So they had launchers in the Falklands? It seems this would have to be the case, since various sources (such as this one) suggest the Exocet’s range is rather limited.
I’m curious how you reconcile this with your earlier statement that “the Argentine Navy could maneuver with near impunity.”
Otakuloki
I think maybe you are thinking of Hong Kong and the New Territories, there was certainly a lot of concern that once China retook possession that hundreds of thousands would leave, and end up trying to come to the UK.
They were issued with HK passports and not British ones, but you can see why the Falklanders were also denied access to British passports as it would have strengthened the HK case to be made full UK citizens.
HMS* Glamorgan* was the one damaged by a land-based (possibly improvised & mobile) launcher
You’re right. My apologies for the confusion.
Royal Naval strategy in the Cold War era was designed with the essential conflict being a NATO/Warsaw Pact conflict in the North Atlantic, i.e. the combined forces of the USN and RN against the Soviet Red Banner Northern Fleet. This had two basic components; protecting shipping lanes for commercial and merchant marine traffic, and prosecuting strategic assets (i.e. ballistic missile submarines). Because the RN did not and to this day does not have a ‘real’ aircraft carrier capable of fielding non-VSTOL fixed-wing aircraft it is reliant on land-based and USN supercarrier coverage; as a result the RN focused more on escort and anti-submarine duties, for which it was admirably suited, but limited independent British capability to project power and provide its own surveillance.
Although the Argentine Navy was clearly outclassed in any head to head conflict, the odds for a single or pair of British ships facing an ARA battle task group were less favorable, and the British had to devote much of their resources to escort duty, substantially limiting their ability to enter into a surface ship naval engagement under favorable conditions or maintain coverage to the west of the Falklands. And because the RN lacked AWACS or even regular overflight capability (something the USN would have provided in a North Atlantic conflict) there was substantial uncertainty about where they could operate. After the sinking of Belgrano (by RN SSN HMS Conqueror) the Argentines essentially withdrew their naval assets, which were incapable of effectively detecting or defending against submarine attack. Prior to the arrival of Conqueror, though the Argentine navy could move freely while the British surface task forces were mostly dedicated to protecting merchant shipping, both before and after the sinking of Belgrano.
Stranger
…if the carrier Hermes was sunk by an exocet missile? Without air cover, the british would have been in a bad way. By the way, the Vulcan bomber that landed in Brazil-what happened to it? I suspect that the long range bombing of the Stanley Airport wasn’t all tha effective, but you have to admire the skill of the pilots-five refuelings! That is pretty amazing!
No Harrier was lost in air combat, two or three (fuzzy memory, I´d have to pick up one of my books and look for it) were shot down by ground AAA; the rest where operational losses.
XM597 was impounded until July. The crew and aircraft were returned but the Brazillians kept the remaining missile.
Images of XM597 (scroll down or search for the number) and a brief description of its impounding.
Anyone interested in Black Buck should read Vulcan 607 by Rowland White. As a military operation it was hardly cost effective but in terms of improvisation and courage it was an epic.
S’what i was thinking too. I remember Invincible losing two on patrols (with pilot fatigue/error or aircraft failure being the most likely cause of loss) and at least two being shot down by ground fire. My Falklands War is very rusty though so i thought i’d hedge my bets. 
It would have been a major problem but not totally catastrophic i suspect. Don’t forget that there were two carriers in the taskforce (Invincible being the other).
I suspect that, supply problems aside, any of Hermes’ aircraft which had escaped it’s destruction (of which there’d be at least a couple who’d have been on CAP at the time) could base off of there.
Similarly the Harrier is obviously a VTOL/STOVL aircraft - they could (and did) operate off of the ground once a secure foothold had been established.
Basically I’ve no doubt it would have seriously stretched the taskforce’s ability to maintain air superiority, but given the various issues the Argentine airforce had (which have already been mentioned in this thread) its unlikely they would have been able to take advantage of the situation.
Of course Hermes was also the Flagship, so i suppose you’ve got the potential for all kinds of problems if it went down with all hands, but that’s a whole different issue.
I can heartily recommend Commander Ward’s Sea Harrier over the Falklands for those interested in the air war.
Some fun trivia, a search of “HMS Invincible” on Wikipedia indicates that the deck cruiser was not the first HMS Invincible to fight near the Falklands. Her immediate predecessor, the lead ship of her class of battlecruisers, lead a squadron of cruisers which fought Admiral Graf von Spee’s German East Asia Squadron near the Falkland Islands in 1914.
/Hijack.
There’s also the maybe apocryphal story that Invincible and her sister ships Illustrious and Ark Royal were designated through-deck cruisers because the Admiralty didn’t think they would get the funding if they were called aircraft carriers.
Reminds me of the story of how the B-29D, a design revision of the B-29 Superfortress that addressed a number of the aircraft’s shortcomings (underpowered engines being a big one), was shot down in Congress because they didn’t want to keep paying for a WWII bomber. So the Air Force changed “B-29D” to “B-50A”, thus making it an entirely new, modern, post-war design, and sent the exact same proposal to Congress with the new name, and it was approved.
Really, it’s amazing what’s in a name. For a time, the US Navy had very few cruisers, while the Soviet navy had many. This was quite distressing, but easily fixed: We simply reclassified many of our frigates, which were themselves as big and powerful as any cruiser, as Cruisers, and voila the Cruiser Gap was closed. Nowadays, the US Navy is one of a few navies that still has Cruisers (IIRC, the other navies are France, Russia, Italy, and Peru), while everyone seems to have these highly capable, massively powerful destroyers ambling about.
These days you persuade the media to call these beauties “super carrers” and then let the publicity do the rest. 
BTW, anyone thinking that, say, the Bainbridge (a former FFGN, later classed DLGN, and finally CGN) was a match, by herself for a Kirov class is smoking something that is not allowed for active duty military personnel. Which only emphasizes the power of a name, of course.
Seriously, the USN’s definition of what a cruiser’s mission is changed radically post-WWII. AIUI, a cruiser is primarily an AAW platform, where it used to be a small, fast surface combatant that was used for scouting and destroying opposing scout forces; a destroyer is now primarily an ASW platform, where it used to be a “torpedo boat destroyer” and had then morphed into the sort of fast scout vessel that cruisers hunted (Note: a light cruiser was really a super destroyer, not a smaller ship to run a cruiser’s job - it was meant for commanding destroyer flotilla); and a frigate was a Cold War name for the DE, a ship that was primarily ASW, and became a sort of bastard child of all roles - not the primary platform for any role, but able to fill-in, sorta, for its larger cousins.
Well, to be fair, the Kirovs were/are really mean looking ships, from what I’ve seen. According to Wikipedia (infallible source off all academically applicable knowledge, of course ), when the Kirovs were put into service, the US Navy recommissioned a couple of the Iowas, possibly as a PR move to counter the powerful image of the Kirovs. Dunno how a fight between a Kirov and an Iowa would go down (assuming, of course, that such a fight would ever happen on the modern battlefield), but it’d probably be interesting to watch from a safe distance…
With The Battlecruiser Invincible herself being sunk at the battle of Jutland with an enormous loss of life.
Another hijack.
“There’s something wrong with our bloody ships today, Chatfield.”