The Falklands

Ughhh – the Yanks f'cked us over with the Falklands

By supplying us with the very latest Sidewinder AA missile technology?

In WW2 US policy was admittedly self-serving and cynical

To argue that it was:

as anti-UK (and other European "imperialist" natons like France and the Netherlands) as it was anti German, anti Japanese.

is just daft

They didn't carpet bomb us like they did the Germans, and they didn't nuke us like they did the Japanese. And they only bombed the French and the Dutch out of tactical necessity

Ughhh – the Yanks f'cked us over with the Falklands,

Please explain that statement.
(It was the French that provided technical assistance to the enemy for their Exocets.)

What do you mean by that CFH?

CaptainFlashheart – Member

the Yanks f'cked us over with the Falklands

American mercenaries lay buried in lime pits in many parts of the Falklands. With their service dogtags.

Make of that what you will.

Que? – never heard that one.

Well, there you go. Every day's a school day. As I said, Make of that what you will

I don't understand it, I don't know why and I won't pretend that I do, but there are Americans in lime in the Falklands.

Nor I.
No mention in any of the accounts I've read from that period or written subsequently.

More info please. Links? Source material?

Source material?

Falklanders.

American bodies from when? What period?

CFH – all bollocks, based on the fact that a number of the Argentinian POW's had perfect English with American accents.

Given the fact that a number of them were from Argentine/American families and had been to high school and university in the States, but as argentinian residents got called up for their national service, it wasn't really surprising that they were mistaken for Spams – a fair number probably qualified for dual citizenship.

a google "falklands war american mercenaries" throws up unsubstatiated allegations. Waht looks likely is that this is an urban myth

It looks like there were american educated argentine citizens captured and shot as well as some british argentines – all conscripts

Well, this is from people who live there. It's their story, not mine. Make of it what you will.

Since the Argentinian military Officer Corps was professional, many officers having been to Sandhurst and no doubt West Point and such like, I can't for one minute think why they'd want to employ non-Argentinian mercenaries to take with them.

I have friends of friends out there on a civi contract so I'll ask.

Re. American mercenaries the link below is interesting as it is from a respectable journalist.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/falklands-war-crimes-claim-mod-investigates-allegations-that-paras-shot-argentine-prisoners-1540755.html

El-Bent

start by working out how you do BVR combat with the GR9.

Then work out air combat without a main runway. Then crack on with getting troops out of the 'stan (they will stop elsewhere before coming home) then come back to me

I'm serving RAF with sufficient experience to know you're talking bollocks. When you've read your shit clearly you'll see different.

Go back to school.

Cletus – the journalist clearly states he is just repeating what is in a book. One uncorroborated source. It only claims they spoke english with an american accent. As do many argentines

More tory lies eh TJ ?

😉

Umm, it's either a conscript army or not hora.
The NCOs and ruperts may be enlisted but it's still not a professional army.

It was mixed. For instance on the Belgrano there were 'old hands' who had been with the Belgrano for years in the regular Navy serving alonsgside conscripts. I take from this that its a sort of national service alongside professionals.

The Argentinian special forces (one of the books mentioned that I read) were professional soldiers not conscripts.

While we're back at school-reading about the Falklands war of 1833 and the claims to ownership in the 50 years before this could clear a few things up….

Thanks for the entertaining thread folks

Yes, maybe we should go back to pre-1824 and Spains ownership of Argentina?

…or possibly the ongoing border/islands dispute with Chile?

Just been talking to the mrs and her mum and they said there weren't any Americans there. Apparently some Argies had an americanised english if that makes any difference.

Captain Flasheart – they're asking if you're from there or if not who do you know?

hora – a conscripted military is nowhere near as effective as a professional volunteer military. Regardless of the number of 'regulars', the far lower levels of ability/motivation etc of conscripts coupled with the higher levels of supervision/effort to employ them drags the overall capability down. Those 'professionals' are often those who came to the end of conscription and decided to sign on as they liked it/didn't know any different/couldn't do anything else.

TooTall- its all semantics. Neither of them had been tested in battle. A kid joining up to escape the dole in Merthyr Tydfil is going to have the same experience and fears.

