The Falklands war was raging 25 years ago. Tom Clonanreassesses the key military factors which led to Margaret Thatcher emerging as a clear winner
Twenty-five years ago this week, over three days of a desperately fought battle for control of the skies over the Falklands, the Argentine Air Force sank four British ships - HMS Ardent, HMS Antelope, HMS Coventryand the MV Atlantic Conveyor- in San Carlos Water. The British taskforce eventually won the air war by a whisper and managed to establish a beachhead at San Carlos.
After the battle for the Falklands was over, Admrl Sandy Woodward, commander of the 1982 British taskforce, admitted the conflict was "a lot closer run than many would care to believe".
As a Royal Navy commander, Woodward was very conscious of the role a jingoistic British media had played during the war in highlighting the successes of Britain's Royal Marine Commandos, Parachute Regiment, Scots Guards and Ghurkhas - all elite units of the British army - in the ground phase of the war. Gritty accounts written by some of the 29 journalists "embedded" with the taskforce described the desperate infantry battles at Goose Green, Darwin, Mount Kent, Mount Longdon, Two Sisters, Mount Tumbledown and Port Stanley as heroic, old-style infantry engagements.
These battles, whose names are etched into the British army's collective martial psyche, are often portrayed as the decisive elements of Margaret Thatcher's Falklands war.
British victory in the Falklands, however, was essentially decided by a narrow air superiority enjoyed by the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. It was also far from assured and the deployment of the taskforce - to a remote archipelago 13,000km (8,000 miles) from Britain - was at all times fraught and problematic. The vulnerability of the British taskforce is revealed in the casualty statistics.
In a relatively short engagement - 72 days - the British lost 255 soldiers and sailors, with a further 777 seriously wounded. The Argentines lost over 650 troops with many hundreds more wounded. Compared to the war in Iraq - where the British army has lost just 136 personnel in four years - the British attrition rate in the Falklands was high.
Most of the casualties inflicted on the British during the Falklands campaign were as a result of attacks on the taskforce from the Fuerza Aerea Argentina (FAA) - Argentina's air force. While the island's ground defences were weak and poorly deployed - consisting of a static force of approximately 10,000 poorly trained conscripts - the FAA was relatively well-equipped with sophisticated fighter and fighter bomber aircraft. These included French Super Etendard fighters, Israeli-manufactured Mirage III Interceptors, US-made A-4 Skyhawk fighter bombers and Argentine IA-58 Pucara attack aircraft.
Though outclassed by the British taskforce complement of Royal Navy Sea Harrier Jets and RAF Harrier jump jets - equipped with state-of-the-art, US-manufactured Sidewinder missiles - the FAA repeatedly penetrated the Royal Navy's formidable screen of anti-aircraft missile systems and defences.
During the most critical phase, as the British taskforce sought to establish a beachhead at Port San Carlos in mid-May, the FAA engaged in extraordinary bravery and tactical ingenuity to breach a substantial phalanx of British Rapier, Sea-Wolf and Sea-Dart anti-aircraft missile systems designed to protect the 65 vessels of the taskforce.
Gen Ernesto Crespo, the commander of the FAA unit attacking the British, formed a special unit of unarmed executive Lear-jets called the "Fenix Squadron" which would fly in formation and at high altitude from the Argentine mainland towards the British fleet. When the threat was detected on British radar, the taskforce would scramble its Harrier jets. Once the ruse was under way, the Argentine Lear-jets would break formation and race back for the safety of Argentine air space.
Meanwhile, squadrons of Argentine attack aircraft would deploy at low altitude from a different attack vector, flying at just 30km (100ft) above sea level for over 100 nautical miles - to avoid detection by taskforce radar systems - to suddenly appear over the taskforce at San Carlos Water (or "Bomb Alley" as it would become known by British personnel).
During this critical phase of the Falklands campaign, the FAA repeatedly attacked the British taskforce and sustained heavy losses. Over 50 per cent of Gen Crespo's aircraft and aircrews fell casualty to this concerted attempt to scupper this most crucial phase of the British invasion.
The Argentine effort almost succeeded. Equipped with only five Super Etendard aircraft and an arsenal of just five air-launched Exocet missiles, the Argentines launched their first missile attacks at the British taskforce on May 5th. Two missiles were launched at HMS Sheffield. One hit the target, sinking the British destroyer. Forced to flee the area immediately after the attack - beyond sight of the destroyer - the Argentine junta had no idea whether their Exocets had hit the target and had no vital bomb damage assessment data.
However, British media reporting of the event unwittingly provided Argentine forces with ample print and photo coverage of the bomb damage, vital intelligence unavailable by any other means - thus confirming the viability of the weapon. Further attacks by air-launched Exocet missiles crippled the MV Atlantic Conveyorat the height of attempts to establish the British beachhead on May 25th. The sinking of this key logistics vessel would have a profound impact on the way in which ground forces would conduct their infantry assaults later in the campaign.
Other bombing raids on the British fleet during early May also yielded vital intelligence to the FAA. On May 12th, bombing from the low altitude necessary to avoid radar detection, an Argentine Skyhawk dropped a 1,000lb bomb on HMS Glasgow.However, it didn't detonate as the fuse setting failed to take into account the low altitude and short time of flight of the bomb. The fact that the bomb had not armed itself fully by the time it had struck the vessel was reported in the British media.
This reportage and subsequent British media coverage of a further 12 unexploded bombs striking - and in some cases bouncing off British ships - ensured that the Argentine authorities adjusted their fuse settings accordingly. HMS Ardent, HMS Antelopeand HMS Coventrywere all sunk towards the end of May by Argentine aircraft deploying 1,000lb bombs with improving success.
As a result of the loss of vital transport and other supplies on the MV Atlantic Conveyor, British ground troops had to march on foot or "yomp" from one engagement to the next on the Falklands. There were many shortages of ammunition and supplies - even paper. Many British soldiers had all their paper and writing materials confiscated by desperate commanders who were forced to formulate, transmit and copy all orders in handwriting for the duration of the campaign.
Other equipment, such as computer-assisted-targeting systems for British artillery support, was also lost. Many units had to resort to pen-and-paper calculations and school-based trigonometry to calculate data for their close artillery support. As a direct result of the ingenuity of the Argentine air assaults on the taskforce, the infantry battles fought on Falklands soil were brutal, primitive affairs, fought on foot and often with forms of bayonet and hand-to-hand fighting not experienced by British troops since the first World War.
In terms of media relations, lessons learned by the British military during the Falklands war were incorporated into the British Army's so-called "Green Book" which set out the fledgling parameters for war reporting and embedding in the subsequent Gulf War and recent invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. The Falklands war was hard fought by both sides. Margaret Thatcher emerged a clear victor and was subsequently re-elected.
In contemplating the military and political lessons of the Falklands, the British government will no doubt be painfully conscious that successful media relations and news management ought to be accompanied by swift and unambiguous military victories.
• Dr Tom Clonanis The Irish Times Security Analyst. He lectures in the School of Media, DIT