Some of the damage was inflicted by (land-based) aircraft that belonged to the Argentine Navy but I am not aware of any damage inflicted by Argentine ships.
Sharkey is as biaised towards naval aviation as the “fish heads” were against it, but its difficult to argue that he doesn’t have a point about most of the issues he quotes.
The Sea Harrier was/is a great CAP fighter when its used by pilots trained in that application, and when present in sufficient numbers to allow a healthy CAP rotation. Sadly, as has already been noted, the Admiralty simply had not anticipated the real need for this role and neither of the above requirements was really in place.
It doesn’t help that the RAF has consistently sabotaged British Naval Aviation since the end of WW2 either.
My Falklands reading is pretty rusty, but if i remember rightly the difference in success rates between Invincible’s “low CAP” (Invincible having the pilots better trained for that role) and Hermes’ “high CAP” was pretty stark.
All of that aside, the fact that only 18 or so Sea Harriers still managed to maintain a reasonable degree of air supremacy throughout the campaign speaks well for the aircraft (and their crews). Can’t remember the exact losses figures either, but i’m reasonably sure it was about 6, of which very few (if any) were actually the result of enemy air activity.
Me too. 
Slightly off topic - I think its Sharkey Ward who reveals that, at an operational level, the majority of their intelligence on the performance capabilities of the Argentine airforce came from a copy of Janes Fighting Aircraft they found in Invincible’s library, because everything else was classified above their level of clearance.
:eek: :smack:
Not sure how reliable this article is, but if it is it appears that France may have been a more helpful ally during and prior to the conflict.
The loan of airplanes for training, details of exocet shipments, bid information on exocet auctions so that MI6 could outbid the Argentinians and information on how to tamper with the missiles so that any missiles already en route or deployed could be sabotaged.
Also apparently the argentinians only had 5 exocets at the start of the war.
Again, another Telegraph article, it being the Telegraph though I don’t put that much faith in it.
There was an airstrip at Stanley, and denying the use of it was a British priority. This involved the US allowing the RAF to stage Vulcans and Victors out of the US base on Ascension, and a complex multistage refuelling scheme and a 30 hour flight to get two bombers on target and back. Black Buck only just came off. Whether the results justified the amount of work involved is debated, but it was an fairly impressive episode. Several other similar raids followed, and the raids motivated the British public with an early success, even if it did not seriously damage the Argentinian efforts.
Si
The fight for the rights of Falkland Islanders is misleading too.
Falkland Islanders at the time held Falkland Islands passports, they were not officially classed as British subjects and were not entitled to rights of residency and wrok in the UK , though applications were normally granted, and a few on the Falklands were UK citizens working away.
What I’m saying is that we were not actually fighting for British nationals.
Argentinas claim in the islands is very dubious at best, the idea that they had a colony is wrong because during the time period that they claim Argenitina simply did not exist, their claim was based on possession by a former colonialist holding and nothing more. There no formal precedent that allows a former colony to base its claim upon the holdings of the coloniser for land that is not contiguous.
In any case the Falklands is quite some way from Argentina, three hundred miles or so so the idea that this is within any form of Argentine zone is also pretty rubbish too.
Argentinas claim amounts to selecting a convenient point in history, but if this were allowed it would set a very unwelcome precedent all over the world, look at the changes that have occurred in the last 50-60 years, Europe could be ablaze again.
The main contribution the US made was ensuring the supply of sidewinder missiles which were crucial in the air, the Argentine aircraft were not designed to be low level attack aircraft, and as such were not manouvereable, they were operating outside of their mission and their best design envelope, and the RN strategy was to ensure that any air combat took place within the Sea Harriers envelope, this is why Argentine aircraft were so vulnerable to sidewinders, they were not high enough to get adequate warning and did not get enough time to deploy effective countermeasures.
It was reported that to ensure adequate supplies of sidewinders, the US took them out of their operational reserves, literally off their own aircraft, crated up and sent to the UK.
