Falklands 1983

uk 75

uk 75

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It is one of the great what-ifs of recent history, what would have happened if Argentina had waited until John Nott's defence cuts had been implemented and invaded the Falklands in March 1983?
With only Illustrious working up and Ark Royal still under construction, the Royal Navy had sold Invincible (Australia), and Hermes (India) and scrapped Fearless and Intrepid as well as Sir Lancelot et al. The RAF had retired its Vulcans in readiness for Tornado. The Royal Marines and Army forces had also been reduced. The Ice Patrol ship Endurance had been sold to a private company in Chile.
The British Government were expecting Argentina to make such a move. It let slip that nuclear submarines were routinely operating in the South Atlantic. It had also been working to build a new airport for the island capable of taking long range jets. But work had been slow because of continuing budget cuts.
With only the Falklands Island Defence Force and a detachment of 16 Royal Marines plus a fishery patrol vessel bought from the RNR, the Argentine airborne forces who arrived in first light on 1April met hardly any opposition.
The Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, told the House of Commons that Britain had looked at its options and decided to accept Secretary of State Kirkpatrick's offer of mediation. The Leader of the Opposition, Michael Foot (to cheers from both sides of the House) said that the Party of Suez and Munich had sold the country cheap.(Looking at the Defence Secretary) he added, the small minded acountancy of a Tory Government was now being paid for by the Falkland Islanders. His party would not rest until the Fascist Junta in Buenos Aires..
 
So the reality is Argentina couldn't wait due to it's internal politics.
The good news is various US Establishment figures were sympathetic to Argentina.
 
"The good news is various US Establishment figures were sympathetic to Argentina."

Why is that 'good news'?
 
Perhaps best not to get into the weeds of the various political machinations (going to be very tinged with specific individuals perspectives).
One very specific thought that does come to mind is more Argentinian Super Etendards and Exocets....
 
CNH said:
"The good news is various US Establishment figures were sympathetic to Argentina."

Why is that 'good news'?
Click to expand...
If you're pro-Argentina and pro-Junta and or if you want to explore an AH scenario such as this, then that is a factor in it's favour.
Until Reagan directly intervened, US policy was at best fence sitting.

Anyway back to the plot.
With potentially a host more preparations for invasion and holding the islands and the UK divested of key assets. Seizure of the islands as per history would leave Thatcher with a FCO telling her there was nothing they could do and No.11 telling her it wasn't worth it anyway.
But under these circumstances no Admiral is coming to her rescue.

All that is left is sinking ships by submarine and fostering Chilean aggression. Which won't go down well in Washington.
 
The problem for the Argentines was the absence of a large airfield on the Falklands to fly in 707loads of troops and kit even after the airborne assault had taken Stanley.
The Argentine Navy could not leave its bases as the Royal Navy had let it be known nuclear subs were operating in the South Atlantic.
Although Mrs Thatcher agreed to mediation by Secretary of State Kirkpatrick who succeeded Al Haig, her new Defence Secretary (Nott resigned after the debate above), Michael Heseltine, flew to Washington with an ultimatum to the Reagan administration. The gist was, get Galtieri to withdraw or the UK would join France and leave the military structures of NATO. This would mean the removal of all US military facilities in Britain.
Cap Weinberger was sympathetic. Kirkpatrick threatened to resign if her Latin America was undermined. Reagan accepted her resignation reluctantly and George Schulz became Secretary. Two days later a full scale outbreak of "spontaneous" anti-Galtieri demonstrations persuaded the Junta to replace him with a younger US-trained Admiral.
In return for much needed US loans and investment the Argentines withdrew their paratroopers from Stanley and release Governor Hunt and the garrison from their "house arrest". The handover was supervised by men of the US 82nd Airborne.
Mrs Thatcher met Reagan a month later in Washington. Details of the Heseltine Ultimatum were not released until 2013
 
That would only strengthen Heseltine's pro-European views and his position inside the Tory party.
As was, until the Falklands Thatcher was looking ever more shaky and talk was of replacing her. Under the circumstances of the humiliation she could be replaced quickly.
 
The point of my rather sketchy political backdrop was to make two points as valid in 1983 as they had been in 1982.
The US would have had to choose between a key NATO ally and its Latin America policy at a time when the Soviet Union was still seen as a major threat.
Argentina might have been able to sieze the Falkland Islands but the Royal Navy could still have denied it access by sea. It could also have divided the Argentine Navy (likely to take the casualties) from the Army and Air Force.
 
I am not sure that one year would have made much difference to the response.

