Falklands War

gigatos | February 21, 2022

Summary

The Falklands War (English Falklands War

Also read, biographies – Henry IV of France

Background

Ownership of the islands was long disputed. In 1600, the Dutchman Sebald de Weert sighted a group of three uninhabited islands. Soon after, they were marked on Dutch nautical charts. In 1690, the English Captain John Strong was the first to set foot on the islands and named the strait between the two main islands Falkland Channel, after the Chief of Admiralty, Lord Falkland. Only later was “Falkland” used as the name of the entire archipelago. Between 1698 and 1712, French captains charted the islands. On their maps, published in 1716 by Frezier in Saint-Malo, they were listed as “Iles Malouines” – referring to the name of the city of St. Malo. In 1764, the Frenchman Louis Antoine de Bougainville founded the first colony, which was sold to Spain by the French Crown in October 1766. On April 1, 1767, the colony was formally handed over to the Spanish, who kept the name of the islands – modified in Spanish – as “Malvinas”. However, as early as December 1766, the British Captain (Captain of the Royal Navy) John McBride had landed on Saunders Island (Spanish: Isla Trinidad), then called “Falkland”, and had left a small force under Captain Anthony Hunt (Captain of the Army) to secure British claims. The name Falkland was thus initially singular and did not refer to the neighboring East Falkland (Isla Soledad), the plural “Falklands” was used by the British much later. In November 1769, Captain Hunt”s sloop and a Spanish schooner encountered each other in the Falklands Sound. They demanded each other to vacate the Falkland Islands, but no one complied with these demands. This resulted in the Falklands Crisis between Great Britain and Spain, which almost led to a conflict between the two countries. In May 1770, the Spanish governor in Buenos Aires, Francisco Bucarelli, sent five frigates, which quickly forced the thirteen British stationed by Hunt on June 10, 1770, to surrender. Impending war between Britain and Spain was averted by a secret peace declaration on January 22, 1771, in which Spain yielded but reserved sovereignty rights over the Falkland Islands. In another treaty on September 16, 1771, both sides mutually recognized their previous rights with respect to the Falkland Islands and Malvinas, respectively. However, in the years that followed, the British made no discernible attempt to settle the islands permanently.

The justification for Argentina”s claims to ownership of the Falkland Islands is very complex. However, the claims are mainly based on the fact that Buenos Aires considers itself the sole legal successor to the former Spanish viceroyalty on the Río de la Plata.

With the dethronement of the previous king and the French takeover of Madrid in 1808, autonomy efforts in the Spanish colonies in South America intensified. On May 25, 1810, Buenos Aires declared itself autonomous. Only when, after the expulsion of the French, the reinstated Spanish King Ferdinand VII refused to recognize the autonomy of the South American colonies, did the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata declare themselves independent on July 9, 1816. In the wars that followed, the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata in Buenos Aires emphatically claimed all the territories that had ever been part of the Spanish Viceroyalty of La Plata, which – notwithstanding the still existing British claims – included the Falkland Islands (or in Spanish: Islas Malvinas). This led not only to battles with Spanish troops, but also to several wars with Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and with Brazil in the following decades. Border disputes with Chile over mutual claims to Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego were largely settled after the 1982 Falklands War (with Argentina”s relinquishment of the islands in the Beagle Channel on November 25, 1984). However, some disputes continue.

The last Spanish garrison in the Malvinas (Falkland Islands) withdrew to Montevideo in Uruguay in 1811, together with the inhabitants of the settlement of Puerto Soledad (Port Louis). Thereafter, the islands were virtually uninhabited and were visited only temporarily (mostly to repair ships and take on fresh water) by sailors and whalers of various nations. The role that David Jewitt played in 1820

It was not until June 1829 that Buenos Aires formally appointed a governor of the islands. The new governor was Louis Vernet, a Hamburg-born French merchant with a U.S. passport who had first come to the Falkland Islands in 1826 for private economic reasons, with the help of Argentine gauchos to catch the now quite numerous feral cattle on the islands and move them to the mainland. For this purpose he also established a settlement there in 1828. In January 1829, Vernet had his claim to vast areas on the Falkland Islands for agricultural use officially registered at the British Embassy in Buenos Aires. In April 1829, the embassy formally confirmed his claim, and the ambassador informed him that Her Majesty”s Government was happy to take his settlement under its protection. In negotiations with the British embassy, however, Vernet had concealed the fact that he had already had land rights confirmed with the Argentine government a year earlier, in January 1828, and had applied for fishing and grazing rights in the Malvinas in Buenos Aires as early as 1823. After the Argentine government had founded the “Comandancia Político y Militar de las Malvinas” (Spanish: “Political and Military Command of the Malvinas”) in June 1829 with regard to his settlement and had appointed Vernet as its first “commander,” the British ambassador protested sharply to the Argentine government in a formal note on November 19, 1829, against this blatant violation of British sovereign rights over the Falkland Islands. Because of Vernet”s (apparent or actual) “double-crossing,” the latter”s name is rarely mentioned in Argentine accounts today, and the South Americans base their claims primarily on David Jewitt, who had spent only a few months on the islands in a wrecked ship.

In 1831, the so-called “Lexington” incident occurred, triggered by Vernet”s seizure in 1829 of three ships belonging to U.S. sealers who had violated fishing and hunting rights guaranteed to him by the Argentine government in 1823 and by the British government in 1829 (the U.S. had – according to Vernet – indiscriminately killed seals and other animals on the islands). The U.S. therefore sent the corvette Lexington more than two years later, in December 1831, whose crew destroyed the settlement in Vernet”s absence and declared the Falkland Islands free (i.e. not belonging to any state), which also turned interest in Europe back to the islands. In response to Argentine protests against the violation of its sovereignty, the U.S. merely referred to pre-existing British sovereign rights.

Nevertheless, in 1832 Buenos Aires posted troops on the islands with the task of establishing a penal colony there. In November 1832, however, the prisoners revolted and murdered the commander of the troops, Captain Jean Etienne Mestivier. Argentina sent another ship with soldiers to arrest the murderers. Only three days after their arrival, the British sloop HMS Clio landed, whose captain John James Onslow took down the Argentine flag and raised the British one on January 3, 1833, thus renewing the British claims. Subsequently, the islands had no governmental authority for over a year (i.e., even after the departure of the British ship, the Argentine government made no attempt to reclaim the archipelago). It was not until January 10, 1834, that HMS Tyne landed for one of its routine annual visits and, in order to permanently secure British claims, left a young officer to establish a British administration as a “resident naval officer.” Only after the establishment of further settlements did Great Britain appoint its own governor for the Falkland Islands in 1842. Between 1833 and 1849, the Argentine Confederation renewed its protest a few more times, which Great Britain rejected on the grounds that they based their claims on the fact that the Falkland Islands had been Spanish, but that Spain had already ceded the rights to the islands to Great Britain before the independence of South America, which is why the islands no longer belonged to the viceroyalty.

Between 1843 and 1852, a series of wars broke out between Buenos Aires and provinces north of La Plata and on the Parana River that had declared their independence. Brazil and the two major European powers, France and Great Britain, eventually became involved in these wars as well (→ see articles on the history of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Juan Manuel de Rosas). In the course of this crisis, the Argentine Confederation under Juan Manuel de Rosas and Great Britain concluded a treaty on November 24, 1849, in which “all” differences were settled. According to the British, this also settled the dispute over the Falkland Islands, which Argentina denies today. However, the Argentine Confederation – and later the Republic of Argentina – made no further claims to the Falkland Islands in the decades that followed. On maps printed in Argentina, the islands were either omitted altogether or were marked as British territory.

The Republic of Argentina, founded in 1862 as the successor state to the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata and the Argentine Confederation, maintained consistently good relations with Great Britain until the beginning of World War II, during which time it made only indirect claims to the Falkland Islands. It was not until 1941 that the islands were again mentioned in an official document, the first time since 1849. In the course of this war, relations between the two states cooled noticeably, as Argentina remained neutral until almost the end, despite pressure from London (the declaration of war on Germany was not made until March 27, 1945).

It was not until after the war and the founding of the UN that Argentina began to take a more active stance on the Falkland Islands again in the early 1960s as part of the discussion about decolonizing the world. However, the approximately 1,900 inhabitants of the Falkland Islands strongly opposed coming under Argentina”s rule. Invoking Article 73 of the UN Charter, which emphasizes the self-determination of the inhabitants, the British representative to the UN at the time, Hugh Foot, therefore also rejected Argentine claims to the Falkland Islands before the UN General Assembly in August 1964. Only a little later, however, in December 1965, the UN General Assembly demanded in a resolution (UN Resolution 2065) that Great Britain and Argentina should immediately begin negotiations on the islands and find a peaceful solution to the problem.

Following the call, Britain and Argentina began negotiating the future of the islands in 1965. However, no agreement was reached until the outbreak of war 17 years later. The talks failed because, although several successive Labour governments in London were quite willing to make concessions and give up the islands, just like other British “colonies,” Argentina insisted on unlimited sovereignty, i.e., it was not prepared to grant the Falklands autonomy rights such as those enjoyed by the Swedes in the Åland Islands, which belong to Finland. However, this was an indispensable prerequisite for the transfer of sovereignty rights for the British, who always emphasized the right to self-determination. After a Peronist group hijacked an airplane (a Douglas DC-4) in September 1966 and hijacked it to Port Stanley, where they captured two British officials to force an immediate handover of the Falkland Islands to Argentina, talks were temporarily suspended. A small contingent of 45 Marines was then stationed at Port Stanley to better protect the islands.

In the negotiations, the Labour government of the time always outwardly put the interests of the inhabitants of the Falkland Islands first, but it carefully shielded the negotiations with Argentina from the British public. The inhabitants of the archipelago also learned nothing at all about the negotiations, which is why in early 1968 they began to lobby the government in London through the media with the help of Conservative MPs. As a result, in the same year, the Minister of State at the Foreign Office, Lord Chalfont, visited the Falkland Islands as well as Argentina. His report again pointed out that the inhabitants of the Falkland Islands wanted to remain British, but Argentina insisted on its claim, so without a solution to the problem, (armed) conflict was to be feared. Despite growing opposition, this year British Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart and Argentine Foreign Minister Costa Méndez nevertheless reached a memorandum of understanding in which both sides acknowledged that “in the best interests” of the inhabitants of the Falkland Islands, the government of Great Britain was prepared to transfer sovereignty to Argentina at a date to be determined.

At that time, the economic situation of the islands, which was based primarily on sheep breeding and wool, began to deteriorate more and more. Since the British government and the nine large landowners who owned most of the islands at that time tacitly expected that the islands would probably go to Argentina “within twenty-five years,” neither the government nor the private entrepreneurs wanted to invest in the Falklands. By cancelling subsidies for the weekly shipping service to Montevideo, which had to be discontinued as a result, the British government finally got the Falklanders to agree to an aviation agreement with Argentina in 1971. As a result, the Argentine state-owned airline LADE took over the connection with the mainland, but considered the flight domestic and forced passengers to accept a special Argentine identity card that identified the holder as an Argentine citizen of the Malvinas (which the British government tacitly accepted). This point was a major irritant – at least for a larger part of the Falklanders – and exacerbated their distrust of both Buenos Aires and the government in London. At the same time, the British government refused to build roads on the islands, to modernize the port of Port Stanley, or to build an airport on the islands suitable for modern aircraft. The Argentines then took over this task from funds in their defense budget and built the modern airport at Stanley in 1972. In return, London extended Argentine rights in supplying the islands in several individual agreements between 1973 and 1975, with the mostly state-owned companies responsible for this increasingly moving to fly the Argentine flag exclusively on the Falkland Islands.

After the Labour Party regained government in 1974 following a brief Conservative interlude, the Foreign Office sought to expedite talks with Argentina along the lines of UN Resolution 2065 on the Falkland Islands. In 1975, the newly appointed British ambassador to Argentina by the Labour government, Derek Ashe, made an offer to then Argentine President Isabel Perón that Argentina should further develop the Falkland Islands economically with generous British aid, thereby winning over the islanders. The Argentine government, however, distrusted this offer and saw in it only a coldly calculated British delaying tactic. After Ashe subsequently received a series of threatening letters and a car bomb exploded in front of the British embassy, killing two members of the guard staff, he was recalled in 1976 at Argentina”s request.

Nevertheless, in order to make the transfer of sovereignty rights to Buenos Aires palatable to the Falklanders, the British government sent Lord Shackleton, the son of the famous explorer Ernest Shackleton, who was close to the Labour Party, to Argentina and the Falkland Islands. However, Buenos Aires refused Lord Shackleton entry and he therefore had to be taken by ship from Montevideo to the islands. After a longer stay on the islands Lord Shackleton came in his detailed report, which he presented in June 1976 to the Prime Minister James Callaghan, however, to a result not so pleasing for the Labour Party. Not only did he state once again that the population of the islands wanted to remain British, but also that the islands (contrary to quite a few official representations to the press) did not cost the taxpayer a penny. The islands had generated an average surplus of 11.5 million pounds per year between 1951 and 1974, he said. Moreover, he listed how this amount could easily be increased by some investments (he pointed, among other things, to fishing in the waters around the islands, which had not existed at all until then, and to the likelihood that the Malvinas Basin off the coast contained oil-bearing strata). The State Department considered the report a “disaster”; it reiterated in its response that it would safeguard the interests of the Falcon countries, but it nevertheless did not break off talks with Buenos Aires, despite Argentine provocations that became more frequent from 1976 onward. To mitigate the strong impression the Shackleton Report had made on the Falklanders, Prime Minister Callaghan dispatched his Foreign Office confidant, Ted Rowlands, to the Falklands in February 1977 to make it clear to the inhabitants that the two strongest economic “trump cards” Lord Shackleton had cited, fish and oil, were in the waters around the islands, and therefore could not easily be used against the will of the Argentines. Nevertheless, even Rowland failed to convince the Falklanders. From that time on, the State Department increasingly favored the “lease back” model (along the lines of Hong Kong), but this was rejected by both the hawkish countries and Argentina, which was now increasingly insistent on immediate and unrestricted sovereignty over the islands in the South Atlantic.

