The Falklands War

Discussion in 'Postwar' started by Drew5233, Nov 26, 2009.

  1. Ewen Scott

    Ewen Scott Well-Known Member

    I’m not sure what your point is.

    Those 120 members of the FIDF were not all concentrated in Stanley. They were in small settlements scattered across the 4,700 square miles of the Falkland Is with poor routes of communication to get to Stanley.

    Given the short notice of the invasion, less than a day, it is hardly surprising that so few were able to report for duty.

    And a correction. The FIDF Official History says 32 not 23.
    History
     
  2. davidbfpo

    davidbfpo Patron Patron

    Just watching a Ben Fogle ITV documentary (60mins, actually 47mins as adverts interrupt) on Naval Party 8901 and in summary:
    I had forgotten it was double its normal size, as a replacement unit had arrived. Sir John Nott even appears alongside several RM veterans. Plus a sole Argentinian marine speaks briefly.

    Lord Carrington's telegram the evening before to the Falklands instructed them to: 'make your dispositions accordingly' and a previous assessment of the threat had never been passed to them. This reflected the diplomatic position - assume they will not invade.

    The RM garrison leader, Major Norman, had not seen the report by the British Military Attache in Buenos Aires; the FCO response "it says nothing we don't already know". The Argentinian special forces (Marines) first target was a "textbook house clearing assault" on the RM barracks at Moody Brook, no prisoners to be taken - assuming the RM would be asleep!

    NP8901 was quickly returned to the UK; where - oddly the press - reported no resistance was made. A reporter on the islands says it was the "fog of war" and Kelvin McKenzie, Editor of 'The Sun' gives his comment.

    Seven weeks later NP8901 returned to the islands, and started their three week walk or yomp to Port Stanley. Via the grim scenes at Goose Green. Raising the Union Jack at Government House.

    Link: Falklands War: The Forgotten Battle - Falklands War: The Forgotten Battle
     
    Last edited: Apr 9, 2022
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  3. davidbfpo

    davidbfpo Patron Patron

  4. davidbfpo

    davidbfpo Patron Patron

    In November 2021 in Post 324 I referred to a forthcoming Kings College London's War Studies Depmt. a forty years after online conference on 3rd May 2022. The website entry states:
    The half-day conference details and bookings have just been announced via: Falklands 40: War and Defence Studies' perspectives in the 21st century
     
  5. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

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  6. davidbfpo

    davidbfpo Patron Patron

    Just spotted and not watched in full a Mark Felton video on:
    Some interesting comments too.
    Link:
     
  7. Ewen Scott

    Ewen Scott Well-Known Member

    If you want more detail on Falklands sub operations on both sides I’d recommend these books
    https://www.amazon.co.uk/find-him-b...x=bring+me+back+his+hat,stripbooks,228&sr=1-1

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/Carrier-Ri...00a64&pd_rd_wg=6i9vL&pd_rd_i=1911628704&psc=1

    The first of those titles has a blow by blow account of the hunt for the San Luis, from both sides, and other ASW operations in the Falklands War including details of each recorded contact by each ship and helicopter and type of weapon expended. All told 24 Mk46 and 6 Mk44 AS torpedoes, 49 Mk.11 depth charges and 22 Limbo salvoes (70 projectiles) were expended by the RN ships and helicopters from 24 April to 12 June 1982.

    Despite the RN being probably the best navy in NATO at anti-submarine warfare at the time that experience was largely in the deep waters of the North Atlantic. Operating in the shallow waters around the Falklands presented a whole new set of challenges which it took sonar operators some time to adjust to. The biggest casualties in it was the sea life. The false alarms reduced over time, helped no doubt by the knowledge that the San Luis had gone home.

    I recall reading somewhere else that when the Leander class were refitted with Ikara in the mid-1970s it was decided to keep the Limbo AS mortar on them because with the technology of the day homing torpedoes like the Mk.44 & 46 couldn’t be relied on in shallow waters while a Limbo salvo could be accurately placed using the ship’s sonars.
     
  8. davidbfpo

    davidbfpo Patron Patron

    From an obituary column (behind a pay wall so abridged):
     
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  9. bamboo43

    bamboo43 Very Senior Member

  10. Sheldrake

    Sheldrake All over the place....

