HMS EAGLE in the Falklands
- Thread starter flasheart
- Start date
I enjoyed this thread very much and happened to come upon this video in youtube.
The scenes in the video are very similar to the thread titled: "Battle of Falklands Island Part 2 and 3".
The Nimrod aircraft discovering an enemy ship and the buccaneers launching the Martel Missiles by flying below radar level.
I really enjoyed the thread thus far and the video made it even more real.
Keep up the good work!!!!
The scenes in the video are very similar to the thread titled: "Battle of Falklands Island Part 2 and 3".
The Nimrod aircraft discovering an enemy ship and the buccaneers launching the Martel Missiles by flying below radar level.
I really enjoyed the thread thus far and the video made it even more real.
Keep up the good work!!!!
I will never undertand how the UK, a nation that depends entirely on the sea, dropped this capability. Bad enough loosing the Bucanner, but then not fiting the Tornado with the Sea Eagle...
SsgtC
Banned
When your best friend in the whole wide world has a bigger Navy than the next 12 navies combined, sea control and anti-shipping strikes become rather superfluous.
Zen9
Banned
Until the day they say you're not their best friend and you're not worth helping on the matter in hand and suddenly you're right up the river without a paddle!
Sea Eagle was integrated with, and carried operationally by Tornado - it was the sole reason for the GR.1B's existence as a sub - type.
Flasheart, very well done timeline.
Wondered if you were familiar with the documentary Galahad . Recently watched this on Amazon Prime, thought it was well done, highlights some of the problems dealt with in this TL in terms of training, logistics, and especially command/communications - a real tragedy what happened.
We're on our own. We're playing for time and it's running out
Port Stanley, 24th May
Why wouldn’t the bastards just come and get on with it! Brigadier Menendez having locked himself in his office in government house (formally occupied by Governor Rex Hunt) allowed himself a brief moment to vent his frustrations and despair while no one was able to see him before working to pull himself back together. He was a big believer in the necessity of commanders maintaining appearances in front of the men. Keeping a stiff upper lip as his adversaries might say. He was worried that if the mood of gloom and despondency prevalent in his headquarters began to spread, he would have an even more serious morale problem than the one he was already struggling with and possibly mutinous or defeatist troops. There was nothing he hated more than his current feeling of impotence regarding his situation. In a way it almost made him feel like a child who just had to sit and be quiet while the adults were talking. Those adults being the British who very clearly held the initiative now and his superiors back on the mainland who in his opinion seemed to be becoming more distant and detached from the situation on the Malvinas.
Its often said that the waiting is the worst part of any conflict. While he had always seen the reasoning behind this argument and had agreed with it, Menendez was fast learning that it was one of those things that could only be properly understood by those who have experienced it.
He was starting to believe that the British were playing mind games with him as some form of psychological warfare. If they were it was definitely working. It had been 3 days now since the long-awaited British landing had occurred. A lot had happened since then but Menendez and his headquarters had had almost no influence on it. The first few hours had been spent on reconnaissance and trying to re-establish contact with the local forces based in and around Fanning head. The first instanced had met with a little success in that they had been able to confirm that there was indeed a British landing underway though that was all and even obtaining this information had been a real skin of their teeth affair for the helicopter crew involved. The attempts at re-establishing contact with local forces had been mostly unsuccessful. All they had been able to manage was intermittent radio contact with someone claiming to be survivor of a firefight at Fanning Head who passed on information about the disposition of British forces. It hadn’t been possible to completely verify this man’s story and eventually even he had stopped responding. This and the fact coupled with the inability to establish radio contact on any frequency led the grim conclusion that something nasty had indeed befallen the local forces in the area.
Next up had come the Air Force operation upon which so much had depended on. This was the point at which even the mainland had stopped telling the hole truth. While they had transmitted a detailed post battle assessment including the fact that most of the ships hit had been warships as opposed to troop transports whenever Menendez had enquired about losses or the strength of their own forces or the possibility of follow up strikes, he had either received evasive answers or been met with silence. While he was aware that the air attacks had gone badly, he got the sense that the mainland was trying to keep the in the dark regarding just how badly. Then the waiting had begun.
The British were expected to move eastwards towards Port Stanley which was the only real strategic objective on the Island but thus far there hadn’t been any sign of this happening yet. The vast majority of the Argentine forces were deployed in the mountains to the south and west of Port Stanley to form a defensive perimeter. The Only other significant concentration of forces was at Goose Green on the choke point between East Falkland and Lafonia to the south. The problem was there was a lot of ground between the outer edge of this perimeter and the British landings at San Carlos. With this and now total British air dominance there was no real time intelligence of British dispositions or movements.
For all they new the British could be on their way right at this very moment or something one staff officer had suggested which if anything was probably worse, taking their time to get themselves fully organised and prepared and avoiding rushing into anything.
The art of working out what intelligence an enemy has on you is a difficult one but always important. British aircraft had been sighted flying plenty of recon sorties and now doubt had plenty of gun camera footage from the numerous airstrikes that his forces had been subjected to. Based on plotting the areas where British aircraft had either attacked or flown low and straight over on probable photo runs the intelligence staff reckoned that the British probably had a fairly good idea of where the Argentine forces were. Therefore, it stood to reason that they must be aware that there were no Argentines anywhere near the beach head so probably felt secure enough to take their time with things.
Despite the seeming lack of movement from the British at San Carlos they clearly were not sitting idle. Two nights ago, the garrison at Goose Green had suffered a heavy air attack. The strange thing about this was that the air force personnel who had witnessed the attack were adamant that rather than an attack by multiple low flying aircraft as had been seen so many times previously the pattern, concentration and number of bombs that had hit them this had to have been from a high flying heavy bomber. Even more interestingly this had been seemingly the only British sortie that night. None of the carrier aircraft had been sighted anywhere. It made no sense. Surely with presumably at that point only a limited number of forces ashore the British would have felt themselves more vulnerable and be hitting the Argentine forces with everything they had to try and prevent a counter attack.
Regarding the aircraft that had likely delivered the strike against Goose Green the only heavy bomber that the British were known to still posses was the Avro Vulcan.
when he had been asked about the possibility of a Vulcan strike the air force intelligence officer had been somewhat taken aback. He had concluded that while such a raid was perhaps feasible it would have to have been an extremely risky world record breaking mission. There was no obvious reason why the British would take such a risk when they had two aircraft carriers nearby that had already shown themselves capable doing the job. The only reason he could think of was perhaps the British ships were beginning to exhaust their supply of air munitions. The number of craters on this island certainly supported this hypothesis. If true Menendez wondered how he might exploit this. The only other theories offered up were fairly unlikely such as the carriers sinking and no one noticing.
Regardless of why the British had done it the raid on Goose Green had inflicted a lot of damage. Still reeling from the SF raid on the night of the 20th/21st and numerous previous air attacks Lt Col Piaggi had reported that his force was now pretty much combat ineffective. While thought had been given to the possibility of his force mounting an attack on the British flank his force had never really been in a position to do this even before the Vulcan Strike. The pan had been for his force to appear to pose a threat to the British flank and force them to tie down forces by covering Goose Green. From a tactical point of view it was reckoned that either the British had declined to do this and had intended to destroy the Goose Green garrison from the air to remove this threat or were attempting to soften them up in preparation for some sort of advance southwards.
Horrifyingly the raid on Goose Green hadn’t been the only occurrence that night.
With the British now known to be between the transmitters in Port Stanley and the mainland extremely strict radio security protocols were being used. It stood to reason that the nation that had broken the enigma code, inspired James Bond and had for years been engaged in a battle of wits with the Soviets must have one hell of a SIGINT capability compared to anything that Argentina had encountered before. It was almost a certainty that if they so wished to the British would be perfectly able to intercept communications between the Malvinas and the mainland and it had to be assumed would ultimately be able to break Argentina’s military codes which would be much more primitive than the Soviet codes the British were used to.
This added to the general sense of isolation felt by Menendez as the number of radio communications had been reduced to the bare minimum and their content carefully censored as a way of minimizing any potential intelligence the British could glean from SIGINT.
This further isolated the outlying garrisons and positions as the routine check in’s and status reports had been halted and units had been ordered to transmit only when they had vital information that they needed to pass on. It wasn’t so much of a problem for the units in the mountains around Port Stanley as the signal troops had provided communications in the form of field telephones using landlines but further afield it was an issue including Pebble Island. Last night and urgent message had come through from the mainland demanding an urgent update on the status of the Pebble Island garrison and air field. Amazingly the message stated the Chilean TV and radio were claiming that the British had captured the island. Attempts by both Menendez’s HQ and the mainland to establish contact with anyone on the island was met with only static. This was seriously worrying. It may be that the British were now jamming radio frequencies or it could be that they had indeed taken the island. As time went by and more and more radio calls went unanswered while calls to other units received timely and clear replies this last possibility became more and more likely. Again, this was just completely unexpected as Pebble Island was in the complete opposite direction from where the British were expected to go and the constant bombing had petty much put the airfield out of action anyway. The only way such a move would make any tactical sense was if the British were attempting to remove anything they deemed to be a local threat in preparation for whatever they had planned next.