It has never been clear that Invincible's sale to Australia was a done deal and indeed it is more likely that it would not of happened. Few if any of the retired ships would have actually been scrapped by then, they may of been sat in a harbour under care and maintenance but they were unlikely to have been sold to a scrappie and torched within 12 months. Their resurrection would have taken longer but it would of been done.

Its not certain that by 1983 there would have been a backlash against the Nott Review and some of the more contencious elements may not have been carried out.

Was the Vulcan a big loss? Arguably a lot of military resource was taken up in prepaing those raids. Yes the psyhcological impact may of been greater than the material, but it wasn't a war winning impact.

On the other hand, Argentina would of had more Exocets and it would have taken delivery of some of the new German MEKO destroyers and corvettes so there would of been gains on that side. Ultimately the risks for Argentian were no less, any scale of defeat risked the whole endevour.
 
Mrs thatcher declares port Stanley as the capital of the U.K.

writes open letter in the enquirer, giving Argentina 48 hours to withdraw.

argentina doesn’t take the enquirer, Maggie launches 1 nuke, buenos Aries suffer more than 8.7 million casualties.

game over dude.
 
Fluff said:
Mrs thatcher declares port Stanley as the capital of the U.K.

writes open letter in the enquirer, giving Argentina 48 hours to withdraw.

argentina doesn’t take the enquirer, Maggie launches 1 nuke, buenos Aries suffer more than 8.7 million casualties.

game over dude.
Click to expand...
No because the old maxim is "one flies, they all fly".
Soviets will detect launch and assume a sophisticated first strike is in progress. They will launch....
 
zen said:
Fluff said:
Mrs thatcher declares port Stanley as the capital of the U.K.

writes open letter in the enquirer, giving Argentina 48 hours to withdraw.

argentina doesn’t take the enquirer, Maggie launches 1 nuke, buenos Aries suffer more than 8.7 million casualties.

game over dude.
Click to expand...
No because the old maxim is "one flies, they all fly".
Soviets will detect launch and assume a sophisticated first strike is in progress. They will launch....
Click to expand...
There’s an exception for the national capital.

or, we take the scampton gate guard, and do a free fall bombing run.
Same result.
 
More likely was the mad SAS mission in a Herc with the entire regiment and only rational if we've bribed Chile into making war on Argentina.
 
Fluff said:
zen said:
Fluff said:
Mrs thatcher declares port Stanley as the capital of the U.K.

writes open letter in the enquirer, giving Argentina 48 hours to withdraw.

argentina doesn’t take the enquirer, Maggie launches 1 nuke, buenos Aries suffer more than 8.7 million casualties.

game over dude.
Click to expand...
No because the old maxim is "one flies, they all fly".
Soviets will detect launch and assume a sophisticated first strike is in progress. They will launch....
Click to expand...
There’s an exception for the national capital.

or, we take the scampton gate guard, and do a free fall bombing run.
Same result.
Click to expand...

Perhaps suggesting (advocating?) what would have been one of the worst war crimes/ crimes against humanity in human history is in exceptionally bad taste and objectively a really bad idea (both in terms of behaviour on this forum and the rules of this forum, and in relation to it’s near impossibility and implausibility in this specific theoretical context)?
 
kaiserd said:
Fluff said:
zen said:
Fluff said:
Mrs thatcher declares port Stanley as the capital of the U.K.

writes open letter in the enquirer, giving Argentina 48 hours to withdraw.

argentina doesn’t take the enquirer, Maggie launches 1 nuke, buenos Aries suffer more than 8.7 million casualties.

game over dude.
Click to expand...
No because the old maxim is "one flies, they all fly".
Soviets will detect launch and assume a sophisticated first strike is in progress. They will launch....
Click to expand...
There’s an exception for the national capital.

or, we take the scampton gate guard, and do a free fall bombing run.
Same result.
Click to expand...

Perhaps suggesting (advocating?) what would have been one of the worst war crimes/ crimes against humanity in human history is in exceptionally bad taste and objectively a really bad idea (both in terms of behaviour on this forum and the rules of this forum, and in relation to it’s near impossibility and implausibility in this specific theoretical context)?
Click to expand...
Ok ok, geez, who needs the thought police.

the argies do get the enquirer, take the hint, and pull out.

U.K. throws one hell of a party, and we all lived happily ever after, and no one ever dies again.

ok now?
 
When it comes to tactical first use, that was Soviet doctrine during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Which is why it would have gone nuclear.
Allied views tended outside of MacArthur's "let's nuke the Norks and push on to Beijing!" to be to avoid using the damn things unless we really have to.
Well for 3 days anyway because then we'd only have nukes left.

Would we have nukes Buenos Aires?
No.
As I've pointed out, it's certain only to trigger WWIII.