Isn’t the base on Ascension actually a UK base just on loan to the US? I’m sure I read somewhere that it was a dual RAF/USAF base.
Operation Back Buck - Not a great article, but its a place to start.
The main point of “Black Buck” was to prove that any aircraft or airport on the Falklands was within the reach of British bombers. The Argentines didn’t know that in practice very few Vulcans could reach the islands, so could reasonably believe that attempts to built their own airport would have been bombed more heavily.
The aim was to deny the airport to the Argentines, not to destroy it. If their jets had to operate from the mainland it shortened their range considerably (many of their jets did not have air to air refuelling). Notably, after the first raid, most of the Argentine aircraft that were there withdrew to the mainland, so in that regard it was a success.
If the US helped with any British operations during the Falklands war (e.g. helping to fit DASH-10 pods to the Vulcans, which has been suggested) that help would have been provided completely unofficially, because of the diplomatic issues already raised.
Edited to add - Ascension Island at the time was a RAF base on loan to the US.
Ascension is a UK territory, but the airbase was built and operated by the US. The UK may have had an agreement prior to the Falklands war, but they had no equipment on site at the time, and had to make special arrangements to stage military operations. The US staff at Wideawake were not allowed to assist, so the RAF were basically on their own (but there was some covert US assistance, as noted).
Si
Well the Yanks built it originally. I think officially it was a “joint” base, but was effectively a US Base on a British Island back then, with the RAF having usage rights as a kind of “sleeping partner.”
Obviously when the Falklands War hit the sleeping partner awoke and regarrisoned it.
Critics (of which I’ll admit i’m one) would say that it was RAF showboating in order to justify the far-fetched “global coverage” claims that they’d pitched to the Powers-That-Be that had allowed them to nab a larger slice of the ever-decreasing defence budget from the Navy (who were still busy trying to work out whether they actually needed dedicated naval air forces anyway). Claims they’d never expected to actually have to demonstrate.
Similar (if not better) results (with far less hassle) could have been achieved by letting the Harriers have a go.
The Argentines weren’t prevented from using Stanley (at least during the daytime) due to the efforts of the RAF’s long distance shenanigans. They were prevented from using it due to the tendency of the taskforce already there to kick the crap out of the airfield whenever they left anything out in the open.
I remember chatting to a Falklands Sea Harrier Veteran in a Pub ages ago, and the expletives that came out of his mouth at the very mention of the Black Buck raids would leave your ears bleeding (although he had only positive things to say about the RAF pilots who were actually involved as part of the taskforce).
Only time i’d heard worse was when i asked a WW2 Italian Campaign Veteran for his opinion of General Mark Clark.
The “unofficial” assistance received from France (and the French defence industry) certainly stands as a decent reminder that the Entente Cordiale is still going strong. At least off of the footie/rugby pitches.
Whilst I don’t want to hijack this thread, I would like to point out that the Falkland islands might not be as unimportant as people seem to believe.
Look at this map of Antartica which shows the areas nations have claimed.
The British, Argentine and Chilean claims all overlap (In fact the British claim completely covers the Argentine claim).
The Falkland Islands would be key to Britains future resource (fishing, mineral and oil) claims from this area.
Now, certainly. Back then, however, general opinion in the halls of power was that they were more trouble (and more expensive) than they were worth, and the Argentines were welcome to them as soon as someone could work out how to spin it to the media (and thus the British public) as in Britain’s best interests.
Under pressure to draw attention away from issues at home, and thanks to some wonderful diplomatic bungling (or deliberate mismanagement to provoke an election-saving war by the Tory government, as some claim) from noble Albion, the Argentinian government misread the situation and jumped the gun by invading.
This, of course, now means they can never get them back (even if their value hadn’t unexpectedly risen) because any British government that let them go would be committing political suicide.
Its basically a more extreme version of the problem that Britain/Spain have with Gibraltar.