  11. davidbfpo

    davidbfpo Patron Patron

    I did listen to the recent online conference Falklands 40 and there was a statement it would all be added to YouTube. So far only the academic introduction, then the Falklands rep in London and Professor Lawrence Freedman (at 21:35) and the first session (starts at 46:34) :
    Link:

    This session did add to my knowledge, Commodore Clapp being rather forthright on whether lessons were learnt and Major-General Julian Thompson on the risks from unwise use of radios by the SAS.
     
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  12. bamboo43

    bamboo43 Very Senior Member

  13. davidbfpo

    davidbfpo Patron Patron

    A second outing for Julian Thompson, Royal Marines CO, on Wednesday 1/6/22, at 7pm (Zoom opens 630pm) and the summary:
    Link: News & Events — RM Historical Society
     
  14. davidbfpo

    davidbfpo Patron Patron

    The Institution of Royal Engineers and the Royal Engineers Historical Society are hosting a series of webinars on current and historical military engineering. They are being promoted on the Royal Engineers Historical Society Twitter Account @RE_Hist_Society. Registration is by emailing Secretary@rehs.org.uk

    It is not clear whether you have to be a member. below details from their website: https://www.instre.org/rehs/

     
  15. Charley Fortnum

    Charley Fortnum Dreaming of Red Eagles

    Somebody's going to have to explain the politics behind this ostensibly bizarre decision:

    The Times today publishes a very detailed and very critical obituary of Brigadier Sir Tony Wilson who died December 5, 2019.

    It's being spun as an anniversary piece, but it looks like a hatchet job to me.

    Have his NOK just died or something?

    Brigadier Sir Tony Wilson obituary

    Falklands conflict infantry commander whose reputation was tarnished by the destruction of the Sir Galahad, 40 years ago today

    “Defeat? I do not recognise the meaning of the word,” Margaret Thatcher said in April 1982 at the start of the Falklands conflict. Many senior officers were not so sanguine. Ten weeks later, however, the Union Jack was flying again over Port Stanley.

    It was a resounding victory but a close-run thing, and the casualty list — the “butcher’s bill”, in the grim parlance of the soldier — was sobering. Reputations were gained, others maintained; some were lost. Most spectacular of the losers was Brigadier Tony Wilson, commander of the 5th Infantry Brigade, the second of the two brigade-size forces dispatched to the South Atlantic as the southern hemisphere winter deepened.

    The Argentine invasion came as a shock to Thatcher’s government, and its response was at first hesitant. What followed, Operation Corporate — assembling a task force to retake the islands — was an improvised affair, at times almost chaotic, for there was no command structure in place to mount and direct a tri-service operation.

    A landing force under Brigadier Julian Thompson of the Royal Marines (RM), comprising the 3 Commando Brigade (RM), which included field and air defence artillery, engineers and others from the army, reinforced by the 2nd and 3rd battalions of the Parachute Regiment detached from Wilson’s brigade, was hastily assembled and sailed within days of the invasion.

    Meanwhile a follow-up force was cobbled together from what remained of 5 Brigade, reinforced by two Guards battalions (Scots and Welsh). The intention was that 3 Commando Brigade would do the fighting, and 5 Brigade the consolidating. However, the MoD recognised somewhat belatedly that 5 Brigade might end up in a shooting war too, and so hastily rearranged their pre-deployment training in Wales. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, for a force thrown together with inadequate communications and no common standard operating procedures, Exercise Welsh Falcon did not go well. Wilson himself evidently performed so badly that Lieutenant General Sir Dick Trant, responsible for the army’s rapid-reaction forces for operations outside the Nato area, and who had formed a high opinion of Wilson’s staff work in previous appointments and been instrumental in his promotion to brigadier, recommended his removal from command.

    However, the chief of the general staff, Sir Edwin Bramall (obituary November 12, 2019), decided that to remove him would be a blow to the brigade’s morale. In the Channel 4 TV documentary Falklands War: The Untold Story, broadcast on March 27, 2022, General Sir Michael Rose, who commanded the SAS in the Falklands, said that Bramall told him afterwards “it was the worst decision he had made in over 40 years as a soldier”.

    When 5 Brigade sailed for the South Atlantic in mid-May, Wilson, like Shakespeare’s soldier and any officer worth his salt, would have been seeking to regain “the bubble reputation even in the cannon’s mouth”, as well as wanting his brigade to share the glory that would otherwise go wholly to the Marines. Everybody wanted a piece of the action. At Ascension Island, the staging post for the task force, he was joined on the requisitioned Cunard liner QE2 by Major General Jeremy Moore RM (obituary September 17, 2007), who had flown from the headquarters of the commander-in-chief fleet at Northwood, northwest London, the controlling HQ for Corporate, where he had been on the planning team, to take overall command of the land forces.

