BP, there is some evidence from the proceedings of a seminar held at the staff college five years ago which is in the public domain. In essence, the then-CAS said that the plan was to do whatever could be done to aid the Task Force. The planning staffs worked out that bombing the airfield would need '25 and preferably 50' Vulcan sorties to guarantee closing it, but the raid went ahead with two aims. MRAF Beetham said [verbatim quote from the proceedings follows]:
'So it was primarily a military purpose to do what we could with the resources we had. But it did have a secondary deterrent effect, in the sense that the Argentines must have raised their eyebrows and the thought would go through their mind (which we ceratinly didn't try to stop them having) that if we could do that, we could bomb the mainland. We had looked at this, but discarded it because it would have been a major escalation. But the Argenitnes wouldn't have known that and therefore their Mirages and their other forces were being aware and taking defensive measures in case we bombed the mainland, which took a little bit of the pressure off the forces which were deploying against the Falklands [i.e. the Task Force].
So that was the major purpose. It was primarily a military objective to do what we could, but it did have this secondary effect.'
This was followed by Admiral Woodward, who in response said:
'I very much agree with what you had to say about it. My dark blue aviators said "Oh, it's the air force just trying to get in on the act", but I said, hang on a minute, there will be two things. If they do hit the runway, that can't be bad, they can disrupt it... but also it will have exactly that effect of causing them [the junta] to think they could come at us on the mainland. It is showing reach and therefore it is deterrent. And I suspect it made them hold back some of their Mirages, which could have acted as top cover for their A-4 raids. So I signed up for it and told my aviators to shut up.'
Unless my memory has failed me ever since (I must find my notes from the session) Admiral Leach made a similar (but much shorter, which is possibly why the documentation doesn't include it) observation about the deterrent effect.
So, even alloing for hindsight, it would seem that there was at least some semblance of effects based thinking behind the planning, both from a light blue and a dark blue perspective.
Last edited by Archimedes; 13th May 2007 at 22:04.