perspective, support for the U.K. was immediate, thorough, and decisive. We met British requests from Day One in a manner that would have been impossible with any other ally. What observers often miss is that our support was built from the bottom up rather than the top down. There was no need for a political decision to be taken from on high. The structure of the special relationship ensured that the day the crisis broke, personnel from both countries were already working closely together at all levels. There was, one might say, already water flowing through the pipes. Following the Argentine invasion, all we had to do was to open the spigot.
When much more significant requests began to come in, starting just a day or two after the invasion, I went straight to Weinberger. We agreed that he would tell the president we planned to handle all these requests routinely without going outside existing Navy channels. In other words, we would leave the State Department, except for Haig, out of it.
So when significant Navy-related requests came in from the UK he talked to Weinberger, the Secretary of Defense, to agree that the requests would be granted immediately without any bureaucratic red tape. Being a primarily naval operation initially, the immediate requests were naval in nature and thus went through Lehman’s department, the Department of the Navy. Once requests for assets from outside the Navy occurred, the other Joint Chiefs (Secretaries of the Army and Air Force) became involved, and Weinberger explained to them he wanted requests for Army and Air Force assets to be handled in the same way that Lehman was handling Navy related requests.
Excellent source by the way, if fairly esoteric, I don’t recall seeing anyone other than myself citing from the US Naval Institute. It’s not in any way officially affiliated with the US Navy or its official views and policies, but its magazines (Proceedings and Naval History) articles are mostly written by current or retired members of the US Navy giving their personnel opinions on naval related issues.
Agreed, it’s an excellent source and comes in handy when looking for material. I’m not sure I’ve directly cited from there, but there’s no doubt that I’ve relied on it.
Thank you for your answer. However, how do we know if there was any resistance from the other Joint Chiefs (Secretaries of the Army and Air Force)?
Is it possible to know if the other Joint Chiefs showed any reluctance to release their resources at the time of the crisis?
The footnote shows the reference to the memo itself.
Hayward to SecDef, “Falklands Crisis,” 15 May 1982, Papers of Caspar Weinberger, Library of Congress
[quibble] I’m not sure about the phrasing of this part of your question:
“However, how do we know if there was any resistance from the other Joint Chiefs (Secretaries of the Army and Air Force)?”
The members of the Joint Chiefs do not include the Secretaries of the Army and Air Force but comprise the senior military leaders of the various branches. The Secretaries are senior civilian leaders and are subordinate to the Secretary of Defense. They must be confirmed by the Senate but are non-Cabinet level.