May I recommend that we keep the discussion to the non-Great Debates issue presented in the OP? Discussion of the merits of the claim of Argentina or the UK to the Falklands should be held in a separate thread in that forum, I’m thinking. Here, we seem to be developing a goodly amount of factual information to answer the OP and the questions related to it. I’ve learned a lot, thanks to the thread. 
I do recall the use of the AIM-9Ls during the war. I felt a certain amount of something, pride, maybe, or discomfort, never quite certain which, as I had had a chance to work on the AIM-9L program at one point for a sub-contractor for the DoD. To see that it was in action was weird.
Well back on topic, one good (if slightly stretched) analogy to show the importance of the US’ tacit support during the campaign is to compare and contrast the outcome of the Falklands War with the Suez Crisis.
This is possibly straying into the GD arena but just to respond to some points already made and to answer the question of why the United States did not do more to help.
As has already been noted if, before the invasion, there had been a face saving way of getting rid of the Falklands the British Governemnt would have jumped at it. The Foreign Office saw it as a ridiculous hangover from Empire that confused and strained relationships with South and Latin American American countries that we wished to trade with and the MOD saw it as a ridiculous waste of scarce resourses at the height of the Cold War. Naturally enough the United States view was the same the same but more so!
Even after the invasion it was a close run thing as to whether Britain would fight to get the islands back. Stranger says "the Argentine Navy was a third rate naval power consisting of mostly second-hand ships and obsolescent, lashed together attack systems. Indeed, if Britain had in its fleet inventory even one real aircraft carrier there simply wouldn’t have been an issue; " but the point was that the Royal Navy did not have a real carrier. In 1982 the RN was overwhelmingly set up to fight in the North Atlantic as part of NATO, any assets they did have for out of area operations were as obsolescent as the Argentinian equipment. From what I have read the conventional military and political wisdom was that Britain could not project sufficient force 8000 miles from home to match the Argentinans 300 miles from their base. Along with the military doubts there was a general feeling that in the late 20th century Britain - and other Western countries - did not fight limited wars outside Europe. The focus was on the Warsaw Pact, Germany and the North Atlantic.
It was only the peronal intervention of the Commander in Chief, Fleet, Sir John Fieldhouse, that convinced Margaret Thatcher that it was “doable” and Margaret Thatcher’s own personality that made her accept the obvious risks.
Regarding the American reaction I think it was mostly horrified disbelief that two allies were fighting over a bunch of barren rocks hundreds of miles from anywhere. There was great resentment in Britain about the US struggling - at least in public - to remain “even handed” between Argentina and Britain - between a military dictatorship with an appaling human rights record that had just invaded a territory whose inhabitants had clearly indicated they wanted to remain British and an old established liberal democracy that also happened to be America’s most important ally in NATO. In private the American defense establishment pretty soon started providing tangible help - the famous Sidewinders, various components for British equipment, and intelligence at various levels.
Probably true, but I believe the **retaking ** of the Falklands had an important geopolitical impact. Along with Reagan’s military commitment and rhetoric it marked a turning point in the West’s self-belief and willingness to intervene against agression. As such you can see the Falklands as one thread in the decision to fight to retake Kuwait in the first Gulf War which - it can be argued - in turn has led to the present situation in Iraq and Kuwait. (Oops - now that is straying into GD territory.)
To add to this, if the Argentines had waited a couple of months they’d have had an even bigger advantage. Hermes was set to be decommissioned at the end of the year.
Just out of curiousity, casdave, my memory of one of the central theses of Battle was that this mess vis-a-vis the citizenship status of the Falklanders was a huge mess, and largely a figleaf to cover the decision to treat the people in Singapore the same way - since they were either the only, or one of the very few, small caucasian populations to be so treated. It also was one of the main supports for the Argentine thinking that the UK would not fight to defend the islands. (Not the only one, but more “encouraging” than even the policy of trying to get the Falklanders to want to become Argentine citizens.) Do you agree with that, or have I got things mixed in my memory again?