It was the not knowing what had happened and inability to find out that had had a severely demoralising effect on Menendez’s staff. Whereas it was fairly obvious what had happened to the Fanning Head garrison the only big unknown there was the status of the individual men. If something had happened at Pebble Island how had could it have been that no one was able to send a message calling for help?
Last night these questions had been answered in possibly the most brutal and stomach churning way possible. The Vulcan had made another appearance. This time over the area of Port Stanley. This time however rather than dropping bombs it had dropped bundles of leaflets.
it was these leaflets and the messages they conveyed and the inability of the officers and military police to prevent the men reading them that was giving Menendez serious cause for concern. A selection of these leaflets covering all of three of the different designs that had thus far been identified had been a topic of conversation in the meeting that had been held earlier that morning.
The most worrying and disturbing leaflet was the one that had provided proof that Pebble Island airfield had indeed been captured by the British.
The leaflet was double sided. On one side was a picture of a man wearing the uniform of a Corporal Second class sat on the ground with his hands on his head and a look on his face indicating a man in shock. Either side of him were what appeared to be two British soldiers although only their legs, boots and muzzles of their rifles were visible. The intelligence analyst who had examined the photos was based upon the camouflage patterns and rifles certain that these were British soldiers. The caption written in Spanish had read: “This is Corporal Roberto Aztiz. His nightmare is over now. He will sleep somewhere dry, eat something warm and see his family again. Be smart, be like Bob” The leaflet had also included his service number and a crosscheck of personnel files and records and interviews with men who knew this man had confirmed that the man in the photo was indeed Corporal Second Class Aztiz who had been based on Pebble Island. This confirmation that the garrison had been overrun was bad enough but on the other side of the leaflet was something that had made Menendez almost vomit when he saw it and had shocked him with how macabre the British were being.
The photograph showed two dead bodies in a dugout. Again, both of these men had been identified. The first body had a clearly visible face and had been identified as Lt Ricardo Marega who appeared to have been killed by shot through the head or struck by shrapnel. The second had been identified as the airfields naval commander who appeared to have been killed as a result of multiple shrapnel injuries. He certainly wasn’t a pleasant site to look at. Again, both men’s name and service numbers were listed but this time the caption simply read “Be smart, don’t be like these men”.
The second leaflet design was single sided and showed a photo of a group of Gurkha soldiers around a stone wheel sharpening some fearsome looking machete like knives and smiling at the camera. The caption simply read “Guess who’s coming to dinner”.
Luckily the average Argentine conscript probably wouldn’t know what a Gurkha was and would probably wonder why they were seemingly now fighting with the Chinese. Unfortunately, the one’s that did along with the officers probably probably would be disturbed by this leaflet and would put the rumour mill into overdrive. Fear could be extremely contagious in situations like this.
The final design was obviously aimed at the civilian population with the message being written in English superimposed over a British Flag. The message read “Keep calm and carry on. Your country is coming for you”.
Before leaving his office for a meeting to decide what their next moves should be Menendez decided to take a walk around Stanley to calm himself down and get a feel for the current state of morale amongst the men, but not before doing something first. The British Governor who had occupied this office before him had been kind enough to leave behind some rather nice bottles of scotch whisky. Menendez had been planning to use these to toast the victory that he had been working so hard for. Now he was reduced to using them every now and then to steady his nerves.
Walking around the town Menendez got a general sense of morale as being somewhere between fear, despondence and grim determination. Certainly, the initial sense of adventure and patriotic enthusiasm was a distant memory even before the leaflet drop which had clearly made things worse. Not helping was the military hospital which as a result of the number of casualties caused by the almost constant bombing and naval shelling had been expanding again and again and wounded men were now housed in the church, school and pretty much every public building greatly irritating the locals. Something Menendez was sure he and many men would be having nightmares about in later life was the sight of the rows of wounded men often with limbs missing crying out for help or morphine while they waited outside the hospitals for their turn to be operated on by the overworked doctors that were simply to few in number. Far too many of them hadn’t lived long enough and were now buried in the local churchyard. The Argentine forces had been operating a policy of rotating personnel out of the mountains and into the town to be rested but as the bodies both living and dead had started to pile up in the hospital some men seemed to be keener to remain at the front.
As for the civilian population the ungrateful bastards had yet to say thank you for their liberation from the foreign oppressors in London and return to the Argentine Fatherland. Their attitude until now had been mostly surely bordering on outright hostility. Since the leaflet drop, they were the only people on this half of the island walking around with smiles on their face. While there hadn’t been any acts of outright resistance there had been a lot of non-cooperation and acts of passive resistance. Things such as door slamming, refusing to converse with Argentines and ignoring the instructions to drive on the right-hand side of the road. Indeed, Menendez’s attempt to rename Port Stanley Puerto Argentino seemed to have caused offense and resulted in a spree of vandalism as signs were removed or graffitied. The military police and Menendez’s staff had been going to great lengths to ensure that there were no acts of retribution, looting or any other crimes however minor inflicted against the civilian population. Any such acts could easily gift the British a propaganda victory and destroy and sympathy for Argentina in this conflict. Furthermore, there was now an underlying concern amongst the officers of what the British may do to them if they ever fell into their hands following any such incidents.
Returning to his HQ Menendez and the other officers again poured over the various maps and reviewed the situation. The main topic of discussion was the disposition of their own forces. The problem was being attackers who definitely held the initiative the British could attack anywhere they chose and concentrate their forces where as the Argentines had to spread out their forces to cover all possible angles of attack. The Argentine commanders had long been aware of the capabilities of his own forces relative to the British which was why they had opted for a dug in defensive strategy taking advantage of the favourable terrain over a more complex campaign of manoeuvre. Thus far there had only been two incidents where Argentine and British ground forces had come into direct contact. Fanning Head and Pebble Island. The problem was there was almost no information regarding these engagements to work with but there was one conclusion that could be drawn. While their strategy could always change, they seemed to prefer to isolate and overwhelm individual troop concentrations. It made sense that they might opt for something like this such as taking individual mountains one at a time when attempting to penetrate the perimeter around Stanley rather than a costlier head on fight. The best defence against this would be to ensure that fighting positions were sufficiently strong enough to avoid being overwhelmed and where possible positioned somewhere where they could be supported or reinforced by other units.
there were some units at his disposal in which Menendez had much more confidence. The 601st and 602nd Commando companies were made up of well trained professionals, had a wide skillset and were certainly competent even by the standards of special forces.
It was decided to use these men to form an outer picket line and to use small teams of them for reconnaissance purposes further beyond the defensive perimeter and further into what was now effectively now mans land. It was vital that every effort be made to identify the British direction of advance. The outer picket would be based on Mount Kent and Mount Challenger. These mountains were the furthest west and therefore directly in the most likely path of the British. They were currently being held by 4th Infantry Regiment. With the regiments other responsibilities and casualties sustained so far it was felt that it was spread to thinly and so would be pulled back from Mount’s Kent and Challenger in order to strengthen its positions further back which were judged as more easily defendable.
The Commando companies would take over 4th Regiments positions. Their objective when the British eventually came would not be to stand and fight but to glean whatever intelligence they could about the attacking force, hopefully surprise and inflict losses on the British before withdrawing back to reinforce the line infantry regiments.
The British special forces raid on Goose Green a few nights ago had inflicted significant losses on the Argentines and made them feel like fools as they wasted time chasing after shadows and preparing to fight an invading force that wasn’t even there. Two could play at that game.
Libertador Building, Buenos Aries
Brigadier wasn’t the only senior Argentine officer beginning to feel despair at his current predicament. In Buenos Aries the President of Argentina Lieutenant General Leoplodo Galtieri was an increasingly worried man. He’d always felt himself as first and foremost the most senior officer in and professional head of the Argentine Armed Forces. It just so happened that in this age of military rule within the country the job also included president of the nation within its remit. He hadn’t even particularly wanted to be a world leader. In the same way that he had been promoted through seniority (and granted the removal of a few rival generals) he had been promoted into the role of president rather than having been voted in or seizing power. In fact, since the military had seized power 6 years ago and begun what they called the National Reorganisation Process Galtieri was the third occupant in the role of president and supreme commander. Unfortunately, it was looking like he would be remembered as the one who had brought disaster and ruin upon the nation. Even before he had assumed power the situation in the nation had been looking grim. The economy was tanking, the military government was still embroiled in the so called Dirty War as it engaged in an endless struggle to root out and eliminate political dissidents, left wing agitators, communists, anyone associated to closely with the previous Peron led government and pretty much anyone the military authorities felt were even a slight threat. The number of people “disappeared” (incarcerated in a now nationwide network of concentration camps or in some cases thrown out of aeroplanes into the Atlantic where no one would ever find the bodies) had eventually reached into the tens of thousands. Even the interrogations that had originally started out as a way of gathering intelligence had eventually morphed into widespread torture for the sake of torture.
