Another rant from the Bearded One

[Archimedes]

Originally Posted by Georg1na

This should put the cat amongst the crabs!!

Not amongst any who've read the articles - with photos - which appear in various editions of the RE Journals from 1983 and 1984...

Certain former members of the naval service need to perhaps remember the line 'I beesech thee in bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken' in their increasingly bizarre attempts to downplay the Vulcan attacks. While there's no doubt that spotters magazines, some elements of the RAF (particularly post Sea Harrier Over the Falklands) and the Rowland White book attempted to spin the effects too far the other way, there's one critical point about the raids.

Which is that they did what Admirals Leach and Fieldhouse wanted, as the various Chief of Staff documents confirm. The raid against Stanley was being discussed even before the Argentine occupation forces were fully established ashore, and the Chief of the Air Staff spent a not insignificant period of the initial planning phase advocating that the Sea Harrier be used to attack the runway rather than Vulcans. It's all there in the files at Kew. Including the fact that the difficulty of cross-cutting the runway meant that the raids were to disrupt Argentine operations rather than to guarantee knocking the runway out. ACM Beetham made clear that he'd want at least 25 and 'preferably 50' attacks to guarantee that the runway was rendered incapable of further use by anything other than helicopters.

There is also evidence - from the Argentine side - that the crater was sufficient to ensure that the C-130 resupply flights had to arrive carrying a much lighter load lest they end up going through the makeshift repair to the crater. I forget the figure off the top of my head, but the air delivered logistic requirement was significantly higher than anything that the C-130s could practically manage after 1 May. Add to that the fact that supply by ship was rather curtailed because of concern that HMS Conqueror might quietly add to its tally and the combined effect - which was what the chiefs of staff were looking for - was significant.

Much of the debate is nothing more than inter-service back-biting and assertion and fails to stand up against the array of records that exist and which are now in the public domain.