My first point, Orca, was to place the raid into some sort of wider context. Experience shows that if you don't do that, this sort of thread rapidly turns into a 'Bah! Bloody crabs! The RN had all the answers and the light blue were simply recerting to type' discussion, so making clear that it was a joint decision needs to be got in there early, othewise you get references to 'one bomb Beetham' which, with respect to NE, are unfair since Beetham is on record as telling the war cabinet that the limitations of the Vulcan's kit meant that he'd want at least 25 sorties to guarantee to them that the runway would be shut - because of the difficulty of getting enough bombs onto the runway. Also, I wanted to make clear that the view from the UK was that it didn't matter whether the Argentines realised that it might be only one bomber - one bomber was enough as far as their Lordships and 'Airships' were concerned.
We do not, as yet, have direct documentary evidence that the Argentine junta thought of permanent forward basing for their aircraft; nor has the supposition put to me by an Argentine officer of 1982 vintage that he thought the point was that Stanley might be used as a FOL for rearming and refuelling, plus for emergency landing (although the one Dagger which tried that was blown out of the sky in a blue on blue [or should that be 'Orange on Orange?]) with aircraft returning to the mainland at the end of the day been fully confirmed by written material.
We know the unit which had its DCA task increased at the expense of their OCA tasking - 8 Grupo. The unit's pilots say so in Middlebrook's book! Yes, their ability to conduct OCA was constrained by other factors, but the evidence is there, even if it is not from the Argentine archives. It may be that the chaps Middlebrook interviewed were entirely wrong, but that's all we have to go on so far, and there does not appear to have been a countervailing view provided to date. I would have to check, but I am fairly sure that any intimation that there would not be a raid on the mainland came some time later in the war. Again, as far as the Mirage pilots were concerned, they ended up placing greater emphasis on DCA post 1 May 1982.