Again, I realize we’re falling back into GD territory, but I can’t help but find the issues interesting.
MarcusF, I don’t disagree with you about the effects on the geopolitical environment after the Falklands conflict.
My recollection of what I’ve read…perhaps it was in Keegan’s The Price of Admiralty, perhaps not…is that while land-based Argentine planes did score some Exocet hits, the British became more concerned about Exocets fired from land. Apparently their radar capabilities could track incoming aircraft for several minutes before a launch, but the land-based launches only gave 30 seconds’ warning before missile impact.
The Argentines only had a few Super Etendards capable of carrying air-launched Exocets. They used old US-surplus A-4 Skyhawks to dive-bomb, and also attacked ground troops with prop-driven Pucara aircraft.
One of the most important lessons learned came from the loss of the Atlantic Conveyor, the huge transport carrying most of the supplies and all of the expedition’s transport helicopters. When an inbound Exocet was detected, all the escorting warships launched chaff and initated jamming to protect themselves. The Atlantic Conveyor had no such protection, and the missile picked her out of the fleet and sank her instead of one of the much less critical small warships assigned to protect her. The moral is, firstly, give the high-value transports better defenses, and secondly, take a bullet for them with your “expendables” if you have to.
Sailboat
That’s precisely the opposite of the case. The British did not believe Argentina was capable of firing an Exocet from land, and were taken entirely by surprise when one was launched from a land platform.
The Falkland Islands War is a rare case of a side losing a war because they ran out of weapons. Argentina had only 6 Exocets, and sank or disabled three ships with them. Had they had 60, they’d have won the war; the British had no effective defense against them.
That is perhaps a bit hyperbolic; if the Argentines had had 60 Exocets, the British would have been more constrained and circumspect. I think the Royal Navy would have choked the Argentines eventually (and politically a win for the British was a must) but at greater cost of time and likely life. As noted above, the tactics that the Royal Navy had worked out for a North Atlantic conflict (and assuming cooperation with the USN) simply didn’t work on their own against the Argentines, despite the latter’s obsolescent fleet and minimal training. Once the British sank the ARA General Belgrano (the only major naval asset loss by the Argentines) the surface ships of the Argentine Navy essentially retired to port.
If the Royal Navy had been able to field even a modest AWACS capability, and/or had been able to provide continuous long range air cover it would have restricted the Argentines reach and given early warning for air attacks, permitted forward response. That it didn’t hampered the ability of the RN to provide protection to transports.
More than anything other factor, the Falklands War demonstrated the value of air superiority and the weaknesses of a navy or land-based airforce that can’t project power in the battle theater, regardless of how modern its shipboard weapon systems are. It also demonstrated that point defense systems were not nearly as invulnerable as promised, and that in a battle between cans and u-boats, the submarine almost always enjoys the advantage, forcing a navy to devote substantial resources to protecting surface assets against attacks from below; hence, the double-edged sword of the aircraft carrier group; it’s necessary to project power but difficult and expensive to protect. The Falklands War also demonstrated (yet again) the value of special operations and on-the-ground intelligence.
And finally, it demonstrated a fundamental rule of war; whatever theoretical genius tactics you’ve developed in the classroom, there are no guarantees in actual combat, and out in the fleet a perfect plan tends to unravel like a cheap scarf.
Stranger
What’s precisely the opposite of the case?
If you mean “The British did not believe Argentina was capable of firing an Exocet from land,” my use of the term “became more concerned” implies that they started out less concerned (in fact, unconcerned) about the land threat. I didn’t bother to expand on the fact that the ugly surprise quickly became their top concern. I’ve read quotes from British officers saying how much the fear of the shorter-warning-cycle land-based missiles came to dominate their thinking.
My post was shorthand for the process of moving from “not expecting the threat” to “dreading it.”
Sailboat