Falklands end of the road, 30 years ago

ARA 25 de Mayo

This week the Falklands War came to an official end as the British announced they had achieved their aims. Within days the last prisoners would be repatriated and within two weeks the Exclusion Zone would be lifted.

By early June the valiant Argentinian air forces had been defeated. While some damaging raids still occurred, notably the June 8 attack that damaged one landing ship and sunk another, the Argentinians had pretty much shot their wad. Losses were simply too severe to keep testing the British defenses.  With their Navy already knocked out of the fight, and the air force, too, the Argentine Army troops around Port Stanley had no real hope of holding on as an isolated island garrison without air cover.

On June 12-13 the final serious fighting occurred as the two British brigades seized the high ground near Port Stanley. And interesting incident occurred as an ad hoc shore-based Exocet managed to hit and damage the British frigate HMS Glamorganas it closed in to give fire support. This suggests that shore-based "artillery" may be becoming a threat to ships again. Truck-mounted mobile shore batteries of SSMs could be very hard to counter  in the future.

But the Argentinians didn't have multiple batteries of these weapons -- they had just one. And the British weren't fighting their way ashore. They were actually attacking from the inland side. And so the Argentinians surrendered.

Thirty years a=on the Falklands War remains a singular event. While there have been many wars since 1945 and quite of few of them have involved naval forces, there have been no other combined land-sea-air campaigns that contested all three environments with such vigor.  With the possible exception of a China-Taiwan clash there's no similar conflict on the horizon, either.

The Falklands War is an excellent example of the difference between a first world military and one that is not, especially in the huge gap in quality between the Argentinian army and the British land troops and in the ability of the British to launch such a massive logistical expedition in the first place. That said, the war was hardly a cake walk for the British. The Argentinian air units, in particular, seriously threatened the task Force. Had  a few more dud bombs gone off or had the Argentinians owned a few more Exocet missiles they may very well have kept control of the seas around the Falkland Islands.

The Argentinian Navy also remains a huge what-if. In the actual event the first carrier vs. carrier battle since 1944 was called off because the slow speed of the Argentinian carrier meant that its A-4 Skyhawks would have had to be launched with just two 500-pound bombs instead of the six desired. Frankly, this was a lame excuse. First, Argentine Skyhawks later made raids with similar small loads due to the range, but most critically, the Argentinians only needed to get lucky once. A single 500-pound bomb could easily have knocked a carrier out of action, even if it didn't sink it. With the British Harriers not having the range to retaliate, the surviving carrier might have been obliged to retreat as well, and with it, the entoire british task force.

No, the Argentinian Navy, which had been the branch most hot on the war in the first place, proved to have cold feet when the moment of truth came, however. After the sinking of the Belgrano, the major elements of the Argentinian Navy didn't venture forth again. And at the end of the day, this, too, seems to illustrate the difference between a first-class Navy and a navy for show. The Royal Navy understood that losing some ships came with the territory and stuck through it despite the hair-raising attacks in San Carlos Waters. The Argentinian Navy cowered in port, which begs the question of why they wasted all that money on a fleet in the first place if they were not willing to risk using it. Argentinian Adm. Gualter Allara may have lost his nerve, but it was an institutional failure, not a personal one.

A Final Sting -- Bluff Cove 1982

Sir Tristam loaded on a heavy lift vessel for transport back to Britain in 1983 after the war.

While heavy losses had forced the Argentine Air Force to slacken its raids on the British in the Falkland Islands, the threat was not entirely neutralized,a s the events of June 8 would show.

While the British were trying to keep up the pace of their advance on Stanley by ferrying troops in landing ships closer to the front, the Argentinians launched two strikes from the mainland. While both strikes were spotted by British submarines on picket off the coast, the early warning wasn't enough to thwart the aattck.

The first, and most destructive run was by five A-4 Skyhawks (out of 8 launched) that surprised the British landing ships Sir Galahad and Sir Tristam and supporting craft at Bluff Cove. Both British landing ships were hit and heavily damaged with 51 killed and 46 wounded. The Sir Galahad was dmaged too badly to save and the Sir Tristam had to be carried back to England on a heavy lift ship after the war for extensive repairs, so both ships were, in effect, "sunk." None of the attacking planes waslost.

A following wave of four Skyhawks was less fortunate, as the British defenders were now alerted and three of the four planes were downed by misisles and Harriers without causing any damage.

The second strike was comprised of five Dagger aircraft (of six launched) that attacked the frigate Plymouth  in Flatland Sound. Four 1,000 pound bombs hit the ship and it would certainly have been lost if any of them had exploded. Instead the four duds severely damaged the frigate. None of the attacking planes were lost.

The Battle of Goose Green -- 28 May, 1982

Battle of Goose Green from 2 Para Falklands by Maj. Gen. John Frost

The final act in the Falklands drama opened at Goose Green on May 28, 1982, as the British 2 Parachute Battalion, supported by fire support from the frigate HMS Arrow and half a battery of 105mm field artillery attacked the Argentine garrison at the settlement of Goose Green, which lies on the narrow isthmus connecting the northern and southern portions of East Falkland Island.