Dont forget one of the regiments that fought had just come over from walking around the Palace/trooping the colours as their main role in the Army.

😯

hora – it isn't all semantics. Nothing of the sort. I take it from your dismissal of my point that you share my experiences of working with both conscripted and volunteer military forces? I would love to hear more of your thoughts on this subject.

think you seriously overestimate the technology of the day, and underestimate the difficulty of finding a ship at sea.

You do recall what computers were like in those days? and that we were still using propeller planes for much of our maritime surveillance…

How much technology does it take to lay up offshore, and to receive comms from portside observations?? You seem to be overlooking the fact that we did have people on the mainland, etc etc etc. Similar to the SAS unit dropped onto Stanley airfield by Vulcan bomber, which then carried out obos and ultimately directed Naval fire onto Stanley with virtually no civilian casualites in the final battle. Allied to that the Nuclear sub didn't just chance on the Belgrano it had done as above, and was tracking the bugger for considerable time before it nailed the poor sod, pretty much as described above.

Regarding the technology of the day, not sure how well you remember the 70's/80's but it was that time when the cold war was still on and Nato had been carrying out surveillance on the planets surface to a very intense degree for decades. It was also the era, when we designed and utilised amongst other things, Concorde, The Harrier, The Sinclair C5 and so on…so whats your point?

I bet the Sinclair C5 was awesome in battle. 😆

BB

Chuckle! Great Inventions of Our Time……Sinclair C5 😆

Still, Maggie did a terrific job, far better than those snivelling, statistic twisting, greedy, expenses claiming, service destroying, sell-of-everything to the highest bidder, warmongering runts we call 'the government' today….

VOTE ICKE!

start by working out how you do BVR combat with the GR9.

Tasking by the big bird in the sky – one of the points of which is after all to enable other aircraft to engage without revealing their presence by keeping their radars switched off.

seem to be overlooking the fact that we did have people on the mainland, etc etc etc.

Which is fine for intelligence on ships leaving port however, unless you've a sub waiting for them to come out, it doesn't help much once they're actually over the horizon. It's not like they just steam in straight lines to make it easy for you… The south Atlantic is a big place and there is a lot of water to cover between Argentina and the Falklands. Perhaps we could have done what the Argentinians did and use aircraft such as Boeing 707's for ocean reconnaissance. I'm not sure we could have relied on them not shooting them down however (Harriers shepherded Argentinian military 707's away from the task force on several occasions during the passage from the UK).

I was a naval intelligence officer in the post Falklands period (mid to late 80's) and so know what intelligence sources were available to us then, regarding ship movements etc. Without access to land based assets deploying from the Falklands themselves it would have been quite tricky to find even large ships like their carrier.

People have an often very unrealistic idea of capability etc. For example the Argentinean airforce's actions during the Falklands has an almost mythical quality now, however the reason so many of their bombs didn't go off or bounced over ships is becuase they were forced down to low level operations to reduce their very high casualty rate. Despite knowing that this was causing issues with the effectiveness of their bombs they still continued to do it (they eventually obtained new fuses from Spain to address the issue), because they thought the alternative was an increased casualty rate (although our forces worked out that if they'd used pop-up tactics for bomb release they'd have been a lot more effective and possibly with a lower casualty rate). Undoubtedly they were very brave but they did suffer badly from a number of things – not least from their politicians starting the war without proper preperations (they reacted to a political opportunity instead of invading later in the year as planned). This meant that the wrong forces were used in the invasion (raw recruits early in their conscription rather than those who were closer to the end of their period and therefore better trained, only 5 exocets delivered and not yet properly trained on the equipment, very limited in-flight refueling capability, no proper plans to make use of the runway at Stanley for fast jets – e.g. equipment to lengthen it, for fuel storage and most importantly to protect it from attack). The lack of in-flight refueling was the worst thing for the air-force – their Mirage's and Daggers were almost useless as they had so little fuel that they couldn't vary their approach to Falklands meaning that it was easy for the Harrier CAP to intercept them on the way in, with a corresponding high casualty rate. They were withdrawn for that reason (it was spun as defence against possible mainland attacks by the Vulcans even though they knew those were quite unlikely) until they got desperate later in the conflict and had to use them again. This left the aging Skyhawks to attack without air cover, hence the low level approach and the issues with bomb fusing. If the Argentineans could have refueled their fighters on the way then it would have been a very different air conflict over the Falklands – with the Skyhawks able to attack the ships while the Daggers and Mirages engaged the Harriers while carrying enough fuel to be effective.

