Originally Posted by
kghjfg
If you ask the standard person on the street about the Falklands,
a) they’ll say that the Vulcan raid was the most important part of the air war. They’ll not even know there was more than 1.
b) they’ll say that the RAF Harriers were brilliant. (They’ll have no idea Fleet Air Arm exists, all flying things are RAF right?)
c) They’ll say we lost all those ships because the French gave the Argentinians the codes to launch Exocet.
(I’ve not even checked if it’s true, I’ve been told it so any times, I’ve presumed that’s how it was reported at the time)
Do a a straw poll of any friends who have not served and this will be what they say, I guarantee it!
i think that’s all Mr Ward is grumpy about.
This is an almost exact inversion of the truth, and your guarantee is worthless! My own straw poll indicates that:
Most people knew that we 'invited' the Argentine invasion when the Royal Navy withdrew "that ship" (Endurance). Which cost some MInisters their jobs. (Some said John Nott, some Lord Carrington)
They know that Mrs Thatcher then sent a task force, including aircraft carriers. These had fighters that were flown by the Navy. Some knew that they were Harriers/Sea Harriers.
No-one I spoke to thought that RAF pilots had been involved in flying off the carriers.
Some know that the RAF played a tiny part - some knew about Vulcan bombing raids.
All knew that we lost some ships, not all knew about Exocet, let alone that it was French.
So far from the public thinking that the RAF won the war, most don't even know that the RAF was involved, and those who do know that it was think that the part it played was unimportant and peripheral. Those who know about Black Buck tend to echo Ward's thoughts that it was an expensive, pointless failure, managing to put only a single bomb on target. The general impression was that it was a Navy 'show', together with some Paras, Royal Marines and the SAS who mopped up the last remnants of Argentine resistance