At first glance the two sides appear evenly matched. 2 Para was comprised of three para companies, a "patrol" company and a support company. This totaled about 450 men.

The Argentine garrison was largely comprised of the 12th Infantry "regiment" (actually battalion sized) with three infantry companies and support company. Attached in support were some air force personnel, some AA guns and half a battery of 105 mm howitzers. The fighting men in the Argentine garrison totaled about 600, with another 900 logistics, air force ground personnel and others present.

In land combat, however, numbers can be very deceiving and, in fact, the British force was far more powerful than the Argentinians. In Clash of Arms South Atlantic War Second Edition supplement there are rules for resolving ground combats based on the work of Col. Trevor N. Dupuy and his Quantified Judgment Model for predicting the outcome of ground battles.

Dupuy's work was -- and is -- controversial in its methodology, but the fact remains that Gulf War predictions based on the QJM method were far closer to the actual result than most other predictions that appeared in the media.

The Ground Combat Strengths of the supplement were calculated using a modified version of the QJM and those GCS figures show an enormous superiority for the British. In fact, the Base GCS of the British force of 15.95 is more than 2 and half times greater than the 6.30 of the Argentine defenders. This implies are fairly quick and decisive victory for the British with relatively light casualties and so it proved in the actual event.

The Argentine garrison was defeated in a day's fighting and the entire lot captured. The British lost 17 killed and 33 wounded while 55 Argentinians were killed and 86 wounded with the balance of the force -- more than 1,000 -- captured.

A notable casualty was the 2 Para commander, Lt. Col. "H" Jones. In fact, the ratio of leader casualties to private soldiers lost between the two forces is very suggestive as to the difference in quality between these elite British troops and their regular Argentine opponents.

Out of the 17 British killed in action, no fewer than a dozen were leaders ( 5 officers and 7 NCOs). In contrast the vast majority of the Argentinian soldiers killed were lower ranking enlisted soldiers -- 43 of them. Coincidentally the Argentinians also had 12 leaders killed -- three officers and nine NCOs.

This quality difference would manifests itself again during the final climactic battle at Port Stanley in a little more than two weeks time.

All out effort on Independence Day -- Falklands 1982

Stunning photo from the HMS Broadsword showing two A-4 Skyhawks on a low-level bomb run through flak attacking the ship on May 25th, 1982.

The Argentinian high command decided to cap off a week of raids against the ships in San Carlos waters with an all-out effort on May 25th, Argentina's Independence Day.

The raids were not as large as the first ones a few days earlier, but they were just as intense, and in the end just as deadly for the British fleet, with the destroyer HMS Coventry and the container ship-turned aircraft transport Atlantic Conveyor sunk and the frigate HMS Broadsword damaged.

Sadly for  the Argentine war effort, however, this level of effort was unsustainable. Three more jets were lost on May 25th, which, when added to the four lost the day before and two lost on May 23, left the Argentine land-based air arm well and truly decimated. There would only be a handful of raids for the rest of the war, as reflected in the loss rates. Only six more high-performance planes would be lost before the final surrender.

Explosions rip through the HMS Coventry after several bombs hit the ship on May 25th. The photo was taken from the HMS Broadsword.

Perhaps even worse for the Argentinians, the May 25th attack that took out the Atlantic Conveyor used up the last of their small stock of highly effective Exocet missiles. Despite strenuous efforts by the Argentinians to somehow find a few more of the air-launched versions of the missile from sources as diverse as Iraq, Libya ad Peru, British counter efforts helped all those efforts fall short. Given that the British were losing a ship for every 2-3 Exocet missiles expended, having a few more of them could have proven decisive.


The loss of the Atlantic Conveyor meat the loss of all but one of the task force's heavy lift CH-47 helicopters, which would soon be felt keenly.

With the Argentine Navy and Air Force largely neutralized, the war was about to move into its final and decisive phase as the British and Argentinian ground forces confronted each other. Despite all the high technology of guided missiles, high-performance aircraft and advanced warships, the war was about to be decided, as wars usually are, at the end of a bayonet wielded by riflemen.

Operation Sutton -- 1982

 

HMS Ardent after being hit

Operation Sutton

30 years ago today the British commenced Operation Sutton, the landing of troops to retake the Falkland Islands, seized by Argentina seven weeks earlier. That the British were able to organize and execute such an operation over such an enormous distance and on such short notice is a testimony to the professionalism of their military. It’s probable that the only other country capable of doing something like this is the United States – and possibly France.

The British plan was to land a brigade’s worth of troops in the protected anchorage of San Carlos Bay, which lies between West and East Falkland Islands. After securing a beached the British would move across East Falkland Island to capture Port Stanley and end the war.

While the Argentinean Navy had been neutralized in the wake of the Belgrano sinking and the Argentine Army had little ability to interfere with the British landings, their air force and naval aviation were a significant threat and wasted no time in reacting vigorously to the British landing. The first British troops came ashore about 4 a.m. and by dawn the landing ships were already being attacked by light aircraft based in the Falklands.

The most significant air attacks, however, came from the mainland, arriving in three waves.

