Caporegime
True,and no ive not been there,I dont like maggie thatch either but thats my personal opinion
Movies about The Falklands War?
- Thread starter Arthur Hucksake
- Start date
True,and no ive not been there,I dont like maggie thatch either but thats my personal opinion
I think that's based on just one source and it is very dubious/very likely to be untrue - also similar nonsense about Exocet "codes" etc...
The French behaved like complete ****s tbh...
Soldato
There was remarkably little support and a measure of opposition for the UK to take military action to reclaim the islands. Despite Thatcher and Reagan's close relationship, the US was very cool on the matter and there was limited international support. Most of the UK had never heard of the Falklands before this point, and there was not initially much domestic support to send the 'armada'. Until the point that it departed and a wave of patriotism and flag waving began, helped by a huge propaganda campaign.
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Thatcher 'threatened to nuke Argentina'
This article is more than 14 years old
Margaret Thatcher forced François Mitterrand to give her the codes to disable Argentina’s deadly French-made missiles during the Falklands war by threatening to launch a nuclear warhead against Buenos Aires, according to a book.
Jon Henley in Paris
@jonhenley
Tue 22 Nov 2005 01.18 GMTFirst published on Tue 22 Nov 2005 01.18 GMT
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Margaret Thatcher forced François Mitterrand to give her the codes to disable Argentina's deadly French-made missiles during the Falklands war by threatening to launch a nuclear warhead against Buenos Aires, according to a book.
Rendez-vous - the psychoanalysis of François Mitterrand, by Ali Magoudi, who met the late French president up to twice a week in secrecy at his Paris practice from 1982 to 1984, also reveals that Mr Mitterrand believed he would get his "revenge" by building a tunnel under the Channel which would forever destroy Britain's island status.
The book, to be published on Friday, is one of several on France's first Socialist president to mark the 10th anniversary of his death on January 8 1996. Despite a now tarnished reputation, he remains a source of fascination for the French in general and the left in particular. Rendez-vous provides revealing insights into the man's mysterious character, complicated past, paranoia and power complex, but nothing as titillating as his remarks on the former British prime minister.
"Excuse me. I had a difference to settle with the Iron Lady. That Thatcher, what an impossible woman!" the president said as he arrived, more than 45 minutes late, on May 7 1982. "With her four nuclear submarines in the south Atlantic, she's threatening to unleash an atomic weapon against Argentina if I don't provide her with the secret codes that will make the missiles we sold the Argentinians deaf and blind." He reminded Mr Magoudi that on May 4 an Exocet missile had struck HMS Sheffield. "To make matters worse, it was fired from a Super-Etendard jet," he said. "All the matériel was French!"
In words that the psychoanalyst has sworn to the publisher, Meren Sell, are genuine, the president continued: "She's livid. She blames me personally for this new Trafalgar ... I was obliged to give in. She's got them now, the codes."
Mr Mitterrand - who once described Mrs Thatcher as "the eyes of Caligula and the mouth of Marilyn Monroe" - went on: "One cannot win against the insular syndrome of an unbridled Englishwoman. Provoke a nuclear war for a few islands inhabited by three sheep as hairy as they are freezing! But it's a good job I gave way. Otherwise, I assure you, the Lady's metallic finger would have hit the button."
France, he insisted, would have the last word. "I'll build a tunnel under the Channel. I'll succeed where Napoleon III failed. And do you know why she'll accept my tunnel? I'll flatter her shopkeeper's spirit. I'll tell her it won't cost the Crown a penny."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/22/books.france
Well he was right in one part, they did get their tunnel.
This article is more than 14 years old
Margaret Thatcher forced François Mitterrand to give her the codes to disable Argentina’s deadly French-made missiles during the Falklands war by threatening to launch a nuclear warhead against Buenos Aires, according to a book.
Jon Henley in Paris
@jonhenley
Tue 22 Nov 2005 01.18 GMTFirst published on Tue 22 Nov 2005 01.18 GMT
Shares
441
Margaret Thatcher forced François Mitterrand to give her the codes to disable Argentina's deadly French-made missiles during the Falklands war by threatening to launch a nuclear warhead against Buenos Aires, according to a book.
Rendez-vous - the psychoanalysis of François Mitterrand, by Ali Magoudi, who met the late French president up to twice a week in secrecy at his Paris practice from 1982 to 1984, also reveals that Mr Mitterrand believed he would get his "revenge" by building a tunnel under the Channel which would forever destroy Britain's island status.
The book, to be published on Friday, is one of several on France's first Socialist president to mark the 10th anniversary of his death on January 8 1996. Despite a now tarnished reputation, he remains a source of fascination for the French in general and the left in particular. Rendez-vous provides revealing insights into the man's mysterious character, complicated past, paranoia and power complex, but nothing as titillating as his remarks on the former British prime minister.
"Excuse me. I had a difference to settle with the Iron Lady. That Thatcher, what an impossible woman!" the president said as he arrived, more than 45 minutes late, on May 7 1982. "With her four nuclear submarines in the south Atlantic, she's threatening to unleash an atomic weapon against Argentina if I don't provide her with the secret codes that will make the missiles we sold the Argentinians deaf and blind." He reminded Mr Magoudi that on May 4 an Exocet missile had struck HMS Sheffield. "To make matters worse, it was fired from a Super-Etendard jet," he said. "All the matériel was French!"
In words that the psychoanalyst has sworn to the publisher, Meren Sell, are genuine, the president continued: "She's livid. She blames me personally for this new Trafalgar ... I was obliged to give in. She's got them now, the codes."
