May 1982 Could Argentina have won the Falklands War?

[Intosh]

That's a huge leap you have made there. Comparisons between the early stages of the Barbarossa campaign and the Falklands war are really really hard to come by, I mean by the standards of even one day in Russia in 1941 (post June 22nd), the Falklands Conflict, (which is how we mainly refer to it in the UK anyway) doesn't really justify being called a war.

Yes the Argentines were badly led, though they did fight well on occasions. Often soldiers fight more for their mates than for their leaders, and they fight to stay alive.

As for Russia, well it's just too big a war to simplify like that.

I wasn't saying the Argentines were badly led or that they didn't fight well, but GI Juan, the average soldier and often a conscript had a bad morale and little will to fight...

From the book, I remembered reading in the 1980's about this war, is that the Falkland war show the difference between a conscript and a professionnal army, and between a motivated and a non motivated army...

 

[Riain]

Someone (over 30 years later!!!) is still maintaining that the Argentinian Army launched just one counterattack throughout the whole war. This is wrong for there were two platoon sized counterattacks on Mount Longdon alone. At one point in that battle a large number of British wounded were about to fall into the hands of a squad of advancing Argentinians from First Lieutenant Raúl Fernando Castañeda's rifle platoon. 3 PARA's Colour Sergeant Brian Faulkner has gone on record saying: "I picked four blokes and got up on this high feature, and as I did so this troop [in fact a reinforced section of fifteen riflemen] of twenty, or thirty Argentines were coming towards us. We just opened fire on them. We don't know how many we killed, but they got what they deserved, because none of them were left standing when we'd finished with them."

Where were the company and battalion counterattacks? A platoon or two moving forward against a coordinated battalion attack isn't much chop, especially when the platoon is actually a reinforced rifle section.

 

[Andy42]

I wasn't saying the Argentines were badly led or that they didn't fight well, but GI Juan, the average soldier and often a conscript had a bad morale and little will to fight...

From the book, I remembered reading in the 1980's about this war, is that the Falkland war show the difference between a conscript and a professionnal army, and between a motivated and a non motivated army...

How not to motivate your troops - issue special double-sized rations with a miniature of whisky just for the officers: http://www.royalmarinesmuseum.co.uk/blog/item/newsblog/trophies-from-the-falklands-war

http://www.mreinfo.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4674

And that is if the rations even made it to the men out in the field rather than remaining piled up in Stanley.

Plus the barbaric "field punishments" (like staking men out), and that the officers lived in warm houses well in the rear while the men were in the wet trenches with inadequate protection.

http://www.falklands.info/history/hist82article13.html

Probably the first time these guys were actually treated as human beings (and got a hot meal) is when they were in the British POW cages!

 

[jamsodonnell]

Probably the first time these guys were actually treated as human beings (and got a hot meal) is when they were in the British POW cages!

A friend of mine, the one Argentine who belived that the islands are the Falklands and not (Las Malvinas) was a couple of years too young to be conscripted but he knew quite a few who were and were sent to the Falklands. According to hi the one thing they all apprecaited as POWs was good chow - far better than the shit they got from their own army.

One former work colleague was involved in dealing with the Argentine POWs and he said he was told much the same thing.

Then again would you expect officers of a regime that tortured and murdered thousands of its own citizens.

It's only a shame that Alfredo Astiz didn't get extradited to France for the murder of the two French nuns or to Sweden for Dagmar Hagelin when we had the piece of human filth in captivity.

 

[Chris Triangle]

Realistically, the British victory was a low probability event.

Suppose the Argentines had managed to deploy low altitude fuses for the simple iron bombs they were using. That would have resulted in the loss of at least three more RN ships.

Suppose the Argentine airforce had managed to keep slightly more of its fleet available for combat during the conflict.

Suppose they had sorted the submarine's torpedo problems out?

How about if the Argentine air force had managed to hit one of the carriers?

Any one of the four simple changes above would likely have resulted in an Argentine victory.