The first wave, eight Daggers and six A-4 Skyhawks arriving around 10:30 a.m., damaged the frigates Argonaut and Antrim. In both cases the ships were hit by bombs which did not explode, but still caused important damage to the ships. Apparently the Argentine planes attacked at such a low altitude that the bombs didn’t have time to arm properly. The frigates Brilliant and Broadsword were also damaged less seriously by cannon fire.

The second wave of 14 Skyhawks, which came in around 1 p.m., didn’t actually succeed in making it to the anchorage. Eight of the planes aborted due to weather or mechanical problems and the other six were intercepted by Sea Harriers which shot down two and damaged a third.

The third wave, 11 daggers and six Skyhawks, succeed in landing several hits on the frigate HMS Ardent, sinking her.

While the Argentine airmen were valorous and did significant damage to the British force, including sinking one ship, the cost was heavy, with five Daggers and five Skyhawks from the mainland shot down. Four of the Daggers were brought down by Sidewinder missiles from Sea Harriers, while the fifth was shot down by a missile from one of the frigates. All five of the Skyhawks lost were downed by Sea Harriers as well. The Argentines also lost four other aircraft that day, and the British two.

As I recall, the intensity of the air-naval battle caught the world by surprise and was a sobering lesson in how bloody modern warfare can be when waged full-out between first-class opponents. Most warfare in the last five decades and been either between third world combatants or between a first world military and third world or non-state actors. In either case, the public in first world countries is not prepared for the kinds of losses that are likely if there’s a future high-intensity conflict between capable modern militaries. It’s quite possible that the casualty toll for a United States war with China over a Taiwan, for example, would exceed the total losses of both Iraq Wars and Afghanistan within hours.

By the evening of May 21st, both sides knew they were in for a tough and costly fight, although the most important fact was that the British were firmly established ashore and the Argentine air attacks, while damaging, had not been severe enough to threaten the landing. At a 10 to one ratio of bombers lost to warships sunk, the Argentineans would run out of planes before the British ran out of ships. Tactics would need to be adjusted.

Pebble Island Raid -- Falklands 30 years ago

The cratering of the runway and some destroyed aircraft are visible in this post-raid damage assessment photo.

The raid on Pebble Island was a textbook commando raid by the British, who pretty much invented the  modern commando in World War II (the very word 'commando' comes from the ground-breaking Commando units formed by the British in the Second World War). The raid was conducted by the S.A.S. (Speical Air Service) another British speical forces unit that traces its origins to Worl dWar II.

Pebble Island is one of the smaller islands in the Falklands group, just north of West Falkland Island. It's importance lay in a two-runway grass airstrip that the Argentinians had taken over. They established a small air presence at the strip, with a half-dozen Pucara ground attack aircraft, four T-34C trainers, which also had ground attack capability and a transport plane. There was also a radar site. All this presented an obvious threat to the British invasion fleet which was planning to pass just a  few miles away on its way to land troops at San Carlos.

About 45 SAS troopers, supported by naval gunfire from two frigates were given the task of landing near the airfield and attacking it to neutralize the radar site and aircraft.

The raid was a complete success, with all 11 aircraft, the radar site destroyed, runway cratered and the SAS extricated with no fatalities or serious injuries.  At least one Argentinian officer fell leading his troops, but total Argentinian personnel losses aren't reported.

Argentina strikes back -- The Sheffield hit 30 years ago

HMS Sheffield hit, May 4, 1982

Any illusions that the war would be entirely one-sided for the British were shattered on May 4 when word came that the HMS Sheffield had been hit by an Exocet missile. While the ship remained afloat, it had to be abandoned ad a fire raged out of control and it would eventually sink under tow. Twenty crew were killed and another two dozen wounded.

The loss came as the Sheffield was on radar picket duty west of the British task force. Radar picket duty is a necessary, but very dangerous, duty, as the US Navy discovered during the closing months of World War II when dozens of escorts were damaged and destroyed by Kamizake attacks.

Fortunately for the British , the Argentinians didn't have dozens  of Exocets. Indeed, they had just five of the air-launched versions and just five Super Etendard attack planes to carry them. This was another negative consequence of the Argentinian decision to rush the start of the war. Had they waited until September they would have had a total of at least 10 Exocets and 14 planes to carry them.

In  a very well-planned and executed mission the Argentinian Navy aviators in two Super Etendard, supported by a Neptune recon plane, were able to fire two missiles and escape without being engaged. One missile apparently failed to find a target but the second w=one hit the Sheffeild, which wasn't prepared properly for defending against a missile attack. It's shipboard radars and air defenses never spotted the threat and the only warning it got was from voice shouts after Mark 1 eyeballs spotted the incoming missile just seconds before it hit. 

It seems evident that the missile did not explode, but rocket fuel and other combustibles combined to fuel a fire that burned out the ship.

It's interesting to go back and read the accounts from the time of the incident. I have the Osprey special editions on the Falklands War (Men-At-Arms No. 133-135) and the Sunday Times of London's "War in the Falklands -- The Full Story," all published in 1982 shortly after the close of the war. While not bad, considering how quickly they were done, they do make a number of claims that turned out to not be true -- and suffer from minimal input form the Argentinian side.

