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Another piece of aviation history
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AndrewFlannigan
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In my opinion, Black Buck summed up the whole mess.
It was a well planned, well executed attack that should never have been necessary - just like the rest of it. If just one of our nuclear attack submarines had shown up every few weeks in the South Atlantic, it's unlikely the Argentinians would have chanced their arm.
James Callaghan, in an uncharacteristically sensible mood, initiated Operation Journeyman in 1977, sending the nuclear submarine Dreadnaught and a couple of frigates to show the flag, following which Argentinian fuming quitened down a lot. However, in 1980, Nicholas Ridley's infamous "there is nothing we could do"speech encouraged Argentinian aggression.
It was all so wasteful and so unnecessary.
It was a well planned, well executed attack that should never have been necessary - just like the rest of it. If just one of our nuclear attack submarines had shown up every few weeks in the South Atlantic, it's unlikely the Argentinians would have chanced their arm.
James Callaghan, in an uncharacteristically sensible mood, initiated Operation Journeyman in 1977, sending the nuclear submarine Dreadnaught and a couple of frigates to show the flag, following which Argentinian fuming quitened down a lot. However, in 1980, Nicholas Ridley's infamous "there is nothing we could do"speech encouraged Argentinian aggression.
It was all so wasteful and so unnecessary.
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At the time of the war I took my mam and dad for a day out in Leeds and a Vulcan went over low with its bomb doors open. I've no idea what was going on, maybe something about Leeds looked like something in the South Atlantic they wanted to bomb. Who knows? The noise was terrific, everyone stopped and looked up.
Jelster
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In my opinion, Black Buck summed up the whole mess.
It was a well planned, well executed attack that should never have been necessary - just like the rest of it. If just one of our nuclear attack submarines had shown up every few weeks in the South Atlantic, it's unlikely the Argentinians would have chanced their arm.
James Callaghan, in an uncharacteristically sensible mood, initiated Operation Journeyman in 1977, sending the nuclear submarine Dreadnaught and a couple of frigates to show the flag, following which Argentinian fuming quitened down a lot. However, in 1980, Nicholas Ridley's infamous "there is nothing we could do"speech encouraged Argentinian aggression.
It was all so wasteful and so unnecessary.
Like almost everything in government, you take your chances, and hopefully come out the other side. Similar to the pandemic, we (the government) knew what it had to do, but didn't want to spend the money. That's how most governments tend to work, then try and put a plaster over it afterwards.
I was in the TA at the time and was mobilised to Germany to replace units that had been sent elsewhere. That was my 5 weeks of being in the army
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They were there
AndrewFlannigan
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Could you post a link to some evidence of that?
My understanding is that there was very little RN activity in the South Atlantic between Journeyman and the Belgrano incident. Along with the evident unwillingness of the UK to make its mind up about the Falklands, this appears to have been the trigger for Operation Rosario.
The deployments of Splendid, Supreme and Spartan appear to have been reactions to intelligence received as Rosario gathered pace.
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They were on their way but too late,
The British had already taken action prior to the 2 April invasion. In response to events on South Georgia, on 29 March, Ministers decided to send the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) Fort Austin south from the Mediterranean to support HMS Endurance, and the nuclear-powered fleet submarine HMS Spartan from Gibraltar, with HMS Splendid ordered south from Scotland the following day
But the Government had been warned
The UK was initially taken by surprise by the Argentine attack on the South Atlantic islands, despite repeated warnings by Royal Navy captain Nicholas Barker (Commanding Officer of the Endurance) and others. Barker believed that Defence Secretary John Nott's 1981 Defence White Paper (in which Nott described plans to withdraw the Endurance, the UK's only naval presence in the South Atlantic) had sent a signal to the Argentines that the UK was unwilling, and would soon be unable, to defend its territories and subjects in the Falklands.