    The land campaign was shaped by two predominant factors: the potential for amphibious landings and the lack of air superiority. Moore insisted that he could not make any firm plans before arriving in theatre. Meanwhile, the possibilities were being explored by Julian Thompson and his brigade, who managed to land unopposed at San Carlos Bay on East Falkland the following day, the bulk of the Argentine forces being some 50 miles the other side of the island at the Falklands capital, Port Stanley.

    By the time Moore, having transferred to the amphibious assault ship HMS Fearless, arrived at San Carlos with Wilson on May 30, two days before 5 Brigade, Thompson’s men were fast advancing east. The SAS had already occupied the heights overlooking Stanley, and next day Thompson flew 42 Commando (battalion equivalent) and a battery of artillery forward by helicopter to take Mount Kent, which was considered key ground.

    During the passage from Ascension to the Falklands, however, when the QE2 had only intermittent communications with both Thompson and Fleet HQ, it seems likely that Wilson and Moore discussed a second axis of advance in the south of the island. On May 30, Moore told the two brigadiers, despite what could at times be an adverse air situation, to plan on a two-axis advance. “The Great Leap Forward”, as the southern axis became known, would have the merit of bringing 5 Brigade up alongside 3 Commando Brigade for the final push on Stanley.

    In the Channel 4 documentary, Moore’s former army deputy, the then Brigadier — later Nato’s deputy supreme allied commander Europe — John Waters criticised the concept for breaching the principle of concentration of effort. The principle applies at the point of attack, not the approach, and dispersal forces an enemy to cover more front, but the issue is whether the advancing forces can concentrate at the decisive point before the enemy can do the same. Besides, movement on the southern axis was fraught with difficulties.

    After the sinking of the Atlantic Conveyor on May 25 with the loss of much equipment, including all but one of the heavy-lift Chinook helicopters, the second axis placed a huge logistic strain on Moore’s HQ, not least the inability to communicate across such a long distance, co-ordination between the brigades, and artillery support. Arguably the Great Leap Forward had less to commend it than it promised, not least in preventing 3 Commando Brigade from exploiting its rapid advance and taking Stanley by surprise and sheer momentum.

    Wilson flew to Goose Green by light helicopter, where 2 Para had recently overcome an Argentine garrison at Darwin Goose Green. Moore had placed the battalion back under 5 Brigade’s command, and Wilson dispatched a dozen men by helicopter to Swan Inlet a few miles along the coast. From there, a civilian telephone call to the settlement at Fitzroy, 15 miles from Stanley, established that there were no Argentine troops present. Commandeering the single Chinook, Wilson ferried two companies to Bluff Cove just beyond Fitzroy, greatly extending the area requiring air cover by the carrier-borne Harriers. Now urgently needing to reinforce 2 Para, the only way his two Guards battalions could be brought forward was by sea.

    On the night of June 6, Fearless took the entire Welsh Guards battalion to a rendezvous point near Elephant Island to meet two “landing craft, utility” (LCU) from Bluff Cove, but they did not appear. Only half the battalion could be taken ashore before daylight in Fearless’s own LCUs. The rest returned with Fearless to San Carlos, and the next night sailed again for Bluff Cove on the Royal Fleet Auxiliary landing ship Sir Galahad. Just before dawn on June 8, Sir Galahad, unable to complete the move in daylight, dropped anchor five miles short at Fitzroy Sound. There was just one off-loading craft, however, and the Welsh Guards took priority behind the field ambulance and Rapier air defence battery.

    Meanwhile, the Argentinians had spotted the ship’s arrival. Some hours later, Skyhawk jets flying 500 miles from the mainland with 500lb bombs, attacked. Three bombs hit Sir Galahad, killing 48 men and wounding 115. Many, including Simon Weston, were badly burnt. Most of the casualties were in the Welsh Guards, rendering the battalion hors de combat until it was reinforced later by marines.

    Mathew John Anthony (Tony) Wilson was born in London in 1935, the son of Anthony Wilson and Margaret Holden. His paternal grandfather was Sir Mathew Wilson, 4th Baronet of Eshton Hall in Craven, North Yorkshire, to which baronetcy he succeeded in 1991 on the death of an uncle. After Trinity College School, Ontario, and Sandhurst, he was commissioned into the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry in 1956, the fourth consecutive generation of his family to serve in the regiment, and joined the 1st Battalion in Cyprus during the EOKA campaign, subsequently seeing service in the Borneo confrontation and the Aden emergency.

