Argentina withdraws from 2016 pact with UK over the Falklands, wants to restart negotiations regarding ownership.

I might be slightly biased, but I love the story of the Black Buck missions as an example of of ‘making it work’ when the plan sounds impossible. It all happened 6 months before I was born, but after two decades in the RAF and currently seeing the Vulcan in question on an almost daily basis (currently awaiting a paint job in the hangar next to mine) I feel there’s another story to it that often gets overlooked.

Most people know the story of XM607 and the flight it made (discussions of the effectiveness notwithstanding) but lesser known is the final Victor which accompanied it. If you’ve read the fantastic book Vulcan 607 then you know it’s well covered, but I’ll give a brief synopsis anyway.

After many refuels from fellow Victors, the final aircraft accompanying the Vulcan south was in a dilemma - they were all burning a lot more fuel than expected, and when the time came to carry out the final refuel they couldn’t offload enough for the Vulcan to make it to the target AND for them to make it back to ascension. In the end, they gave him what they needed and prepared to ditch in the Atlantic in the way back. Luckily, the problem had been noted back at base and they scrambled more tankers to meet the Victor and Vulcan on their return legs so they everyone made it back.

This is a very condensed and simplified version of events - I recommend reading the book for the full story. The captain of the Victor was Sqn Ldr Bob Tuxford, awarded the Air Force Cross for the mission, and I was lucky enough to get to know him quite well in the years I spent volunteering at the Cold War Jets collection at Bruntingthorpe in a Leicester. He would taxi a lot of the aircraft, including the Nimrod which I helped look after when they were retired in 2010. Below is a video I made from one of the 2013 open days - reading the checklists is Mike Beer, another of the Black Buck mission crew, and in later years they were joined by his co-pilot Glyn Rees (right hand seat in the second video) before the base was sold in 2020. Needless to say, by copy of Vulcan 607 is fairly well autographed…


 
ianh said:
Absolutely 100% correct, which is why I said it was to be used in a pincer against the Task Force (not the Sub) with the Argentine CV as the Northern attack group using strike aircraft and the Belgrano group as the Southern group using the Exocets on the destroyers.



To be blunt no-one cares what I think today, what matters is what the Argentine Military thought in 1982 and they were so worried by the BB raids that they moved fighter aircraft away from Falklands escort duty to protect themselves from a potential (if incredibly unlikely) BB raid, and thats a strategic win for BB, (yay!) even if Sea Harriers did a better tactical job at damaging the airfield.



Here's the UK's classified (since declassified) Intel report from the Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff (Intelligence) dated 7th April 1982 on the use of the runway which on page two, under "Argentine Offensive/Defensive Air Operations", mentions -

"The Argentine Mirage III, Mirage V and their A4 Skyhawks could operate from Stanley Airport with almost full payloads to defend the Island."

So there's definitely some discrepancy in the various intel reports being bandied about which always makes getting a definitive answer on these things far less obvious than it should ideally be IMHO.
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That's an earlier "opinion" piece. The engineering report was latter, detailed and first hand. The fact remains there's no evidence they could (or did) operate from there. The UK had to extend it for phantoms. Even then they decided it wasn't suitable and built a new runway at Mount Pleasant pleasant.

It's not IMO credible to say the BB reduced the fighters available for escorts or attacks on the Falklands when the fighter type they "withdrew" was still used in that conflict decoys towards the Falklands. Just mostly avoided combat having found to be outclassed and too short ranged. That they also moved them to cover any potential BB raids on the mainland made negligible difference according to those that studied the Argentinian deployments during the war.

One thing that was reported was that the BB and Harrier raids on Stanley made the Argentinians realize they couldn't protect anything based there. So even if they did extend the runway to a level required for fast jets. Anything based there and it's associated facilities would be a constantly attacked.

It's not that BB had no value. They obviously did but the effort required and resources consumed didn't really justify the outcomes achieved. IMO.

It's interesting when with benefit of hindsight and data old combat reports and data are analysed.
For example... https://youtu.be/fxQISKzt1IU

Certainly the Falklands war taught harsh lessons about tech in warfare from the dominance of the latest Sidewinder,and Exocet vs older types to the vulnerability of cost cutting in warships etc. End of an era. The BlackBuck raids were certainly a reflection of stoicism and improvisation and endurance of earlier times.
 