All of this had made for an extremely unhappy population and things had reached the point where the military junta was seriously concerned that it might be overthrown or face a rebellion. The solution to this threat had been to attempt to unite the populace by liberating the Malvinas from the British. While this had worked at first, they had committed a cardinal sin in the rules of war in that they had grotesquely underestimated their opponent in both their willingness and ability to respond.
Flash forward a few weeks and what had been intended to be little more than an easily winnable diplomatic dispute had mutated into a full scale war with the British. A war which Argentina was losing badly and was now causing a whole host of other problems.
The Chileans were the main source of these problems. The navy and the air force had been almost completely wiped out with the remnants now combat ineffective. A good chunk of the army was now stuck on the Malvinas and becoming increasingly isolated from the outside world. There was no ability to physically reach them meaning there was zero possibility of even resupplying them let alone reinforcement or evacuation. Even communicating with them was becoming difficult due to the risk of the British intercepting the radio transmissions. Brigadier Menendez was a good man and competent commander but the odds against him were increasing.
The Chileans quite clearly knew this and were aware that in any conflict with Argentina the odds had defiantly swung in their favour as a result. They were now making threatening moves in the border region. Things like stationing extra troops, conducting manoeuvres and carrying out live fire exercises in view of the Argentines. Chilean jets were now patrolling up and down the edge of their airspace and eventually there would come a point where they would feel bold enough to begin violating Argentine airspace.
As a result of this the main threat to Argentina was now felt to be coming more from a potential Chilean invasion rather than from the British fleet to the east. This was causing the Junta to deploy more and more of the country’s military assets to the western border to deter any such move.
The Junta was certain that while they were not formally allied the British were behind a lot of the Chilean provocations. The intelligence services were pretty certain that the Chileans were receiving British military hardware o very generous terms and Chilean TV and Radio had been broadcasting reports that could only have come from the British which was causing an even bigger problem. The TV images and films of captured Argentine servicemen on the Malvinas and British soldiers showing off captured hardware including aircraft had caused outrage and fury on the home front and was resulting in riots in the streets and everything short of a full uprising which was requiring a lot of man power and resources to try and keep a lid on things.
Retreating into his comfort zone of thinking like a military leader as opposed to a politician Galtieri analysed the situation with the other members of the Junta which had itself undergone changes in light of recent events. Following the debacle of Operation Martillo which had resulted in a crushing defeat and the loss of almost the entire navy Admiral Anaya though he had tried to keep his position by accepting much reduced influence had eventually seen the writing on the wall and resigned. He felt that this was the safest course of action as to hold on any longer would see him ejected from the junta and possibly ending up in a jail cell or even in front of a firing squad. He was now under a sort of self-imposed house arrest and was trying to keep his head down.
his replacement was Admiral Ruben Franco who had been going to great lengths to point out that he had had nothing to do with the planning or execution of Martillo.
Following the failure of the air attacks on San Carlos a few days previously both Galtieri and Franco had been absolutely furious at the head of the air force Brigadier Dozo. Not because the attacks had failed but because he had deliberately tried to conceal the extent of the aircraft losses from them. Dozo had witnessed the loss of prestige and influence the navy had suffered and had wanted to shield his beloved air force from the same fate even going as far as to waste hours of time in a meeting talking about possible follow up strikes using aircraft which he knew no longer existed. Galtieri was now looking for a way to get rid of Dozo and replace him. Brigadier Jorge Hughes of Air Defence Command would be his preferred choice or maybe even someone from the army.
From a military point of view the strategic situation was grim. There were multiple threats and not enough forces with which to respond. On the mainland to the east the Chileans were making increasingly threatening moves and it was going to take a lot of forces to keep the extremely long border covered. Especially now that those forces would have to operate with almost no air cover. On the home front the situation was getting badly out of hand with riots and local small uprisings and the police were unable to control the situation on their own and were having to be supported with military forces. Even then this wasn’t enough especially with a big chunk of the military no stuck on the Malvinas. It was a case of did where was the bigger threat. Was it from the Chileans on the border in which case the military should be deployed to fend them off or was it from the angry mobs on the streets in which case the military should be sent to put them down? All of the military’s assets were already deployed anyway so whichever way they decided to go they would have to take units away from on area to reinforce another thus increasing the threat there.
To the east was the almost the entire fleet of one of the biggest and most powerful navies in the world. The fleet of a nuclear armed nation that had quite effortlessly destroyed the Argentine air force and navy. The British were at least entirely focused on the Malvinas. For now.
If they did decide to attack or even invade the Argentine coastline there was nothing that could be done to stop them as there were now no units available. Furthermore, the air strikes on the Malvinas from long ranged Vulcan strategic bombers had added a further complication. These strikes were now known to have likely come from Ascension Island thousands of miles to the north. If the Vulcan could reach that distance from Ascension to the Malvinas then it could easily reach Buenos Aries or indeed pretty much anywhere else on the mainland. This threat added an immense amount of pressure on the air force’s few remaining Mirage interceptor’s and Daggers as they struggled to be ready to meet both the Chilean and British threats. This was before anyone even considered the possibility of a strike from the British carrier aircraft.
As far as Galtieri could see the only way to keep the British at bay was to keep them focussed n the Malvinas for as long as possible. For this reason, Menendez had been instructed that even if his situation became hopeless for this reason he must hold out for as long as possible and inflict as much damage as he could upon the British.
The overall situation was fast becoming hopeless. There were to many threats and to few assets to deal with them. In fact even if all assets were allocated to it the Argentine military would probably struggle to defend the nation and Junta from even one threat let alone all of them at the same time.
In the back of his mind Galtieri began to wonder whether he should looking for some to extract himself personally from this god awful predicament that he found himself in.
Ministry of Defence, Moscow, USSR
The armed forces and intelligence agencies had naturally taken a great interest in the Falklands conflict. This was a once in a decade opportunity to see a NATO power and potential adversary in action and to see NATO military and to gauge the performance of NATO military hardware. Not only that but this was the first “modern” naval war fought using jet fighters, aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, guided missiles, ect between two roughly peer level opponents.
Given that both nations were capitalist and vocally anti-Communist the USSR didn’t really care much for either nation. However due to international geopolitics the politburo had decided that the ideal outcome would naturally be a British defeat as this would weaken NATO. To this end though they had never harboured any great affection for the country working off the principle of my enemy’s enemy is my friend the Soviets had decided to support the Argentines. Even in the now increasingly likely event of an Argentine defeat any material losses inflicted on the British would help to further the Soviet Unions aims.
In terms of practical support for the Argentines all the Soviets had really been able to do so far was subtle things such as providing the Argentines with intelligence on the British. Even then the GRU and KGB hadn’t exactly been thrilled with this as they had always classed Argentina as at best neutral leaning towards hostile. In terms of material support there was little that could be done seeing as the Argentines used predominantly American and western hardware meaning anything sent over would have to come with trainers to show them how to use it and integrate it with their systems. The conflict so far had been pretty fast moving meaning that even if they had decided to go down this route there wouldn’t be enough time for any of the hardware to make any difference anyway. Besides the Argentine economy was known to be in freefall meaning that they probably couldn’t afford to purchase any hardware anyway and it would be politically and diplomatically too difficult to just give it away as such a thing would upset their socialist allies who had had to pay up and risk conflict with the British and possibly the Americans.
The main interest the Soviets had in this conflict was intelligence gathering and the possibility of leaning lessons the easy way. Naturally a lot of effort and been expended by all of the services and agencies to gather information but these efforts had been somewhat thrown by the fact that the conflict was taking place in the South Atlantic, a region that the Soviets had never had all that much interest in and so had never given much thought too.
Whereas the Soviets enjoyed extremely good satellite coverage of the North Atlantic where any naval conflict with NATO was expected to take place and where the main strategic focus of the Soviet Navy was the South Atlantic was a bit of a dead zone. The satellites were in orbits designed to cover the north Atlantic and while they could get photos of the British base on Ascension Island the curvature of the earth meant that the Falklands was initially outside of their collective field of vision.
Changing a satellite orbit even slightly is a very complicated and difficult process as it requires careful calculation of its new trajectory to ensure that its not at risk of colliding with another object. Satellites only carry a very limited amount of fuel meaning that they can only perform a limited number of manoeuvres during their useful life. For these reasons it was not judged feasible to reposition a reconnaissance satellite to cover the Falkland Islands. The absolute most that could be done was to slightly alter the orbit of one satellite so that it could based on its orbit and the rotation of the earth provide a window of opportunity every 48-72 hours to take photos from an angle.
The Navy had looked long and hard at attempting to locate and trailing the British task force with an SSN. The Naval staff had given this option serious consideration before concluding that it was too unfeasible and risky. There hadn’t been a submarine in position when the British had set sail to either intercept or catch up with them. The possibility of sending a VICTOR III class SSN from Murmansk had been considered but it was hard enough to slip through the GIUK gap undetected at the best of times let alone being able to catch up with and shadow a fleet in the South Atlantic. Plus the boat would be limited by its food endurance and would probably use the vast majority of this simply getting there and back home again meaning that it wouldn’t be on station long enough to gather any useful intelligence.