I know the British love to play the underdog but the notion that Argentina could defeat them is taking this whole attitude a little too far. Britain was a heavily armed western power at the height of the the cold war states and an extremely competent and very advanced military. Argentina was a corrupt, right wing South American dictatorship with considerably wealth and military potential. Britain was going to win and honestly, based on that the UK's typical military performance, I'm amazed that the Argentines gave them as much trouble as they did. It takes a lot of nerve to pick a fight with the British navy. If I were an Argentinian solider, I would be scared to death.

 

[The Oncoming Storm]

I know the British love to play the underdog but the notion that Argentina could defeat them is taking this whole attitude a little too far. Britain was a heavily armed western power at the height of the the cold war states and an extremely competent and very advanced military. Argentina was a corrupt, right wing South American dictatorship with considerably wealth and military potential. Britain was going to win and honestly, based on that the UK's typical military performance, I'm amazed that the Argentines gave them as much trouble as they did. It takes a lot of nerve to pick a fight with the British navy. If I were an Argentinian solider, I would be scared to death.

The reason why Argentina proved so much trouble was because the British military had lost most of the capability to carry out that type of operation, most tellingly a CTOL carrier with organic AEW capability. Since the 1965 Defence White Paper the military had been structured to fight the Warsaw Pact in Central Europe and conduct ASW in the North Atlantic, the idea of doing along range amphibious campaign simply wasn't considered. Had that capability existed then it would have been a complete mismatch, if Argentina had invaded at all, as it was it was very closely run, apparently when the Argentineans surrendered Admiral Woodward was 48 hours from telling London he needed to suspend operations because many of the ships of the Task Force were wearing out and needed repairs.

 

[samuelemmerson2012]

With regards to the "field punishments", they were necessary for the maintainment of discipline in the hills around Port Stanley. A platoon commander cannot afford to let 2 or 3 conscripts go AWOL to steal from the Port Stanley residents or the food depots. People seem to forget that Australian conscripts doing the wrong thing copped the same harsh treatment in Vietnam with the “O’Neill affair” surely being the tip of the iceberg in the case of Australian forces but nobody calls the Australian officers "barbaric". Also New Zealand conscripts doing the wrong thing in Vietnam would be locked up in steel shipping containers in the suffocating heat, but nobody lambastes the New Zealand officers. And also the morale of the Argentinian conscripts was pretty good considering the circumstances. Private Fabian Passaro of the forward Argentinian platoon (under 2d Lt. Juan Baldini KIA) on Mount Longdon has gone on record saying:

Most of us had adjusted to what we'd been landed in, we'd adjusted to the war. But some boys [identified in the book Two Sides Of Hell/Los Dos Lados Del Infierno] were still very depressed and, in many cases, were getting worse all the time. Of course, we were very fed up with wearing the same clothes for so many days, going without a shower, being so cold, eating badly. It was too many things together, quite apart from our natural fear of the war, the shelling and all that. But I think some of us were adapting better than others. There were kids who were very worried; and I tried to buoy them up a bit. 'Don't worry,' I told them. 'Nothing will happen, we're safe here. 'Don't you see they could never get right up here? There's one thousand of us; if they try to climb, we'll see them, we'll shoot the shit out of them.

 

[Cook]

With regards to the "field punishments", they were necessary for the maintainment of discipline in the hills around Port Stanley.

The ‘field punishments’ meted out by Argentine Officers were nothing less than stupidity; they ranged from deducting rations to forcing men to stand bare foot in puddles of icy water – resulting in trench foot if the men were lucky, frost bight if they weren’t. Even the minor punishments weakened the men, while the major punishments rendered them unable to fight. They were not something that would strengthen resolve and were not being delivered by men sharing the hardships of the soldiers.

People seem to forget that Australian conscripts doing the wrong thing copped the same harsh treatment in Vietnam with the “O’Neill affair” surely being the tip of the iceberg in the case of Australian forces but nobody calls the Australian officers "barbaric".