I'm open to correction but I though the US has enough deep reserves to supply oil and gas to the west, that in recent years has become viable to access. The problem is getting it to europe in enough quantity. Norway also has enough reserved but was trying to move away from fossil fuels.

In that context getting at the Falklands resources seems like a long way off.
 
Quartz said:
Do you think that Argentina might have its own oil requirements?
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Nobody is going to exploit the oil anytime soon it is simply too difficult and expensive for the size and quantity of reserves found to date, there is an argument to be had about potential Future exploitation of Antarctic resources but none of this had anything to do with the last war and little nothing to do with the current situation. Fishing is literally a much bigger dish to fry than oil at the moment!
 
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Moley said:
That's a really cool watch. Amazing how the latest gen aircraft are just so overpowered.
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Although it’s had a few updates in the meantime, the original prototype for the Typhoon first flew in 1986, and the Typhoon itself in 1994. Definitely not the latest generation…
 
^^ Compared to Argentina's (admitedly modernised) A-4 Skyhawks that first flew in the 50's, Typhoon is very modern. Let's be honest though, in the unlikely event anything were to kick off we'd be sending a squadron of F-35s down on a carrier.
 
Its only going to work if the UK wants to negotiate and they don't.

Argentina has no hope of taking it by force now. It's to well defended and Argie stuff is from the Soviet era. They wouldn't even waste time sending jets up, the Type-45 would shoot anything approaching down.
 
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I was 15 in 1982 and I can clearly remember every night watching the news with my Encyclopaedia of the World's Combat Aircraft by Bill Gunston sitting next to me as my point of reference. Lot's of (now naive) debate with my dad on how we would not stand a chance against the Mirage III (as a child like a child today, my 'expertise' was based on a few numbers and nothing more to support my point).

I recall the Sheffield being hit and the impact that had on the nation more than the Belgrano. It was the first time the whole thing became real and when we realised it would not be just about Britain sinking ships and winning the war. I remember "I counted them out and I counted them all back", terrible quality images of Harriers attacking, missiles being tracked and exploding (without hitting much) and the voice of the Falklands campaign, Ian McDonald! His delivery was so measured, sombre and clear, he was the perfect person to deliver news and we ALL hung on to all he said.

Imagine a 15 year old, mouth wide open, almost in tears at this news. That was what it was like.
 
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OspreyO said:
Certainly the Falklands war taught harsh lessons about tech in warfare from the dominance of the latest Sidewinder,and Exocet vs older types to the vulnerability of cost cutting in warships etc. End of an era. The BlackBuck raids were certainly a reflection of stoicism and improvisation and endurance of earlier times.
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Indeed, it showed how poor most of our air defence systems were for such a conflict. Rapier in particular, a mainstay of our air defences, was terrible accounting for 1 (disputed) take down at best. It never worked properly, malfunctioned often and was pretty much useless in the Falklands. I remember discussing this with a friend, ex marine, who served during the campaign and he confirmed this. "Bloody laughably bad" was his view.

Sea Dart was OK, but not really built for close in combat at low level, but take down some higher level targets if I recall correctly. Sea Slug, an older generation missile, was hardly used (one or two fires I believe) and was just not up to the job. Sea Wolf was the only modern missile, which was talked about as the best during the conflict, but was again littered with failures and didn't launch or therefore kill that many aircraft (2 or 3 I seem to recall).

Our Naval doctrine of the time was not built around a Falklands type conflict sadly, so the gaps we bound to show themselves.
 
visibleman said:
Awesome machines but Black Buck was a complete farce given one of the Harriers would have done a better job :cry:
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It's amazing that in 2023 that there's still people questioning the effectiveness of the Vulcan bombings and sinking the Belgrano....

The whole point of using the Vulcans was to demonstrate that we could hit Argentian positions on the islands even before the task force was in range. The Vulcan strike combined with taking out the Belgrano severely hampered the Argentinian war effort by restricting the bulk of their airforce to operating from the mainland and causing their navy to return to port.

visibleman said:
Why would the Harriers have needed the range?
Just to add, they were already heading down with the Invincible and the Hermes and arguably would have produced better results than what was achieved from Black Buck.
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Given the UK's experience with anti ship missiles when the boats closed on the islands it should be apparent that it was desirable to hamper the range of the enemies air force in advance of the task forces arrival by convicing them it was best to operate only from air facilities in Argentina.

