WEB SPECIAL - Falklands War

FALKLANDS WAR SPECIAL

The troop ship Canberra returns to Southampton following the British victory in the South Atlantic. Photo: Jonathan Eastland/AJAX.

To begin the final part of our Falklands War series, Peter Hore considers the long-term impact of the conflict on the Royal Navy and world affairs.

In April 1982, at the beginning of the Falklands War, the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Henry Leach, had told British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher: “If we pussyfoot in our actions and do not achieve complete success, in a few months we shall be living in a different country whose word counts for little”.

The Falklands War had lasted only a few weeks. War had never been officially declared and in some minds it had amounted to no more than a minor post-Colonial scrap. In reality it was an event that changed many things and had a great impact.

For a start, apart from lives tragically lost (255 UK & 750 Argentinean), the war had cost some £2 billion, most of which the Royal Navy spent on buying new equipment which otherwise it would not have been allowed.

Many lessons were learned, or re-learned. The Royal Navy had re-asserted itself as the world’s leading fighting fleet, one with combat experience that other navies were anxious to benefit from. Practical improvements included better damage control in warships, such as permanently rigged fire curtains, improved, more fire-resistant battledress, larger ammunition stocks, and closer cooperation between the navy, army and air force. Prior to the Falklands War divorce between the Royal Navy and its Royal Marines was looming.

The RMs were confined to tours of duty in Northern Ireland and practising for the defence of Norway against the Soviet Union (which many thought would be a futile mission if it ever happened). Neither of these roles contributed to the Royal Navy’s Mahanian concept of itself fighting a decisive battle in the North Atlantic against the Soviet fleet, and naval planners had even suggested the sacrifice of the Marines on the altar of budgetary purity. After the Falklands the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines realised that they needed each other, and since then have grown steadily closer together so that today the commander of the British fleet’s surface flotilla and the commander of the amphibious group are co-equals. One major, and immediate, effect of the war was a reversal of many aspects of the Knott defence review. Prior to April 1982, Defence Minister John Knott had decided, when pressed to reduce defence budget, that the Army’s major contribution to the central front in Europe should be maintained while the Navy, its potential battle in the Atlantic, and the concomitant duties which developed from it, should be cut. The most shocking aspect of his proposals was the loss of the Navy’s specialist amphibious shipping and its aircraft carriers. The Falklands changed the course of history for the RN’s capabilities. Today its amphibious shipping is expanding at a rapid rate and a pair of large aircraft carriers is to be built to replace the Invincible Class carriers that survived Knott’s axe.

Battered, but unbowed, the Type 42 air-defence destroyer HMS Glasgow comes alongside at Portsmouth Naval Base on her return from the Falklands War. Photo: Jonathan Eastland/AJAX.

Post-Falklands there was a growing realisation within the Navy that it had stated its case badly during the Knott defence review. Out of this sense of guilt grew the need to develop the necessary expeditionary warfare doctrine to justify a navy in terms of the modern strategic environment. It was successfully used to make the case for the Navy, and for expeditionary warfare in the key defence review of 1997.

More generally, a successful war gave Britain a renewed sense of self-confidence, and helped to define the nation, which, if it was beginning to lag behind Europe in other matters, still had world class armed forces.

This is a remarkable legacy, which has survived into the 21st Century. The current British administration seems to know, instinctively, that the Ministry of Defence will obey it and can be relied on to deliver success in a way that other government departments can only dream of.

Margaret Thatcher’s government was in its first term of office when the war broke out, and her rule was by no means firmly established. The successful outcome of the war undoubtedly played a major role in getting her re-elected for a second term of office. And finally, the Falklands War showed the Soviet Union that the West was no toothless tiger with an aversion to casualties, not when national interest and the rule of international law was at stake. Undoubtedly this had an effect on Soviet thinking. If a leading Western nation would fight over something like the Falklands, then war in Europe would be no pushover. With the solution of armed conflict closed to the Soviet Union, it had to turn inwards to find an answer to its economic and political woes. Three years after the Falklands War, Gorbachev came to power and started that introspective process, initiating the chain reaction that ended the Cold War. The Falklands was a remarkably influential war.

This summer I attended a conference at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, jointly sponsored by the British Army and Royal Navy to mark the 20th anniversary of the end of the Falklands War. The event was attended by many veterans of the war, including Henry Leach, and also by John Knott who gave a vigorous, but unconvincing, justification of the defence review which had done so much to encourage the Argentineans that they could invade without serious opposition. Old enemies like Mike Clapp, who commanded Britain’s amphibious shipping, and Horacio González, who was an Argentinean Air Force Mirage pilot, discussed tactics. González disclosed how weak the Argentinean air force really was, given only three weeks to train for an anti-shipping role that it had never previously expected to undertake. Animosity was entirely absent between all the former foes who gathered at Sandhurst - fighting men discussed their shared experience of war, happy to have survived so they could meet two decades on, and sincerely regretting the losses on both sides.

• For the rest of this article buy the Aug/Sept 2002 edition of WARSHIPs IFR magazine.