But we'd certainly make Argentina's economy crash and maybe we'd give Chile lots of money to invade them.
Which tended to be British policy when we couldn't fight someone directly.

I don't think trotting out the idea of mass slaughter is wrong in the context of war. It's frankly part and parcel of the dirty business of fighting a war (second best option in war).
Just in this specific context it's not a runner.
 
Ok, seriously, what would be wrong with conventional attacks on the mainland? Accession with a sqn of Vulcans, phantoms for local AD, attack military airfields, ports etc first.

It’s not like Argentina could say they only attacked military targets, there were virtually none on the falklands, so tit for tat.

also could we drag up some old treaty ceding all of South America to us, in return for 20 slaves and 2 barrels of good rum?

there would be other options, at least to harass.
 
Given the amount of infrastructure required for the Black Buck raids (most of the tanker fleet to support one bomber), conventional attacks on the mainland would have been slow (1-2 bombers at a time), and likely to result in RAF losses (no fighter escort at that range). The effect would have been psychological only, and that could have gone either way: bombing a capital full of civilians is likely to strengthen resolve rather than dissuade the government.
 
Hobbes said:
Given the amount of infrastructure required for the Black Buck raids (most of the tanker fleet to support one bomber), conventional attacks on the mainland would have been slow (1-2 bombers at a time), and likely to result in RAF losses (no fighter escort at that range). The effect would have been psychological only, and that could have gone either way: bombing a capital full of civilians is likely to strengthen resolve rather than dissuade the government.
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Of course, but the first 1 or 2 would have been dramatic, and if you can tank a Vulcan, you can tank a phantom.

also possible would be one way missions, especially for harriers, launched from container ships, or frigates, eject, and head for chile. maybe even rato a hunter of a ramp? 12 of these in one wave, would swamp the limited AD of Argentina.

sas and sbs attacks, assassinations, ‘accidents’ for Argentinian civilian ships and aircraft. Sink the belgrano in port.


Of course we already had the exclusion zone, so the only supply route was air. 2 men, one anti materiel rifle, in one night you could shutdown their transport fleet.
U.K. would have the fleet to block main shipping lanes for Argentina, sure lots of noise at UN, but doable for a period.

also bombing cities, can go 2 ways,while one way is Dresden/Coventry, many casualties, but production continued, or Tokyo, burned whole city to ground. Pretty sure that stopped production and was noticed.

also depends on the government response, if your military can shoot some of the enemy down, then morale improves, an end in site maybe. If you cannot hit them, and they come every night, maybe the people decide a change is needed.

lots of options, if you have the will.
 
Fluff said:
Of course, but the first 1 or 2 would have been dramatic, and if you can tank a Vulcan, you can tank a phantom.
Click to expand...

I don't know how much one or two Phantoms could do against an entire airfield's worth of Argentine airforce...
 
I did read a book about HMS Conqueror some years ago where the author wrote that Mrs Thatcher told President Mitterrand that she was prepared to use a nuclear weapon if the task force took significant losses. This persuaded him to give the UK full information about Exocet. The author suggested that a second Polaris boat was available (rare for this to happen) and could have been sent to the South Atlantic. The target for a strike would have been Cordoba as it was a military base. The book was a library book and I may be misquoting.
As in 1991 when the Allies let Saddam know "through channels" that they would respond with nuclear weapons if he used WMD it is possible that Britain used the nuclear option as "disinformation".
I think that Argentina was more vulnerable to British pressure through the IMF and World Bank and the UK's importance to Washington as a base in the Cold War.
For what it is worth I do not think any British Prime Minister would use or threaten the use of the deterrent against a non-nuclear power.
 
uk 75 said:
For what it is worth I do not think any British Prime Minister would use or threaten the use of the deterrent against a non-nuclear power.
Click to expand...

Unless they tried to use Chemical or Biological weapons against British forces and/or civilians. In addition in the present day, nanoweaponry would also be likely be a red line.
 
Interestingly, the Argentine Army apparently intended to deploy mounted infantry in a patrol role; a provisional troop from the General Jose de San Martin Cavalry Regiment, aka the Regiment of Mounted Grenadiers (normally the Presidential Guard unit), was formed for duty in the Falklands but ultimately had to be held in reserve in Argentina because of a lack of available transport.
 
Some interesting thoughts on HMS Vanguard in a Falklands scenario (relevant time stamp below video):

01:31:27
 
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I heard there would be a US carrier or two available if needed. How real that is I do not know but Argentina would have been on the hind foot either way.
 
Foo Fighter said:
I heard there would be a US carrier or two available if needed. How real that is I do not know but Argentina would have been on the hind foot either way.
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It would have to be manned by US personnel who knew how to operate US standard equipment.
RN standards are not the same, and RN equipment wasn't the same either.
 