Based on other intelligence sources it had become known that the British ships were very jumpy about the threat posed by Argentina’s German built SSK’s and were constantly scanning for them and attacking everything that possibly could be a submarine. If they detected a Soviet boat following them there was a risk that they may mistake it for an Argentine and attack it. The prospect of shooting match between NATO and Soviet naval units and the consequences thereof alone were enough for the Naval Staff to scrap this plan.
The First Chief Directorate of the KGB had had some success in gleaning some intelligence regarding the state of repair and morale of the British ships before they had sailed from assets they had in Portsmouth and Plymouth. It seemed that the British had had to pull out all the stops to get the Task Force to sea and this was having a detrimental effect on everything else. The assets were female agents specially chosen for both their language skills and natural assets. The agents had gotten themselves jobs as barmaids in pubs known to be frequented by RN personnel. Alcohol loosens tongues and overtime the girls had been able to overhear enough idle chit chat to learn things. Furthermore, the back stories they had been given about how their fathers had been in the navy and they had always wanted to go aboard a warship combined with bright green eyes and beautiful smiles had often been useful. If they judged it necessary certain other natural assets and skills taught to them at State School Number 4 meant they could effectively pump someone for information or leverage.
The intelligence that had been gathered had been fed into a committee of military officers who had analysed all the available data particularly open source data to see what lessons could be learnt. Today that committee was presenting its findings thus far to the General Staff of the Soviet Union so they could decide what if any changes they should make in light of this.
The main lessons thus far related to the naval sphere of things. Once the briefing was finished the big takeaway that the Defence Minister Marshall Ustinov, the Head of the Navy Admiral Sergey Gorshkov, minister of Defence industry Pavel Finogenov and minister of foreign affairs Gromyko were left with was the vulnerability of surface ships, the effectiveness of guided missiles over bombs and the fact that aircraft carriers were both extremely useful and extremely dangerous.
The Soviet naval hierarchy had been shocked at how easily the British had destroyed the Argentine navy. They had sunk 8 ships with a single carrier that was old enough to vote (not that such a thing mattered in the USSR). If the British could do that with an elderly small second world war era carrier what kind of damage could a single American Nuclear powered carrier battle group do to them? Bear in mind the Americans had dozens of enormous aircraft carriers.
Clearly a serious look at ways of countering the threat posed by American aircraft carriers was needed. It was at this point that the meeting descended into the usual bickering, backstabbing, empire building that was to a degree customary in all armed forces when money for new equipment was potentially up for grabs.
The army were present but would naturally oppose anything that was proposed as they feared it would divert resources away from their own projects. As they saw it the Soviet Union was a land based power and they were the ones facing its biggest threat which they felt was NATO in Germany. They tended to regard the Navy as little more than an expensive prestige project and waste of money and thought that the air forces only real role was to provide them with tactical aircraft for air cover and CAS and always got annoyed when the air force spent money on things like long range aviation and strategic bombers.
The air force would probably use this to try and get a little bit more power. They had always resented the existence of Soviet Naval Aviation as they were of the opinion that anything that flies should belong to them and for a while now had been trying to have more and more naval aviation functions brought under its remit.
Gorshkov leading the Soviet naval contingent knew that naval projects were very expensive and difficult to get funding for. He wanted to use this opportunity to get resources for some more assets while as far as possible trying to avoid having to sacrifice any other programs.
Regarding countering aircraft carriers and other surface forces the one thing that the navy and air force could agree on was that guided missiles were the way forward. The disagreement was on how to deliver said missiles. Both the navy and the air force operated the TU-22M strategic bomber. Equipped with heavy ASM’s the envisaged wartime role for these aircraft was for them to flyout far into the North Atlantic and launch massed missile attacks against NATO convoys and naval forces. Whereas the navy advocated for more of these aircraft the air force went for something slightly different. Their proposal was for more tanker aircraft. They argued that the assumed losses suffered by Argentine aircraft in their attacks on the British ships demonstrated the vulnerability of even small bomb laden aircraft to carrier based interceptors let alone a massive thing like the TU-22M. They argued that more tanker aircraft should be produced so that the TU-22M’s could be given a fighter escort for the duration of their missions. The fighters most likely MIG 31’s would be supported by AAR and would further the air forces aim of taking over naval aviation functions as the tanker aircraft and necessary number of fighters would probably have to be supplied by the air force.
The navy was due to shortly begin construction on the first 19,000 ton Project 949A Antey Class (OSCAR II) class SSGN. They wanted this program expanded and accelerated as they not unreasonably argued that a large, tough and quiet nuclear submarine carrying 28 of the latest SSM’s would be an extremely formidable opponent for a carrier battle group. All it would take was one large missile to sink a carrier and if all 28 were fired in a volley it was guaranteed that at least one would hit.
The conversation then turned to aircraft carrier construction. If nothing else the Falklands conflict was showing the value and utility of aircraft carriers and their value in force projection. Something the Soviets had begun to recognise even before the conflict had begun. The minister of foreign affairs in particular was very keen on the idea of bring able to project force over seas while the defence minister liked the idea of being able to disrupt NATO convoys by operating in the Atlantic or even simply posing enough of a threat as a fleet in being to cause disruption. The Army, Air Force and Strategic Rocket Forces regarded carriers as yet another of Gorshkov’s expensive vanity projects.
Marshal Ustinov had been responsible for the cancellation of the previous project to build large aircraft carriers. Project 1153 OREL had been intended to produce a class of 72,000 ton fleet carriers four years previously on the grounds of cost.
Instead he had opted to go for the much cheaper 42,000 ton Project 1143 Kiev class aviation cruisers. These ships were essentially guided missile cruisers that had a flight deck that allowed them to operate a number of VSTOL aircraft for local air defence and were broadly the equivalent of the British INVINCIBLE class carriers.
The stellar performance of the conventional fleet carrier HMS EAGLE compared to the bit part seemingly played by HMS INVINCIBLE and his observations from the previous year when he had observed the WEST-81 naval drills from the KIEV (where he had been rather underwhelmed by the performance of the ship and its aircraft) had helped convince him of the value of full sized carriers. The destruction of the 25 DE MAYO had showed that smaller carriers were really just a very expensive way of getting a lot of people killed.
The KIEV class did fulfil a useful function in serving as design stepping stones onto something bigger. The first of a new 45,000 ton STOBAR carrier had been recently laid down on the Black Sea Coast. This ship would be conventionally powered and carry and air group of 40+ aircraft which would be existing fighter designs modified for naval service. Either a navalised MIG 29 or SU 27. The design was essentially an enlarged and modified KIEV class with most of the missiles removed, a full length flight deck with INVINCIBLE style ski jump and arrestor wires.
A second of the class was pencilled in but Gorshkov now pushed for something bigger. He argued that with the amount of money that would have to be allocated to any aircraft carrier project any half measures would just be a waste. He wanted something comparable to the latest class of American supercarrier the 100,000 ton NIMITZ class. He proposed a class of nuclear powered CATOBAR carriers of at minimum 70,000 tons carrying abut 50 aircraft. He was willing to forgo the second of the conventional 45,000 ton conventional carriers to help pay for this. The defence and foreign ministers seemed swayed by this argument and agreed to authorise development work on the class.
One senior government minister who had been unable to attend had been the finance minister. Instead he had sent a deputy in his place. The deputy had pulled a face when the subject had turned to yet more expensive defence procurement projects. He would have to report back to his boss who would have to explain to these various interested parties why their expensive dreams would probably end up remaining just dreams. While the defence ministry usually got its way when it came to money the idea of a class of enormous nuclear powered aircraft carriers on top of all the other recent and ongoing expensive ship and submarine procurement programs would probably end up being completely unaffordable.
Gorshkov wouldn’t like it but perhaps there was a cheaper way of boosting carrier capability. The deputy knew that the 4th and last of the Kiev Class had recently been launched. The BAKU it was called if his memory served him well. Maybe it was still early enough in build to be redesigned and finished as a small STOBAR carrier with a full length flight deck?
Why wouldn’t the bastards just come and get on with it! Brigadier Menendez having locked himself in his office in government house (formally occupied by Governor Rex Hunt) allowed himself a brief moment to vent his frustrations and despair while no one was able to see him before working to pull himself back together. He was a big believer in the necessity of commanders maintaining appearances in front of the men. Keeping a stiff upper lip as his adversaries might say. He was worried that if the mood of gloom and despondency prevalent in his headquarters began to spread, he would have an even more serious morale problem than the one he was already struggling with and possibly mutinous or defeatist troops. There was nothing he hated more than his current feeling of impotence regarding his situation. In a way it almost made him feel like a child who just had to sit and be quiet while the adults were talking. Those adults being the British who very clearly held the initiative now and his superiors back on the mainland who in his opinion seemed to be becoming more distant and detached from the situation on the Malvinas.
