Twelve Reasons Why the Falklands War Was A Closer Call Than You Think

[mapuc]

I thought it was a strait ahead victory for the Brits. Well The Argentines fought brave.

The Falklands War is looked back on by many as a forgone conclusion. Lasting only ten weeks, and it resulted in clear British victory. But this war between Argentina and Britain could have gone either way. As Major-General John Jeremy Moore, commander of the British land forces in the war, put it, “It was a very close-run thing.”

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/ins...ar-closer.html

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[tmccarthy]

Originally Posted by mapuc

I thought it was a strait ahead victory for the Brits. Well The Argentines fought brave.



https://www.warhistoryonline.com/ins...ar-closer.html

Markus

The one I remember hearing in a documentary was that Argentina also got something like 6 bomb hits on British ships that failed to detonate because the bombs were dropped to low to have time to arm themselves. I want to say it was a British naval officer who said that if just two of those bombs had detonated and two more ships were lost the Royal Navy could not have continued at that time. (A temporary set back of course)
And the Ultra Long Range bombing mission flown from England against the Argentine airfield where the recon photo looked like there was just one (very crucial) hit!

[tmccarthy]

[tmccarthy]

[Kapitan]

Ahhh war history online have to say some of their writers can be a bit jubious bit like national interest, war is boring etc.

the British put up little defence.

According to the Argentines it was a good defense and cost them men and equipment including atleast 1 AMTRACK initially.
The outcome was always going to be surrender for the British forces given the overwhelming odds.

Unrealistic operation, not really there were war games done based around the Falklands and yes the majority came back unfavorably, however what wasn't in doubt was the logistical situation, the UK maintains (even to today) the largest strategical logistical network of any nation and yes that does include the USA (they use a lot of our network)


The Black buck raids were meant to be a show piece, a moral booster and to signal to Argentina that the UK meant business, in that respects it succeeded.

Plans to attack the air base at Tierra del Fuego, on the Argentine mainland, were abandoned before they even began

More of a political move than a practical one, reason being if they attacked the mainland then it opens up the conflict to a wider audience mainly countries sympathetic to Argentina and could result in them joining on Argentina's side.

The losses to the fleet were expected and if you hear Sandy Woodward speak at all (he has since passed) he has always said " We knew we were going to loose ships, it was a question of which ones and how many"

Moral from the argentine forces was not high a lot of those who were interviewed after the conflict recall a lot of incidents where they simply didn't want to fight, the cold hunger and waiting had got to them long before the British arrived.
There was also another big mis balance in that most of the troops Argentina fielded were conscripts while the British forces were professional soldiers.

Conducting a war so far from home, the British could not easily be resupplied. By the end of the war, they were low on food and ammunition, many down to a handful of bullets. If the Argentine forces had held out a little longer, the British troops would have run out of resources with which to fight.

While ammunition was low and food was low the reality was they were far from running out, a lot of people often forget that while the RFA helps supply the fleet and ground forces they are backed up by a substantial merchant fleet, by wars end there were ships in the supply fleet still laden with food and munitions to continue the fight for at least a month with other ships being readied to relieve. (from the case studies I've read).

The article seems a little thin on facts and doesn't really have much meat beyond the click bait adverts

[mapuc]

Thank you for your answer Kapitan. I myself can only rely on what they tell me. I can recall some of the news from then.

Here's something I have only READ once in a Swedish newspaper and it was a little notice in the middle of the newspaper.

The British government had two Vulcan bomber plane loaded with nukes in case of loosing the war against Argentina.

This was posted a few years after the war.

Not heard any confirmation about this thereafter.

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[Kapitan]

I’d call into question the reliability of that paper

It is unlikely infact I’d go a lot further and say near impossible that the UK would consider nuclear weapons on Argentina

The main reason being Argentina herself had no nuclear capability and had the UK used nuclear weapons condemnation around the globe would have been intolerable and it would defiantly have split the UK and USA

I’d take that story with a very large pinch of salt

[mapuc]

Originally Posted by Kapitan

I’d call into question the reliability of that paper

It is unlikely infact I’d go a lot further and say near impossible that the UK would consider nuclear weapons on Argentina

The main reason being Argentina herself had no nuclear capability and had the UK used nuclear weapons condemnation around the globe would have been intolerable and it would defiantly have split the UK and USA

I’d take that story with a very large pinch of salt

You right.

I thought what does the Internet has to say about it and I found this

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...2/books.france

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[Kapitan]

The guardian a labour socialist supporting paper one who likes to big up every other country bar it’s own

As for the codes for the missiles utter tosh you can’t use codes to disable an Exocet in flight once’s it’s fired it will arm and go to target

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Kapitan

The guardian a labour socialist supporting paper one who likes to big up every other country bar it’s own

As for the codes for the missiles utter tosh you can’t use codes to disable an Exocet in flight once’s it’s fired it will arm and go to target

Agreed....on both counts

[mapuc]

I wonder and it's pure speculation.

If some high ranked officer has said the same to the Prime Minister as Kapitan told me.

Once fired there's no code to disable it.

To be honest I truly thought it was possible to use some code to disable a missile like the Exocet when fired.

I thank thi for enlighten me Mr Kapitan and not to forget Jimbuna.

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[Kapitan]

Originally Posted by mapuc

I wonder and it's pure speculation.

If some high ranked officer has said the same to the Prime Minister as Kapitan told me.

Once fired there's no code to disable it.

To be honest I truly thought it was possible to use some code to disable a missile like the Exocet when fired.

I thank thi for enlighten me Mr Kapitan and not to forget Jimbuna.

Markus

Very few missiles come with an in flight self destruct function, to my knowledge I believe only the Aster 15 / 30 (Sea Viper) and the SM2 3 and 6 have this but I may be wrong.
I know that sea dart if you broke lock the missile was basically an unguided rocket (HMS Coventry 1982 proved that)

Missiles like Harpoon use a guidance track and it will hit a certain point before the seeker becomes active similar set up with the Exocet, basically once it is fired that's it there's no return, Fire and forget missiles are just that
once fired forget about them.

Exocet and Harpoon have their own internal target radar and navigation systems and require no external sensors for target acquisition unlike sea dart which relied on the ship board radars to guide them, if the ships radars broke lock the missile goes dumb and will miss the target.

That was the big problem back in 82 both sea dart and sea wolf relied heavily on ship board sensors to guide missiles to targets, if you look at what the soviets were fielding at the same time you would be shocked to learn they were a good 20+ years ahead of us.

The P700 (SS-N-19 shipwreck) for example would be volley fired in a batch 20/24 missiles, one missile would climb to 20,000ft and provide range and targeting data for all the missiles using a data link system.
The missiles were also capable of target discrimination as well, and just prior to the terminal phase the missile leading (one at 20,000ft) would assign each surviving missile a target they then go into their high supersonic state for the final terminal phase before impact.

You can program a P700 to go after smaller ships and ignore big ones if say you wanted to take out the picket line to create a gap for aircraft or vice versa to ignore picket ships and go for the large carriers or amphibs.

Neither Exocet or Harpoon can do this, it will hit what ever it see's, a frigate a destroyer, or container ship as we found out in the Falkland's with Atlantic conveyor, it also proves these missiles can be spoofed by soft kill systems such as chaff.

[mapuc]

They say that life is one long educations and this is why I love Subsim-I learn something new each day.

Thank you so much Kapitan.

Here's a Danish story about a Harpoon going wrong

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_H...sfire_incident

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