The Harpoon4 supplement South Atlantic War 2nd Ed., which is my main source, was published in 2002 and had the advantage of much better information and much more information from the Argentinian side. One difference, for example, is the supposed role of the Argentinian submarine sin the incident.  At the time, the British ships reported "torpedo wakes" near the stricken Sheffield. The Osprey book asserts that "It seems probable that both of the Argentine Type 209 submarines were in the vicinity. Some reason exists to believe that one of them may have been hit, and perhaps sunk, by a Stingray torpedo released from a Sea King helicopter.

We now know that there were in fact no Argentinian subs present that day and, in fact, only one of the Type 209 submarines was even operational. A nice illustration of the news truism that the first reports are always wrong.

More losses for Argentina in the Falklands War 30 years ago

The damage to the Alferez Sobral bridge area

 The first few days of serious fighting were costly for the Argentinian military, especially the Navy. Besides losing more than 300 men when the ARA general Belgrano went down on May 2, a small Argentinian warship called the Alferez Sobral suffered disproportionate casualties from some non-fatal hits from Sea Skua air-to0surface missiles fired by Btitsh helicopters when it was spotted while searching for downed aircrew from earlier fighting.

A total of four Sea Skua were fired and it appears three of the hit. One did not serious damage, as it hit the Sobral's lifeboat and blew it to bits. But two of the missiles hit near the bridge and killed 8 men, including the captain, and wounded at least 8 more -- for a loss rate of nearly 20%.

One thing this episode points out is the limitations of a wargame, even a very detailed one such as Harpoon4. According to the Harpoon4 rules, each Sea Skua should do 6 damage points so three hits should have left the 24-damage point Sobral nearly crippled with 75% damage before considering the effects of any critical hits.

In fact, though, one of the "hits" destroyed an accessory of the ship, its lifeboat, and did no structural damage at all. The effect of the two hits on the bridge also seems to be less than expected, as well. This reminds me of a discussion in a Harpoon Sitrep a few years back where Larry Bond discussed the surface-to-surface missile hit by Palestinian militants on the Israeli patrol boat INS Hanit in 2006. According to the Harpoon4 models the ship should have been devastated by a hit from the powerful missile used. While four crew were killed and there was a fire, the ship seemed to have escaped serious  structural damage.  Bond's analysis of open source photos led him to believe that the missile struck an exposed crane on the deck, which was missing in post-attack photos. He admitted that this sort of fluke hit  was hard to model in Harpoon4 and said that he basically just ignored that sort of thing in the game -- a not entirely satisfactory answer.

When I've run Harpoon4 scenarios I've experimented with various random reductions in effectiveness (While a better-than-expected result is also possible, I assume that is generally accounted for by the critical hit rules and in my opinion most weapons perform worse than expected and that's the bias I introduce into the game.)

Based on the photographic evidence and the lack of any apparent reduction in the ship;s speed, it appears that the actual damage done to the Sobral was less than 6 damage points in Harpoon4 terms. This implies that the Sea Skua's did less than half the expected amount of damage, even discounting entirely the lifeboat "hit" which might have been a "miss" in game terms.

In any case, a lesson worth bearing in mind when considering the likely effectiveness of any new weapons is that the most likely outcome is disappointment.

The Belgrano sinking -- how to properly use a submarine

Famous photo of the ARA General Belgrano sinking, taken by a crewman in one of the orange inflatable life rafts. note that the bow of the cruiser has been blown off. While a grievous blow, this was not the fatal one. A second torpedo hit midships aft, killing more than 200 sailors instantly and causing flooding damage that led to the sinking.

Thirty Years ago today the Falklands War took a dramatic and serious turn as the British nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror successfully torpedoed the ARA General Belgrano (formerly the USS Phoenix). The General Belgrano soon sank, with the loss of  321 men.

There was considerable, if misplaced, controversy at the time over the sinking, as the Argentinian ship was outside the declared exclusion zone and the heavy loss of life was a shocking development in what, for most of the world, had seemed a rather odd war between two unlikely combatants. Up until this point the war had seen few casualties and the media portrayal of the whole affair seemed to downplay the seriousness of what was at stake -- or so I thought at the time. For weeks the media had been filled with acoc8unts of the shuttle diplomacy of Alexander Haig and various talking heads had dismissed the idea that these two American allies could actually, you know, fight.

I thought this attitude was quite bizarre, and once the first elements of the British task force set out for the war zone I was absolutely certain it would come to fighting. Both sides were committed and neither could back down at that point. The Argentinian Junta could not possibly retreat from the islands and survive -- and Thatcher's government likewise would have been instantly doomed had it ordered the task force to turn around.

The Belgrano incident revealed to the world what a serious affair the Falklands War was -- and always had been. To its credit the Thatcher government seems to have been very clear-eyed about what was at stake and the order was given to sink the Belgrano despite some murkiness about the exact situation.

And the sinking of the Belgrano was hugely significant, signaling, in effect, the defeat of the Argentinian Navy. In the wake of the Belgrano's sinking the Argentinian surface navy returned to port, never to return. Just a few hours before there had been the real possibility of the first carrier battle in almost 40 years as the Argentinian aircraft carrier ARA Veinticinco de Mayo closed within 200 miles of the British fleet. Light winds thwarted the Argentinian attack as its A-4 Skyhawks would have had to launch with just two 500-pound bombs instead of the planned six and the Argentinians decided that wasn't good enough. Hindisght suggests this was a mistake, as even one bomb on a British carrier would have changed the complexion of the war.

