Falklands WI - Airports on St. Helena and Tristan da Cunha, 1982

[Admiral Beez]

The closest British airport in the Falklands War was Ascension Island, located 6,100 km from the Falklands.

Let's add some additional options to the RAF:

1) St. Helena's new airport opens in 1981

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Helena_Airport This won't be a huge game changer, as it's only about 600 km closer to the Falkands than Ascension. However it gives more options.

2) 3,000m runway and airport at Tristan da Cunha.

The British territory of Tristan da Cunha is 4,002 km from the Falkland Islands, and 2,430 km from Saint Helena. This is within the one way range of the Avro Vulcan bomber, requiring fewer in-flight refueling, thus easing the demands on the Victors and allowing larger strikes.

Now, the terrain is difficult, so we'd need a very good reason for the UK gov't to invest in an airport here.

I suggest we go back to WW2 and have the gov't consider a Coastal Command base for tracking subs in the South Atlantic. That would give a foundation of a smaller WW2-era strip that could be expanded in the post war period as a bridge for shorter ranged aircraft between South America and Africa.

One benefit I see from an airport on Tristan de Cunha is the ability to rapidly reinforce the Falklands before the invasion when it appears talks with Argentina are breaking down. At the time, the only RAF transports that could land at Stanley were Hercules, but none of the RAF's Hercules were in-flight refueling capable (apologies if I have that wrong). The Hercules could make the flight from Tristan to Stanley and return. Tristan is also almost within the ferry range for the Harrier GR3, so with a single re-fuel inflight you could have a squadron of Harriers at Stanley.

Imagine the Argies' surprise when they invade and Gov't House is defended by 600 RMs and/or Paras as opposed less than 90.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Bump, no interest I suppose, but with all our Falklands threads recently, I thought I've give this one a last throw.

 

[trurle]

Most likely additional airport at closer range cancel Falkland War altogether. The Argentinian army would no longer consider the capture of Falklands a low-risk affair.

 

[Mumbles]

Imagine the Argies' surprise when they invade and Gov't House is defended by 600 RMs and/or Paras as opposed less than 90.

Not sure how that kind of reinforcement could be kept secret in a place like Port Stanley.

 

[pdf27]

An airport in Tristan (i.e. anything much bigger than a grass strip) is pretty much impossible thanks to there being nowhere to put it apart from the only agricultural land on the island. In any case a WW2 airfield would have been wiped out by the 1960s eruption, and with only 250 or so islanders it would never have been rebuilt - the FCO thought it would be abandoned after the eruption, so would never pay for a new airport.
St Helena really isn't a lot closer than Ascension (I think it's about 100 NM), so that doesn't help either.

The two things that could potentially help a lot are more and better tankers for the RAF (the first VC-10 tanker didn't fly until June 1982) and a better runway at Stanley. The only thing I can think of that would help with both would be adopting the VC-7 (V-1000) back in the day and converting it to the tanking role instead of bombers. That gives you a transport able to do Ascension-Stanley in one hop, and offload far more fuel at range than a Victor. That unfortunately requires the UK to have a lot more money back in the day, however, or the MAP programme (which paid for the original Valiant tankers in their entirety, killing off the V-1000 for the RAF) to be cancelled much earlier.