However, as a result of the coup d”état in Argentina and the seizure of power by a military junta that soon acted with great brutality against the opposition in the country, the attitude of many members of parliament from the Labour and Liberal parties changed after a short time, and they now no longer wanted to support the handover of British citizens to the “Argentine torturers”. Even after the election victory of the Conservative Party in 1979 and the appointment of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister, talks with Argentina initially continued, with the new government, in order to buy time, initially adopting the “lease back” model, but they have since been conducted by the British side in an increasingly non-committal manner, so that the impression grew in Buenos Aires that it was to be put off forever. However, with the planned closure of the last British research station on South Georgia and the decommissioning of the ice patrol ship HMS Endurance, which until then had represented British sovereignty in the area of the Antarctic Islands, the British government signaled to the Argentines in the late fall of 1981 that it was obviously ready to withdraw completely from the South Atlantic. And it was in this sense that the move was understood by Argentina (see also the next section).

After a coup d”état in March 1976, Argentina was ruled by a military government that, as part of the “Process of National Reorganization,” murdered numerous opposition figures until 1983, the majority of whom simply disappeared without a trace (see: Desaparecidos). This was justified by the fight against the leftist guerrillas of the Montoneros, which, however, numbered only a few thousand men. The country was already suffering from major economic problems before the military came to power, and these problems worsened during their rule.

In October 1977, after Argentina had established an (armed) research station on the island of South Thule (found in numerous encyclopedias as Morrell Island, the U.S. name of the island), British intelligence warned of increased military activity in southern Argentina. The British government then sent two frigates and a submarine into the South Atlantic as a precautionary measure (which, however, was not made public and was not noticed at all by Argentina) and declared an (economic) exclusion zone 25 nautical miles around the Falkland Islands, but otherwise tacitly accepted Argentina”s occupation of the island.

On December 22, 1978, the junta launched Operation Soberanía (Operation Sovereignty) to militarily occupy the Cape Horn islands disputed with Chile and invade Chile. However, it was aborted a few hours later.

According to many observers, the Argentine leadership at the time intended to cover up public criticism of the desolate economic situation and the human rights situation with a quick, patriotic “victory” in the Malvinas issue. The 150th anniversary of the “illegal occupation of the Falkland Islands by the British” served as a pretext. Pressure was exerted in the UN with a subtle hint of a military invasion, which the British ignored. Since the occupation of the island of South Thule (1976), which London had accepted without objection, the Argentines interpreted the British attitude as a retreat and believed that Britain would leave the islands to them without a fight in the event of an invasion. They were reinforced in this belief by the planned withdrawal of the last Royal Navy unit permanently stationed in the South Atlantic, HMS Endurance, and by the British Nationality Bill of 1981, which restricted the British citizenship of the islanders and declared them “Falklanders.”

The new friendship (based on active support for the anti-Sandinista Contras in Central America) with the United States, which lifted the arms embargo against Argentina again in 1979 (Ronald Reagan was elected to succeed him in late 1980), reinforced President Galtieri”s belief that Britain could not wage war in the South Atlantic without U.S. support.

Further Argentine plans at the time envisaged military occupation of the islands south of the Beagle Channel following a successful capture of the Falklands. The head of the Argentine Air Force during the Falklands War, Basilio Lami Dozo, confirmed these plans in an interview with the Argentine newspaper Perfil:

Argentina”s last foreign minister before the war, Óscar Camilión – who held office from March 29, 1981, to December 11, 1981 – also confirmed these intentions, writing later in his memoirs:

Kalevi Holsti also came to this conclusion:

The idea had often been expressed in the Argentine press, for example by reporter Manfred Schönfeld of La Prensa (Buenos Aires) on June 2, 1982, about the course of the war after the Falklands deployment, when the war was still thought to have been won in Argentina:

In December 1978, the Argentine junta had already aborted Operation Soberanía at the last moment. Before the Argentine-Chilean conflict over the Beagle Channel, Jorge Anaya saw an opportunity to establish a military base on the Malvinas that Chile could not reach.

Concrete planning for the “recovery of the Malvinas” began on December 15, 1981, when Vice Admiral Lombardo was asked at the Puerto Belgrano naval base by Admiral Jorge Anaya (1926-2008), the commander-in-chief of the Navy and a member of the junta, to discreetly prepare a plan for the recovery of the Malvinas in the near future. According to other senior officers, the military leadership had been dealing with this problem for some time; thus, preliminary planning had begun even before Galtieri became president. Nominally, military planning was initially intended only to support increased diplomatic efforts in 1982, which was to be the Year of the Malvinas. In consultations with Admiral Anaya during this period, it was decided that the Falkland Islands would be

In mid-January 1982, a special working commission (Comisión de Trabajo in Spanish) began concrete planning work for “the reclamation of the Malvinas” in seclusion at the army headquarters in Buenos Aires. It was assumed that a landing on the Malwinas should not take place before September, i.e., it should roughly coincide with the beginning of spring in the southern hemisphere. By then, as announced by London, the British ice patrol ship HMS Endurance should also have left the South Atlantic, and by then the Argentine Air Force should have received and tested all fourteen Super Étendard ordered in France and all fifteen AM39 “Exocet” air-to-ship missiles ordered at the same time. Moreover, from experience, by then the 1982 recruit cohort should have been sufficiently educated and trained. The preparation of the actual landing plans on the islands was entrusted to Rear Admiral Carlos Büsser, the commander of the Marines, who for this purpose, among other things, had the 2nd Battalion of the Marines conduct several landing exercises in southern Patagonia in February and March on beaches very similar to those of the Falkland Islands. As early as March 9, the task force submitted the completed plan for a September landing of troops at Puerto Argentino (Stanley) to the junta, which approved it after a brief review.

Also read, biographies – Phryne

Initial military situation

The Argentine Air Force (Fuerza Aérea Argentina, or FAA) had a large number of modern aircraft and weapons, including Mirage III fighters, Mirage 5 fighter-bombers, and older but still very capable Douglas A-4 fighter-bombers. It also had the Argentine-developed FMA-IA-58 Pucará earth fighters, which could take off from short and improvised airfields. This was especially important for a mission in the Falkland Islands, where only one airfield had a concrete runway. The FAA also had older English Electric Canberra bombers in its inventory.

However, the Argentine Air Force was specifically prepared for a war against Chile or the guerrillas and thus was more equipped for a short-range fight against ground targets than for a long-range fight against ships. As a result, Argentina had only two Lockheed C-130s converted to refueling aircraft for the FAA and the Navy. The Mirages were not equipped for aerial refueling.

In addition, the FAA had only a few reconnaissance aircraft and air-to-air missiles of French and U.S. production, but most of these were not among the most modern versions available. The then state-of-the-art Exocet AM39 air-to-ship missiles, which could have posed a serious threat to the British fleet, had been ordered from France, but only five were available at the start of the war, according to Argentine sources. To these Air Force forces were added five modern Dassault Super Étendards of naval aviators equipped for aerial refueling. Argentina had ordered fourteen of these aircraft, but only five had been delivered by the outbreak of the war, which is why one of them had to remain on the ground as a spare parts donor as a result of the arms embargo imposed by the EC states.

The Argentine Air Force was divided into eight groups (Grupo 1-8), which in turn were subdivided into two to four squadrons. In some accounts, the Escuadrón Fénix (Phoenix Squadron), which consisted of 35 civilian aircraft (for transport and reconnaissance missions), is referred to as “Grupo 9”. The naval aviators (Aeronaval Argentina) were divided into eight aircraft and two helicopter squadrons. The recently delivered state-of-the-art “Super Étendards” belonged to the “2 Escuadrilla de Caza y Ataque” (2nd Fighter and Ground Attack Squadron). The strength of a Grupo varied from twelve to 32 aircraft. Grupo 3 was largely transferred to the Falkland Islands during the war with its Pucará type ground attack aircraft.

For operations in the South Atlantic, the Argentine Naval Forces (Spanish: Armada de la República Argentina, ARA) were subdivided into.

The Royal Navy, at the time of the outbreak of war, was not geared to be the main force in such a maritime operation in such a distant area. Rather, it was geared for use in a possible Third World War within the NATO structure. Since in such a case its primary task would have been to secure transatlantic liaison routes, particularly the GIUK gap, against the Soviet Northern Fleet, the emphasis was placed on antisubmarine warfare. Because Western assessments indicated that the concurrent threat of Soviet air attack in the North Atlantic would have been low, British ships had limited antiaircraft capabilities. Thus, in the late 1970s, the large aircraft carriers HMS Eagle and HMS Ark Royal, which were expensive to maintain, were decommissioned, as were the corresponding Blackburn Buccaneer carrier aircraft. Due to the high costs, the British government refused to overhaul the Ark Royal, which had only been combat upgraded in 1972. The retirement of the remaining small aircraft carriers had also already been decided; HMS Bulwark was decommissioned in 1980 and was already in too poor a condition for rapid reactivation by 1982; the retirement of HMS Hermes was to follow in 1982. Air support in wartime was to come either from bases ashore or from U.S. aircraft carriers. Agreement had been reached with Australia on the sale of the relatively new HMS Invincible. As the submarine-launched missile force expanded, the number of surface forces was further reduced. The Royal Air Force was in the process of retiring the Avro Vulcan in favor of the Panavia Tornado, which was being introduced step by step. In the Army, priority was given to modernizing the British Army of the Rhine. In May 1981, Defense Minister John Nott had issued a new white paper with drastic restructuring maxims.

Because of the planned occupation of the Falkland Islands and the threat of war with Chile, Argentina simultaneously drafted two cohorts of recruits in 1982. Therefore, the Argentine Armed Forces had a strength of 181,000 men that year, to which must be added the paramilitary National Gendarmerie (Spanish “Gendarmería Nacional”) and the Coast Guard (Spanish “Prefectura Naval Argentina”), both of which also sent units to the Malvinas. Thus, Argentina had a force of more than 200,000 men. When it became clear after the occupation of the islands that Great Britain was by no means willing to acquiesce in the annexation of the Falklands, the Argentine armed forces still sent parts of three brigades of the army as well as a reinforced battalion of marines to the islands. In addition, the Air Force, the National Gendarmerie and the Coast Guard stationed additional units on the islands to support them. However, the British naval blockade then prevented further reinforcement of the Argentine troops.

In total, about 15,000 to 16,000 Argentines arrived in the Falkland Islands for shorter or longer periods. This number is higher than the number of soldiers who became British prisoners in the Falklands on June 15 (about 12,700) because, among other things, most of the units that had occupied the islands in April had returned to the mainland and, in addition, a large number of the sick and wounded could still be flown out in the weeks before the surrender. The number of Argentine soldiers involved in the war was even higher. Immediately after the war (1983), the Argentine army officially stated that 14,200 soldiers had participated in the war. By 1999, this number was then successively raised to 22,200 troops. In 2007, the Argentine Association of Falklands Veterans reckoned with “about” 24,000. However, since (at least temporarily) almost the entire Argentine air force and navy were involved in the fighting, which together numbered 55,000 to 60,000 men, this figure – which, moreover, increased slowly over the years – cannot be correct. It is probably explained by the fact that officially only those soldiers are recognized as “Falklands veterans” who permanently stayed in the area of the TOM (“Teatro de Operaciones Malvinas”) or in the area of the TOAS (“Teatro de Operaciones del Atlántico Sur”) during the war and directly participated in military operations. Therefore, all soldiers and conscripts who spent the entire war in the Andes along the Chilean border (because of the threat of war with Chile at the same time) are not counted among the war veterans.

The British armed forces comprised about 327,000 men in 1982. The numerical ratio of the two forces was thus about 3:2 in favor of the British. However, most of the British forces were tied down by their NATO duties and by the conflict in Northern Ireland. Therefore, the army command could only rely on the two brigades of the “UKMF” (United Kingdom Mobile Force, i.e. the mobile reaction reserve). The mobile reserve also included the United Kingdom

At first, moreover, it was thought that the matter could be resolved with the 3rd Commando Brigade of Marines (about 3,500 men) alone. When it became known in London that Argentina had already brought some 10,000 to 12,000 men to the island, it was decided to reinforce the brigade with two paratrooper battalions of the 5th Brigade, parts of the United Kingdom Special Forces (UKSF), and other support troops. These included artillery and air defense units in particular. Eventually, the brigade grew to a total of nearly 7,500 troops. Since the Argentines had actually already brought more than 12,000 men to the islands, London sent even more parts of the 5th Brigade to the South Atlantic. In the meantime, since most of this brigade was already on its way to the South Atlantic, the British leadership “across the army” gathered everything that was still available. In doing so, they reluctantly, but of necessity, fell back on two battalions of the Guards (“Welsh Guards” and “Scots Guards”) and placed them under the 5th Brigade. These were stationed in London as representative guard battalions mainly for ceremonial purposes, and had neither the necessary training or special training nor the required equipment and clothing for combat in winter under subarctic conditions. To make matters worse, by the end of April, when the decision was made to send the brigade on, only the cruise ship Queen Elizabeth 2 was available, but she held only 3,200 men, so about a quarter of the brigade-primarily support troops-had to be left behind. The strength of the British land forces (army and marines) thus increased to about 11,000 men. Added to this were the ship crews and naval aviators, as well as air force units, bringing the total number of men involved in the British operation in the South Atlantic to nearly 30,000 (supplemented by about 2,000 civilian merchant marine sailors).

Also read, biographies – Rudolf Nureyev

Argentine invasion

In mid-March 1982, Argentine scrap dealer Constantino Davidoff accelerated events – presumably unintentionally. Davidoff had bought the disused whaling station in Leith (Leith Harbour) on South Georgia (1,300 km southeast of the Falkland Islands) in 1979 from its previous owners in Edinburgh in Scotland. After a lengthy search for an inexpensive means of transporting the 30,000 tons of scrap metal hoped for there, the Argentine Navy showed itself willing to help and offered to temporarily rent the fleet transport ship ARA Bahía Buen Suceso at a low price. The ship therefore sailed from its base on Tierra del Fuego to South Georgia in mid-March 1982, where (according to the captain of the Bahía Buen Suceso) it put 40 workers ashore. Since the fleet supply ship normally had a small detachment of marines on board, British intelligence directly assumed that soldiers were going ashore with the workers. In any case, the four British scientists who first noticed “the 50 or so Argentines” in Leith on March 19, 1982, saw soldiers there.

The Argentine flag was flying over Leith and the Argentines refused to pick up an entry permit for South Georgia at the British research station in Grytviken. Shortly thereafter, a French yacht that had been damaged by storms arrived in Leith, and its crew soon struck up a conversation with a lieutenant captain (Teniente de navío in Spanish) Alfredo Astiz, who had lived in Paris a few years earlier. This observation, neutral in itself, suggests that there were already soldiers among the first group that landed in Leith.

