Nuestra Patria: The Chilean-Argentinian Border War, 1978-80
- Thread starter Chris Oakley
- Start date
You just gave me a great idea for Chapters 2 and 3.
If you'd like, drop me a PM, and I can give you some info about the plans and the approximate size and equipment of the Peruvian forces at this time.
Hmm, that does sound very interesting, and you just potentially gave me an idea - but for my own potential TL-in-development.
Chris Oakley
Banned
Hmm, that does sound very interesting, and you just potentially gave me an idea - but for my own potential TL-in-development.
Looking forward to it.
Chris Oakley
Banned
Nuestra Patria(continued)
Chapter 2
No sooner had the first Chilean artillery shells crashed into Argentine border outposts than the
Argentine air force scrambled its attack squadrons to commence bombing raids on military and
industrial targets throughout northern Chile. And while the Chilean naval task force was making
its approach toward the Tierra del Fuego, Argentina’s own navy had deployed a rather sizable
flotilla to intercept and engage the Chilean ships. Heading up the Argentine naval task force was
the light cruiser General Belgrano, originally named 17 de Octubre after a holiday that had once
honored Juan Peron and subsequently re-christened in tribute to a 19th century general who had
played a critical role in Argentina’s fight for independence from Spain. The two naval task forces
made contact early on the afternoon on August 4th, the second day of the war; the Chileans got
in the first blow, hitting the Argentine ships with a punishing missile strike. Three Argentine ships
were sunk outright and two others badly damaged, while the General Belgrano sustained minor
damage to her port side.
General Belgrano’s captain responded by ordering his main batteries to open fire on the nearest
Chilean vessel; his gunners were only too happy to comply with his instructions, and only a few
minutes after the order was originally given a Chilean guided missile ship found itself feeling the
wrath of Belgrano’s guns. One salvo ripped a massive gash in the missile ship’s starboard side;
another salvo scored a direct hit on her bridge, killing her captain and most of her senior officers
instantly. The third salvo exploded just a fraction of an inch from her main engine room, setting
off a fire which spread to her forward compartments in a matter of seconds. Her highest-ranking
surviving officer, a lieutenant with the vessel’s engineering staff, gave the order to abandon ship
less than ten minutes later.
While the missile ship’s remaining crew were being taken into custody by Belgrano security
personnel, one of Belgrano’s submarine escorts turned to pursue the flagship of the crumbling
Chilean flotilla. The subs soon caught their quarry and launched eight torpedoes at the enemy
flagship’s bow; all eight of those torpedoes hit the bow dead on and blew it to pieces, sinking
the Chilean flagship so quickly her captain didn’t even have time to give the evacuation order
before he drowned. At approximate 4:30 PM in the afternoon Buenos Aires time, the remnants
of the Chilean naval task force retired toward their home ports at full speed. The Argentines
declined to pursue them, opting instead to await further instructions from their navy’s admiralty
and take on fuel and other supplies from their accompanying support tenders. Their first wartime
operational mission had been a smashing success: in revenge for the three ships lost by their
own number, the Argentine flotilla had sunk seven Chilean warships and forced another one to
be scuttled by her own crew.
Chapter 2
No sooner had the first Chilean artillery shells crashed into Argentine border outposts than the
Argentine air force scrambled its attack squadrons to commence bombing raids on military and
industrial targets throughout northern Chile. And while the Chilean naval task force was making
its approach toward the Tierra del Fuego, Argentina’s own navy had deployed a rather sizable
flotilla to intercept and engage the Chilean ships. Heading up the Argentine naval task force was
the light cruiser General Belgrano, originally named 17 de Octubre after a holiday that had once
honored Juan Peron and subsequently re-christened in tribute to a 19th century general who had
played a critical role in Argentina’s fight for independence from Spain. The two naval task forces
made contact early on the afternoon on August 4th, the second day of the war; the Chileans got
in the first blow, hitting the Argentine ships with a punishing missile strike. Three Argentine ships
were sunk outright and two others badly damaged, while the General Belgrano sustained minor
damage to her port side.
General Belgrano’s captain responded by ordering his main batteries to open fire on the nearest
Chilean vessel; his gunners were only too happy to comply with his instructions, and only a few
minutes after the order was originally given a Chilean guided missile ship found itself feeling the
wrath of Belgrano’s guns. One salvo ripped a massive gash in the missile ship’s starboard side;
another salvo scored a direct hit on her bridge, killing her captain and most of her senior officers
instantly. The third salvo exploded just a fraction of an inch from her main engine room, setting
off a fire which spread to her forward compartments in a matter of seconds. Her highest-ranking
surviving officer, a lieutenant with the vessel’s engineering staff, gave the order to abandon ship
less than ten minutes later.
While the missile ship’s remaining crew were being taken into custody by Belgrano security
personnel, one of Belgrano’s submarine escorts turned to pursue the flagship of the crumbling
Chilean flotilla. The subs soon caught their quarry and launched eight torpedoes at the enemy
flagship’s bow; all eight of those torpedoes hit the bow dead on and blew it to pieces, sinking
the Chilean flagship so quickly her captain didn’t even have time to give the evacuation order
before he drowned. At approximate 4:30 PM in the afternoon Buenos Aires time, the remnants
of the Chilean naval task force retired toward their home ports at full speed. The Argentines
declined to pursue them, opting instead to await further instructions from their navy’s admiralty
and take on fuel and other supplies from their accompanying support tenders. Their first wartime
operational mission had been a smashing success: in revenge for the three ships lost by their
own number, the Argentine flotilla had sunk seven Chilean warships and forced another one to
be scuttled by her own crew.
