There is something wrong with that list of British losses because HMS Fearless was not lost, I don’t think she suffered even minor damage, and HMS Intrepid, her sister ship was not harmed either.
The loss of this vessel would have been very serious indeed.
For more try this
My mistake, casdave. I think it was a landing craft from Fearless that was sunk. I don’t know how I cut that out.
I was politely hinting at a vague racist impulse behind Thatcher’s choosing to fight for the Falklands while negotiating away Hong Kong. Perhaps that’s unfair.
My other statement was that Hong Kong Island (and I should have included Kowloon, sorry) wouldn’t have been viable cut off from the rest of the colony. Could you imagine building a wall down the middle of one of the most densely populated cities in the world, cutting off much of the people and most of the land? The wall would have separated much of the population from their places of work, and much of the local agricultural production (yes, there is some) from much of the people.
Also, I believe (correct me, please) that Kai Tak Airport is outside the permanent-lease area. I know Chek Lap Kok is. How could a rump Hong Kong function with only sea traffic? If you’d ever been there, you’d understand there’s no place left to build. Most of the land is more vertical than horizontal.
I could go into a lot more depth, but I hope you see that splitting Hong Kong would not have been doing the residents of the Island and Kowloon any favors.
I remember hearing the Brits point out that a ship’s threat status is due to its position, not its direction, which can be changed instantly.
So far, the mainland government has kept its end of the bargain. Hong Kong doesn’t appear, on the surface anyway, to be any less democratic than it was under British rule. That was hardly democratic, either - HK only got its own assembly around 1995, and that was clearly a negotiating ploy anyway.
ElvisL1ves,
Concerning ‘Although Hong Kong Island could have been kept British under international law, it wouldn’t have been viable.’,
you posted ‘I was politely hinting at a vague racist impulse behind Thatcher’s choosing to fight for the Falklands while negotiating away Hong Kong. Perhaps that’s unfair.’
Not at all. For example Zola Budd, an female WHITE South African athlete, probably broke the world record for getting permission to emigrate here.
Further ‘Could you imagine building a wall down the middle of one of the most densely populated cities in the world, cutting off much of the people and most of the land?’
I take your point that it wouldn’t work in such a densely-populated area as Hong Kong.
It was terrible that the Berlin Wall lasted so long. (I know that’s not exactly the same thing).
RickJay posted ‘The British rationale was that the General Belgrano was steaming into a conflict zone and so was effectively a combatant and a legitimate target.’
I replied ‘I’m sure Thatcher claimed at first it was sailing towards the islands, but later had to retract (i.e. admit it was retreating).’
You commented ‘I remember hearing the Brits point out that a ship’s threat status is due to its position, not its direction, which can be changed instantly.’
Well Thatcher admitted immediately that it was outside the war zone. Her defence was that it was ‘attacking’, so that’s why the direction mattered.
I said ‘In any case I personally would rather struggle for a while than leave British citizens to the mercies of the Chinese Government.’
You replied ‘So far, the mainland government has kept its end of the bargain. Hong Kong doesn’t appear, on the surface anyway, to be any less democratic than it was under British rule. That was hardly democratic, either - HK only got its own assembly around 1995, and that was clearly a negotiating ploy anyway.’
Yes, it was highly embarrassing that Britain had so little democracy in Hong Kong. (I suspect it was tied up with preventing non-whites getting the right to emigrate to Britain after the eventual handover).
Carnivoursousplant:
I had also heard that the Argentines were afraid of the Ghurkas. The version of the story was I heard was that the British actually threatened the Argentines that they would soon send in te Ghurkas if there wasn’t a quick resulution.
I understand that the Ghurkas are among the most fearless and agressive military units of the world.
Also I had heard that Argentine forces were running very low on supplies and that some of their conscripts were literally chained in their defensive positions.
casdave, it’s really cool to have some eyewitness information here. I’ve read Hastings’ and Jenkins’ fine book, and wonder if you might like to elaborate on or correct some of these half-remembered factoids I’ve been keeping with me all these years:
The main reason why there were so many “dud” hits by the AAF is because they were using American bombs. Unbeknownst to the Argentines, the armor-piercing bombs were shipped set for maximum penetration, and the manuals for the weapons were either not translated or were not provided by the Americans. As a result, many bombs failed to detonate and instead remained unexploded or passed entirely through a ship. If I remember correctly, the Ardent was “only” severely damaged but later sank when an unexploded bomb on board detonated during attempts to defuse it.
The Sea Wolf AAM system had a fatal flaw in that it could not track a target below a certain altitude. As a result, low flying aircraft were only vulnerable to Sea Dart missiles and AAA. That’s where the 4.5" proved to be invaluable due to its unusually high rate of fire for such a large piece.
One of the largest successes against the AAF was actually carried out by the SAS and SBS, who early in the conflict infiltrated an Argentine airfield on West Falkland and sabotaged most of the aircraft on the field there.
At no time did the Royal Navy have more than twenty Sea Harriers operational during the conflict. They were lucky to have that–one of the two aircraft carriers brought to the conflict by the U.K. was scheduled to be sold to Australia that year.