The governor of the Falkland Islands, Sir Rex Masterman Hunt in Stanley, who was also responsible for South Georgia and had been informed by the head of the research station, therefore sent the Antarctic patrol ship HMS Endurance with 22 marines on board to Grytviken on March 20, 1982, after consultation with London, so that they could remove the Argentines from Leith by force if necessary. After a harsh protest from the British government in Buenos Aires, they promised that all Argentines would leave South Georgia together with the Bahía Buen Suceso. Orders then came from London for HMS Endurance to proceed first to Grytviken and await further instructions there. However, when observers in South Georgia reported two days later that Leith was still occupied by the Argentines, on March 23 British Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington sent a second, even more sharply worded note of protest to Buenos Aires, threatening, moreover, that if the illegal invaders did not immediately leave the place voluntarily, they would be removed, if necessary, by use of force.

On March 24, HMS Endurance arrived at the research station at Grytviken with the naval command on board. From there, on March 26, she discovered that also anchored off Leith was the armed Argentine Antarctic patrol ship ARA Bahía Paraiso, part of the Argentine Antarctic Squadron. The ship, which had been on patrol near the South Orkney Islands, had reached Leith on the evening of March 25. On board the ship, as usual, were soldiers of the Marines. There is conflicting information about their strength; the Argentines speak of “fourteen,” but the British assume that there were “forty,” also as usual. As a result, the Foreign Office as well as the Ministry of Defence in London prohibited the “police action” on the part of HMS Endurance and instead instructed its captain to patrol off the coast of South Georgia. On March 27, ARA Bahia Paraiso also left Leith again, but, like HMS Endurance, was now patrolling in parallel off the island”s coast. On the evening of 31 March, HMS Endurance was notified by London that an invasion of the Falkland Islands was imminent and ordered back to Port Stanley.

The unexpectedly sharp protest by the British on March 23 acted as a spark for the Argentine military leadership. On the same day, those involved in the planning for a landing on the Malvinas were called together. They were instructed to calculate the earliest possible time for a landing. On March 25, Admiral Büsser presented a much abbreviated version of his landing plan to the Admiral”s Staff, naming April 1 as the earliest date. The plan, however, suffered from the fact that fewer transport ships were available at that time than originally planned, so that not everything could be taken; however, for prestige reasons, almost the entire Argentine fleet, including its aircraft carrier, was offered up to “protect” the small “landing fleet,” although, as was well known, no British warship was in the South Atlantic except the patrol ship HMS Endurance. Apart from the landing ship ARA Cabo San Antonio, only one other transport ship was attached to the landing group (Task Force 40) – the ARA Isla de los Estados. To defeat the 45 British marines in the Falkland Islands, Admiral Büsser had earmarked more than 900 men. It consisted at its core of the 2nd Battalion Marines, reinforced by a battalion of Amtracs (20 LVTP-7 type Amtracs), a battery of field artillery (six guns), a company of the 1st Battalion Marines, a naval commando company, and a section (twelve men) of Buzos Tácticos (combat divers) who were to examine the beach where the Amtracs were to land for any hidden mines. The Army was represented only by a small advance detachment of the 25th Infantry Regiment, which was to follow by plane to Stanley after the occupation of the islands was completed, to serve as the future garrison of the islands.

Loading of the ships began on March 28 at the naval base in Puerto Belgrano.The landing ship Cabo San Antonio was loaded with 880 soldiers; it was designed for about 400. As a result, during the crossing in the storm it leaned more than forty degrees on its side several times and threatened to capsize. By March 31, it was clear that the tight schedule could not be met, so General García, commander of the V. Army Corps (Patagonia) and commander-in-chief of the forces in the “Malvinas area of operations,” and Rear Admiral Allara, commander of Task Force 40 (the amphibious group) had to ask President Galtieri to postpone the landing for a day. With his approval, the landing at Stanley was finally set for 2 April.

With the invasion, which had been planned for a long time but was now hastily launched, the Argentine leadership committed several mistakes: it launched the landing without initiating it – as originally planned – through preliminary diplomatic work, especially in the UN. Instead of diplomacy, they relied on the creation of faits accomplis. Due to the excessive haste, there was no time left to prepare better logistically, i.e. to have the necessary means of transport already ready and to ship heavy goods immediately before the British submarines could reach the South Atlantic. Therefore, the soldiers who were later brought to the islands by plane as reinforcements could only be incompletely equipped. The landing also came too early for the Antarctic winter, which, had the invasion been carried out only five to six weeks later, would probably have forced the British to wait until October to counterattack. The invasion also came too soon because aircraft, ships, and submarines already on order had not yet been delivered, and the British had not yet decommissioned their aircraft carriers and landing ships, as had been announced for the next year (which would have made a British counterattack impossible). The unexpectedly sharp British reactions since March 20 and the threat to use force if necessary should have warned the junta that the British government – since May 1979 it had been a Conservative one under Margaret Thatcher – was by no means prepared to accept an invasion of the archipelago without action, as had actually been expected in Buenos Aires after London”s behavior in recent years.

On the night of April 2, the first Argentine troops landed in the Falkland Islands. While the Argentine fleet was already on its way to the Falkland Islands, London and Washington – startled by intelligence reports – still tried to stop events. Prime Minister Thatcher sent an urgent telex to the White House asking President Ronald Reagan to intervene in Buenos Aires. After several unsuccessful attempts, the latter finally reached Argentine President Galtieri on the phone at about 8 p.m. on April 1. After a fifty-minute conversation, Reagan had to acknowledge that Argentina was not prepared to forgo action.

The great haste with which the landing on the islands had been initiated necessitated improvisations that almost inevitably resulted in further changes to the original plan. The Argentine air force officer in charge of the LADE Argentine air company field office at Stanley radioed that the British garrison had been alerted and that the airport was blockaded and would probably be defended. Admiral Büsser therefore had to make further changes during the crossing, complicated by the fact that the landing force was spread over only two ships and that helicopters on the ships were damaged during the storm on the crossing, rendering them useless. The most consequential change for the company”s external image concerned the “rapid elimination” of the governor. Since the detachment designated for this purpose, a platoon of 40 men of the 25th Regiment, which had rehearsed the occupation of the governor”s building several times (and probably had construction plans of the building in its baggage), was on the landing ship ARA Cabo San Antonio along with the main group, it was now to occupy the airport first and clear the runway as quickly as possible. In its place, the Marine Commando Company (Spanish: Compañía de Commandos Anfibios), which was on the destroyer ARA Santísima Trinidad, since it was to land south of Stanley independently of the main group, was now to send one of its sections (a group of about 15 men) to the governor”s building to occupy it.

In fact, at 3:30 p.m. on April 1, 1982, the British governor of the Falkland Islands, Sir Rex Hunt, received a message from London that an Argentine invasion was imminent. He then had the 81 Royal Marines of “Naval Party 8901” under the command of Major Mike Norman prepare defensive measures. To prevent a landing by aircraft, he had fire trucks placed on the runway of the Port Stanley airfield. The shallow beaches north of the airport that were suitable for landing were blocked with several rolls of barbed wire. At 8:15 p.m., the governor informed the island population in a radio address that an Argentine landing was imminent. He asked the population to stay at home and avoid the area around the airport. The fishing vessel Forrest under Jack Sollis, which had been sent out to keep a lookout for Argentine landing ships by radar off Cape Pembroke (east of Stanley), reported the first radar contacts at about 2:30 a.m. (local time) on April 2.

Unnoticed, before midnight between 9:30 and 11:00 p.m. (1 April local time), the 120-man Marine commando company landed south of Stanley near Mullet Creek with the aid of motor-driven inflatable boats. From there the bulk of this unit marched in a wide arc over the hills to the Moody Brook Barracks of the Royal Marines, to surprise them, if possible, while they were still asleep. Separately, one of their sections advanced cautiously over Sapper Hill to the Governor”s Mansion. After a long march, the company stormed Moody Brook Barracks after 5:30 and found it completely deserted. The company then made its way back to Stanley. Meanwhile, the detached section (16 men) led by Corvette Captain (capitán de corbeta) Giachino had arrived at the Governor”s Mansion. It was defended by 31 Royal Marines and 11 sailors from HMS Endurance, as well as a former Marine who lived in Stanley. In the fight for the governor”s residence and government complex, which began about 6:30 a.m., Corvette Captain Giachino was mortally wounded and three soldiers who had accidentally entered an occupied outbuilding were captured there.

Shortly after midnight (about 1:00 a.m.), the Buzos Tacticos section disembarked from the submarine Santa Fé to act as beach reconnaissance party to check the designated landing site for mines. Using inflatable boats, the men arrived at Yorke Bay, northwest of the airport, at approximately 4:30 a.m. By 6:00 a.m., in the wide bay of Port William north of Stanley ARA Cabo San Antonio had approached within about two miles of the coast under cover of several destroyers. At exactly 6:00 a.m., the landing ship opened its bow door, over which 20 Amtracs and several LARC-Vs entered the water within a very short time (the Argentines were much more modernly equipped in this respect than the British). After about 25 minutes, the first vehicles reached the beach without encountering any resistance. While the first Amtracs, with the soldiers of the 25th Regiment aboard, occupied the airport and had it completely under control by 7:30 a.m., the 2nd Battalion Marines continued on to the narrow headland connecting the airport with the main island. This headland, called “the Neck,” is only between 160 and 200 meters wide, so the Argentines feared that the British had established their main defensive position there and were approaching the site cautiously. But it was unoccupied.

On the road to the airport, about 500 yards from the outskirts of Stanley, was a large construction machine. As the first vehicle of the advance party approached this spot, at about 7:15 a.m., a group of Royal Marines who were in the first houses opened fire on the armored troop carriers with machine guns and the FFV Carl Gustaf anti-tank rifle. No one was seriously injured, but the exchange of fire delayed the further advance of the Argentines, who, on the instructions of their battalion commander, Frigate Captain Weinstabl, waited there until the entire battalion had approached. Then, as the battalion developed on both sides of the road and opened fire on the houses with heavy antitank weapons, the British soldiers withdrew. Meeting no further resistance, the Argentines subsequently occupied all of Stanley until shortly after 8:00 a.m.

As the armored vehicles approached the governor”s office, the governor made contact with the Argentines by calling the representative of LADE (the Argentine airline) in the city. While negotiations were still going on, the first planes from the mainland landed at the airport around 8:45 a.m., bringing more reinforcements to the island. After some delays, Admiral Buesser finally arrived himself at the Governor”s Mansion, where he assured Governor Sir Rex Hunt that he had by now landed well over 800 men. Another fight against his soldiers, who by now also had artillery and were already being reinforced with an airlift from the continent, was pointless. After a brief consultation with Major Norman, commander of the Royal Marines, Hunt ordered the soldiers to lay down their arms at 9:25 a.m. (local time). A short time later, at 10:00 a.m., the British flag was taken down at the governor”s house and the Argentine flag was raised.

In the battle for Port Stanley, according to Argentine accounts, one soldier (Capitán de corbeta Pedro Giachino) died and two were wounded, while the British suffered no casualties. The captured soldiers and sailors, the governor and all other British nationals, as well as any Falcians who wished, were taken back to Britain via Montevideo a short time later. A few days later, all units of the Argentine Marines and the Buzos Tacticos also left the islands again.

On the evening of April 2, huge flag-waving crowds gathered in Buenos Aires” Plaza de Mayo (the square in front of the presidential palace) after hearing the news. Britain was shocked by this “Black Friday.” Nevertheless, over the next few days, the conservative press in particular celebrated the long heroic resistance of the Royal Marines in the battle for the Governor”s Mansion and the great losses they had inflicted on the Argentines, according to their account, almost as a victory. This conviction, together with “the humiliation” of the photographs of British soldiers lying flat on their stomachs in the street in Stanley, which were shown in the media around the world over the next few days, reinforced the British government”s view that it would not sit idly by and accept the violent occupation of the islands.

On March 31, HMS Endurance received orders at Grytviken to return to Falkland. The 22 marines led by Lieutenant Mills, who had come to the island with the ship, stayed behind at the BAS (British Antarctic Survey) research station located on King Edward Point, a small peninsula off Grytviken. Their job was to protect the scientists at the research station while keeping a “watchful eye” on the Argentine metalworkers at Leith.

On the evening of April 1, the British also heard the radio address on South Georgia in which Governor Hunt warned of an imminent Argentine invasion, and on April 2 they learned of the landing at Port Stanley via the BBC World Service. That morning, the soldiers received an order from the Ministry of Defense in London to concentrate at Grytviken and retreat to the mountains if necessary in the event of an Argentine attack. At the same time, HMS Endurance was ordered back to South Georgia. However, bad weather that day prevented the Argentines from taking any action against the British at Grytviken.

Then, early on the morning of April 3, the Argentines appeared off Grytviken, by now reinforced by the corvette ARA Guerrico, which had arrived in South Georgia the day before with more marines on board. Since HMS Endurance was not in Cumberland Bay, the Argentines assumed that there were no British soldiers left on South Georgia either. At about 10:00 a.m. (local time), Captain Trombetta, the flag officer (commander) of the Argentine Antarctic Squadron, radioed the members of the research station on ARA Bahia Paraiso to surrender and assemble on the beach. As they attempted to land troops using helicopters, the Royal Marines at Grytviken opened fire on the Argentines with machine guns and the Carl Gustaf anti-tank rifle. In the process, a helicopter was shot down and the Corvette ARA Guerrico was damaged by a hit with the anti-tank rifle and therefore had to retreat to beyond the range of the anti-tank weapons, from where it opened fire on the British positions at Grytviken with its 100-millimeter gun. With the remaining helicopter, a small “Alouette” (Aérospatiale SA-319), the Argentines eventually nevertheless managed to land a total of more than a hundred soldiers, so that the Royal Marines were finally forced to surrender after about two hours. After an intensive interrogation, the British soldiers were released home via Montevideo on April 20.

In the battle for the islands, one British soldier was wounded and three Argentines were killed (two in the helicopter crash and one sailor on the Guerrico from the hit with the Carl Gustaf). Thus the South Sandwich Islands, claimed by Argentina since 1938, and the island of South Georgia, claimed by Argentina since 1927, were (temporarily) occupied by Argentina.