    In 1962 he married Janet Mowll, a trainee nurse whom he had met while an instructor at the School of Infantry at Hythe in Kent. Lady Wilson survives him along with a son, Mathew, the seventh baronet, who also served with the Light Infantry, and a daughter, Victoria, a lawyer.

    After attending the Pakistan Staff College, Wilson was posted to the operations staff of HQ Northern Ireland just as the Troubles began, where for his service he was awarded the MBE (Military). On return to his battalion, by then 2nd Battalion The Light Infantry (2LI), he commanded a company in South Armagh, for which he was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry. He subsequently commanded 1LI in Hong Kong, where the battalion was frequently deployed on the Chinese border to deter immigrants, before returning to HQ Northern Ireland as the principal operational staff officer when Dick Trant was commander land forces, for which in 1979 he was advanced to OBE (Military). On promotion to colonel he headed the MoD branch responsible for UK internal security, Northern Ireland especially, before in 1981 being appointed to command 5 Brigade.

    Opinions of Wilson varied. He seemed to live on his nerves, though some in the MoD found him refreshingly easy to work with. He was undoubtedly a showman, with a rather theatrical voice, and soldiers are acute theatre critics. In 5 Brigade he offended some by wearing the famed red (strictly, maroon) airborne forces beret and parachute “wings” although the brigade was no longer an airborne force and he had not completed “P” Company, the usual qualification.

    He was not all show, however. Soon after taking command he forcefully represented the brigade’s lack of critical resources, communications especially, to the commander-in-chief, though without result. After the loss of Sir Galahad in 1982 he tempered his style somewhat, accepting advice from subordinates and modifying his orders. But the die had been cast, and on return to England his name was not on the honours list.

    Later that year he resigned his commission and moved to America with his family, where he became director of the Wilderness Foundation UK. He subsequently spent ten winters in the Bahamas following his passion for sailing, writing The Bahamas Cruising Guide and lecturing on cruise ships, where his style was well received.

    Wilson wrote a memoir of the Falklands, but the publisher Leo Cooper refused to publish it, advising that it would do the author no good.

    Napoleon reputedly asked of his generals simply: “Is he a lucky commander?” Wilson evidently was not.

    Brigadier Sir Tony Wilson Bt OBE MC, Light Infantry officer, was born on October 2, 1935. The Times did not run an obituary of him when he died after a long illness on December 5, 2019, aged 84. To mark the 40th anniversary of the destruction of the Sir Galahad, we are publishing one now.

    Source:
    Brigadier Sir Tony Wilson obituary | Register | The Times
     
  16. Tullybrone

    Tullybrone Senior Member


    Hi,

    I think it’s basically taking advantage of today’s 40th anniversary of the sinking of Sir Galahad to repeat the criticism’s that were strongly expressed in the recent Channel 4 documentary.

    Steve
     
  17. Charley Fortnum

    Charley Fortnum Dreaming of Red Eagles

    I didn't see the documentary, unfortunately, but the article mentions that Sir Michael Rose contributed.

    I'd be very surprised given his age and role during the conflict if he didn't have a memoir either written or ready to publish before very long.

    It just seems odd to me: why wrap the criticism up in a late obituary?

    Why not a proper essay in a journal?

    Or even use it as a strand in a special anniversary article?
     
  18. davidbfpo

    davidbfpo Patron Patron

    There is a strong smell of revenge over what happened in this obituary, written in the full knowledge Sir Tony Wilson would not take legal action. Even that no-one would publish a response; Leo Cooper might of course think now they could profit by publishing his book - assuming his family would agree and no legal obstacles exist.
    .
     
  19. davidbfpo

    davidbfpo Patron Patron

    Watched a BBC2 documentary last night 'Our Falklands War: A Frontline Story', it is 90 minutes and in places is very grim, as war is. Well worth watching, with a somewhat eccentric Scots Guards officer appearing near the end.

    The programme's explanation:
    Link (available for 11 months): BBC iPlayer - Our Falklands War: A Frontline Story
     
    Last edited: Jun 14, 2022
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  20. Tullybrone

    Tullybrone Senior Member

    What you describe as “eccentricity” is likely due to his ongoing disability due to the loss of 42% of his brain - as a result of sustaining a headshot by an Argentinean sniper on Mount Tumbledown - which was referenced in his interview.

    Steve
     
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