Its often said that the waiting is the worst part of any conflict. While he had always seen the reasoning behind this argument and had agreed with it, Menendez was fast learning that it was one of those things that could only be properly understood by those who have experienced it.
He was starting to believe that the British were playing mind games with him as some form of psychological warfare. If they were it was definitely working. It had been 3 days now since the long-awaited British landing had occurred. A lot had happened since then but Menendez and his headquarters had had almost no influence on it. The first few hours had been spent on reconnaissance and trying to re-establish contact with the local forces based in and around Fanning head. The first instanced had met with a little success in that they had been able to confirm that there was indeed a British landing underway though that was all and even obtaining this information had been a real skin of their teeth affair for the helicopter crew involved. The attempts at re-establishing contact with local forces had been mostly unsuccessful. All they had been able to manage was intermittent radio contact with someone claiming to be survivor of a firefight at Fanning Head who passed on information about the disposition of British forces. It hadn’t been possible to completely verify this man’s story and eventually even he had stopped responding. This and the fact coupled with the inability to establish radio contact on any frequency led the grim conclusion that something nasty had indeed befallen the local forces in the area.
Next up had come the Air Force operation upon which so much had depended on. This was the point at which even the mainland had stopped telling the hole truth. While they had transmitted a detailed post battle assessment including the fact that most of the ships hit had been warships as opposed to troop transports whenever Menendez had enquired about losses or the strength of their own forces or the possibility of follow up strikes, he had either received evasive answers or been met with silence. While he was aware that the air attacks had gone badly, he got the sense that the mainland was trying to keep the in the dark regarding just how badly. Then the waiting had begun.
The British were expected to move eastwards towards Port Stanley which was the only real strategic objective on the Island but thus far there hadn’t been any sign of this happening yet. The vast majority of the Argentine forces were deployed in the mountains to the south and west of Port Stanley to form a defensive perimeter. The Only other significant concentration of forces was at Goose Green on the choke point between East Falkland and Lafonia to the south. The problem was there was a lot of ground between the outer edge of this perimeter and the British landings at San Carlos. With this and now total British air dominance there was no real time intelligence of British dispositions or movements.
For all they new the British could be on their way right at this very moment or something one staff officer had suggested which if anything was probably worse, taking their time to get themselves fully organised and prepared and avoiding rushing into anything.
The art of working out what intelligence an enemy has on you is a difficult one but always important. British aircraft had been sighted flying plenty of recon sorties and now doubt had plenty of gun camera footage from the numerous airstrikes that his forces had been subjected to. Based on plotting the areas where British aircraft had either attacked or flown low and straight over on probable photo runs the intelligence staff reckoned that the British probably had a fairly good idea of where the Argentine forces were. Therefore, it stood to reason that they must be aware that there were no Argentines anywhere near the beach head so probably felt secure enough to take their time with things.
Despite the seeming lack of movement from the British at San Carlos they clearly were not sitting idle. Two nights ago, the garrison at Goose Green had suffered a heavy air attack. The strange thing about this was that the air force personnel who had witnessed the attack were adamant that rather than an attack by multiple low flying aircraft as had been seen so many times previously the pattern, concentration and number of bombs that had hit them this had to have been from a high flying heavy bomber. Even more interestingly this had been seemingly the only British sortie that night. None of the carrier aircraft had been sighted anywhere. It made no sense. Surely with presumably at that point only a limited number of forces ashore the British would have felt themselves more vulnerable and be hitting the Argentine forces with everything they had to try and prevent a counter attack.
Regarding the aircraft that had likely delivered the strike against Goose Green the only heavy bomber that the British were known to still posses was the Avro Vulcan.
when he had been asked about the possibility of a Vulcan strike the air force intelligence officer had been somewhat taken aback. He had concluded that while such a raid was perhaps feasible it would have to have been an extremely risky world record breaking mission. There was no obvious reason why the British would take such a risk when they had two aircraft carriers nearby that had already shown themselves capable doing the job. The only reason he could think of was perhaps the British ships were beginning to exhaust their supply of air munitions. The number of craters on this island certainly supported this hypothesis. If true Menendez wondered how he might exploit this. The only other theories offered up were fairly unlikely such as the carriers sinking and no one noticing.
Regardless of why the British had done it the raid on Goose Green had inflicted a lot of damage. Still reeling from the SF raid on the night of the 20th/21st and numerous previous air attacks Lt Col Piaggi had reported that his force was now pretty much combat ineffective. While thought had been given to the possibility of his force mounting an attack on the British flank his force had never really been in a position to do this even before the Vulcan Strike. The pan had been for his force to appear to pose a threat to the British flank and force them to tie down forces by covering Goose Green. From a tactical point of view it was reckoned that either the British had declined to do this and had intended to destroy the Goose Green garrison from the air to remove this threat or were attempting to soften them up in preparation for some sort of advance southwards.
Horrifyingly the raid on Goose Green hadn’t been the only occurrence that night.
With the British now known to be between the transmitters in Port Stanley and the mainland extremely strict radio security protocols were being used. It stood to reason that the nation that had broken the enigma code, inspired James Bond and had for years been engaged in a battle of wits with the Soviets must have one hell of a SIGINT capability compared to anything that Argentina had encountered before. It was almost a certainty that if they so wished to the British would be perfectly able to intercept communications between the Malvinas and the mainland and it had to be assumed would ultimately be able to break Argentina’s military codes which would be much more primitive than the Soviet codes the British were used to.
This added to the general sense of isolation felt by Menendez as the number of radio communications had been reduced to the bare minimum and their content carefully censored as a way of minimizing any potential intelligence the British could glean from SIGINT.
This further isolated the outlying garrisons and positions as the routine check in’s and status reports had been halted and units had been ordered to transmit only when they had vital information that they needed to pass on. It wasn’t so much of a problem for the units in the mountains around Port Stanley as the signal troops had provided communications in the form of field telephones using landlines but further afield it was an issue including Pebble Island. Last night and urgent message had come through from the mainland demanding an urgent update on the status of the Pebble Island garrison and air field. Amazingly the message stated the Chilean TV and radio were claiming that the British had captured the island. Attempts by both Menendez’s HQ and the mainland to establish contact with anyone on the island was met with only static. This was seriously worrying. It may be that the British were now jamming radio frequencies or it could be that they had indeed taken the island. As time went by and more and more radio calls went unanswered while calls to other units received timely and clear replies this last possibility became more and more likely. Again, this was just completely unexpected as Pebble Island was in the complete opposite direction from where the British were expected to go and the constant bombing had petty much put the airfield out of action anyway. The only way such a move would make any tactical sense was if the British were attempting to remove anything they deemed to be a local threat in preparation for whatever they had planned next.
It was the not knowing what had happened and inability to find out that had had a severely demoralising effect on Menendez’s staff. Whereas it was fairly obvious what had happened to the Fanning Head garrison the only big unknown there was the status of the individual men. If something had happened at Pebble Island how had could it have been that no one was able to send a message calling for help?
Last night these questions had been answered in possibly the most brutal and stomach churning way possible. The Vulcan had made another appearance. This time over the area of Port Stanley. This time however rather than dropping bombs it had dropped bundles of leaflets.
it was these leaflets and the messages they conveyed and the inability of the officers and military police to prevent the men reading them that was giving Menendez serious cause for concern. A selection of these leaflets covering all of three of the different designs that had thus far been identified had been a topic of conversation in the meeting that had been held earlier that morning.
The most worrying and disturbing leaflet was the one that had provided proof that Pebble Island airfield had indeed been captured by the British.
The leaflet was double sided. On one side was a picture of a man wearing the uniform of a Corporal Second class sat on the ground with his hands on his head and a look on his face indicating a man in shock. Either side of him were what appeared to be two British soldiers although only their legs, boots and muzzles of their rifles were visible. The intelligence analyst who had examined the photos was based upon the camouflage patterns and rifles certain that these were British soldiers. The caption written in Spanish had read: “This is Corporal Roberto Aztiz. His nightmare is over now. He will sleep somewhere dry, eat something warm and see his family again. Be smart, be like Bob” The leaflet had also included his service number and a crosscheck of personnel files and records and interviews with men who knew this man had confirmed that the man in the photo was indeed Corporal Second Class Aztiz who had been based on Pebble Island. This confirmation that the garrison had been overrun was bad enough but on the other side of the leaflet was something that had made Menendez almost vomit when he saw it and had shocked him with how macabre the British were being.
The photograph showed two dead bodies in a dugout. Again, both of these men had been identified. The first body had a clearly visible face and had been identified as Lt Ricardo Marega who appeared to have been killed by shot through the head or struck by shrapnel. The second had been identified as the airfields naval commander who appeared to have been killed as a result of multiple shrapnel injuries. He certainly wasn’t a pleasant site to look at. Again, both men’s name and service numbers were listed but this time the caption simply read “Be smart, don’t be like these men”.