More Exocets and no Vulcans, mean a lot more losses on the British side as it would have freed the Argentinian Mirage IIIs for escort missions. and more British ships would have been crippled by Exocet strikes. Whether that would have been enough to turn the tide is a different question, as it was just giving the Argentinians reliable bomb fuses could have been enough to stem the British response.
 
I did a paper a few years back on the Falklands, looking very much at the Argentinian side, of which there is relatively little published.

It was quite clear the Vulcan's had nothing to do with the Mirage IIIs removal, it was (a) fears over countering Chile and (b) lack of infra to operate them.

Above all what came out was the total failure of thinking on the Argentinian side at any of the levels of war: Strategic, Operational or Tactical.

Strategic - completely underestimated the affront to the UK and that everyone would either turn a blind eye, or support them viz Argentina. Especially the Americans. Hadn't even considered having to plan for fighting for the Islands. They really expected to be able to waltz in and present a fait accompli and that would be the end of it, perhaps at worst with a UN force and transitional arrangement before they got complete control.

Operational - Air Force the junior service, not involved barely at all in the planning or initial Op, Army not a lot better. This was a Navy first, Army second, Air Force distant third, yet the actual fight was, and could only be, overwhelmingly by Air Force. Hence they had no plans, no infra, wrong aircraft and so on. Their logistics wasn't even a distant third in the planning and was abysmal, units literally almost starving. The actual defence was static, which reflected lack of vehicles and logistics but effectively sat and waited for the Brits to beat them. A key part of this was total failure to put an proper air component in the islands. Even a sqn of A4s with bomb stores would have changed it a lot, let alone Daggers there - again the Air Force hadn't been consulted or included, and so the planning to extend the runway (and they did have some kit) wasn't done/a priority. As we saw post war, it could have been done by them, and the Air Force knew very well the importance of that. Similarly they'd have expedited Exocet procurement if they'd known this was coming. This one failure probably doomed them as their air support was minimal, jets operating at end of their range with no margin for manoeuvring plus reduced bomb loads. Thus whilst the Brits never achieved Air Supremacy, they did achieve enough Air Superiority when and where they needed it.

Tactical - wrong troops, wrongly equipped with wrong logistics to support or change that. Some good outliers (tanking Etendard Exocet, countering Vulcan raids). They were right about low level attacks given how Sea Dart/Wolf dealt not too brilliantly with that, but they'd have been slaughtered at medium or higher. However they didn't join that up to arming their bombs! That is a sign of a very incompetent/non joined up engineering to aircrew talk if nothing else!

All in all, their Air Force and troop son the ground did a decent job, against horrifically bad Senior Leadership and planning. But of course that reflects that these were Leaders who sincerely thought the way to deal with difference was to chuck people out of aeroplanes, murder them generally and remove their children. So with absolute scum like that, you cant really expect inspired or even competent military planning, necessarily considering what if/problems you can't just murder away!

So, to get back to the point - 1983, not a huge change really, more Exocets, harder for Brits to generate task force (but not impossible), but given the road to war was scrap merchants and so on (to some extent, doing their own thing independent of the Junta), Britain may have started to take quiet steps to counter that and have something, anything in the pipeline to be there or reinforce it (ships sent south as before, additional troops), or even just some actual intelligence effort that would make the invasion less of a surprise.

Hmm this has ended up as a long response!
 
I am slightly disturbed to see something called warshipporn showing an image of the sinking Belgrano - 323 sailors went down with her.
 
Sad to see such a great warship go down, she was the first major US ship to sail from Pearl Harbor after the attack.
 
As other long dormant threads have been revived recently I'm joining in.

The consensus seems to be that Argentina would have been in a better position and the UK would have been in a worse position. E.g. Argentina would have had more AM39 Exocets, more Super Etendards to carry them and some of the Meko 360s would have been delivered. Meanwhile, the UK would have lost the Vulcans, Hermes, Invincible, Fearless and Intrepid.

Would there have been any improvements to HM Forces? Some that I can think of are that a few more ships armed with Sea Wolf (Type 22s & modernised Leander class) would have been in service along with a few more Sea Dart armed ships (Illustrious and Type 42s) and more Sea Harriers may have been available.

In total it's only a handful of ships, but relatively speaking would have been a big improvement over a year earlier as only 3 Sea Wolf armed ships (Broadsword, Brilliant & Andromeda) served in the OTL Falklands War and only 2 of the Sea Dart armed ships (Invincible & Exeter) which served in the conflict had the Type 1022 radar. Illustrious and the extra Type 42s would have had the Type 1022 radar too which would have been important because as far as I know it considerably improved the performance of Sea Dart, especially against low-flying targets.

