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The Falklands in Retrospect
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Did it ever really happen?
On these pleasant Spring days, it is difficult to recall with clarity that only a few short months ago men were fighting in the frigid climes of the South Atlantic. Watching the horror of the Sheffield burning, of a Mirage’s final second, of the injured from the Sir Galahad, with the heroic helicopter pilots struggling to save their fellow men from a sea of fire has an almost numbing effect upon the television news viewer.
Did it ever really happen? Yes, it did and again proved the naivety of politicians who year after year, decade after decade, let the armed forces run down to the point where good men, young men, have to be eternally sacrificed in. the name of the national good. By mid-March, the name Falkland Islands meant little to anyone, a windswept and relatively docile remnant of empire. By mid-June, the war had been fought and won by the British. In that three-month period the world had stood and watched as technology and tactics had shown us all that modern weapon systems, particularly missiles, are effective and in the hands of a small defending nation can inflict merciless damage against a much larger attacking force.
The Argentinians blundered from beginning to end. Their air force fought bravely and well considering the enormity of the task in operating Mirage and Skyhawk aircraft at the extreme edge of their tactical envelopes. The navy and army alas were hardly in the same league despite the termer’s enthusiasm for a Malvinas adventure in the first place. Why didn’t the Argentinians extend the Port Stanley runway, set up a more effective air defence missile system and bring in a squadron of Mirages and Skyhawks with spare backup in the nearly two-month period prior to the landings at Port San Carlos? If this had been done then the Royal Navy would never have been able to get close enough to the Islands to even contemplate a landing. The British were lucky that the Falklands were not a hundred miles to the west or the Argentine air force would have been much more of a force to be reckoned with.
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