The second leaflet design was single sided and showed a photo of a group of Gurkha soldiers around a stone wheel sharpening some fearsome looking machete like knives and smiling at the camera. The caption simply read “Guess who’s coming to dinner”.
Luckily the average Argentine conscript probably wouldn’t know what a Gurkha was and would probably wonder why they were seemingly now fighting with the Chinese. Unfortunately, the one’s that did along with the officers probably probably would be disturbed by this leaflet and would put the rumour mill into overdrive. Fear could be extremely contagious in situations like this.
The final design was obviously aimed at the civilian population with the message being written in English superimposed over a British Flag. The message read “Keep calm and carry on. Your country is coming for you”.
Before leaving his office for a meeting to decide what their next moves should be Menendez decided to take a walk around Stanley to calm himself down and get a feel for the current state of morale amongst the men, but not before doing something first. The British Governor who had occupied this office before him had been kind enough to leave behind some rather nice bottles of scotch whisky. Menendez had been planning to use these to toast the victory that he had been working so hard for. Now he was reduced to using them every now and then to steady his nerves.
Walking around the town Menendez got a general sense of morale as being somewhere between fear, despondence and grim determination. Certainly, the initial sense of adventure and patriotic enthusiasm was a distant memory even before the leaflet drop which had clearly made things worse. Not helping was the military hospital which as a result of the number of casualties caused by the almost constant bombing and naval shelling had been expanding again and again and wounded men were now housed in the church, school and pretty much every public building greatly irritating the locals. Something Menendez was sure he and many men would be having nightmares about in later life was the sight of the rows of wounded men often with limbs missing crying out for help or morphine while they waited outside the hospitals for their turn to be operated on by the overworked doctors that were simply to few in number. Far too many of them hadn’t lived long enough and were now buried in the local churchyard. The Argentine forces had been operating a policy of rotating personnel out of the mountains and into the town to be rested but as the bodies both living and dead had started to pile up in the hospital some men seemed to be keener to remain at the front.
As for the civilian population the ungrateful bastards had yet to say thank you for their liberation from the foreign oppressors in London and return to the Argentine Fatherland. Their attitude until now had been mostly surely bordering on outright hostility. Since the leaflet drop, they were the only people on this half of the island walking around with smiles on their face. While there hadn’t been any acts of outright resistance there had been a lot of non-cooperation and acts of passive resistance. Things such as door slamming, refusing to converse with Argentines and ignoring the instructions to drive on the right-hand side of the road. Indeed, Menendez’s attempt to rename Port Stanley Puerto Argentino seemed to have caused offense and resulted in a spree of vandalism as signs were removed or graffitied. The military police and Menendez’s staff had been going to great lengths to ensure that there were no acts of retribution, looting or any other crimes however minor inflicted against the civilian population. Any such acts could easily gift the British a propaganda victory and destroy and sympathy for Argentina in this conflict. Furthermore, there was now an underlying concern amongst the officers of what the British may do to them if they ever fell into their hands following any such incidents.
Returning to his HQ Menendez and the other officers again poured over the various maps and reviewed the situation. The main topic of discussion was the disposition of their own forces. The problem was being attackers who definitely held the initiative the British could attack anywhere they chose and concentrate their forces where as the Argentines had to spread out their forces to cover all possible angles of attack. The Argentine commanders had long been aware of the capabilities of his own forces relative to the British which was why they had opted for a dug in defensive strategy taking advantage of the favourable terrain over a more complex campaign of manoeuvre. Thus far there had only been two incidents where Argentine and British ground forces had come into direct contact. Fanning Head and Pebble Island. The problem was there was almost no information regarding these engagements to work with but there was one conclusion that could be drawn. While their strategy could always change, they seemed to prefer to isolate and overwhelm individual troop concentrations. It made sense that they might opt for something like this such as taking individual mountains one at a time when attempting to penetrate the perimeter around Stanley rather than a costlier head on fight. The best defence against this would be to ensure that fighting positions were sufficiently strong enough to avoid being overwhelmed and where possible positioned somewhere where they could be supported or reinforced by other units.
there were some units at his disposal in which Menendez had much more confidence. The 601st and 602nd Commando companies were made up of well trained professionals, had a wide skillset and were certainly competent even by the standards of special forces.
It was decided to use these men to form an outer picket line and to use small teams of them for reconnaissance purposes further beyond the defensive perimeter and further into what was now effectively now mans land. It was vital that every effort be made to identify the British direction of advance. The outer picket would be based on Mount Kent and Mount Challenger. These mountains were the furthest west and therefore directly in the most likely path of the British. They were currently being held by 4th Infantry Regiment. With the regiments other responsibilities and casualties sustained so far it was felt that it was spread to thinly and so would be pulled back from Mount’s Kent and Challenger in order to strengthen its positions further back which were judged as more easily defendable.
The Commando companies would take over 4th Regiments positions. Their objective when the British eventually came would not be to stand and fight but to glean whatever intelligence they could about the attacking force, hopefully surprise and inflict losses on the British before withdrawing back to reinforce the line infantry regiments.
The British special forces raid on Goose Green a few nights ago had inflicted significant losses on the Argentines and made them feel like fools as they wasted time chasing after shadows and preparing to fight an invading force that wasn’t even there. Two could play at that game.
Libertador Building, Buenos Aries
Brigadier wasn’t the only senior Argentine officer beginning to feel despair at his current predicament. In Buenos Aries the President of Argentina Lieutenant General Leoplodo Galtieri was an increasingly worried man. He’d always felt himself as first and foremost the most senior officer in and professional head of the Argentine Armed Forces. It just so happened that in this age of military rule within the country the job also included president of the nation within its remit. He hadn’t even particularly wanted to be a world leader. In the same way that he had been promoted through seniority (and granted the removal of a few rival generals) he had been promoted into the role of president rather than having been voted in or seizing power. In fact, since the military had seized power 6 years ago and begun what they called the National Reorganisation Process Galtieri was the third occupant in the role of president and supreme commander. Unfortunately, it was looking like he would be remembered as the one who had brought disaster and ruin upon the nation. Even before he had assumed power the situation in the nation had been looking grim. The economy was tanking, the military government was still embroiled in the so called Dirty War as it engaged in an endless struggle to root out and eliminate political dissidents, left wing agitators, communists, anyone associated to closely with the previous Peron led government and pretty much anyone the military authorities felt were even a slight threat. The number of people “disappeared” (incarcerated in a now nationwide network of concentration camps or in some cases thrown out of aeroplanes into the Atlantic where no one would ever find the bodies) had eventually reached into the tens of thousands. Even the interrogations that had originally started out as a way of gathering intelligence had eventually morphed into widespread torture for the sake of torture.
All of this had made for an extremely unhappy population and things had reached the point where the military junta was seriously concerned that it might be overthrown or face a rebellion. The solution to this threat had been to attempt to unite the populace by liberating the Malvinas from the British. While this had worked at first, they had committed a cardinal sin in the rules of war in that they had grotesquely underestimated their opponent in both their willingness and ability to respond.
Flash forward a few weeks and what had been intended to be little more than an easily winnable diplomatic dispute had mutated into a full scale war with the British. A war which Argentina was losing badly and was now causing a whole host of other problems.
The Chileans were the main source of these problems. The navy and the air force had been almost completely wiped out with the remnants now combat ineffective. A good chunk of the army was now stuck on the Malvinas and becoming increasingly isolated from the outside world. There was no ability to physically reach them meaning there was zero possibility of even resupplying them let alone reinforcement or evacuation. Even communicating with them was becoming difficult due to the risk of the British intercepting the radio transmissions. Brigadier Menendez was a good man and competent commander but the odds against him were increasing.
The Chileans quite clearly knew this and were aware that in any conflict with Argentina the odds had defiantly swung in their favour as a result. They were now making threatening moves in the border region. Things like stationing extra troops, conducting manoeuvres and carrying out live fire exercises in view of the Argentines. Chilean jets were now patrolling up and down the edge of their airspace and eventually there would come a point where they would feel bold enough to begin violating Argentine airspace.
As a result of this the main threat to Argentina was now felt to be coming more from a potential Chilean invasion rather than from the British fleet to the east. This was causing the Junta to deploy more and more of the country’s military assets to the western border to deter any such move.
The Junta was certain that while they were not formally allied the British were behind a lot of the Chilean provocations. The intelligence services were pretty certain that the Chileans were receiving British military hardware o very generous terms and Chilean TV and Radio had been broadcasting reports that could only have come from the British which was causing an even bigger problem. The TV images and films of captured Argentine servicemen on the Malvinas and British soldiers showing off captured hardware including aircraft had caused outrage and fury on the home front and was resulting in riots in the streets and everything short of a full uprising which was requiring a lot of man power and resources to try and keep a lid on things.
