Comments have been made that we can ALWAYS rely on US support whenever we engage in hostilities..... Are our memories that short? Think Suez
Exocet
a few dozen more Exocets from France - and given their pilots more time to train in the use of them - then they would have made mincemeat of our shipping from Day One.
Would they? Would they really have made 'mincemeat' of our shipping from day one?
I dislike being critical of ANY of our brave personnel that fought in that conflict but apart from the Sheffield own goal and the suicidal arrogance by the commanding officer of Glamorgan.... Was the only successful attack by Exocet on a defenceless merchant ship? . What if and what might have been can be debated until those proverbial cows steer the correct course and I agree that more of anything would have or could have altered the outcome either way.
The mainly British made, British supplied dumb bombs were something else. If the majority had gone bang, then I would suggest it was possible that this conflict would have gone 'bang'.
Should we have held off the invasion until we had taken out far more of the Argentine Air power? Warships operating in coastal waters are always on the back foot and without dominance of the air space they are going to struggle to stay sunny side up. Away from the coastline the odds were completely stacked in the opposite direction with the Argentine forces taking significant losses.
To answer my own question I would suggest the big problem was the state of the Battle Groups. They had been at sea operating in atrocious conditions and most were in need of vital maintenance. Not liberating the islands when we did would see ships becoming non operational simply because of breakdowns, to attack early would see ships becoming 'non operational'. Damned if you do, damned if you don't!
Exocet was indeed a threat but it was always a controllable threat
IF we fought as we trained.
Originally Posted by Langley Baston
When CMetO STC rang me on the morning of/after the invasion [I was PMetO 1 Group] he told me "the bastards have invaded" and I asked "what are we going to do about it" [being bright eyed and bushy tailed] and he said he had come straight from crisis HOBs meet and the received opinion was "Nothing" ........... this did not last very long!
Cometh the hour, cometh the Royal Navy.......
Admiral Leach was an AMAZING GENTLEMAN.... He had seen his fleet cannibalised. He had tried speaking to Margaret Thatcher but she had not even given him the
courtesy of a meeting, but when push come to shove, he was the ONLY senior officer that had the courage to put his head on the chopping block.. It could have been so easy for this man to have said, 'I told you so!' but instead he got together a fleet of warships and as we know the rest is history. A truly great man.
Regarding the involvement of Chile, I was going through Cranwell late '82/early '83, and I have vague memories of a visit from a party of special VIPs. Allegedly, it was General Pinochet, or some of his senior military staff, being given a tour as a "thank you" for discrete support during the war.
We only need to look at how Baroness Margaret Thatcher showed her true qualities when she greeted that man when he was perhaps not quite so popular years after these events..