War in the Falklands. Through the Eyes of the British and Argentine Soldiers Who Fought There.

pardus said:
This was written in a book that a Para wrote. He witnessed it personally and his mate was personally threatened by MI5/6 after the war to keep his mouth shut. The Americans were supposedly executed, on order from London (and IIRC in collusion with Washington) in order to stop an international incident.

Or so he says...
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I just read a blurb about The Feather Men which the movie Killer Elite was based on. Whenever I hear of conspiracies ending in "everyone was killed to protect the secret" my BS meter pegs off the scale.
 
Freefalling said:
I just read a blurb about The Feather Men which the movie Killer Elite was based on. Whenever I hear of conspiracies ending in "everyone was killed to protect the secret" my BS meter pegs off the scale.
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The Feather Men has been roundly agreed upon to be utter fiction, even by the author, though he changed his mind on that later on... :rolleyes:

I read the book and was quite bored by it until the very end, when DS's name was mentioned. I thought that was a simply brilliant twist.

The movie adaption was fun and I enjoyed it. I also enjoyed Rambo.
 
pardus said:
To be clear, I'm highly sceptical of the story. That said, this is war, lots of things are unexplainable.
The Belgrano was outside the 200ml exclusion zone which is why there is some controversy behind the decision to sink it.

Argentina was a conscript army, some well trained, professional units and a lot of unwilling (yet brave) Soldiers.
The Argentine Junta was desperate at the time, hence the invasion itself. Nothing would surprise me, but again, I'm pretty sceptical.

A little known fact is that the British pondered the idea of launching a Trident (?) missile, without a nuclear payload, into the center of Buenos Aries as a rather obvious declaration of Britain's determination with regards to the Falklands.
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Fair points those. The SLBM thing (would have been a Polaris back then IIRC, just to be picky) is really interesting- imagine the back hall negotiations to both tell all the nuclear powers it wasn't a nuke launch and the effort you'd have to go to to keep it all secret!

Reading this book (SF Pilot), he mentions that there were two exchange pilots in his sqn at the time, one Aussie and one Yank. Sounds like the Yank got sent home pretty quickly (unsurprising) but the Aussie almost stayed on. Presumably a AU government decision since I remember reading (vague memory though) about some of the SF units having kept their people in the unit on exchange...
 
SpitfireV said:
Fair points those. The SLBM thing (would have been a Polaris back then IIRC, just to be picky) is really interesting- imagine the back hall negotiations to both tell all the nuclear powers it wasn't a nuke launch and the effort you'd have to go to to keep it all secret!

Reading this book (SF Pilot), he mentions that there were two exchange pilots in his sqn at the time, one Aussie and one Yank. Sounds like the Yank got sent home pretty quickly (unsurprising) but the Aussie almost stayed on. Presumably a AU government decision since I remember reading (vague memory though) about some of the SF units having kept their people in the unit on exchange...
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Yes, Polaris I'm sure.

I was hanging out with a Kiwi mate of mine today, RNZAF armourer/EOD. He has told me several times that the Brits were in direct comms with them, in regards to the US bombs the Argies were dropping on the ships. The Brit EOD guys didn't have the experience with them that the Kiwis did (we used US aircraft and bombs). My mate said he and a dozen RNZAF EOD guys had all their gear packed and ready to fly to the Falklands at a moments notice.

NZ deployed a frigate to replace a Brit one in order to allow the Brit one to go down south. We were very supportive indeed, shame we didn't get to go IMO.
 
pardus said:
Yes, Polaris I'm sure.

I was hanging out with a Kiwi mate of mine today, RNZAF armourer/EOD. He has told me several times that the Brits were in direct comms with them, in regards to the US bombs the Argies were dropping on the ships. The Brit EOD guys didn't have the experience with them that the Kiwis did (we used US aircraft and bombs). My mate said he and a dozen RNZAF EOD guys had all their gear packed and ready to fly to the Falklands at a moments notice.

NZ deployed a frigate to replace a Brit one in order to allow the Brit one to go down south. We were very supportive indeed, shame we didn't get to go IMO.
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US moved additional tankers into NATO to free up RAF assets. I have seen some stories where we also put tankers into the azores to refuel RAF aircraft headed to the war zone.

Poor maintenance helped the British, as some of the Argentine bombs couldn't detonate because the fuses essentially rusted in-place.
 
You guys gave them a bunch of satellite coverage, too. Chile moved their troops to the border (them and AR were having issues at the time) to keep the mountain troops and some others tied up as well. The RNZAF thing is new to me but not too surprising. We gave them a lot of SIGNIT stuff IIRC.
 