Australian national servicemen in Vietnam were fully integrated in the regular army, the ‘nashos’ were indistinguishable from their ‘reg’ compatriots, they did not constitute the bulk of any unit and were led by NCOs who where almost exclusively regular army. Field discipline in the Australian army is generally the domain of NCOs and the RSM rather than officers, all of whom were doing the same work in the same conditions and facing the same hardships and the men they were leading, as were the officers – that alone leads to better discipline and morale. Australian army punishments were never things that weakened a soldier’s ability to fight, meals were never withheld for this reason and failure to take proper care of their feet was something that would incur punishment; the “O’Neill affair” was so exceptional that it was even mentioned in parliament.

The highest casualty rate in the Australian army was in junior NCOs and junior officers; the result of leadership by example.

 

[samuelemmerson2012]

From the book (page 197) 9 Battles To Stanley (written by a British veteran of the Falklands War who interrogated the Argentinian officers captured in the battles):


Baldini was later criticized by veterans for being indifferent and selfish towards his men although this seems to have come from several petulant soldiers who failed to appreciate his efforts to keep them alive in difficult conditions

Private Fabian Passaro speaks well of his platoon commander (Baldini) who is representative of the tough but fair platoon commanders that gave the British troops so much trouble in the battles. They were an example to their men.

 

[samuelemmerson2012]

Baldini and Llambias-Pravaz were representative of the Argentinian Army & are heroes!

The Argentinian officers, at platoon and company level fought well, despite the rubbish being put out by the leftist veteran organizations seeking monetary compensation (They are being encouraged to do so by the current Kirchner government, composed of former Marxist guerrillas that tried to install a Communist dictatorship in the 1970s and are rewriting history at this very moment; they've even declared 7 September as "Montoneros Militant Day".). Funny thing is that under the Menem governement in 1992, the Buenos Aires city centre was filled with some 30,000 marching veterans (including the 10,000 or so garrison troops deployed in Southern Argentina and the 10,000 naval personnel deployed out at sea during the war) marking the 10th Anniversary of the Falklands/Malvinas War, but under the Kirchner administration the 30th Anniversary was marked right from day one (2 April 2012) with exaggerated newspaper reports and television bulletins revealing supposedly "torture" cases at the hand of platoon commanders when in fact it was these were field punishment metted out to conscripts that had gone AWOL or fallen asleep during sentry duties or worse. The conscripts that behaved heroically such as Fabricio Carrascul, Jorge Testoni, Guillermo Huircapan, Leonardo Rondi, Jorge Ledesma, Daniel Sanchez, and Oscar Poltronieri, etcetera, are not given the time of day by the Montoneros controlled press but instead former conscripts like Ernesto Alonso and Edgardo Esteban that were considered deserters by their officers get all the limelight.
I've done much research in the last couple of hours and can confirm that overrall the Argentinian officers and NCOs fought well and led their men from the front. At Goose Green the senior NCOs rallied the remnants of the 12th Regiment's A Company overrun in the initial night fighting and CSM Juan Cohelo sustained serious wounds in the fighting on Darwin HIll as he lay bed sheets to mark the Argentinian line for the supporting Pucaras and artillery guns. (And for the record, Cohelo was wounded by British fire just in case some smart Alec would like to say the opposite.) A lesser SNCO would've got a conscript to do the job for him. On Two Sisters, Captain Carlos Lopez Patterson was representative of the 4th Regiment officers when (under the British noses on Mount Kent) he would go out and repair the broken telephone cables under shellfire to avoid having conscripts risk their lives doing the job. A lesser officer would've got the conscripts to do this job. This Argentinian captain would regularly visit the forward 4th Regiment platoon (under 2d Lt. Llambias-Pravaz) near Murrell River and would be greeted enthusiastically by the conscripts in this exposed position (This platoon had had several bloody gunbattles with Royal Marines in the week before the battle and in fact forced the withdrawal of a platoon of Royal Marines from Mount Wall on 3 June). And the courage of Llambias-Pravaz has been recognized by the British Marines that stormed his position when ex-Marine Nick Taylor returned the photographs he found of the Argentinian officer and his platoon of conscripts on Two Sisters on the morning of 12 June. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...aylor-tracked-Argentine-soldier-pictures.html The conscripts in this platoon held an entire British company at bay for several hours against a barrage of LAW and MILAN missiles and with the telephone lines to the Command Post in shreds, regrouped on Sapper Hill rather than call it quits and head for the relative safety of Port Stanley. This platoon put up a magnificent fight thanks to it's officer, the platoon sergeant (Ramon Valdez) and the three or four corporals assigned as squad leaders (I will try to find out their names). There are several other army platoon commander that come to mind that fought equally well such as Aristegui WIA, La Madrid, Franco, Robredo, Oliva, Castaneda, Gonzalez WIA, Peluffo WIA, Aliaga WIA, Estevez KIA, Rodriguez-Perez, Perez-Grandi WIA, Mosquera WIA, Ron KIA, Gomez-Centurion, Munoz-Cabrera, Malacalza, Gimenez-Corvalan WIA, Neirotti WIA, Baldini KIA, Arreisegor, Dobroevic, Vasquez, Reyes, Martella KIA, Silva KIA, Alvarez-Berro, Bianchi, Harrington, Galindez-Matienzo, Karbiner, Pasolli, Guidobono, Mosteirin, Juarez, Corbella, Monez-Ruiz, Lopez WIA, Quiroga, etectera.