Retreating into his comfort zone of thinking like a military leader as opposed to a politician Galtieri analysed the situation with the other members of the Junta which had itself undergone changes in light of recent events. Following the debacle of Operation Martillo which had resulted in a crushing defeat and the loss of almost the entire navy Admiral Anaya though he had tried to keep his position by accepting much reduced influence had eventually seen the writing on the wall and resigned. He felt that this was the safest course of action as to hold on any longer would see him ejected from the junta and possibly ending up in a jail cell or even in front of a firing squad. He was now under a sort of self-imposed house arrest and was trying to keep his head down.
his replacement was Admiral Ruben Franco who had been going to great lengths to point out that he had had nothing to do with the planning or execution of Martillo.
Following the failure of the air attacks on San Carlos a few days previously both Galtieri and Franco had been absolutely furious at the head of the air force Brigadier Dozo. Not because the attacks had failed but because he had deliberately tried to conceal the extent of the aircraft losses from them. Dozo had witnessed the loss of prestige and influence the navy had suffered and had wanted to shield his beloved air force from the same fate even going as far as to waste hours of time in a meeting talking about possible follow up strikes using aircraft which he knew no longer existed. Galtieri was now looking for a way to get rid of Dozo and replace him. Brigadier Jorge Hughes of Air Defence Command would be his preferred choice or maybe even someone from the army.
From a military point of view the strategic situation was grim. There were multiple threats and not enough forces with which to respond. On the mainland to the east the Chileans were making increasingly threatening moves and it was going to take a lot of forces to keep the extremely long border covered. Especially now that those forces would have to operate with almost no air cover. On the home front the situation was getting badly out of hand with riots and local small uprisings and the police were unable to control the situation on their own and were having to be supported with military forces. Even then this wasn’t enough especially with a big chunk of the military no stuck on the Malvinas. It was a case of did where was the bigger threat. Was it from the Chileans on the border in which case the military should be deployed to fend them off or was it from the angry mobs on the streets in which case the military should be sent to put them down? All of the military’s assets were already deployed anyway so whichever way they decided to go they would have to take units away from on area to reinforce another thus increasing the threat there.
To the east was the almost the entire fleet of one of the biggest and most powerful navies in the world. The fleet of a nuclear armed nation that had quite effortlessly destroyed the Argentine air force and navy. The British were at least entirely focused on the Malvinas. For now.
If they did decide to attack or even invade the Argentine coastline there was nothing that could be done to stop them as there were now no units available. Furthermore, the air strikes on the Malvinas from long ranged Vulcan strategic bombers had added a further complication. These strikes were now known to have likely come from Ascension Island thousands of miles to the north. If the Vulcan could reach that distance from Ascension to the Malvinas then it could easily reach Buenos Aries or indeed pretty much anywhere else on the mainland. This threat added an immense amount of pressure on the air force’s few remaining Mirage interceptor’s and Daggers as they struggled to be ready to meet both the Chilean and British threats. This was before anyone even considered the possibility of a strike from the British carrier aircraft.
As far as Galtieri could see the only way to keep the British at bay was to keep them focussed n the Malvinas for as long as possible. For this reason, Menendez had been instructed that even if his situation became hopeless for this reason he must hold out for as long as possible and inflict as much damage as he could upon the British.
The overall situation was fast becoming hopeless. There were to many threats and to few assets to deal with them. In fact even if all assets were allocated to it the Argentine military would probably struggle to defend the nation and Junta from even one threat let alone all of them at the same time.
In the back of his mind Galtieri began to wonder whether he should looking for some to extract himself personally from this god awful predicament that he found himself in.
Ministry of Defence, Moscow, USSR
The armed forces and intelligence agencies had naturally taken a great interest in the Falklands conflict. This was a once in a decade opportunity to see a NATO power and potential adversary in action and to see NATO military and to gauge the performance of NATO military hardware. Not only that but this was the first “modern” naval war fought using jet fighters, aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, guided missiles, ect between two roughly peer level opponents.
Given that both nations were capitalist and vocally anti-Communist the USSR didn’t really care much for either nation. However due to international geopolitics the politburo had decided that the ideal outcome would naturally be a British defeat as this would weaken NATO. To this end though they had never harboured any great affection for the country working off the principle of my enemy’s enemy is my friend the Soviets had decided to support the Argentines. Even in the now increasingly likely event of an Argentine defeat any material losses inflicted on the British would help to further the Soviet Unions aims.
In terms of practical support for the Argentines all the Soviets had really been able to do so far was subtle things such as providing the Argentines with intelligence on the British. Even then the GRU and KGB hadn’t exactly been thrilled with this as they had always classed Argentina as at best neutral leaning towards hostile. In terms of material support there was little that could be done seeing as the Argentines used predominantly American and western hardware meaning anything sent over would have to come with trainers to show them how to use it and integrate it with their systems. The conflict so far had been pretty fast moving meaning that even if they had decided to go down this route there wouldn’t be enough time for any of the hardware to make any difference anyway. Besides the Argentine economy was known to be in freefall meaning that they probably couldn’t afford to purchase any hardware anyway and it would be politically and diplomatically too difficult to just give it away as such a thing would upset their socialist allies who had had to pay up and risk conflict with the British and possibly the Americans.
The main interest the Soviets had in this conflict was intelligence gathering and the possibility of leaning lessons the easy way. Naturally a lot of effort and been expended by all of the services and agencies to gather information but these efforts had been somewhat thrown by the fact that the conflict was taking place in the South Atlantic, a region that the Soviets had never had all that much interest in and so had never given much thought too.
Whereas the Soviets enjoyed extremely good satellite coverage of the North Atlantic where any naval conflict with NATO was expected to take place and where the main strategic focus of the Soviet Navy was the South Atlantic was a bit of a dead zone. The satellites were in orbits designed to cover the north Atlantic and while they could get photos of the British base on Ascension Island the curvature of the earth meant that the Falklands was initially outside of their collective field of vision.
Changing a satellite orbit even slightly is a very complicated and difficult process as it requires careful calculation of its new trajectory to ensure that its not at risk of colliding with another object. Satellites only carry a very limited amount of fuel meaning that they can only perform a limited number of manoeuvres during their useful life. For these reasons it was not judged feasible to reposition a reconnaissance satellite to cover the Falkland Islands. The absolute most that could be done was to slightly alter the orbit of one satellite so that it could based on its orbit and the rotation of the earth provide a window of opportunity every 48-72 hours to take photos from an angle.
The Navy had looked long and hard at attempting to locate and trailing the British task force with an SSN. The Naval staff had given this option serious consideration before concluding that it was too unfeasible and risky. There hadn’t been a submarine in position when the British had set sail to either intercept or catch up with them. The possibility of sending a VICTOR III class SSN from Murmansk had been considered but it was hard enough to slip through the GIUK gap undetected at the best of times let alone being able to catch up with and shadow a fleet in the South Atlantic. Plus the boat would be limited by its food endurance and would probably use the vast majority of this simply getting there and back home again meaning that it wouldn’t be on station long enough to gather any useful intelligence.
Based on other intelligence sources it had become known that the British ships were very jumpy about the threat posed by Argentina’s German built SSK’s and were constantly scanning for them and attacking everything that possibly could be a submarine. If they detected a Soviet boat following them there was a risk that they may mistake it for an Argentine and attack it. The prospect of shooting match between NATO and Soviet naval units and the consequences thereof alone were enough for the Naval Staff to scrap this plan.
The First Chief Directorate of the KGB had had some success in gleaning some intelligence regarding the state of repair and morale of the British ships before they had sailed from assets they had in Portsmouth and Plymouth. It seemed that the British had had to pull out all the stops to get the Task Force to sea and this was having a detrimental effect on everything else. The assets were female agents specially chosen for both their language skills and natural assets. The agents had gotten themselves jobs as barmaids in pubs known to be frequented by RN personnel. Alcohol loosens tongues and overtime the girls had been able to overhear enough idle chit chat to learn things. Furthermore, the back stories they had been given about how their fathers had been in the navy and they had always wanted to go aboard a warship combined with bright green eyes and beautiful smiles had often been useful. If they judged it necessary certain other natural assets and skills taught to them at State School Number 4 meant they could effectively pump someone for information or leverage.
The intelligence that had been gathered had been fed into a committee of military officers who had analysed all the available data particularly open source data to see what lessons could be learnt. Today that committee was presenting its findings thus far to the General Staff of the Soviet Union so they could decide what if any changes they should make in light of this.
The main lessons thus far related to the naval sphere of things. Once the briefing was finished the big takeaway that the Defence Minister Marshall Ustinov, the Head of the Navy Admiral Sergey Gorshkov, minister of Defence industry Pavel Finogenov and minister of foreign affairs Gromyko were left with was the vulnerability of surface ships, the effectiveness of guided missiles over bombs and the fact that aircraft carriers were both extremely useful and extremely dangerous.
The Soviet naval hierarchy had been shocked at how easily the British had destroyed the Argentine navy. They had sunk 8 ships with a single carrier that was old enough to vote (not that such a thing mattered in the USSR). If the British could do that with an elderly small second world war era carrier what kind of damage could a single American Nuclear powered carrier battle group do to them? Bear in mind the Americans had dozens of enormous aircraft carriers.