Also read, history – English Armada

Attempts at a diplomatic solution

The British government was able to quickly organize diplomatic pressure against Argentina in the United Nations. While public sentiment in Britain was willing to support an attempt to reclaim the islands, international opinion was strongly divided. The Argentines propagandized that Britain was a colonial power trying to take back a colony from a local power. The British pointed to the UN principle of self-determination and declared themselves willing to compromise. Then-acting UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar said he was surprised at the compromise offered by the United Kingdom, but Argentina rejected it, basing its claims of ownership on events before the UN was founded in 1945. Many UN members were aware that-if such old claims were revived-their own borders would not be secure, and so on April 3 the UN Security Council passed a resolution (UN Resolution 502) calling for the withdrawal of Argentine troops from the islands and an end to hostilities. On April 10, the EEC agreed to trade sanctions against Argentina.

For the United States, the war presented a dilemma: On the one hand, “in the middle of the Cold War,” an armed conflict between two Western states was not foreseen; moreover, they were allied with both sides and both sides expected support from them. Argentina saw the issue of possession of the islands as a colonial conflict and expected the U.S., in accordance with the Monroe Doctrine, to prevent any attempt at “recolonization.” Therefore, most Latin American countries and Spain supported Argentina”s position. The memory of the Malvinas as a “remnant of colonialism” is kept alive in Latin American states by, among other things, the fact that hundreds of neighborhoods, squares, and streets are named “Las Malvinas” (not including the designations in Argentina). Britain, on the other hand, also expected its main political and military ally to support the defense of the islands, which it considered legitimate British territory. The mood in the U.S. government was divided: A lack of support or even active obstruction by Britain would be disastrous for the U.S. position within NATO, since the reliability of U.S. pledges of assistance would then be doubted, even in the event of a NATO alliance; on the other hand, however, there was great concern-primarily in the State Department-that the good “special relations” with Latin America that had been built up over decades would suffer from (open) support from Britain (moreover, it was feared that an open war between Britain and Argentina might drive the latter “into the arms” of the Soviet Union). Although the Falkland Islands themselves did not fall within the scope of the North Atlantic Treaty because of their location in the southern hemisphere, on the other hand a NATO member had been directly attacked here.

The U.S. therefore tried to reach a diplomatic solution and prevent a war between its allies. President Ronald Reagan”s statement that he could not understand why two allies were fighting over “a few icy rocks” became famous. U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig led a “shuttle diplomacy” mission from April 8 to April 30, but it failed because no mutually acceptable solution could be found. Finally, Reagan declared his intention to support Great Britain and announced sanctions against Argentina. In doing so, he followed, among other things, the vote of U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, who had taken a pro-British stance early on. U.S. non-intervention had become impossible anyway, since Wideawake, the large airport on the British Atlantic island of Ascension, was leased to the U.S. and the British claimed use of the island as a logistical base. The U.S. also supplied antiaircraft missiles (albeit obsolete ones); moreover, it reportedly assisted the British with intelligence information such as decrypted telecommunications from Argentine forces, satellite reconnaissance, and communications support, though both sides deny this. At the same time, munitions stockpiles from Allies were delivered to or released to British forces under embargo for the defense of Central Europe. However, U.S. services also sent internal messages to the Argentines on several occasions. Secretary of State Haig, among others, even informed the Argentine government that the British were en route to South Georgia to recapture the island.

All mediation proposals at the time, both those of U.S. Secretary of State Haig between April 8 and 30 and the subsequent one of Peruvian President Fernando Belaúnde Terry beginning May 2, were based essentially on three steps: (1) withdrawal of the Argentine occupation forces, (2) assumption of administration of the Falkland Islands by an intermediate neutral body, and (3) transfer of sovereignty to the future owner. Buenos Aires insisted – despite all the efforts of the mediators – on the earliest possible transfer of unrestricted sovereignty rights over the Falkland Islands, while London, invoking the United Nations Charter, rejected this just as categorically.

The mission of U.S. Secretary of State Haig ultimately failed because of the resolutely negative attitude of the two governments involved. The new mediation proposal of the Peruvian president of May 2 did nothing to change this, especially since his plans differed from those of the U.S. only in that he slightly modified the mode of “transfer of sovereignty” from Great Britain to Argentina and that, instead of a neutral intermediate authority (such as the UN or the U.S.), he wanted to insert a group of four neutral states. Ultimately, all attempts at mediation amounted to arranging the “interim step,” i.e., the temporary neutral administration of the archipelago, in such a way that it was acceptable to both sides and without loss of face-with Haig and Belaunde apparently assuming (at least in the British view) that after an appropriate “interim period,” sovereignty over the islands would be transferred to Argentina. Therefore, the British government”s main concern was to preserve the status quo ante, if possible, until a final referendum, while the Argentines, conversely, sought to change it as irreversibly as possible during this neutral “interim period” (for example, by giving Argentine settlers and businesses immediate free access and right of establishment, and by immediately making it compulsory for Argentines to be members of the Islands” Legislative Assembly and administration, etc.). Although during this process all parties involved constantly told the press that the mediation talks were making good progress, both parties to the conflict were adamant in insisting on their core demands, so that the talks revolved mainly around incidental details, while the core issues were obscured with the most non-committal phrases possible. Moreover, Secretary of State Haig repeatedly signaled to the media and his interlocutors “significant concessions” by the other side, which the latter had not made at all and therefore later revoked, which did not make the talks any easier. Nonetheless, the hope for an early conclusion of the negotiations remained outwardly alive, without any actual progress being made. At the end of April, even Secretary of State Haig and the U.S. State Department finally had to admit that there was little hope for mediation.

In the mediation attempt that Peruvian President Belaunde launched on his own initiative in the early morning of May 2 by calling Argentine President Galtieri and U.S. Secretary of State Haig, the British were initially hardly involved. While Galtieri remained very skeptical from the beginning and showed little hope, Haig immediately took up Belaund”s ideas and also tried to convince British Foreign Secretary Pym, who was in the United States and was about to fly back to Europe. After the conversation, Haig again signaled British willingness to compromise and make concessions that they had not made at all, which is why London later felt compelled to intervene and demur through their ambassadors directly in Lima and New York (to the UN), bypassing Haig. However, the late afternoon sinking of the cruiser General Belgrano in the South Atlantic effectively ended any compromise, although President Belaunde and the U.S. continued their efforts until May 5. Background mediation talks continued until May 17, now primarily through UN bodies, but the hardened position of the two parties to the conflict could no longer be softened, all the more so because demands were also made that the British should vacate South Georgia, which had just been recaptured.

Margaret Thatcher suspected that her foreign secretary, Francis Pym, wanted to bypass her in the U.S. mediation attempts. This is shown by a 1982 memorandum that was donated in June 2015, along with other private papers, by Margaret Thatcher”s children to the British state and the archives of Churchill College, Cambridge University. Thatcher”s private notes show that Thatcher was fundamentally dissatisfied with U.S. mediation efforts and the demeanor of her foreign minister. When Pym brought her a proposed solution from the U.S. on April 24, 1982, she called it a “complete sellout,” saying it would deprive the islands” residents of their freedom. Pym nevertheless insisted on presenting the plan to the entire cabinet. Thatcher managed to convince him to present the plan to the Argentines first, who rejected it. If the proposed U.S. solution had succeeded, she considered her position as prime minister untenable.

Ten days after this initial push by Pym, he brought Thatcher the peace plan that had been negotiated by the Peruvian side with U.S. mediation. Again he urged a presentation to the full Cabinet and succeeded. The memorandum says of this meeting that the plan was acceptable if the right of the inhabitants to self-determination was preserved, while the generally accepted version of the meeting is that Thatcher said they could not achieve self-determination for the island”s inhabitants but should accept the plan as the best possible outcome. Pym wrote the U.S., authorized by the Cabinet, an acceptance of the plan, while Thatcher herself wrote, but did not send, a letter to U.S. President Ronald Reagan rejecting the proposals. Thatcher herself sent another letter to Reagan very late in the day, requesting minor changes to the proposal. By the time Thatcher”s letter reached Reagan, however, the latter had already responded to Pym”s pledge. The renewed proposal lapsed because the Argentine side rejected it.

Also read, biographies – William Jennings Bryan

Structure of the Argentine Land Forces in the Falkland Islands

Simplified, for the period May 21 to June 14:

The commander-in-chief of the land forces in the Malwinas, officially called the “Teatro de Operaciones Malvinas” (Malwinas Operational Area), was Major General Osvaldo García, Commanding General of the V. Army Corps, based in Bahía Blanca (Buenos Aires Province).

Governor: Brigadier General Menendez, Puerto Argentino (Stanley)Chief of Staff: Brigadier General Daher, Puerto Argentino (Stanley)

Army

Marine

Most of these troops were located in the Puerto Argentino (Stanley) area. On the isthmus of Darwin

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British war preparations and division of the armed forces

The Falkland Islands are about 12,000 kilometers away from southern England as the crow flies. Even fast warships need at least fourteen days to get there. Therefore, after the Argentine attack became known, it could initially only be a matter of sending a provisional flotilla to the South Atlantic to build up diplomatic pressure. Since the 1st Flotilla happened to be on maneuvers near Gibraltar, it was sent on its way to the Falkland Islands, though it was not even clear what it would do once it got there. Almost simultaneously, three large nuclear-powered submarines, soon followed by others, were dispatched to the sea area around the Falkland Islands. On April 5, 1982, the two aircraft carriers HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible set out. The first troops of the reinforced 3rd Commando Brigade followed on 9 April, primarily on the commandeered passenger ship Canberra.

There were no plans for a possible reconquest of the archipelago; at first it was not even certain whether Great Britain still had the means to force its return. Since the 3rd Commando Brigade, which had been selected for deployment in the South Atlantic, was to defend northern Norway in the event of a war with the Soviet Union, plans were partly adapted for that eventuality and adapted for a war in the Falklands. For political and financial reasons, the instruments indispensable for this purpose, such as aircraft carriers, amphibious landing ships, or naval infantry, had been gradually dismantled for years. The military staffs involved had no intelligence material to inform them about the Argentine forces, but could initially only consult publicly available sources, such as the yearbooks “Jane”s Fighting Ships” or “Jane”s Aircrafts of the World,” which, after an initial overview, led to the increase in the size of the contingent to be sent. Since Great Britain had hardly any mobile forces left, people and material had to be “gathered” all over Great Britain for this purpose. The navy no longer had enough ships to transport these troops, so additional civilian merchant ships had to be requisitioned first and the legal basis for this had to be created. Among them was the well-known passenger ship Queen Elizabeth 2, which, however, was not requisitioned until April 28, in order to bring the later forwarded 5th Brigade to South Georgia on May 12 (where the soldiers were then distributed among several smaller ships that took them further to East Falkland). In all, the government had to requisition 45 merchant ships, and still other ships for transport outside the war zone were chartered to carry 9,000 men, 100,000 tons of cargo, 400,000 tons of fuel, and 95 planes and helicopters to the South Atlantic.

Although signs had been mounting in late March that Argentina was plotting something against the Falklands, Britain was nonetheless surprised when the invasion occurred. Although Admiral Fieldhouse, the commander-in-chief of the British fleet, had already asked Rear Admiral Woodward on March 29 to prepare a plan for a possible combat mission in the South Atlantic, the Argentine occupation just three days later left no time for plans to be worked out. Therefore, ad hoc improvisation had to be hastily undertaken, which is why not even the command structure for the South Atlantic operation was clearly defined. This led to friction between the commanders deployed there several times during the operation, as their areas of responsibility were not clearly delineated.

At British Air Force bases in the UK, a number of Harrier GR.3 fighters – originally designed for air-to-ground combat – were fitted with Sidewinder air-to-air missiles in just a few days and later transported to the Falkland Islands on civilian container ships.

Simplified structure of the battle groups (task forces)

The commander-in-chief of all operations in the South Atlantic was the Commander-in-Chief of the British Fleet, Admiral Fieldhouse at British Fleet Headquarters in Northwood (near London).

Under him were:

With the arrival of Major General J. Moore and the 5th Brigade on East Falkland on 1 June, British forces in the South Atlantic were reorganized:

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The maritime exclusion zones

For the safety of neutral sea and air traffic and, above all, for the safety of their own armed forces, the two parties to the conflict declared maritime “exclusion zones” (CET, Maritime Exclusion Zone) in the course of April. In this way, both sides sought to secure themselves for reasons of international law and politics without exposing their forces too much to a surprise attack by the other side. Since modern weapons systems not only have a very long range (far beyond the declared zones) but also a high speed, but at the same time, for political reasons, very great consideration had to be given to public opinion and international legal regulations, both sides simultaneously formulated rules of conduct for their armed forces, which were, however, adapted several times during the course of the crisis to the current political situation (at least in Great Britain, lawyers from the Foreign Office were always involved in their formulation).

Exclusion zones played an important political and military role several times during the crisis, such as in the later sinking of the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano. On April 5, Great Britain publicly declared a zone of 200 nautical miles around the Falkland Islands a Military Exclusion Zone, calling on all states to warn civilian shipping and aviation accordingly. Argentine ships and aircraft that entered this zone would be considered enemy units and “treated” accordingly. However, as early as April 23, i.e., before the actual armed conflict began on May 1, Britain, through the Swiss Embassy, sent Argentina the additional warning that Argentine warships and military aircraft could be attacked even outside the “exclusion zone” if they posed a threat to British forces exercising their right of self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter. This was a clear indication that Argentine warships could also be attacked outside the declared Maritime Exclusion Zone (and this was understood to be the case in Argentina.

On April 29, for its part, the Argentine government declared that it considered all British civilian and military aircraft and ships in a zone within 200 nautical miles of the Argentine mainland and within 200 nautical miles around the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, and the South Sandwich Islands to be hostile and a danger to its forces, and that its ships and aircraft therefore had permission to attack any British units they encountered there. The Argentine exclusion zone thus covered an even much larger area than the British.