Instead it was the pair of torpedoes that the Conqueror sent into the Belgrano that ended up being the game changer.. It was evident that the Argentinians had no tools to cope with the British nuclear sub force and rather than risk any more ships they abandoned the field. The rest of the Argentinian effort against the British fleet would rely on land-based aircraft and a single submarine. This proved not to be enough.

Unlike the Argentinian misuse of the Sante Fe a few days before, the British dedicated their submarine force to the critical mission of  winning the sea battle. On May 2 they didn't have many resources -- in addition to the HMS Conqueror the HMS Spartan and HMS Splendid were in the area. This wasn't a lot to cover such a huge are and in the event only the Conqueror actually made contact with one of the three Argentinian task forces. This was sufficient, however.

For more on the sinking of the Belgrano there is this site.

Amazing Raid on Port Stanley 30 years ago

One should never underestimate the ingenuity of man when it comes to warmaking.

On May 1, 1982 the British launched one of the longest distance air raid ever when they bombed Stanley Airfield from Ascension Island, 3,750 miles away.

As shown in this graphic, taken from Clash of Arms' South Atlantic War 2nd Ed.  the raid involved a complicated dance of refueling tasks to pull off. It took 11 tanker aircraft to support the one Vulcan bomber that conducted the actual bomb run. (That bomber was the "spare" aircraft assigned to the mission, the primary aircraft had to abort.)

The bomb run did some key damage to the airfield, closing it to high performance aircraft. (The light Pucara attack plane and C-130 transports could still use it).  Things might have been tougher for the British if the Argentinians had been able to base jets at Stanley.

While the Vulcans conducted their mission without loss, other attacks that day were a harbinger for things to come for the the Argentinian airmen. Three Pucara aircarft were destroyed on the ground by attacking Sea Harriers from the British task force. Meanwhile, Argentinian attacks on the task force were costly. Three Argentinian aircraft were shot down by Sea Harriers -- a Mirage III, a Dagger and a Canberra bomber. Another Mirage III damaged by a Sea Harrier was lost when downed by friendly fire. The British frigate Arrow was damaged.

The South Georgia campaign in the Falklands War

Santa Fe scuttled at South Georgia Island

The campaign over South Georgia in the Falklands War offers a microcosm of the entire conflict, as British pluck overcome some hairy moments while Argentine valor was no match for strategic ineptitude.

The entire war erupted when it did because of  an incident involving Argentine workmen landing on South Georgia in March without permission to dismantle a whaling station and raising the Argentine flag to proclaim possession. The Argentine Junta, which had already planned to invade the Falklands in September, suddenly moved up the timetable by six months, with doleful consequences for its war effort.

Jointly with its invasion of the main Falkland islands on April 2, the Argentine landed troops on South Georgia on April 3 and captured it, but not before taking embarrassingly heavy damage from the tiny garrison of just 22 Royal Marines with light arms. A helicopter was shot down, a second helicopter was damaged and an Argentine frigate was disabled.

Before the month was out, however, the British were back in possession of the barren island. The initial British efforts barely escaped disaster when bad weather threatened the lives of special forces troops landed on the Fortuna Glacier on April 21. On April 22 two helicopters were lost due to the weather and the troops had to be rescued.

The strategic ineptitude of the Argentinians was revealed by the misuse of the submarine Santa Fe.  While old and not very effective, the mere presence of the Santa Fe was enough to disrupt British operations and cause them to pull their naval forces away from the island, But it turned out that the Santa Fe was not there to stalk the British ship but merely to deliver reinforcements of 40 marines to the island. This mission caused the submarine to be caught on the surface as it was departing the island by a British helicopter on April 25. The Wessex used depth charges to damage the Sante Fe and prevent it from diving and a follow-up attack by a Wasp helicopter with an AS.12 air-to-surface missile damaged the sub further. It fled back to South Georgia and was scuttled in the harbor.

Later that same day the British landed troops on South Georgia and by the next day the Argentine garrison of 137 surrendered, so the reinforcements brought by the Sante Fe did absolutely nothing to beef up the defenses and just added to the haul of prisoners. If, instead, the submarine had been used to interdict the approaches to the island the British effort to retake it would have been more complicated.

While there may be a role for the submarine insertion of clandestine special operation forces, using submarines as transports for conventional  forces seems like a huge waste of resources. The Japanese also tried it a few times in World War II but to little effect. It's hard to see how riflemen brought in by the limited carrying capacity of a submarine could possibly have as much use as simply using the submarine properly as a warship. Losing the Santa Fe was a huge blow to the Argentine effort because it wiped out half of their operational submarines. While they had four boats on paper, only the Santa Fe, a US-made Guppy II class sub and the San Luis, a German-made Type 209 sub were usable . The other Guppy in the Argentine Navy, Santiago del Estero was cannibalized for parts and the other Type 209, the Salta, had  a noise problem that rendered it unserviceable.  The San Luis made several unsuccessful attacks on the British task force over the course of the war, and the British task force made equally unsuccessful attempts to sink her.  It was a major distraction for the task force, however, and one wonders what effect the presence of another submarine might have had. Indeed, had the Argentinians actually had four operational submarines instead of one, they might have foiled the invasion. They only had to get lucky once.