Most military commentary I've seen things that we'd have been unlikely to lose the conflict even under those circumstances, but that a negotiated "draw" would have been quite possible.

Similar to the SAS unit dropped onto Stanley airfield by Vulcan bomber,

😯

Jesus, you really have no idea do you!

PMSL!

What's the similarity between Mrs.Spock and Port Stanley Airport?

They've both been ****ed by Vulcans……..

for SAS insertion on to the Islands read Ghosts (history of the SAS)
it can only be described as a botched F*** up..
and there were no Vulcans involved..

it can only be described as a botched F*** up..

Doesn't that describe most insertions of the SAS?

SNAFU.

Doesn't that describe most insertions of the SAS?

No, Just the ones we hear about.
B20 aside, can you name another?

unless you've a sub waiting for them to come

How much technology does it take to lay up offshore

Thats what I said wasn't it? Given the carrier was apparently such a huge threat, and given that the Belgrano just wasn't under any interpretation. (NB: at this point could I just point out that Battle Cruisers were already redundant during WW2 and most played little or no significant part in the outcome, spending most of the war either being sunk or alternatively hiding from air attack in port.) So please don't try to tell me that our navy in 1982 was underthreat from this antique. So I think I might be forgiven for suggesting that the aircraft carrier was a more significant target. Or is this a new war fighting tactic? Lets attack something that isn't a threat at all, because that will quite obviously deal with the threat from the thing that was. Get a grip FFS Shyhawks etc still went on to play a significant part in the destruction of both men and material.

Now then moving on swiftly to the military derivative of the C5… specifically developed with stealth technology in mind and the ability to come in under the enemies radar. Unfortunately not deployed in the Falklands as it was deemed quicker to walk. It went on to find greater usage with special forces and covert ops where it was found that utilising said vehicle immediately lulled the enemy into a false sense of security and thus to drop their guard. Most effective when painted in Camoflage colouring and sporting excessivley large wing mirrors.

This was then named "the sinkie" by the SAS following "the pinkie" and "the dinkie".

As part of the combined attack that Argentina were attempting there is absolutely no doubt that the Belgrano was a threat. Ok it was from a earlier era however because of that it had much heavier gun armament than a modern ship would and, if allowed to get close enough to use them, would have been capable of causing havoc.

The Harriers or sub were of course capable of dealing with a vessel like that however bear in mind the following points:
– the Belgrano was escorted by two Type-42 destroyers armed with Sea Dart and those would have been a threat to the Harriers
– weather conditions in the South Atlantic often meant that aircraft couldn't operate
– if the sub had been told to leave the Belgrano and go look for the carrier (which was hundreds of miles away) then the Harriers would have been the only effective response – not good if they can't fly or were effectively engaged by Sea Dart
– Plenty of the ships and helicopters had surface attack capable missiles however, as with Exocet, they weren't realy expected to be used against a big old vessel with a fair bit of armour and it may have taken a lot of hits to disable the Belgrano

is this still rolling on?

argentina want a slice of the oil pie and are playing the only card they have. access.

simples.

if the sub had been told to leave the Belgrano and go look for the carrier (which was hundreds of miles away) then the Harriers would have been the only effective response – not good if they can't fly or were effectively engaged by Sea Dart

Steve…… c'mon these things were getting taken out by Swordfish biplanes in WW2 FFS you're just not going to convince me that it was any sort of threat. Type 42 destroyer either for that matter… mark you you are making an argument for nailing the destroyers, which would also have been a more valid thing to do. All this apart, and presuming there was only one submarine in the South Atlantic at the time, (No doubt someone will be along in a minute who was head of security at the MOD at the time and will share with us detailed info on their deployment, so we'll make this presumption before that), Reading any edition of Hornblower will tell you that you mustn't let the dago's distract you by sending out a decoy. you have to maintain a stiff upper lip and a tight sphincter and wait the buggers out.