Also read, biographies – Du Fu

Reconquest of South Georgia

The recapture of South Georgia at the earliest possible date was decided upon in the first days of April, independently of the plans for the Falkland Islands, which were open at that time (as early as April 4, a company was selected for this purpose to be flown ahead to Ascension Island, where they transferred to the RFA Tidespring on April 7 to be taken from there to South Georgia). For one thing, if any action was to be taken in the South Atlantic at all, the approach of the Antarctic winter forced a quick response, and for another, the reoccupation was intended to make it clear that the territory of the Antarctic Islands (South Georgia, South Sandwich Islands, South Orkney Islands, South Shetland Islands) was not historically or legally part of the Falkland Islands. Moreover, the Argentines did not appear to have left a major garrison on South Georgia, so there was probably no serious resistance or major casualties to be expected. When later British Defense Secretary Sir John Nott stated in interviews that the recapture of South Georgia was intended primarily to fill the news and boost morale, this reflected the British government”s concern that the initial action by British troops could have ended in chaos, so that any further attempts to regain the Falklands would probably have had to be abandoned.

After the occupation of South Georgia, the Argentines had left two small garrisons there, one at Leith and one at Grytviken. They hardly moved outside these stations because of bad weather, so the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) staff and two Independent Television (ITV) staff who were at the research station on Bird Island (off the western tip of South Georgia) remained unmolested (they had been told by radio that the island was now occupied by Argentina). HMS Endurance observed the Argentines from about 60 NM away, hidden among icebergs, and also kept in contact with BAS and ITV personnel.

The task group charged with the recapture of South Georgia (the operation was known as Operation Paraquet) consisted of several destroyers and frigates under Captain Brian Young, who was also assigned support and supply ships. It was composed of (among others) the destroyer HMS Antrim and the frigate HMS Plymouth with Special Air Service (SAS) and Special Boat Service (SBS) troops on board, and a company of Royal Marines on the support ship RFA Tidespring. On 19 April, HMS Conqueror, a Churchill-class submarine, reconnoitered the north coast of South Georgia. On 20 April, a radar-mapping reconnaissance aircraft of the Handley Page Victor type, which had launched on Ascension, overflew the island. No Argentine ships were detected near the island.

Prior to the planned invasion of the Royal Marines, the first reconnaissance troops of SAS and SBS landed first on 21 April. Due to bad weather, they could not reach the planned observation point and had to spend the night on a glacier. After a storm hit the next day, the SAS soldiers requested help. While trying to rescue them with helicopters, two machines crashed due to whiteouts, only with another attempt all soldiers could be rescued.

On the afternoon of April 23, an intelligence report caused the British to sound the submarine alert and the operation against South Georgia was interrupted. Captain Young had the RFA Tidespring depart again for the high seas with the troops aboard. On the 24th, he regrouped the British force and then waited with four of his ships a few nautical miles east of Cumberland Bay for the arrival of the Argentine submarine, ARA Santa Fe (ex-USS Catfish (SS-339) of the U.S. Balao class). Early on the morning of the 25th, the submarine was located by shipboard helicopters specializing in anti-submarine warfare and immediately attacked from the air with machine gun fire and AS.12 anti-ship missiles and depth charges. In the process, it was so badly damaged that it had to flee to Grytviken, unable to dive, and be abandoned there immediately.

The British now decided to attack quickly. Since RFA Tidespring with the company of marines was again 200 miles away, three improvised teams totaling 72 soldiers were assembled and landed by helicopter south of Grytviken. At Grytviken, the soldiers took up positions and HMS Plymouth and HMS Antrim fired 235 rounds into the vicinity of the settlement to demonstrate their firepower. The Argentines, which included the crew of the stranded submarine, then surrendered. The next day, Leith (in West Cumberland Bay), which was occupied by Argentine soldiers, was also taken without a fight.

The next day, when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher announced the recapture of South Georgia to the media, she was interrupted several times by journalists asking critical questions. Angered by this, she finally shouted “just rejoice at the news and congratulate our forces and the marines … rejoice.” This sentence appeared the next day in several newspapers critical of the government, polemically shortened as a shout of joy: “Rejoice, rejoice!” (Engl.: “Rejoice, rejoice!”).

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Operation Black Buck

From mid-April, the British Air Force”s command staff pursued the idea of attacking Argentine Air Force bases on the mainland or Stanley Airport with Vulcan long-range bombers from Ascension Island. While attacks on the mainland were very quickly discarded for political reasons, plans for Stanley continued to be developed. The project had two main objectives: First, as much of the Argentine air force as possible was to be withdrawn northward to the Buenos Aires area and kept there as permanently as possible; second, the Stanley runway was to be rendered unusable for use by Argentine “Mirage” or “Étendard” jet aircraft by hits on or immediately adjacent to it. For this purpose, there are heavy special bombs which, dropped from high altitudes, first detonate deep in the earth to cause widespread earth dislocations. This deforms asphalted or concrete runways over a wide area in such a way that they have to be restored at great expense (since aircraft taking off and landing at very high speeds require long, perfectly level runways, it is not sufficient here simply to fill in the bomb crater).

Since the Argentine Air Force was known to have more than 200 aircraft, but the two British aircraft carriers carried only 20 “Sea Harriers”, whose suitability as fighters was (still) highly controversial, these two targets had a high priority in the British high command. However, difficulties initially arose because the commander of the U.S. base at Ascension refused to let the British long-range bombers land. This problem was not resolved until, on April 27, Washington was also convinced that U.S. Secretary of State Haig”s peacekeeping mission no longer had a chance of success.

On 1 May, the operation against the Falkland Islands began with the attack operation Black Buck 1, which the RAF conducted from Ascension using an Avro 698 Vulcan bomber on the airfield at Port Stanley. The Vulcan was designed for medium-range missions in Europe. Therefore, its refueling capacity was far from sufficient for a direct flight. The round trip of 13,000 km therefore necessitated several air refuelings. The Royal Air Force tankers were converted Victor-type bombers. Because of their equally limited range, an elaborate procedure had to be used: To bring a Vulcan with 21 bombs to the target, two Vulcan bombers and eleven tankers took off for air refueling, one of which was a bomber and two tankers as reserves. The tankers refueled the bombers and the other tankers, respectively, in succession and then turned back. The last tanker refueled the attacking Vulcan (actually the reserve aircraft, after the first choice had turned back) once more just before reaching the target and was met and refueled on the way back by a tanker flying toward it again. The bomber returning from the attack was once again met by three aircraft, a converted Nimrod-type long-range reconnaissance plane and two more tankers. With this enormous logistical effort, only one bomb hit the runway at Port Stanley was scored in the first raid – as expected. However, some of the other bombs caused damage to other important parts of the airfield. Thus, this attack initially had only limited tactical success; more important was the political and psychological effect (see also Doolittle Raid).

Just minutes after Operation Black Buck, nine Sea Harriers from the Hermes carried out an attack, dropping explosive and cluster bombs on Port Stanley and the smaller grass airfield at Goose Green. Both attacks resulted in the destruction of aircraft on the ground and damaged airfield infrastructure. At Stanley airfield, in addition to the bomb dropped by the Vulcan bomber, three more bombs dropped by Sea Harriers hit the runway, making future use of the “Étendards” and “Skyhawks” from the island even less likely. Three British warships additionally shelled the airfield at Port Stanley. That same night, in the shadow of these attacks, SAS and SBS scouts were dropped on the Falklands, which could report the positions and movements of Argentine troops.

Meanwhile, the Argentine Air Force had already begun its own attack on the assumption that British landings were underway or imminent. Grupo 6 attacked British naval forces without any losses of its own. Two aircraft from other formations were shot down by Sea Harriers operating from Invincible. A dogfight ensued between Harriers and Mirage fighters from Grupo 8. Neither side initially wanted to engage in a fight at the enemy”s optimum altitude until finally two Mirages went lower to attack: one was shot down, and the pilot of the second eventually wanted to land at Port Stanley due to lack of fuel, where the aircraft was shot down by friendly forces.

The air attack and the results of the air combat had strategic implications. The Argentine high command saw the entire Argentine mainland coast threatened by British attacks and, as expected by the British high command, therefore actually moved Grupo 8, the only Argentine air force group equipped with interceptors, further north so that the greater Buenos Aires area was still within its range. The operational time available to the aircraft over the Falkland Islands shrank again considerably as a result of the longer approach time. The inferiority of the Mirages over the Sea Harriers at low altitudes, which became apparent later on, also due to their being armed with older air-to-air missiles, meant that Argentina effectively no longer had air superiority over the Falkland Islands even at the beginning of the war.

Nightly supply flights from the continent by the C-130 “Hercules” propeller-driven aircraft were resumed on a reduced scale after the first air raids on May 1 when the craters had been filled. However, the repeated attacks on the airfield meant that only about 70 tons of supplies could be brought to Stanley from May 1 until the surrender on June 15, for which reason the Argentine army was forced to cut soldiers” food rations as early as May 18 (i.e., even before the British landed in the Falkland Islands). The lack of food had a negative impact on the morale of the young soldiers. Some of the units that were later hastily flown in from the mainland had been inadequately equipped with winter clothing, so they suffered especially from the wet and cold weather of the onset of winter. Since their weatherproof winter clothing now no longer reached the islands, colds and dysentery soon spread among them, gradually spreading to other units.

One of the two escort destroyers, the ARA Hipólito Bouchard, was hit by the third torpedo, which, however, did not detonate. Therefore, the escort destroyers immediately began searching for the submarine. When they noticed that something was wrong with the General Belgrano, as the cruiser stopped responding to radio signals, they turned back and took up the rescue of the castaways. Due to nightfall and the strong storm that rapidly dispersed the life rafts, it took all of May 3 to find the last raft.

Since the ship had been sunk just outside the “Total Exclusion Zone,” much criticism was later voiced by opponents of the war, mainly in Great Britain, because of it. It became a “cause célèbre” (public bone of contention) for MPs such as Sir Thomas Dalyell Loch of the Labour Party, who shortly after the end of the war, December 21, 1982, accused the Prime Minister of having “as coldly as deliberately given the order to sink the Belgrano, knowing full well that an honorable peace was in prospect, in the expectation … that the Conqueror”s torpedoes would also torpedo the peace negotiations.” Numerous other opponents of the war echoed this view, emphasizing in particular that the ship had been heading west at the time of the attack, that is, it had been moving away from the Falkland Islands. They therefore accused (and still accuse) the British government of deliberately sinking the General Belgrano in order to derail an ongoing mediation attempt by Peru. Between May 1982 and February 1985 alone, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense had to justify themselves in the British Parliament against 205 written and 10 oral questions.

In response to the accusations of Dalyell and others, the British government primarily stated that it had already sent Argentina a warning on April 23 that Argentine warships and military aircraft could be attacked outside the TEZ if they posed a threat to British forces exercising their right of self-defense. The contradiction among the British public lasted so long primarily because various members of the government had initially given the media a series of sometimes confused, sometimes contradictory statements that could not be clarified until 1985 by a parliamentary committee of inquiry (Select Committee on Foreign Affairs), but nevertheless left a great deal of suspicion about the government”s statements.

This mistrust was further heightened when it became known in 1984 that the Conqueror”s navigation logs could no longer be found. The opposition accused the government of deliberately “disappearing” the logbooks because they recorded the Belgrano”s exact position at the time of the sinking. The logbook could have proved that the Belgrano was not in the exclusion zone. After the publication of new files, Stuart Prebble, on the other hand, suspects that the disappearance of the logbooks is more likely to be connected with the more recent Operation Barmaid.

In fact, after the April 23 warning, the Argentine Navy anticipated attacks on its warships even outside the exclusion zone and therefore did not protest the sinking of the cruiser even after the war. Both the captain of the General Belgrano, Héctor Bonzo, and the Argentine government later stated that the sinking had been legitimate. Argentine Admiral Pico wrote in 2005 that the General Belgrano was on a “tactical mission” against the British fleet, so it did not matter whether she was in or slightly outside the exclusion zone.

According to the British Navy, the cruiser General Belgrano was no longer new, but it still posed a threat to British ships because of its heavy armament. The sinking of the cruiser was not an isolated act. The movements of the Argentine Navy ships were as coordinated as those of the British fleet. Thus, the cruiser was in the company of two destroyers, Hipólito Bouchard and Piedra Buena, which were equipped with modern Exocet MM38 missiles with a range of about 40 km. The group around the cruiser could change course at any time, and given the high speed of warships (the General Belgrano was originally designed for a speed of up to 33 knots, or about 60 km

In fact, in the early morning hours of May 2, the aircraft carrier had to abort the ordered attack because the weak wind did not allow the takeoff of its heavily loaded Douglas A-4 “Skyhawks”. Therefore, shortly thereafter, Admiral Lombardo, the Argentine commander-in-chief of operations in the South Atlantic (Spanish “Teatro de Operaciones del Atlántico sur” – TOAS for short), ordered all units to return to the shallow waters near the mainland because of the acute submarine danger. After receiving this order, the group around the cruiser General Belgrano also turned back and headed in irregular zigzag movements toward Isla de los Estados (States Island) off the coast of Tierra del Fuego until it was torpedoed. According to the General Belgrano”s captain, Héctor Bonzo, the cruiser group”s first priority was to control the sea route around Cape Horn, and at the time of the attack it was en route to a new position where it would await further orders.

Against this military background, which is largely confirmed by Argentine accounts, the British government denied (and continues to deny) any connection with the Peruvian peace initiative, which, according to Prime Minister Thatcher, it learned of only after the ship had already sunk. Regardless, the exclusion zones were declared, in accordance with international law, primarily to warn neutral ships and keep them out of the war zone. Warships do not enjoy protection under such declarations, even when they are outside the declared exclusion zones. With the start of the bombing of the airport in Stanley one day earlier, the “open war” had begun – clearly recognizable even to Argentina.

Following the sinking of the cruiser, the Argentine Navy withdrew the ships to their bases. The Argentine aircraft carrier, which posed the greatest threat, was also ordered back to its base. To attack the British ships, the Argentines relied only on their land-based fighters as the war progressed. Subsequently, Argentine troops in the Falkland Islands were supplied only by C-130 Hercules transport aircraft landing at night.

The next day, the British tabloid The Sun published its famous headline “Gotcha” in its first editions, but this was changed and put into perspective after it became clear how many Argentine sailors had been killed.

Other attacks on ships were carried out by aircraft and are therefore presented in the context of air operations.

An Argentine commando action (code name Operation Algeciras) against British warships in Gibraltar was prevented by Spanish police.