Goose Green, May 28, 1982

This travel blog photo's source is TravelPod page: Island Tour - Stanley, Falkland Islands Travel Blog

The memorial for fallen Lt. Col. Herbert H Jones.

The English are the best people in the world for colorful place names. I'm not sure why a place would be called Goose Green, but it's not the sort of name you forget.

This little spot on the globe became famous on May 28, 1982 as the site of the first major ground clash in the unusual Falklands War between Argentina and the United Kingdom.

Action had been fiecre up to this point, but it had mostly involved naval and air forces. At Goose Green and Darwin the British and Argentines came to grips in a sharp action between a battalion of British paratroopers and a 1,200-man Argentine garrison made up of air force troops and a battalion-sized force of infantry.

Both sides were remarkably evenly matched and the the fighting was long and difficult. After about 30 hours of combat the Argentine force surrendered. The British lost 17 killed, including the commander of the 2 Para, Lt. Col. Herbert "H" Jones, who was awarded the Victoria Cross. The Argentine lost around 40 soldiers killed and the entire garrison as prisoners of war.

The battle is depcited in some detail as Scenario 18 in South Atlantic War, a Harpoon 4 campaign book published by Clash of Arms Games. It's also a scenario in the Test of Arms from GDW. Still, this would seem to be fertile ground for scenario designers for modern tactical wargames and I'm surprised it hasn't been tapped more often.

Argentina's Independence Day

Today Argentina is celebrating its bicentennial with parades and fireworks, but back in 1982 they marked that occasion with bombs and bravery as Argentine pilots flew into the teeth of fierce British air defenses during the Falklands War.

Probably the most notable attack on that day was the successful Exocet strike that left the Atlantic Conveyor burning. Among the stores being carried on that large container ship was a cargo of Chinook heavy lift helicopters. Only one Chinook survived. The lack of these helicopters was felt immediately and slowed the British advance on Stanley.

Other attacks sunk a British warship and damaged several others. The Argentines were plagued with bombs that failed to explode because they were dropped at too low an altitude to arm, although even unexploded bombs could do serious damage and even cause a ship to be lost.

While only three Argentine aircraft were lost on May 25th, the cumulative losses since May 21 added up to 22 high performance jets and the Argentine air campaign was running out of steam. Losses would decrease as air attacks tapered off and the campaign moved into the ground phase that would bring the war to a close.

One interesting point to consider is the intersection between military technology and political decision-making. There's little evidence in accounts of the war that either the Argentine junta or Thatcher's government were aware of how much the success of their war efforts might turn on technical details. More than a dozen Argentine bombs that hit British ships failed to explode. Suppose they had gone off? Would the British task force have been able to stay on station if it lost 8 frigates and destroyers instead of 4? The five Argentine Exocets between them sunk two British warships for no losses among the attacking aircraft. The Argentines had ordered 10 of the missiles, though. With another five they might have sunk 2-3 more British ships and of one of those had been the Hermes or Invincible the entire operation would have been endangered.

It all seems so inevitable now, in hindsight, as these things usually do. But British failure was certainly an option and defeat in the Falklands would have inevitably brought Thatcher's premiership to an abrupt, inglorious end. There would have been no "Iron Lady" to stand alongside Reagan. For the want of a nail, the poem goes ... .

San Carlos waters, 1982

HMS Ardent burns after being bombed

The Falklands War is definitely fading away it seems. I haven't seen anything in the general media about the war that was big news back in 1982.



On this day 28 years ago the long-awaited British landings began at San Carlos in the straight between West and East Falkland islands. At the time I remember that this had caught observers by surprise. Most seemed to believe that the British would land closer to Stanley because of the nearly non-existent overland transportation infrastructure. Instead the British elected to land far enough away from the main Argentine units to have an essentially unopposed landing. There were a couple of platoon-sized Argentine forces in the area, but these withdrew, although not before downing two British helicopters.

The Argentine reaction was swift and forceful, as they sent no fewer than three waves of attacking aircraft from the mainland as well as many sorties from local aircraft. At least 10 Argentine A-4s and Daggers were shot down, but they did considerable damage, sinking the HMS Ardent and damaging four more warships. One of those, the Argonaut, was disabled and knocked out of the war. Three Argentine Pucaras were also shot down, as well as a British Harrier.

As damaging as the Argentine air raids were, they did not seriously threaten the landings. No troop ships were sunk or badly damaged. More ominously for the Argentine war effort, losing 10 of the 57 mainland aircraft that sortied represented a loss rate of nearly 18 percent -- clearly unsustainable.

Pebble Island Raid 1982

In the evening of May 14, 1982 an SAS raiding party landed on Pebble Island in the Falklands.