Chris Wilson said:
One unpalatable fact was Margaret Thatcher got incalculably important help from the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. It may seem amazing to younger people, brought up with a total abhorrence of dictators, that the Falklands war may well have gone a totally different way without Pinochet's assistance, at considerable risk to himself. It's well documented now, so I won't dwell on it here, but at the time it was a dark secret.
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It's not at all un palatable in my view.

The UK/US sent supplies to and were working in coordination with the Soviets in WW2 despite us having exactly the same casus belli to declare war on them as we did with Nazi Germany (invading Poland) and with Stalin being every bit the monster Hitler was (a frequent que for some people to start frothing because they think it's more acceptable to starve millions of your own poulation and kill them of in gulags just as long as you don't more openly state that as your intention).

In war and especially when defending your own territory countries can rarely afford to be overly picky about their allies.

And it's not as if Pinochet's contemporary adversaries would have ushered in an enlightened democracy. Sometimes foreign policy is picking the more aligned of the bad options.
 
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Housey said:
Indeed, it showed how poor most of our air defence systems were for such a conflict. Rapier in particular, a mainstay of our air defences, was terrible accounting for 1 (disputed) take down at best. It never worked properly, malfunctioned often and was pretty much useless in the Falklands. I remember discussing this with a friend, ex marine, who served during the campaign and he confirmed this. "Bloody laughably bad" was his view.

Sea Dart was OK, but not really built for close in combat at low level, but take down some higher level targets if I recall correctly. Sea Slug, an older generation missile, was hardly used (one or two fires I believe) and was just not up to the job. Sea Wolf was the only modern missile, which was talked about as the best during the conflict, but was again littered with failures and didn't launch or therefore kill that many aircraft (2 or 3 I seem to recall).

Our Naval doctrine of the time was not built around a Falklands type conflict sadly, so the gaps we bound to show themselves.
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The Navy was built primarily around ASW in the early 80's. To add to all your valid points above, we had no Airbourne Early Warning nor CIWS for point defence, both of which would have made a huge difference (especially the former). These are things that have been remedied in the years since due to experience gained in the Falklands.

Sea Wolf was essentially still in development, think I recall reading some of the contractors were sill onboard one of the Type-22 Frigates. By the time of the Gulf War it had become very potent.
 
zola25 said:
^^ Compared to Argentina's (admitedly modernised) A-4 Skyhawks that first flew in the 50's, Typhoon is very modern. Let's be honest though, in the unlikely event anything were to kick off we'd be sending a squadron of F-35s down on a carrier.
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You could bolster the Typhoon force already present within a few days by just flying them or the F-35 down there - the carrier would take a month or so to arrive.

As we can now fly Chinooks down there in C-17’s it would be much safer than sending them on boats too, and with the correct support could be operational within a week of being initially directed to deploy.

Times have moved on and as a force we are much more capable at deploying quickly if needed - the carrier will still take just as long though…
 
Today there is no chance, outside of some monumental **** up that is virtually impossible to comprehend, for Argentina to get a meaningful foot hold on the Falklands, certainly not like they did in 1982. Our ability to force project is vastly better today and we have a proper 'fast jet' capable airbase there now with proper front line Air to Air capability. Without any reinforcement the current air wing, if fully serviceable, could most likely deal with todays entire Argentinian airforce without help.

RAF Mount Pleasant is also much better protected and the forces down they're far batter equipped to deal with, what could only be, a vey small landing by Argentinian special forces. How they would get to the island without being apprehended is unclear and with a couple of subs down there you can pretty much deal with their tiny navy, which no longer has a carrier or anything modern. There sub force is pretty much finished and outside of them sinking the odd ship I can't see how they could get anywhere close to the Falklands intact.

Likelihood is they will get access to F16's I have read, more to protect South America from Chinese influence, which they would start to have if they were able to supply their fast jets to Argentina of course. With the F16's does come some genuine threat and capability still, but once more they would be in small numbers and you need far more than a few fast jets to take land.
 
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