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SAS commando action on Pebble Island

The only 20 Sea Harriers on the two aircraft carriers, whose numbers were increasingly reduced by the losses incurred since May 2, were unable to secure air superiority. The fact that the British aircraft carriers had to remain out of range of the “Super Étendards” stationed on the mainland, which were equipped with Exocet missiles, made securing air superiority even more difficult. Of great concern to the British was the fact that the complicated computer-controlled air defense missile systems – such as “Sea Dart” or “Sea Wolf” – did not at all deliver in real operations what they had promised in trials under ideal conditions. Even more unpleasant was the fact that since the sinking of the General Belgrano, Argentine naval and air forces had not left their bases, apparently to save all their striking power for the expected amphibious landing. Therefore, General Thompson, the commander of the 3rd Commando Brigade, in particular, urged more active action by the aircraft carrier group, but Admiral Woodward refused, so as not to endanger the valuable aircraft carriers, without which a landing would not be possible at all. At Thompson”s suggestion, a commando action was then planned against an Argentine air base at Pebble Island, where ground attack aircraft were stationed and where small propeller planes from the Continent, whose range did not extend to the airfield at Stanley, frequently landed.

A little later, in the night of 12.

In addition, the carrier aircraft repeatedly attacked Argentine positions in the interior of East Falkland, where the Argentines had stationed the helicopters for their mobile operational reserve. The destruction of the helicopters increasingly restricted the freedom of movement of the Argentines, who wanted to use helicopters to transport troops to the landing sites in the event of a British landing.

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Landing in the Falkland Islands on May 21, 1982

After the last hopes for a negotiated settlement finally failed in the UN in mid-May, the War Cabinet in London decided on May 18 to grant permission for the landing. By this time, the British military leadership had decided on a landing in San Carlos Bay (English mostly San Carlos Water) in the northwest of East Falkland, and finalized plans for the landing operation. The bay had been selected by the Amphibious Group planning staff because, first, the landing ships seemed safe from submarine and aircraft attack in the relatively narrow bay and, second, it was sufficiently far from Stanley to be safe from immediate Argentine counterattacks. Moreover, scouting parties brought ashore had determined that the Argentines had not occupied the land around the bay. Only a few days (on May 15) before the planned landing, the Argentines brought a company of soldiers from Goose Green to Port San Carlos, from where they established an observation post equipped with light guns and mortars on Fanning Head, the promontory north of the bay, since it overlooked both the entrance to Falklands Sound and that of San Carlos Water. In order to secure the landing of troops in the bay, the British first had to overwhelm this observation post, manned by 20 men, by a detachment of about 30 men from the SBS the night before the landing.

On 21 May, the recapture of the islands was initiated with an amphibious landing. To distract and deceive the Argentine leadership, that night the Navy and SAS made diversionary attacks south of Port Stanley and at Goose Green. Under cover of darkness, landing craft entered the Falklands Sound shortly after midnight, where troops boarded landing craft. At 4:40 a.m. local time, the first troops with landing craft landed almost simultaneously at three points in San Carlos Bay (marked green, blue, and red on the attached map) and from there occupied the surrounding hills. Only then did the twelve ships of the landing fleet anchor in the bay, including the large passenger ship Canberra. During this time, the warships of the battle group, equipped with guided missiles, secured the entrance to Falkland Sound against air attacks and submarines. After only a short time, the five battalions of the 3rd Commando Brigade were brought ashore and a field hospital was established in an abandoned refrigerated factory in Ajax Bay (on the west side of San Carlos Water), where it remained stationed for the rest of the war. As the sun rose, helicopters were used to bring the 105-mm guns and Rapier air defense systems into position. The installation of the Rapier systems was delayed, however, because their highly sensitive electronics had suffered from the long sea transport, so that they were not yet operational when the Argentines launched their first air attacks.

Made careless by the landing without opposition, the helicopter pilots, who brought the heavy material from the ships ashore, flew after a short time, without heeding the necessary security, up to the forward positions. In the process, several aircraft east of Port San Carlos came under fire from the Argentines retreating from there, who used their rapid-fire weapons to destroy two Aérospatiale-SA-341

Before withdrawing from Port San Carlos shortly after 8 a.m. in the morning, the Argentine command, which had been taken completely by surprise by the British landing, reported by radio to the Argentine base at Goose Green its observations in the bay. After smaller aircraft (Pucará and Aermacchi) from Goose Green and Stanley confirmed the observation, Argentine aircraft on the mainland launched their attack on the landing fleet they had been waiting for since 1 May. At about 10:35 a.m., the first planes attacked the warships in the Falklands Sound. In order to fly under British radar and the associated missile shield, the Argentine planes crossed West Falkland mostly in low-level flight during the first few days and then naturally attacked the first British ships they saw, which were the warships in the Falklands Sound. Therefore, the ships of the landing fleet, still fully loaded at the time, were able to unload almost unmolested in San Carlos Bay. Moreover, the Argentines often flew their attacks even below the mast height of the British ships with reckless maneuvers, which led to the fact that the fuse in the fuses of their bombs, which usually hit their target less than a second after being released, had not yet been released, so that they did not detonate on impact. As a result, more than a few bombs penetrated the narrow warships without detonating, leaving only minor damage and a few wounded on the British side. Other bombs got stuck in the hulls of the ships and could later (except for one) be defused by demolition experts. In return, the British managed to shoot down an Argentine aircraft (a “Dagger” Likewise, D Squadron of the SAS managed to shoot down a Grupo 3 Pucará over the Sussex Mountains with an FIM-92 Stinger.

In the afternoon, the Argentines (air force and naval aviators) flew a series of further attacks in which HMS Argonaut was damaged (three killed). The frigate HMS Ardent, which was alone in the middle of Falkland Sound on its way back from the diversionary attack at Goose Green, was attacked several times in succession, receiving seven hits (burned out, she sank the next day. That afternoon, however, the Argentines lost nine planes (four “Daggers” of Grupo 6 and five “Skyhawks” of Grupo 4 and the naval aviator), all of which were shot down by “Sea Harriers” with Sidewinder missiles only after their bombs had been dropped on the way back. At the end of the first day, although almost all the frigates patrolling the Falklands Sound as mobile air cover for the landing ships had been damaged by the air raids, they had still managed to land 3,000 troops and 1,000 tons of materiel and secure the beachhead.

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Argentine airstrikes until 25 May

Two days after the sinking of the Belgrano, a patrol aircraft of the Argentine Naval Air Force (COAN) spotted parts of the British fleet. On May 4, two COAN Super Étendards then took off from Río Grande Air Base in Tierra del Fuego, each armed with an Exocet. After an aerial refueling by a C-130 Hercules shortly after takeoff, they transitioned to low-level flight, ascended for radar tracking, and fired the missiles from 30 to 50 km away. One missed HMS Yarmouth, the other hit the Type 42 destroyer HMS Sheffield. The warhead of the Exocet did not detonate, but the residual fuel set the ship on fire. Due to the destruction of the fire extinguishing system, the ship had to be abandoned hours later and sank after six days. Twenty sailors died. Meanwhile, the other two destroyers were withdrawn from their unsafe positions. The British military would have been defenseless against an attack.

After the sinking, there were plans for a commando action by the SAS against the FAA unit equipped with Exocet missiles in Río Grande. In the process, according to initial plans, SAS soldiers were even to land C-130 transport aircraft on the airfield, destroy the missiles and aircraft, and then kill the pilots. Later, the plan was modified. The soldiers were to be taken to the coast by submarine and flee to Chile after the mission. However, the plan was not carried out after a helicopter that was supposed to drop a reconnaissance team was spotted and subsequently had to make an emergency landing near Punta Arenas.

The feared Argentine air attacks following the landing of ground troops on May 21 failed to materialize. Bad weather prevented the planes from taking off on the mainland. It was not until the afternoon of the day after next, May 23, that the Argentine air force and naval aviators were able to resume their attacks. On that day, the Antelope sank after being hit by a bomb that did not immediately explode on impact. The bomb detonated during the night after the ship had been cleared and two demolition experts were attempting to remove the fuses. Multiple hits on other ships again demonstrated the glaring weakness of the “short-range air defenses” of the new British frigates, which were hardly equipped with anti-aircraft guns in favor of anti-aircraft missiles. The previously highly rated automatic missile defense systems, however, all disappointed. Reliable protection was provided only by the two aircraft carriers” sea harriers, which constantly circled over West Falkland.

In the morning hours of May 24, the British again attempted to disable Stanley Airport with an air attack, but ultimately failed again. Beginning at noon, Argentine aircraft attacked the landing fleet, attempting for the first time to hit the landing and supply ships in San Carlos Bay. In the process, the landing ships Sir Galahad, Sir Lancelot, and Sir Bedivere were hit, but in none of the three cases did the bombs detonate, allowing them to be defused later by demolition experts. The Argentines, on the other hand, lost another “Dagger” (of Grupo 6) and a “Skyhawk” (of Grupo 5) that day.

On May 25, their national holiday, the Argentines planned a decisive strike against the two British aircraft carriers whose position they had established with the help of reconnaissance aircraft and radar in the Falkland Islands. For this purpose, the two British outpost ships far to the northwest of Pebble Island were to be “eliminated” first, whose task as radar early warning and guidance ships for the “Sea Harrier” they had recognized in the meantime. Through several staggered attacks, they finally succeeded in sinking the destroyer Coventry by bombs, costing the lives of 19 sailors, and damaging the frigate Broadsword (the shipboard helicopter was destroyed). At the same time, two naval “Super Étendards” equipped with Exocet missiles took off northward from Río Grande on Tierra del Fuego. After refueling in the air northwest of the Falkland Islands, they attacked the British battle group, in whose midst were the two aircraft carriers Hermes and Invincible, from the north by complete surprise. Warned by their radar in time, all warships fired metal strips into the air (English “chaff”) with special launchers to fool or deflect the missile”s seeker. As a result, none of the Exocet missiles hit a warship, but the radar-guided seeker head, after flying through these chaffs, selected the container ship Atlantic Conveyor, which was sailing singly at the time, and set it on fire (killing twelve), causing it to sink three days later. This ship, which was to enter San Carlos Bay the next night, was carrying helicopters, equipment to build a runway, and tents for 4,500 men, which were important for the rest of the battle. The Argentines lost three “Skyhawks” that day (much fewer than the British believed in 1982). Two Grupo 4 “Skyhawks” were shot down over San Carlos Bay, and another Grupo 5 aircraft was accidentally shot down by Argentine flak while flying back over Goose Green.

The fact that Argentina was equipped with modern French weapons placed a great burden on the British; the French were their closest allies in Europe. France was also embarrassed to see French-made armaments causing great damage to one of its closest allies. In relation to its population, France was the world”s largest arms exporter at the time.

Years later, an advisor to then-French President François Mitterrand reported that after the Exocet attack, Thatcher had forced him to give British forces codes that could be used to electronically disable the missiles. Thatcher had threatened otherwise to have submarines fire nuclear missiles at Buenos Aires. Mitterrand had then allowed the British to sabotage the Exocets.

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Battle for Goose Green

The airfield at Goose Green, about 25 km south of the town of San Carlos, was not only the closest Argentine base to the British beachhead, it also represented the largest enemy troop concentration outside the island capital of Stanley. Therefore, the staff of the 3rd Commando Brigade planned an attack on Goose Green just one day after the landing. In doing so, they initially planned only to destroy the airfield – or the aircraft – and then withdraw. According to the original orders, however, General Thompson was to wait until the 5th Brigade had also arrived there before making a general breakout from the landing zone (if only because the unloading of the supply ships was slow without the usual harbor facilities, such as cranes). However, after only a few days it was clear that the fierce Argentine air attacks and the continuing losses of ships in the Falklands Sound forced the original planning to be changed and the landing zone to be left earlier. This step was now to be initiated at the latest with the help of the additional helicopters that the container ship Atlantic Conveyor was to bring to the island. After that, the troops were to be dropped as close as possible to the island”s capital, Stanley, with the help of the large “Chinook” transport helicopters.

This plan also had to be abandoned after the sinking of the ship and the loss of the additional helicopters on 25 May. Therefore, the staff of the 3rd Commando Brigade decided that part of the battalions would have to cross the island on foot, which was expected to take quite a few days (the heavy equipment was to be brought in later by the remaining helicopters). Therefore, in order not to expose the British base in San Carlos Bay and the supply depots already established there to possible flank attacks from Goose Green during this critical phase, this nearby Argentine base had to be captured first. If in 1982 several interviews in the press claimed that “the attack on Goose Green was mainly intended to boost the morale of the British troops,” this point was at best a secondary aspect. Militarily, the capture of the enemy base so close to one”s base of operations was essential if Thompson was not to leave a substantial portion of his troops behind to protect them in the advance on Stanley. Since Thompson, still bound by General Moore”s order of 12 April, hesitated to break out, the British high command at Northwood finally ordered him to do so. This order was given all the more emphatically because they had learned from leaked U.S. intelligence reports that the Argentines were planning to land paratroopers from the mainland at Goose Green. However, for security reasons (i.e., to preclude possible interception of the radio message), this point was not communicated to Thompson, which is why the general was subsequently critical of the order on several occasions.

The 2nd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment (usually just called “2 Para” for short) was on the southern edge of the landing zone, so Thompson had already earmarked it for the attack on Goose Green on 23 May. Since the 3rd Commando Brigade was then already preparing to occupy Mount Kent by helicopter while still initiating the advance of two battalions across Teal Inlet, only limited attention was given to the attack on the isthmus and airfield at Goose Green. Thus, only half a battery of 105-mm howitzers (i.e., three guns) and very little ammunition were assigned to the attack, which during the night was reinforced only by the 4.5-inch gun (114 mm) – also light – of the frigate HMS Arrow. Due to the loss of the helicopters on the Atlantic Conveyor, the soldiers had to carry all the heavy equipment (grenade launchers and Milan rockets and their ammunition) on their backs, since the brigade staff assumed (without daring to try) that the road was impassable for vehicles.

The Argentines were willing to defend the site vigorously, as the isthmus of Darwin

On the evening of May 26, the 2nd Parachute Battalion set out to march on Camilla Creek House north of Goose Green. Due to careless statements from government circles, during the next day the BBC reported the planned attack on Goose Green on the BBC World Service. The Argentines, forewarned by this, flew additional troops from their reserve at Mt. Kent to Goose Green. A British air raid on the airfield at Goose Green on May 27 shot down an RAF Harrier GR.3, but the pilot survived and was rescued by a British helicopter two days later.