There target was an grass airfield on the north side of the island that was the base for a squadron of Argentine turboprop attack planes. But the real objective of the raid was to knock out the radar at the air base because it might detect the British invasion force that was due to move into Falkland Sound in a few days.

The raid was a complete success, with all 10 aircraft and the radar station destroyed with no fatalities for the British side. Argentine casualties are not reported in the sources I have, but at least one Argentine officer was killed trying to lead a counterattack against the raiders.

If there's one form of warfare that the British seem to always excel at it's the special forces raid. They pretty much invented the modern commando, but British raiding goes back way before that to the famous "cutting out" expeditions by Royal Navy landing parties.

HMS Sheffield Day

HMS Sheffield burns after being hit by an Exocet missile

Just two days after the sinking of the cruiser Belgrano, any thoughts that the war would be a one-sided affair came to an abrupt end on May 4, 1982 when the HMS Sheffield was hit by an Exocet missile fire by an Argentine Super Etendard.

While it took a few days for the ship to actually sink, it was immediately clear that the HMS Sheffield was essentially destroyed as far as taking any further part in the war. In the event the abandoned ship foundered in heavy seas while under tow. While not as bloody as the Belgrano incident, as only 20 British sailors lost their lives, the Sheffield loss was perhaps even more shocking.

While the Belgrano case was of a World War II era vessel being sunk by essentially World War II era technology (an unguided torpedo) the HMS Sheffield was a first-line modern warship. And the Exocet missile was likewise an expensive first-line weapon.

One wonders how different the war might have been if the Argentines had the full complement of Super Etenard (12) and Exocet missiles (10) they had ordered from France, instead of the 5 and 5 they actually had on hand. As it was, between them, those five missiles were able to sink two British ships while suffering no losses. In comparison it cost the Argentines more than three dozen attack aircraft to sink three more British ships (although the score would have been higher had more Argentine bombs exploded). At a ratio of 12 to 1 the Argentines simply ran out of aircraft before the British ran out of ships.

On the other hand, with 10 Exocets instead of 5 the British could easily have lost a couple of more ships, with a reasonable chance that one of those ships might have been an aircraft carrier. It's possible that losing a carrier would have forced the British to withdraw the task force. At the very least it would have reduced the already scanty level of British air cover substantially and made the situation much riskier for the invasion force. Harriers were responsible for shooting down about 22 or 23 Argentine attack aircraft. Ship defenses only downed about 15, so removing the Harriers from the defensive scheme might have changed the balance of power.

Fortunately for the British, the Argentines had only taken deliver on five missiles and five panes and the embargo prevented them from getting any more. This was another example of how the junta's hasty decision to move up the invasion date cost them.

General Belgrano day

ARA General Belgrano sinking on May 2, 1982

Outside of Argentina, I'm sure few will note that the ARA General Belgrano was sunk on this day in 1982 as the first major casualty of the Falklands War.

As a younger and much skinner wargamer back in 1982 I followed the course of the Falklands War intently. One of the things that sticks in my mind after all these years was the utter lack of seriousness there seemed to be in the American media about the potential for combat. The conventional wisdom was strong that somehow these two U.S. allies would work things out without there being much more than posturing. The sinking of the Belgrano shocked people into realizing that this was a deadly serious affair after all. A few of the ignorant criticized the attack because it was outside the Exclusion Zone declared by the British, although the Argentine authorities admitted it was a legitimate act of war and not the slightest bit irregular.

As I said, the conventional wisdom was that there wouldn't be an actual war, although I don't think many wargamers believed that. As a matter of fact, whenever it came up, I told everyone that there would undoubtedly be a war. This wasn't because I was clairvoyant, it was simple common sense about human nature and power politics.

In the first place, it was clear to me that the Argentine junta could never meekly withdraw from the captured islands under British threat. Whatever internal politics drove their decision to invade would make it impossible to leave, period. It was literally unthinkable.

The British had a tiny bit more choice open to them. It was at least theoretically possible that they could have accepted the fait accompli or tried to negotiate a settlement. Some governments might have tried to do this, although it would necessarily come at enormous political cost -- probably fatal to that party for a generation. The Thatcher government was not that sort of government and if there was even a moment's consideration for anything other than a liberation then it was clearly dispensed with quickly. Within hours the first elements of the task force were on their way and once the very first ship sailed I believed war was inevitable.

The simple fact is that no government, anywhere, ever, could dispatch a fleet to liberate some territory and then not use it. It was unthinkable.

So within hours it should have been clear to anyone who looked at it that the dispute would result in fighting and all the drama in April of diplomacy and Alexander Haig shuttle flights and other garbage was pointless.

The sinking of the General Belgrano, which cost 323 lives, settled that the war would be a "real" one, with serious fighting, major losses and at least one loser.

There were a number of interesting aspects to the Belgrano sinking. One is that the ship, itself, was a former U.S. Navy cruiser, the USS Phoenix, one of the powerful pre-war Brooklyn class light cruisers and a survivor of Pearl Harbor and other battles. The Belgrano had been slightly updated and modernized in the decades since it's WWII service but it was definitely not first-line equipment by international standards. Few similar vessels were still in service anywhere.