SOWT said:
Poor maintenance helped the British, as some of the Argentine bombs couldn't detonate because the fuses essentially rusted in-place.
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Ive never hear that before. Do you have a source/link for that?
Everything Ive read/been told is that the bombs weren't going off because the Argie pilots were flying so low that the bombs didn't have time to arm themselves most of the time.
 
ARGENTINA’S TACTICAL AIRCRAFT EMPLOYMENT
IN THE FALKLAND ISLANDS WAR

AIR COMMAND AND STAFF COLLEGE
AIR UNIVERSITY
by
Gabriel V. Green, Major, USAF


One of the common trend items they failed to recognize quickly was that the bombs generally did not detonate.
Many have studied this problem and the common consensus is the bombs were either fused incorrectly or delivered at too low of an altitude to arm.
The fuses in general purpose bombs are set on the ground and have two function settings.
The first setting determines the time delay required for the weapon to arm.
Ideally, the fuse arm time allows adequate time for the pilot to drop the bombs and escape the bomb blast. If the arm time is too short, the pilot and aircraft risk destruction by bomb blast fragments. If the delay is too long for the flown delivery profile, the bomb will dud upon impact. The second setting, the fuse delay, determines how long the bomb waits to explode once it hits a target. This is important to get desired weapons effects. If the bomb explodes immediately upon impact, the blast will occur outside of the ship.
If the delay is too long, the bomb will simply pass through the ship and detonate. If the pilots failed to utilize both fuse functions, they would not be able to optimize weapons effects. Despite numerous unexploded bombs, tactics failed to adjust for this weakness in this phase.
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A pretty good write-up of the Falkland's air war:

http://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/falklands.html?c=y&page=1

Re: the Belgrano
The next morning, about 200 miles northwest of the British fleet, 25th de Mayo prepared a strike, but with no wind, her catapult couldn’t loft a fully laden Skyhawk. General Belgrano was eastbound 30 miles south of the combat zone, trailed by the British nuclear submarine Conqueror. Sensing an Argentine pincer movement, the Royal Navy ordered the sub to strike.
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The Smithsonian alleges that the bombs were British-made and improperly employed :

In fact, their British-made thousand-pounders weren’t detonating. Fused to provide enough time for the airplane to get clear before they exploded, the bombs had no time to arm at the low altitudes where the Argentines were flying. To arm and explode, they needed to be dropped from a greater height—at least 200 feet—and at that altitude, the aircraft became vulnerable to missiles. BBC World Service would reveal that little secret, but not until late May.
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Mad props to the BBC for their OPSEC....
 
I think they had a big mixture of equipment, British/French/US and some Israeli aircraft to boot. The book I'm reading now mentioned the British bombs too. Thanks for that link, I'll have a read of that later on.

IIRC the Captain of the Belgrano has said he doesn't have an issue with the sinking and considered it a "legitimate" sinking.

This image shows that mix quite well I think

Gentemayo1982.jpg
 
The BBC also reported that 2 Para were about to launch an imminent attack on Goose Green just hours before it happened.

As for the bombs, my information is that they were US made MK 82 bombs for sure (that was why the RNZAF were called, as that was what they used were as the Brits didn't) and I see a wiki reference to a Brit 1000lb bomb.
 
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Hell, the Belgrano was an enemy combatant. It isn't like they sunk it pier-side in the US. "To," "From", doesn't matter in my simple eyes, those sailors weren't taking the kids to school...
 
Freefalling said:
Hell, the Belgrano was an enemy combatant. It isn't like they sunk it pier-side in the US. "To," "From", doesn't matter in my simple eyes, those sailors weren't taking the kids to school...
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Exactly.

I just added another link. In it is this little snippet...

In 1994 the Argentine government dropped its claim that the sinking of the Belgrano was a war crime, its defence ministry conceding that it was "a legal act of war''.
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Which is pretty much what the captain said. It's mostly arse-hurt Argies and dumb left wingers that hate Thatcher that bring it up.
 
I find it hugely ironic when the Argentine govt call anything a war crime after what they did during the dirty war.
Argentinian people should be grateful to the British, for not only did they treat their POWs with better care than their own commanders, but the Falklands war was the event that caused the Junta to collapse and restore democracy to Argentina.
 
 
I win the Internet. Join us next week as pardus and I debate obscure facts from the Boxer Rebellion. It should be great fun for the 2 or 3 of you bored enough to watch.

:-":ROFLMAO:
 
It was either in China or when Cassius Clay wouldn't appear for the draft. Maybe drugs were involved....in the war, not me using them or anything.

It was the first semi-obscure war that popped into my head. My sarcasm has limits. LOL
 

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