Clearly a serious look at ways of countering the threat posed by American aircraft carriers was needed. It was at this point that the meeting descended into the usual bickering, backstabbing, empire building that was to a degree customary in all armed forces when money for new equipment was potentially up for grabs.
The army were present but would naturally oppose anything that was proposed as they feared it would divert resources away from their own projects. As they saw it the Soviet Union was a land based power and they were the ones facing its biggest threat which they felt was NATO in Germany. They tended to regard the Navy as little more than an expensive prestige project and waste of money and thought that the air forces only real role was to provide them with tactical aircraft for air cover and CAS and always got annoyed when the air force spent money on things like long range aviation and strategic bombers.
The air force would probably use this to try and get a little bit more power. They had always resented the existence of Soviet Naval Aviation as they were of the opinion that anything that flies should belong to them and for a while now had been trying to have more and more naval aviation functions brought under its remit.
Gorshkov leading the Soviet naval contingent knew that naval projects were very expensive and difficult to get funding for. He wanted to use this opportunity to get resources for some more assets while as far as possible trying to avoid having to sacrifice any other programs.
Regarding countering aircraft carriers and other surface forces the one thing that the navy and air force could agree on was that guided missiles were the way forward. The disagreement was on how to deliver said missiles. Both the navy and the air force operated the TU-22M strategic bomber. Equipped with heavy ASM’s the envisaged wartime role for these aircraft was for them to flyout far into the North Atlantic and launch massed missile attacks against NATO convoys and naval forces. Whereas the navy advocated for more of these aircraft the air force went for something slightly different. Their proposal was for more tanker aircraft. They argued that the assumed losses suffered by Argentine aircraft in their attacks on the British ships demonstrated the vulnerability of even small bomb laden aircraft to carrier based interceptors let alone a massive thing like the TU-22M. They argued that more tanker aircraft should be produced so that the TU-22M’s could be given a fighter escort for the duration of their missions. The fighters most likely MIG 31’s would be supported by AAR and would further the air forces aim of taking over naval aviation functions as the tanker aircraft and necessary number of fighters would probably have to be supplied by the air force.
The navy was due to shortly begin construction on the first 19,000 ton Project 949A Antey Class (OSCAR II) class SSGN. They wanted this program expanded and accelerated as they not unreasonably argued that a large, tough and quiet nuclear submarine carrying 28 of the latest SSM’s would be an extremely formidable opponent for a carrier battle group. All it would take was one large missile to sink a carrier and if all 28 were fired in a volley it was guaranteed that at least one would hit.
The conversation then turned to aircraft carrier construction. If nothing else the Falklands conflict was showing the value and utility of aircraft carriers and their value in force projection. Something the Soviets had begun to recognise even before the conflict had begun. The minister of foreign affairs in particular was very keen on the idea of bring able to project force over seas while the defence minister liked the idea of being able to disrupt NATO convoys by operating in the Atlantic or even simply posing enough of a threat as a fleet in being to cause disruption. The Army, Air Force and Strategic Rocket Forces regarded carriers as yet another of Gorshkov’s expensive vanity projects.
Marshal Ustinov had been responsible for the cancellation of the previous project to build large aircraft carriers. Project 1153 OREL had been intended to produce a class of 72,000 ton fleet carriers four years previously on the grounds of cost.
Instead he had opted to go for the much cheaper 42,000 ton Project 1143 Kiev class aviation cruisers. These ships were essentially guided missile cruisers that had a flight deck that allowed them to operate a number of VSTOL aircraft for local air defence and were broadly the equivalent of the British INVINCIBLE class carriers.
The stellar performance of the conventional fleet carrier HMS EAGLE compared to the bit part seemingly played by HMS INVINCIBLE and his observations from the previous year when he had observed the WEST-81 naval drills from the KIEV (where he had been rather underwhelmed by the performance of the ship and its aircraft) had helped convince him of the value of full sized carriers. The destruction of the 25 DE MAYO had showed that smaller carriers were really just a very expensive way of getting a lot of people killed.
The KIEV class did fulfil a useful function in serving as design stepping stones onto something bigger. The first of a new 45,000 ton STOBAR carrier had been recently laid down on the Black Sea Coast. This ship would be conventionally powered and carry and air group of 40+ aircraft which would be existing fighter designs modified for naval service. Either a navalised MIG 29 or SU 27. The design was essentially an enlarged and modified KIEV class with most of the missiles removed, a full length flight deck with INVINCIBLE style ski jump and arrestor wires.
A second of the class was pencilled in but Gorshkov now pushed for something bigger. He argued that with the amount of money that would have to be allocated to any aircraft carrier project any half measures would just be a waste. He wanted something comparable to the latest class of American supercarrier the 100,000 ton NIMITZ class. He proposed a class of nuclear powered CATOBAR carriers of at minimum 70,000 tons carrying abut 50 aircraft. He was willing to forgo the second of the conventional 45,000 ton conventional carriers to help pay for this. The defence and foreign ministers seemed swayed by this argument and agreed to authorise development work on the class.
One senior government minister who had been unable to attend had been the finance minister. Instead he had sent a deputy in his place. The deputy had pulled a face when the subject had turned to yet more expensive defence procurement projects. He would have to report back to his boss who would have to explain to these various interested parties why their expensive dreams would probably end up remaining just dreams. While the defence ministry usually got its way when it came to money the idea of a class of enormous nuclear powered aircraft carriers on top of all the other recent and ongoing expensive ship and submarine procurement programs would probably end up being completely unaffordable.
Gorshkov wouldn’t like it but perhaps there was a cheaper way of boosting carrier capability. The deputy knew that the 4th and last of the Kiev Class had recently been launched. The BAKU it was called if his memory served him well. Maybe it was still early enough in build to be redesigned and finished as a small STOBAR carrier with a full length flight deck?
So the Vikramaditya rises early? Although ideally if they go that route they need to get the Yak 141 into service. Although not as bad as once thought the navalised 29-k and the 33 are still not terribly capable as without catapults they burn alot of fuel just taking off. In contrast if they can get the 141 into service that gives them a supersonic Vstol fighter that (minus the stealth) could potentially be somewhat as potent as the F-35B (which is somewhat based on it).
That said either just build a STVOL carrier or a proper catobar one as the Soviet tendancy for bodge jobs on carriers benefits no one but the west.
Also ditch the steam turbine for something that actually works more than one day out of three...
That said either just build a STVOL carrier or a proper catobar one as the Soviet tendancy for bodge jobs on carriers benefits no one but the west.
Also ditch the steam turbine for something that actually works more than one day out of three...
And here comes the funding justification for HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales.
With the Soviets suddenly accelerating development of full sized conventional carriers instead of the smaller historical Kuznetsov class, I think that the USN is going to get a bit more funding for the F-14D and the A-6F.
With the Soviets suddenly accelerating development of full sized conventional carriers instead of the smaller historical Kuznetsov class, I think that the USN is going to get a bit more funding for the F-14D and the A-6F.
Most likely one of those will be the third carrier named Eagle actually. You could be right about the rest, except the D and the A-6F were ultimately cancelled due to the end of the cold war. As building full sized carriers will do nothing for the USSR's economic and social problems the most likely outcome is that a sixty percent complete Catobar carrier is bought by a Chinese front company while the American planes die of peace dividends.
Probably at least one full size British fleet carrier will get finished but will serve alongside the Indy's.
The first capital ship of a new monarchs reign is traditionally named after that new monarch, so Queen Elizabeth will definitely be the name ship of the class of carriers, for they are the capital ship of the post-war era. Having the second ship named after the Eagle would be a useful tactic to protect her from cancellation at the end of the Cold War.
The increased Soviet emphasis on big carriers and the threat that they imply would inevitably mean that more development cash would go to the USN. I"m thinking mostly of the logic of the Missile Gap - I'd expect a similar over-reaction and more money getting thrown at Naval Aviation, which might mean they'd probbably get more F-14D's and AIM-120 compatability.
The A-6F would probably get funded as well, just because there is justification for ordering them sooner, and once you've got the A-6F, you naturally are going to get an EA-6G to match it.
Edited for clarity.
The increased Soviet emphasis on big carriers and the threat that they imply would inevitably mean that more development cash would go to the USN. I"m thinking mostly of the logic of the Missile Gap - I'd expect a similar over-reaction and more money getting thrown at Naval Aviation, which might mean they'd probbably get more F-14D's and AIM-120 compatability.
The A-6F would probably get funded as well, just because there is justification for ordering them sooner, and once you've got the A-6F, you naturally are going to get an EA-6G to match it.
Edited for clarity.
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Wait are the soviet agents are shagging for information? Well didn't expect that in a falklands tl.
Yes, it's increasingly hard to see how the RN doesn't get at least *one* new fleet carrier out of all this.
But what will they fly on it?
But what will they fly on it?
I rather like the "stay calm and Carry on" reference, I can just picture those leaflets!!!