 

[SunilTanna]

The ‘field punishments’ meted out by Argentine Officers were nothing less than stupidity; they ranged from deducting rations to forcing men to stand bare foot in puddles of icy water – resulting in trench foot if the men were lucky, frost bight if they weren’t. Even the minor punishments weakened the men, while the major punishments rendered them unable to fight. They were not something that would strengthen resolve and were not being delivered by men sharing the hardships of the soldiers.

You missed out summary executions for stealing food.

 

[jamsodonnell]

Snip

No doubt there were instances where the Argentine forces on the Falklands fought well.

On the other hand their actions pale into insignificance against the vile crimes of the likes of Astiz and the scum at ESMA

 

[Riain]

No doubt there were instances where the Argentine forces on the Falklands fought well.

I agree, flying into a naval gunline (set up specificallly to shoot you down) at ultra low level is ballsy, but it takes more than balls to win a war.

 

[Cook]

You missed out summary executions for stealing food.

I hadn’t been aware that there’d been any. Given that the Argentineans were regularly raiding Falkland islander houses for food and steeling sheep to slaughter because of desperation, I’m surprised there was summary justice for it.

 

[Grimm Reaper]

Unfortunately the Argentine leadership was unable to tell the British how many POWs to expect, let alone provide for their own men.

 

[Cook]

Unfortunately the Argentine leadership was unable to tell the British how many POWs to expect, let alone provide for their own men.

More and more I have the impression that the only experience the German advisors Peron hired after World War Two had was in the subjects of uniforms and torture.

 

[Orville_third]

I hadn’t been aware that there’d been any. Given that the Argentineans were regularly raiding Falkland islander houses for food and steeling sheep to slaughter because of desperation, I’m surprised there was summary justice for it.

Well, the British were surprised at the comparative lack of ill-treatment of the Islanders in some ways.

 

[SunilTanna]

I believe that at least some of the executions were for stealing food from Argentine army stores.

How mad is that?

 

[Cook]

I believe that at least some of the executions were for stealing food from Argentine army stores.

I have the mental image of a crusty old quartermaster peering over the counter of the Q store and saying “No you can’t have anything, you haven’t filled in this request form properly – there’s an ‘r’ in starving. Now sod off, don't you know there's a war on?”

 

[Riain]

I have the mental image of a crusty old quartermaster peering over the counter of the Q store and saying “No you can’t have anything, you haven’t filled in this request form properly – there’s an ‘r’ in starving. Now sod off, don't you know there's a war on?”

More like "You can't have that ration pack, it's the last one I've got in stock and someone might want it!"