Mr Mitterrand - who once described Mrs Thatcher as "the eyes of Caligula and the mouth of Marilyn Monroe" - went on: "One cannot win against the insular syndrome of an unbridled Englishwoman. Provoke a nuclear war for a few islands inhabited by three sheep as hairy as they are freezing! But it's a good job I gave way. Otherwise, I assure you, the Lady's metallic finger would have hit the button."
France, he insisted, would have the last word. "I'll build a tunnel under the Channel. I'll succeed where Napoleon III failed. And do you know why she'll accept my tunnel? I'll flatter her shopkeeper's spirit. I'll tell her it won't cost the Crown a penny."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/22/books.france
Well he was right in one part, they did get their tunnel.
Since the Exocert missiles actually worked the story is clearly false. And TTBOMK you could turn an Exocet off in flight.
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The USA gave help via spy-planes photos and their news team were allow in to report the conflict and were said to gather more than the news and report back with it.
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I am not saying it is true or false but it was mentioned above and I had not heard it for years, the fact is nobody will know but a few select what happened and they are mostly dead now.
Well, to be blunt, nobody would want to see it.
You see the only people that would really be interested in the idea of a film about the Falklands conflict (it wasn't actually a war, that's just how we refer to it) would be the British, as the Argentinians wouldn't want to sit through a two hour film of their soldiers dying and their military losing and as far as the rest of the world is concerned it was a an event of minor importance.
Now that does leave the British audience, and you can make a lot of money by making films just for the British audience, however therein lies the second issue, reality. You see the British audience would want to see the film where we sail down with our mighty navy, trash the Argies, sink their flagship and liberate our protectorate. Not the reality where we lost our islands and would have been forced to surrender them permanently had it not been for the massive assistance we received from our French and US allies who made it possible for us to retake them (not something that would go down well with Brexit going on).
So yeah, if you make the film realistic then it will tank and you will upset a lot of overly patriotic people, if you make it an action movie then not many people will want to see it and you risk seriously offending those involved. Very little scope for profit, very high scope for a PR disaster.
To be very blunt the BBC didn't want to make any film that showed Thatcher in a good light.
Yes, how dare they send us over a squadron of Dassault aircraft like the ones Argentina used complete with pilots specifically so that our boys could practice combat against the very planes they would face (while the Argentinian pilots had never even seen a harrier) and be trained by the Mirage pilots on their weaknesses. And the further audacity to give us highly classified information on the Exocet and how best to counter/impede it, something that damaged their position as an arms dealer. The dirty frogs...
And those Yanks too! first the give us the fuel we need to get our Vulcan there, and to operate our task force. THEN they go and give us the latest bleeding edge revision of the sidewinder missile so we have a further edge, hell they were so scummy that due to the shortage of the missile (as it was only just in production) they were even taking them off in service US aircraft to send them to us! The ***s...
Shock as author makes up nonsense to sell a book
Commissario
It's awful. It got slated by SF.
Caporegime
I enjoyed it.
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Same here, good movie but some may be expecting Hollywood action movie type viewing not realism.
What do the yanks have to do with my comments? Nice attempt at a straw man there... Yes the French did help the UK, they also required a fair bit of lobbying/pressure to try and curtail any further help from being given to the Argies.
Nice of the French Engineers to fix problems with the Exocet missiles and get them working on the Argie planes, they were pretty key bits of equipment for them and cost some British ships and the lives of various service personnel, without that French team they'd not have got them working. Of course former French government officials deny knowledge of this but it turned out one the the Engineers was an agent for the French intelligence service.
Nice of the French to not reveal how many missiles they'd sold initially, it was only after HMS Sheffield was sunk that they finally confirmed they'd received an order for 10 and had supplied 5.
Nice of the French to be planning to sell 4 more missiles to
Also good job some Super Entards were spotted in Peruvian colours at the Dassault Factory else they might have been shipped to
I think this is on point.
Caporegime
Yeah I did figure the code stuff to be balls. As you say only ever seen it in one source also.
Warshots do not have remote range safety devices for obvious reasons.
Comedy value, the nonsense you spout about the French is usually accompanied by nonsense about the Americans, hence it's usual to mock both together.
That's not what a straw man is lol.
Not really, as an EU/NATO ally they were pretty much instant in their cutting of ties to Argentina and their support for us.
You're referring to Dassault employees who had worked/lived in Argentina for years, it's sad that they chose to break the law and their orders in order to help their friends but it's no fault of the French as a whole.
Would have been nice if true
Would have been nice if true, and posting an edited excerpt from an official document in order to pervert the context doesn't make it true. The only reason we knew of the danger of Exocet's making their way to Argentina via Peru is because the French warned us that they suspected Peru would violate their contract and ship them to a third party hence why they had refused to give them the missiles and sent their ship away empty (as detailed in the part of the report you redacted). Hence why the report also states that as a result of that fear France had halted shipments to Peru until after we retook the Falklands, despite legal pressure from Peru and the fear of losing their military contacts throughout South America (and pretty much begs them to tell them when we think we will have the islands back by so they can make arrangements).
The part you posted is essentially Thatcher trying to statesman by strongly wordily asking him to do the thing he's already informed her he will be doing
Oh, and if you read the rest of the document you will see the part where the government are mad at Israel because instead of stopping arms sales to Argentina they have stated shipping them by air instead to get them there faster, but hey it's more fun to try and paint the French as bad guys right?
Soldato
But it is the fault of the French government (which also owned a majority share in the contractor) for doing nothing about it and still employing them. It's disgusting and British troops are dead because of those technicians and the faults they rectified.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17256975
And how exactly do you propose the French government should have stopped them from doing something they had already forbidden them to do, considering they were 11,000km away and had no clue it was happening?