Escorting the Belgrano were a couple of other World War II veterans, the Hipolito Bouchard and Piedra Buena, former U.S. Navy Sumner destroyers that had undergone the FRAM II upgrade. While all three ships had dangerous capability against surface targets, their anti-submarine capability was low and definitely not up to coping with a modern fast-attack nuclear submarine.

And yet this was exactly what they had the misfortune to encounter. The HMS Conqueror was a large and modern ship. It the actual attack on the Belgrano the sub used the venerable unguided Mark 8 straight-running torpedo, similar to weapons used in World War II and at first glance not a complete mismatch for the Argentine targets.


The Conqueror itself, however, was a hugely more capable opponent than any German U-boat or Japanese I-boat. The fact that the British submarine was able to stalk the Argentine task for for the better part of a day illustrates that. No World War II boat could stalk warships, although slow-moving convoys could be shadowed. Attacks on warships were a matter of luck and fortunate positioning.

In this case, however, the submarine was able to shadow warship traveling at a decent clip under wartime conditions, make contact with home authorities and finally get the clearance to attack. The torpedoes were launched at just 1400 yards, a stunningly short distance that reveals how inadequate the Argentine ASW capability. In the Harpoon 4 game system the two Argentine DDs are rated with sonars with a maximum detection range for passive use of under a mile. The Actual Argentine formation appears to have been loose enough that the two DDs didn't even see the General Belgrano being torpedoed!

Still, even a tight formation would have been futile for defending against the attack, although it might have saved some lives by putting rescue vessels closer.

The sinking of the General Belgrano is noteworthy as the only occasion in the more than half-century of nuclear submarine service that one of them sunk an opposing warship.

How they might fare in a larger conflict against more modern foes is still very much an open question. But at least in this one case the type scored not just a tactical success, but a strategic victory. In the wake of the Belgrano sinking the rest of the Argentine surface navy returned to port for good, ceding sea control to the Royal Navy. After this only a solitary Argentine conventional submarine and Argentine aircraft would attempt to contest the British at sea.

Warfare the old-fashioned way -- The Falklands, 1982

It was 28 years ago today that Argentinian troops landed on and captured the Falkland Islands, launching the 74-day Falklands War.

The Falklands War was unusual in many ways. It was relatively quick, for one thing, and was largely a naval-air campaign, which is always uncommon but has been especially so since 1945.

In many ways it's kind of a throwback to an earlier sort of war, the conventional state vs. state war that wargamers are comfortable with, but that has been rather uncommon since World War II. Sure, the have been a few major state vs. state wars since 1945 involving Israel and its neighbors, three between India and Pakistan, Korea, Iraq, Kuwait and Iraq-Iran come to mind. But most of the combat that the world has seen since WW2 has been much messier insurgencies, terrorism and genocides. Even many of the state vs. state wars have involved a lot of irregular warfare such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, etc. Ideology and ethnic tensions have featured prominently in most of those wars, and those passions have added an ugly element to most of them.

The 1982 Falklands War was much more old-fashioned. It was a contest between states, over national interests, and conducted largely in accordance with the recognized rules of war. Both countries involved were "western" in culture, although the Argentine regime was not democratic. As mentioned, the war was largely decided by the naval-air campaign, although there was some serious ground fighting.

It was an odd war for the era, because it was largely outside the Cold War framework. While the United Kingdom was part of NATO, the Argentinian aggression fell outside of the NATO treaty as understood at the time. Argentina was unfriendly to the Soviets and an ally to the United States, which put the US in the awkward position of watching two allies fight. The Ar gentians, badly misjudging their situation, apparently thought the US would come down on their side, a monumental delusion of the sort that closed regimes seem especially prone to. While the US kept officially neutral, there was little doubt where American sympathies lie, and Washington apparently provided discreet aid to the British.

The fact that the war could occur at all was only due to the sufferance of the U.S., which had naval supremacy in the Atlantic.

There were a lot of lessons derived from the conflict. not the least of which is that there is a huge gap in actual military capability between a First World power such as the U.K. and a Second World military power such as Argentina. While Argentina's air force and naval pilots showed exceptional valor and skill and gave the British a run for their money, there was no contest at sea or on land. Argentina's navy, while impressive on paper, had critical weaknesses compared to Britain's Royal Navy, especially in the skill and daring of its higher leadership. One wonders if any Argentinian admiral had ever given serious thought to how me might actually use his fleet in battle.

The land fighting showed an even bigger gap in capability. While Argentina's air and naval forces showed considerable professionalism, the land elements were completely outmatched. The British have centuries of tradition and experience in expeditionary campaigns of this sort and committed most of its most elite units (commandos, paras, Gurkhas, guards, etc.) to the affair. In contrast the Argentinian command withdrew its best units, which were used in the initial landings and replaced them with raw conscripts.

There haven't been an awful lot of games published on the episode, but among those that have been published is the South Atlantic War campaign book for Harpoon published by Clash of Arms Games in 2002 (2d edition) and earlier in 1990 by Game Designer's Workshop. The South Atlantic War is a very comprehensive treatment of the war, including sources from both sides, that depicts every significant incident of the war from the initial landings at Port Stanley on April 2 to the final battle, also at Port Stanley, on June 14.