On the night of May 28, shortly after midnight, the paratroopers moved to attack the Argentine outposts positioned at the entrance to the isthmus, which in turn slowly withdrew from there in accordance with orders, trying to delay the British advance as long as possible. Accordingly, it was already broad daylight (contrary to British plans) when the paratroopers finally reached the narrowest part of the isthmus north of Darwin and the Argentine main position. There the British attack came to a halt under fire from the Argentine machine guns (about between 9:30 and 12:30). The defenders were supported in this by multiple attacks by Pucarà fighters, which on one occasion dropped napalm bombs, and also shot down one of the British scout helicopters bringing in ammunition and carrying off wounded. Only after a hard fight, in which the commander of the 2nd Parachute Battalion fell (see below), were the British finally able to gain the upper hand, after 1:00 p.m. they then managed to bypass the Argentine position along the beach on the west side of the isthmus. By evening (about 17:30), the paratroopers slowly advanced to near the outskirts of Goose Green. Just before sunset, two Harrier GR.3s with BL755 cluster bombs destroyed the Argentine guns, the large fireballs from the explosions briefly causing panic among the Argentine soldiers. With 114 Falklanders trapped in a barn at Goose Green, Major Keeble, the British commander now in charge of the battalion, refrained from further fighting so as not to endanger the prisoners in the darkness. It was not until the next morning that he sent two captured Argentines to Goose Green with a demand for surrender. After a period of reflection, the Argentine commander, with General Menéndez”s permission, agreed to surrender (at about 11:30 a.m. on May 29) because his units were completely surrounded – greatly overestimating the number of British soldiers.

On the British side, 17 soldiers died, including Battalion Commander Jones, who had initially led the attack. 37 soldiers were wounded. Jones fell while attacking an Argentine machine gun position that temporarily held down the battalion”s attack, causing heavy casualties there. With no reserves available in his immediate area, the commander decided to attack this position himself with his battalion mobile command post staff group. Jones was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, Britain”s highest military decoration for superior gallantry in the face of the enemy. Some 50 Argentines lost their lives in the fighting, and about 90 were wounded. The number of unwounded Argentine prisoners was 961.

The successful and rapid capture of Goose Green subsequently had a discernible negative effect on the morale of the Argentine troops. The relatively high casualties led the British to launch all further attacks only at night to reduce the defensive effect of enemy automatic weapons on the open grasslands. The Argentines, with the help of helicopters at Goose Green, used their entire mobile reserve, which they had concentrated in a camp at Mount Kent. This had the unexpected effect for the British of allowing them to occupy Mount Kent virtually simultaneously without encountering opposition. The occupation of the isthmus opened another, southern route for British troops along the coast of Choiseul Sound and Bluff Cove to Stanley. When British troops took this route, it reinforced the impression – already held by the Argentine high command in Stanley – that the main British attack on the island”s capital would probably be made from the south, thereby diverting Argentine attention from the northern British advance across the island via the settlement of Douglas and Teal Inlet to Mount Kent.

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Battle of Port Stanley

The attack on the island capital Stanley was launched simultaneously with the battle for Goose Green. For this purpose, beginning with the night of 24.

Meanwhile, on the night of 31 May-1 June, the British 5th Brigade had landed at San Carlos Bay with another 3,500 troops. After the battalion of Gurkhas of this brigade had relieved the troops at Goose Green, the 2nd Battalion of Paratroopers was flown to Bluff Cove and Fitzroy on the coast south of Stanley on June 3. Thus the island capital was widely surrounded and the British had already regained control of most of the island.

The advance of the British troops, which passed through an area without hard roads, could be opposed by the Argentine command in the Falkland Islands to little effect after the loss of most of its helicopters. Apart from a few sorties by Argentine Command Companies 601 and 602, which led to some, albeit very brief, engagements along the advance routes south of Teal Inlet, the British advance up to the Mount Kent area proceeded virtually without a fight.

The capture of Goose Green had opened a second route to Stanley for the British, and General Moore, who assumed supreme command of the land forces after the arrival of the reinforcements, attached great importance to both brigades being equally involved in the attack. With the 2nd Parachute Battalion already occupying Bluff Cove with helicopters “requisitioned” on its own authority, the rest of the 5th Brigade had to be brought there as well. Since the few helicopters available were barely sufficient to supply the brigades, the two Guards battalions of the 5th Brigade (Welsh Guards and Scots Guards) had to be taken by landing craft from San Carlos around the southern tip of the island to Bluff Cove. To minimize the resulting threat of casualties from submarines or air attacks, the troops were spread out over several separate ship transports and over several nights.

Not only had the fighting of the first week weakened the Argentine air forces in numbers, but many of the remaining aircraft had damage from British defensive fire that had to be repaired. In addition, the weather was so bad at times after June 1 that no air attacks were possible. Therefore, it was not until June 4 that the Argentines were able to resume their actions with a scattered air attack by six “Daggers” on British positions at Mount Kent. This was also the reason why the newly arrived troops and their commanders of the 5th Brigade did not realize until then the great danger posed by the Argentine aircraft.

On the night of June 7-8, two companies of Welsh Guards (about 220 men), together with a field hospital, were to be moved from San Carlos to the east side of the island as the last transport of troops. The field hospital was to be landed at Fitzroy, while the two companies had Bluff Cove as their destination. Due in part to bad weather, the ship was delayed, its captain having explicit orders to go no farther than Port Pleasant Cove (i.e., Fitzroy). Therefore, it was broad daylight before the field hospital could be unloaded there. Since there were no docks in the bay, everything had to be brought ashore by landing craft or by Mexeflotes (motorized pontoons). Shortly after the ship”s arrival, because of the imminent air danger, naval officers repeatedly ordered the guardsmen crowding below deck to abandon ship. Nevertheless, they remained on board, claiming that they had to be taken to Bluff Cove and not Fitzroy (it is a walk of about 10 to 12 kilometers from Fitzroy to Bluff Cove) and, moreover, they did not want to part with their baggage and equipment. When a major in the Royal Marines of the 5th Brigade finally ordered the two companies of guards to wait ashore to be taken to Bluff Cove by landing craft after the ship was unloaded, the commanding officer of the field hospital (a lieutenant colonel and, as it happened, the senior Army officer on board) countermanded this order and insisted that the unloading of the field hospital had priority.

From Mount Harriet, Argentine observation posts could see the mastheads of ships in Fitzroy with binoculars. This observation triggered the last major combined Argentine air attack of the war. In this, some of the Argentine aircraft first flew to the British landing zone around San Carlos to distract British air defenses and the “Sea Harriers” by attacking the ships lying there. In the process, the frigate Plymouth was hit in the Falklands Sound by four bombs that failed to detonate. The actual attack was flown south by five “Skyhawks” to Fitzroy, where at 13:00 (local time) they bombed the little-protected ships in the harbor (the ships should have been back in San Carlos by now). Two bombs that failed to detonate hit the RFA Sir Tristram, killing two men. Three bombs that detonated hit the still-full RFA Sir Galahad. The explosions and rapidly spreading flames killed 47 men on Sir Galahad (including 39 men from the Welsh Guards alone). In addition, a total of 115 men were injured in the attack (75 of them slightly).

Three “Skyhawks” of Grupo 5, dodging what had become heavy defensive fire at Fitzroy towards evening, sank a British landing craft on its way back in Choiseul Sound, en route from Goose Green to Bluff Cove with vehicles. A little later they themselves fell victim to the Sidewinder missiles of the rushing “Sea Harriers”.

After securing their positions around Stanley, the British opened the offensive on the island”s capital. The attack began on the night of the 11th.

At dawn on 12 June, HMS Glamorgan, which had supported the infantry”s night attack on Mount Harriet with its shipboard gun, was about to return to the carrier group. Although the British knew at the time that the Argentines were setting up a mobile launching pad for MM38 “Exocet” anti-ship missiles every night on the coast east of Stanley, the ship hastily attempted to return to the carrier before dawn and ran into the area covered by the Exocet. Warned by the ship”s radar, the ship just managed to turn the stern of the approaching Exocet, so that only the helicopter deck was hit. The detonation of the missile and the subsequent fire killed 13 crew members and injured 15 (thus the “Exocet” on the Glamorgan claimed about as many victims in a few seconds as the storm on Mount Longdon did in six hours). Nevertheless, the crew managed to extinguish the fire after a short time and return under the protection of the carrier group.

On June 12, General Moore postponed the attack on Mount Tumbledown and Wireless Ridge by one day. In exchange, a series of Argentine and British air attacks on each other”s positions took place that day, including the RAF flying the last long-range bomber attack (Black Buck VII) from Ascencion Island on Stanley Airport. The next day, 13 June, the 2nd Parachute Battalion prepared to storm Wireless Ridge, an extension of the peninsula in Port Stanley Bay, at the foot of which lay the Moody Brook barracks of the previous British occupation of the island. British artillery shelled briskly the Argentine positions around Stanley. South of it, the Scot Guards prepared to attack Mount Tumbledown, and behind them the Gurkhas to attack Mount William, lying diagonally behind, immediately after its fall. These attacks were also to take place under cover of darkness.

Similar to its attack on 11 June, on 13 June the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards began its assault shortly after 10 p.m. (local time) on Mount Tumbledown, the strongest point in the enemy front. Earlier, shortly after 9 p.m., the 2nd Parachute Battalion under its new commander, Lieutenant Colonel Chaundler, supported by artillery and naval guns, advanced from the north against Wireless Ridge. While Mount Tumbledown was defended by the recognized Argentine 5th Marine Infantry Battalion, individual companies of various regiments were on Wireless Ridge. While Mount Tumbledown was tenaciously defended, as expected, so that the mountain was not fully occupied until about 10 o”clock the next morning, the paratroopers advanced rapidly farther north. They passed the highest point of the hill shortly after midnight and then stopped only because they were now being fired upon by the higher Mount Tumbledown, which was still in Argentine hands. It was not until about 6 a.m. (June 14) that General Thompson gave permission to advance further to Moody Brook Barracks (at the western end of Stanley”s inner bay ) – leaving only “a few hundred yards” to the outskirts of Stanley. The British advance to Moody Brook resulted in the only Argentine counterattack of this war, which, executed only half-heartedly, ended in a rout after only a few minutes.

The rapid failure of the counterattack and the appearance of the first British troops so close to the town probably triggered the “mental breakdown” of the Argentine resistance. A short time later, the Argentine marines abandoned their resistance on the eastern slope of Mount Tumbledown and retreated toward the town. From the top of the mountain, the British could now observe Argentine retreat movements everywhere during the morning. Consequently, General Moore now ordered a general advance. In the afternoon paratroopers and marines approached Stanley on foot from the west. At about 3 p.m. helicopters carrying soldiers of the 40th Commando Battalion accidentally landed on Sapper Hill, a hill about 100 yards high immediately south of the town. The helicopters, which were supposed to land much farther west, at Mount William, almost touched down among Argentine troops in the process, but after a brief exchange of fire, they fled into town. When the first soldiers of the 45th Command appeared there from the west some time later, with orders to storm the hill, it took a few shots to clarify that Sapper Hill was already occupied by their own troops. Thus the last fighting of the war came to an end. By this time, negotiations were already underway in the city for a surrender of the Argentine troops in the Falkland Islands.

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End of war

Even during the night of June 14, the Argentine governor of the Malvinas, General Menéndez, and the commander of X. Brigade, General Joffre, agreed that with the fall of Mount Tumbledown and Wireless Ridge the situation at Stanley would be untenable. They therefore ordered troops who had taken up positions on the coast east and south of the island capital (to repel landings) westward, but this resulted only in the brief Argentine counterattack early that morning at Moody Brook. After repeated attempts to call, Menéndez finally reached Chief of State General Galtieri in Buenos Aires at about 9:30. After describing the current situation, Menéndez suggested to him that Argentina should accept UN Resolution 502 (i.e., accept the withdrawal of Argentine troops), but Galtieri refused. When Galtieri asked him to attack instead of withdrawing, he hung up, saying that he obviously did not know what was going on in the Malvinas. Thereupon, according to General Menéndez, he accepted the British offer to talk.

Already since June 6, the British had sent a daily offer to talk to the Argentine administrative officers who controlled the medical radio network that connected the hospital in Stanley with all the settlements on the islands. Although they did not respond, they did not shut down the network either. On the morning of June 14, the British again offered talks “for humanitarian reasons.” Shortly after 1 p.m., the Argentine officer in charge of the civil administration finally responded and offered to talk about a cease-fire. Finally, after several hours of negotiations, shortly before 9 p.m. (local time), the Argentine governor of the Malvinas and commander-in-chief of all troops in the archipelago, Mario Menéndez, and Major General Jeremy Moore, commander of British land forces in the Falkland Islands, signed a cease-fire that included not only the trapped troops around Stanley, but included all soldiers on all islands in the archipelago. (To achieve this last point, the words “unconditional surrender” were omitted, something Menéndez placed great emphasis on, even if it was ultimately one). The armistice went into effect upon signing (in effect, arms had already been at rest around Stanley since that afternoon). Because of the indications of time according to different time zones, the media give both June 14 and 15 as the day the war ended. The official (nominal) time of signing is given on the document as June 14, 2359Z (23:59 Zulu).

On June 20, the British also occupied the South Sandwich Islands, where on Southern Thule Island Argentina (illegally, in the British view) had already established a research station and raised the Argentine flag in 1976. On that day, the British government unilaterally declared an end to hostilities.

The conflict lasted 72 days. In the process, 253 British (including 18 civilians) and 655 Argentines lost their lives, 323 of them on the cruiser General Belgrano alone (the Argentine casualties also included 18 civilians). At the cease-fire negotiations on June 14, General Menéndez spoke of more than 15,000 soldiers under his command, but even a recount later revealed no more than 11,848 unwounded POWs. As early as June 20, all the prisoners (except for about 800) were repatriated. Among those held back was General Menéndez. When the Argentines announced on July 3 that they would release Captain (Flight Lieutenant) Glover-the only British POW who had been shot down over Westphalia on May 21-the remaining POWs were brought home by July 14.

On June 18, President Galtieri resigned and was replaced by General Reynaldo Bignone.

On July 27, 1982, General Menéndez was dismissed from all military posts.

On September 15, 1982, Argentina and the United Kingdom lifted all mutual financial sanctions.