Does any one know when the transfer of Invincible to Australia was to have taken place? For some reason I've got it into my head that the plan in 1981 was for Hermes to pay off early in 1983 to provide the crew for Illustrious and for Invincible to be retained until Ark Royal was completed circa 1984. Is that roughly correct? Because if it is it might have been possible to bring the recently decommissioned Hermes back into service so the task force would have had 3 aircraft carriers instead of 2.

Part of the OP.
uk 75 said:
With only Illustrious working up and Ark Royal still under construction, the Royal Navy had sold Invincible (Australia), and Hermes (India) and scrapped Fearless and Intrepid as well as Sir Lancelot et al. The RAF had retired its Vulcans in readiness for Tornado. The Royal Marines and Army forces had also been reduced.
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See above about Invincible, Illustrious and Ark Royal. IOTL Hermes wasn't sold to Indian until 1987. Fearless & Intrepid were reprieved early in 1982 so early in 1983 one would have been in commission as the Cadet Training Ship and the other would have been refitting or in reserve.

Discarding the Sir Lancelot class as part of the 1981 Defence Review is news to me. I thought they were still needed to support BAOR, which as far as I know was their "day job" and they were also needed to support the British forces to be sent to Denmark & Norway a mission that John Knott didn't cut. Please tell me more.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that the 1981 Defence Review didn't include cutting the Royal Marines and the Army was to have been increased. I may be wrong, but I thought John Knott decided that the UK's defence priorities were the Nuclear Deterrent, NATO's Central Front, the UK Air Defence Region & NATO Eastlant in that order and he allocated the £x billion that Geoffrey Howe told him he would have to spend accordingly.
 
Would the cuts to the Royal Dockyards and the RFA have been as important as the reduction in the number of warships? As I understand it what the former did in the OTL war was prodigious. Would they have been able to do it a year later? Would it have been possible to get the task force to the Falklands if the proposed cuts to the RFA had taken place?

Large numbers of British merchant ships were requisitioned in the OTL war, but the Merchant Navy was in steep decline too. Would enough ships of the right type have been available a year later? Behind it were the contracting British shipbuilding and ship repair industries. Would they have been as capable in 1983 as they were in 1982?
 
Foo Fighter said:
I heard there would be a US carrier or two available if needed. How real that is I do not know but Argentina would have been on the hind foot either way.
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LHA, yes, I doubt a carrier would have been made available.

=====

Probably the most effective threat that the UK could have is to tell the US "stay out of our way or we will withdraw from NATO and kick the US out of the UK entirely."

Because as I understand it, the US was leaning more towards the Argentine side of things in light of the Monroe Doctrine.
 
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zen said:
More likely was the mad SAS mission in a Herc with the entire regiment and only rational if we've bribed Chile into making war on Argentina.
Click to expand...
That operation as proposed was many things,rational was never one of them .
 
I never had bothered to check what was Argentina original plan, plotted during January - March 1982. Before the scrap merchants incident in South Georgia forced the Junta hand - to invading in March.

Check the attached file. Tons of interesting stuff I've found here and there.

Most salient points
-the Falklands invasion was to start on May 15, 1982 at the earliest and July 9 at the latest (Argentina independance day- not a coincidence)

-it was only a token effort (500 occupiers) to put the british in a "fait accompli"

-before and after that invasion would be a diplomatic offensive at the U.N and elsewhere

-the South Georgia scrap merchants were NOT part of Operation Alpha (Davidoff was all regular business, and lost everything)

BBC News - Scrap dealer who accidentally set off the Falklands War

news.bbc.co.uk news.bbc.co.uk

-operation Alpha (South Georgia) was entirely separated from Operation Azul / Rosario - the Falklands.
www.infobae.com

“Operation Alpha”, the Navy's plan to occupy the Georgia Islands that started the Falkland War

On March 19, 1982, a group of scrap dealers from businessman Constantine Davidoff arrived in Port Leigh in Georgia. With the raising of the Argentine flag, the incident began that led to the recovery of the Malvinas and the armed conflict with Great Britain. The idea of seafarers that “London...
www.infobae.com www.infobae.com

-even if it could draw British attention... on the Falklands plan (exactly what happened OTL, after March 19 !)

-prefered date was July 9 or later, right in the middle of winter to piss the british even more

-they hoped Nott would make enough damage, while they would reinforce (Super Etendard and Exocets, you guess)

Except for Anaya being a massive idiot about Alpha vs Azul, the initial plan was not that bad.
 

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