Please, tell us some more stories!
Yes and no. The Falkland Islands do not return an MP to Westminster, nor do they constitute part of another constituency. The same is true of Gibraltar and various other British dependencies overseas.
However, British citizens living abroad are entitled to vote in British parliamentary elections under legislation brought in by the Thatcher government after surveys found that the majority of ex-pats were Tory voters–a simple piece of gerrymandering. Normally they vote in the constituency in which they were last resident in the UK, but I believe that some special provision was made for assigning constituencies to people who had never lived in the UK.
Churchill on the Ghurkas: “I don’t know about the enemy but, by God, they frighten me.”
Some of my favorite Falklands War media coverage stories …
The way American TV people now say “Ar-gen-TINE” instead of “AR-gen-teen”, in their zeal to sound as cultured as BBC people …
The way Brit officers would talk about, in their clipped Received Pronunciations, “the bloody Argies”
…
UK garrison troops, after the war, calling the Falklands locals “Bennies”, after a dimwitted TV character. When ordered to desist, they changed the nickname to “Stills” - short for “Still Bennies”.
I’ve gotta say that the AAF put up a pretty good fight before they lost. The reason I thought that only the Sheffield had been lost was that I’d read something about the Falklands War before, but it only mentioned the Sheffield and the General Belgrano, so I was lead to believe that the air-sea battles were pretty low-intensity affairs. I can see that wasn’t the case. How big was the British task force, all told? Because if the AAF had figured out how to reset those triggers then the Glasgow, Antrim, Argonaut, Sir Lancelot, and Plymouth would have fared much worse, and possibly sunk. (You don’t list the bomb that hit the Broadsword as a UXB, so I’m assuming that it was a dud.) The Sir Galahad, Ardent, and Antelope would have sunk much sooner as well, probably with more lives lost.
And what does “Malvinas” mean? It’s been a few years since I’ve taken a Spanish class, but IIRC “mal” means “bad.” Maybe Malvinas really does mean “Sour Grapes.”
Sofa King
HMS Ardent was hit by a number of bombs and missiles with which she coped to some extent but the critical hit was the one that hit the hanger, that set off the helicopter fuel(AVCAT) on the aircraft and some of the pyrotechnics, even the installed sprinkler system was unable to cope and one front-line fire-fighter was lost when the bottles on his breathing apparatus ruptered due to the intense heat.
Eventually the fire was so out of control that it was only a matter of time before the air dropped torpedo magazine at the far end of the hanger went up and the ship had to be abandoned.
Some of the surviving fire-fighters had heat burns that had radiated through the BA visors, but it goes to show how effective the protective gear was.
The ship that was destroyed by a bomb in the process of being defused was HMS Antelope. It is thought that the rocket powered unscrewing clamps for the fuse mechanism were set the wrong way round, the bomb had left-hand threads.
The 4.5"Mk 8 gun has a rate of fire of around 30 rounds per minute which is a devastating weapon. in a little over five minutes it could level half a city .It is reckoned that it took out at least one Exocet, and when you think that these things fly extremely low at around 450 knots that is impressive.
I think the US Navy has a larger version(don’t they always) at least 6" but the rate of fire is a little lower.
The Sea-Wolf system was so fast and accurate and able to hit multiple attacking targets that it intimidated the AAF, can’t say I was aware of any low level failings certainly the AAF flew extremely low and were hit by Sea Wolf missiles but they had some problems where the systems were not available at times.
For much of the time I think there were only 17 harriers available but they had a local combat time far in excess of the AAF and they were deployed in low level dogfights which the AAF aircraft were simply not designed for, plus they were using thrust vectoring which meant they could stop or zip off to one side in a way that the AAF could not cope with.
There was a story that when HMS Fearless was in an attack zone their antiquated version of Seacat was fired at an AAF jet but in turn this was detected and shot down by a 4.5 gun in radar auto mode, menawhile Sea Darts from one of the type 42 destroyers dealt with the aircraft.
There are plenty of stories about but we didn’t know much about most of them till we got home, the papers seemed to report a differant event altogether.
Basically the overriding memory is that of watchkeeping and false alarms during off watch time, and the shore shelling which lit up the night so dramtically.
Thanks for setting things straight for me, casdave. It’s very interesting to hear it from someone who was on the scene.
Lizard asked in his post But was I right that the Falkland Islands War is still the only occasion (or was at least the first) where a ship was sunk by an air-launched missle? It depends on how you define “air-launched missle”, the Nazis sank a British warship in the Med in 1942 or 43 with a radio guided gravity powered bomb. Unfortunately I can’t find the name of the ship right now.
HMS Warspite was severely damaged by a German glider bomb in the Meiditterannean during WWII.
I’m sure other smaller ships must have been sunk.
I was just wondering if the ‘out of range’ missile failures noted here aren’t referring to the US supplied Stinger missiles? I’m not sure they’d been in service that long, even with the US forces. I think a dozen or so were hurriedly taken without proper training by, IIRC, the paras, registering just a single hit.