Neither in the armistice negotiations in Stanley nor in the repatriation of the prisoners of war was the Argentine government involved. The British unilaterally declared the war over. Therefore, Argentina did not and does not consider itself defeated – and for this reason, during the UN General Assembly in New York on October 3, 1982, the country renewed its claim to ownership of the Falkland Islands.

On October 12, 1982, a victory parade was held in London. Before that, Prime Minister Thatcher awarded medals to about 1250 soldiers.

On October 17, 1982, the United Kingdom stationed a new air surveillance squadron (Flight 1435) of four F-4 Phantom fighter aircraft at Port Stanley. The Phantoms were replaced in 1992 by more modern Tornado F.3s, which were replaced in 2009 by the Eurofighter Typhoon.

A resolution introduced by Argentina in the UN General Assembly on November 4, 1982, supported by the United States and others, to resume British-Argentine negotiations on the future of the archipelago caused disappointment in the British government and is considered the first diplomatic defeat in the conflict.

On January 7, 1983, the commemoration of the British occupation of the islands in 1833, Prime Minister Thatcher visited the archipelago, where some 6,000 troops are to remain as a permanent troop presence. British banks, with the government”s approval, granted a loan of 170 million pounds to Argentina in late January 1983.

On February 28, 1983, the United Kingdom began expansion of Port Stanley Airport and, beginning June 28, 1983, construction of a new air base south of Port Stanley, which was completed as RAF Mount Pleasant beginning in 1985.

Argentina returned to democracy on December 9, 1983.

On October 19, 1989, the two parties to the conflict declared the war (legally-officially) over after lengthy talks in Madrid, which only came about after Spanish mediation. But only a little later, already in April 1990, Argentina declared the Falkland Islands and all their adjoining territories, i.e. all British islands in Antarctic waters (British Antarctic Territory), to be an integral part of the then newly founded Argentine province of Tierra del Fuego (Tierra del Fuego). Accordingly, the conflict over the islands remains unresolved to this day.

Following a rapprochement between the new Macri government and the United Kingdom, work began in 2017 to identify 123 Argentine soldiers buried without names in the cemetery near Darwin. The ICRC is in charge, and the costs are shared equally between the two countries.

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Military

The Falklands War illustrated the vulnerability of ships in the open sea, both to missiles and to submarines. As a result, warships were increasingly built using flame-retardant materials and novel fire extinguishing systems (halons as extinguishing agents, etc.). Exocet missiles became a best-seller on all continents. British ships did not have a short-range defense system; such systems were immediately introduced or developed by almost all navies in the years following the Falklands War.

Numerous conclusions also resulted from the war for the forces operating on land. On the British side in particular, anti-tank handguns and anti-tank guided missiles such as the MILAN were successfully employed against Argentine field fortifications. Four FV101 Scorpion and FV107 Scimitar light armored vehicles each from the British reconnaissance force had proved their worth in supporting the infantry.

Due to one-sided press reports in Europe and the U.S., the Argentine troops were portrayed rather negatively in the first postwar accounts. According to these reports, units were deployed on the Argentine side that were not used to comparable climatic conditions. As a result, their resilience and operational capability were significantly limited. The Argentine units were mostly conscripts from the hot and humid interior. The British units, on the other hand, consisting of professional soldiers from the Parachute Regiment and Royal Marines, were able to train in Scotland and Norway. Only the Argentine 5th Marine Battalion was considered prepared for deployment in the dry-cold climate zone.

In fact, only three of the twelve Argentine infantry battalions deployed to the Falklands came from the “hot and humid” northern Argentine province of Corrientes. The remaining units were mostly from the major cities of Buenos Aires Province, and four of the battalions were from Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego (including the two battalions of Marines), whose climatic conditions were quite similar to those of the Falkland Islands. The soldiers” personal equipment was adapted to the climatic conditions on the islands (conspicuously, the young soldiers from the warm north, most of whom came from rural areas, coped better with life in the open air or in tents than a large proportion of the metropolitan conscripts from the colder south). The official report of the experience of one of the British brigade commanders (Wilson) thus states, “The enemy was not incompetent and not fearful. He was not ill-equipped, nor was he starving. The use of his planes was very bold. The positions of his defenses were well chosen and they were very well laid out. He fought very skillfully and with great courage. Some of his units resisted to almost the last man.” This description is confirmed in most of the detailed accounts later written by war veterans of individual engagements.

However, the inhospitable climatic conditions at the beginning of the southern winter in the Falkland Islands put the forces of both sides to severe tests. For the first time since the Winter War and the subsequent Wehrmacht operations in Finland during World War II, infantry battles were fought in the subpolar climate zone. Special features of this climatic zone, in addition to high wind speeds in the low-cover terrain, were the cold and ground moisture, which reduced the protective effect of leather combat boots. Thus, for the first time after World War I, cases of trench foot occurred again on the British side. For this reason, boots with PTFE membranes (also known as Gore-Tex) were subsequently developed, as only rubber boots were available as otherwise suitable footwear. Lessons could be learned for the clothing and field equipment as well as the armament of the infantry. These included the introduction of wind- and moisture-protective clothing with PTFE membranes that were open to vapor diffusion.

The standard British L1 A1 SLR rifle, a variant of the FN FAL self-loader without continuous fire, proved to be no longer adequate. No night sight could be added for night combat and it did not have a telescopic sight.

Lessons could also be learned for training and about the psychology of a soldier and his readiness to fight within the small combat community through cohesion. Differences in training became particularly apparent between the paratroopers and the members of the Guard regiments. Since then, therefore, a fixed component of the training there has also been mentally, but also physically demanding training, including rappelling exercises.

Further lessons could be learned in medical service and in self and comrade help. Due to the climate and the weather – cold leads to a contraction of the veins, the application of an infusion via a peripheral or central venous access is not possible for an inexperienced and untrained soldier when wounded – a volume replacement was performed rectally via a flexible plastic catheter. Initial experience with cryogens in the form of natural hypothermia was gained in wounded care. Blood loss and subsequent physical shock were thus minimized. At the same time, the soldiers as a whole, but especially the wounded, had to be protected from hypothermia. Despite this experience, it is only today that research is leading in the USA on this “initial care” of a polytrauma casualty by cryogens in order to keep him stable until full care can be provided in a hospital.

On both the British and Argentine sides, however, most of the killed and wounded were not the result of combat between the two armies, but were overwhelmingly victims of air strikes on ships hit by bombs or by missiles (even the Army suffered slightly more than half its casualties from the bombing of the Sir Galahad). The relatively high number of civilian sailors who lost their lives during the conflict also reflects the enormous importance of the navy and shipping on both sides. On the British side, 45 requisitioned and chartered merchant ships were involved, carrying more than half a million tons of supplies (including about 400,000 tons of fuel). Argentina, on the other hand, was very quickly cut off from sea supplies to the islands by the British submarines, which is why the very last units that were still hastily brought to the Malvinas could only be brought there by aircraft with some of their equipment, but where they ended up hindering the defense more than helping it.

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Ausschuss zur Überprüfung der Falklandinseln

After the end of the war, a British inquiry headed by Lord Franks into the events surrounding the start of the Falklands War was held in October 1982 by the Falklands Island Review Committee. In the inquiry, which met in secret, Margaret Thatcher admitted that the Argentine attack on the archipelago came as a surprise to the British government. The government had not expected this move, which was classified as “stupid.” British intelligence agencies had thought it possible since 1977 that Argentina would attack the islands, but it was not until March 26, 1982, that the Ministry of Defense presented a plan to defend the territory. The prime minister expressed shock in her diary at the possibility mentioned in this plan of not being able to repel an attack, but she still considered the invasion unlikely. In October 1982, she described the moment she received intelligence on March 31 that an Argentine attack was imminent as the worst moment of her life.

Peter Carington, who had resigned as British foreign secretary on April 5, 1982, supported Margaret Thatcher”s statements that he, too, thought an attack was out of the question.

On January 18, 1983, the government presented the official final report of the Falkland Islands Review (also known as Frank”s Report) to Parliament. The report certified that the government had done nothing to provoke Argentina into attacking the Falkland Islands. The government was also acknowledged that it could not have foreseen the attack. It was nevertheless recommended to improve intelligence collection and analysis. The opposition called the report”s conclusions a whitewash and a cover-up of the real results.

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Political consequences

The Argentine military junta, which was exposed to strong internal pressure due to a severe economic crisis, had used the annexation of the Falkland Islands for domestic political goals. The war therefore had domestic political repercussions for Argentina. The country”s defeat forced President Leopoldo Galtieri to resign after only a few days on June 18, following violent demonstrations in the country. Galtieri was replaced by General Reynaldo Bignone. The country returned to democracy on December 9, 1983.

In the long run, the debacle ended the Argentine military”s regular interference in politics and discredited it before society. In Comodoro Rivadavia, seat of Argentine jurisdiction for the war zone, 70 officers and non-commissioned officers were charged with inhumane treatment of soldiers during the war.

Argentina”s defeat ended the military alternative for resolving the Beagle conflict, until then the preferred option for the hawks in the Argentine government, and later led to the signing of the 1984 treaty between Chile and Argentina.

The war between Argentina and Great Britain ended with the capture of the invading forces without a formal peace treaty. Argentina never withdrew its claim to the Falkland Islands; to this day (March 2013), every Argentine government renews the country”s claim to the archipelago.Every year, Argentina renews its claim to the islands before the UN”s Decolonization Committee.In the weeks surrounding the 30th anniversary of the start of the war in April 2012, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a left-wing populist in her country”s Peronist tradition, again sharpened her tone toward Britain.

Journalist Jürgen Krönig wrote on this topic in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit in 2012:

In Argentina, the soldiers were celebrated as heroes at the beginning of the war, but shortly after it ended, many considered them failures. Many of the war veterans feel disregarded by the country”s official policy.

Exploration of oil deposits near the Falkland Islands by companies with British licenses has exacerbated the conflict, according to the Argentine government.President Kirchner complained: “Our natural resources – fish deposits and oil reserves – are being plundered.”

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Casualties and war costs

Cost of war: about 2.5 billion British pounds.

Cost of war: unknown

The clearance of the numerous mines lasted until the end of 2020 and was officially ended in a ceremony on November 14, 2020.

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Medical consequences of war

In 2001, politically motivated action groups emerged in the UK claiming that the number of casualties from combat on both sides was lower than the number of returned veterans who took their own lives because they suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). While several studies had shown that symptoms of PTSD appeared in about one-fifth of soldiers after war, this rarely led to an “abnormal life” (“abnormal life”) later. The neutrality of such studies, which not infrequently reach different conclusions, is controversial, especially since the numerical base on which they are based is usually small. A group of 2,000 veterans, including a number of soldiers who had been in the Falkland Islands, claimed in 2002 that there had been no adequate medical or psychological care for severe post-traumatic stress disorder after the war. Her lawsuit against the Department of Defense made it all the way to the High Court in 2003, but the High Court rejected the claims as exaggerated and unproven. During the trial, the DOD was able to prove that after the war, all PTSD sufferers who requested it were treated as inpatients using the “best possible methods at the time” (“in line with contemporary best practice”). The judge then left no doubt that, in his view, some very seriously ill patients had not been treated well, but he found no evidence of systematic neglect of PTSD sufferers by the ministry, which is why he dismissed the case.

Earlier, in 2001, other action groups in Argentina and the United Kingdom claimed that within 20 years of the end of the war, the number of Argentine veterans committing suicide due to PTSD had risen to 125. However, the different groups gave quite different but increasing numbers over time for both Argentina and the UK, which they justified by saying that no reliable statistics were available. A 2003 account by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy claimed that 300 veterans had killed themselves. In 2013, the British magazine Dailymail wrote that SAMA (South Atlantic Medal Association), an organization representing veterans of the Falklands War, would claim that 264 British Falklands War veterans had killed themselves. That number would exceed the number of British killed, 255. But more accurate figures cannot be gleaned even from good British statistics. In an April 1, 2006, Deutschlandfunk report, according to a sufferer, the number of suicides by Argentine army veterans was put at exactly “454,” which would exceed the number of those killed in action. However, as in the other cases, no concrete statistical basis was given and no comparisons were made with the “normal” suicide rate of the civilian population or with that in other armies of the world.

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Discussion about nuclear weapons on board British ships

In April 1982, some of the British ships headed directly from their patrols in the North Atlantic, where they had to monitor Soviet Navy submarines equipped with intercontinental ballistic missiles, to the South Atlantic. Therefore, it was actually already clear at that time that very likely some of the ships were nuclear-armed. Nevertheless, in the 1990s this fact was presented in the anti-government press as “secret information” and a “sensation.” The left-liberal Guardian in particular demanded clarification about the nuclear weapons at the time. After repeated refusals by the British government, the newspaper sued for the right to information and won after years of litigation. On December 5, 2003, the British Ministry of Defense confirmed that several ships had carried nuclear weapons during the war. However, the use of the weapons had been ruled out from the beginning. Moreover, none of these ships had entered South American waters. Argentine President Néstor Kirchner demanded an official apology from Great Britain on December 7, 2003, saying that his country had been unduly threatened and endangered by British nuclear weapons. However, then British Prime Minister Tony Blair rejected this demand as inappropriate.

In June 2005, the British government officially confirmed that at the beginning of the war, the frigates HMS Broadsword and HMS Brilliant carried tactical nuclear weapons of the type MC (600), which had been developed for use primarily against Soviet submarines in the Atlantic armed with nuclear intercontinental missiles. These were not “nuclear bombs” in the general sense, as sometimes portrayed by the press, but a type of “depth charges,” or rather, self-targeting anti-submarine torpedoes with long range and large effective radius, specifically directed against the deep-diving large Soviet submarines. Thus, the weapons could not have been usefully employed against Argentina at all. For security reasons and to avoid violating international law (i.e., the 1967 Treaty of Tlatelolco, which declared South America a “nuclear-weapon-free zone”), these weapons were transferred to the aircraft carriers HMS Invincible and HMS Hermes during the voyage to the South Atlantic, and subsequently to the supply ships RFA Fort Austin, RFA Regent, and RFA Resource, which remained outside the territorial waters of the Falkland Islands (and thus did not formally violate the Treaty of Tlatelolco).

In general, it can be noted that the event has been extensively edited, of course, especially by British authors (many of them soldiers). A few Argentine authors have also published (in Spanish). In the German-speaking world, there are only very few publications that have dealt with the war in terms of military history.

Sources

1. Falklandkrieg
2. Falklands War