HeavyWeaponsGuy
Banned
Oh praise Jeebus, we've needed another one of these ever since Maverick deleted his.
Chris Oakley
Banned
Just found this and I have to say : I'm impressed.
Chris, do keep this up and please finish it.
I'm going to.
Matter of fact, I'm working on Chapter 3 right now.
Chris Oakley
Banned
Nuestra Patria(continued)
Chapter 3
While Argentina’s navy was giving Chile a bloody nose at sea, her air force kept smashing key
military and industrial facilities throughout northern Chile and had mounted a punishing surprise
attack on the port of Valparaiso. The Valparaiso raid was carried out partly with the tacit help
of Peru, whose military had planned to attack Chile in 1975 only to scrap those plans when the
government changed; the outbreak of the Chilean border war with Argentina had prompted Lima
to retrieve its own war plans from mothballs. Under the pretext of holding training exercises to
test its pilots’ navigational abilities, the Peruvian air force dispatched U.S.-built A-37s to distract
Chilean air defense commanders from the Argentine strike force. By the time those air defense
commanders realized what was actually going, most of the Argentine strike jets were already
crossing back into their own airspace and the rest were just a stone’s throw shy of the Chilean-
Argentine border.
The Valparaiso air strike would have repercussions far beyond Latin America. Impressed
by the airtight operational security surrounding the Argentine raid on the Chilean port city, the
Israeli air force would use it as a template for their own plans when bombing the Iraqi nuclear
reactor at Osirak in 1981; a decade later the U.S. and its coalition allies would incorporate the
lessons of the Valparaiso raid into their air war strategy for Operation Desert Storm.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
One of the better-known aspects of the Chile-Argentina border war is the so-called
“Guerra de las Montes”(war of the mountains) campaign in which the Chilean and Argentine
armies fought each other tooth and nail for control of the Andes. Since the 19th century Latin
American wars for independence from Spain military strategists have been keenly aware of
the mountain range’s importance as a natural defensive barrier to any potential invader; when
the 1978-80 border conflict began in earnest, each country did everything it possibly could to
render these mountains impassable to the other. Taking a page from the Viet Cong, Chilean
and Argentine soldiers strung homemade booby traps wherever they could in order to hinder
the passage of enemy forces-- and they didn’t shy away from employing more sophisticated
devices either. One particularly sadistic and inventive Argentine officer positioned a series of
tripwires across certain trails that, if broken, would set off cluster bombs powerful enough to
kill a dozen men in one fell swoop or tear a vehicle apart like it was made out of paper.
But occasionally even these lethal devices weren’t enough to deter an advancing troop
detachment from venturing into hostile territory-- and when that proved to be the case, fierce
firefights would ensue. It was during one of those firefights that the Chilean army would gain
its first significant tactical victory of the war; on October 11th, 1978, just two over two months
into the conflict, a Chilean infantry battalion patrolling a footpass at the southern end of the
Andes encountered an Argentine commando detachment whose mission was unclear at the
time but was later determined to involve sabotage of Chilean industrial facilities. In a moment
of panic one of the Argentines drew a pistol and fired at the Chilean battalion commander. The
Chileans immediately returned fire, and a brief but intense skirmish ensued in which two of the
Chilean soldiers and four of the Argentine commandos died and another Argentine soldier was
seriously wounded. When Chilean air force attack jets began strafing the commandos’ seriously
exposed position, the remaining Argentines decided discretion was the better part of valor and
hastily retreated back to their side of the border. Although the Chileans were disappointed at
not having been able to capture any of the commandos, the fact they’d succeeded in repulsing
the Argentine attempt to disrupt Chilean industrial production filled them with considerable pride.
It also helped elevate Chile’s collective national morale. Augusto Pinochet went on Chilean
state television that evening to laud the infantrymen as heroes; despite the relatively small scale
of the engagement, Pinochet hyped it like it was the Battle of Waterloo. A massive government-
sponsored rally in Santiago drew one hundred thousand people to celebrate the thwarting of the
Argentine commando operation, and when the battalion commander went home on leave he
was greeted by an enthusiastic welcoming committee along with a three-hour parade at which
all his hometown’s leading dignitaries turned out to honor him. Not surprisingly the Argentines
saw matters a tad differently; then-Argentine president Jorge Rafael Vidala accused the Chilean
army of luring the commandos into an ambush and threatened to have every Chilean POW who
was in Argentine custody shot in retaliation. Although this threat was never carried out, the fact
Vidala issued it drove home the intensity of the conflict between Chile and Argentina. While the
Argentine army tried to figure where it had gone wrong with the commando mission, the Chilean
army looked for a way to take the fight to the Argentines’ own backyard.
In the meantime, the Peruvian navy was stepping in to aid its Chilean allies in harassing the
Argentines at sea. One vessel which would play an especially notable part in this regard was
the Peruvian cruiser BAP Almirante Grau. The flagship of the Peruvian navy at the time
the Chile-Argentina border war started, the Almirante Grau not only coordinated attack missions
by other Peruvian warships but also saw plenty of action in her own right; the British newspaper
Daily Mirror gave her the unofficial title “the most frequently-fired on warship in Latin American
history”, and few on Grau’s personnel roster would have been inclined to question that moniker.
Certainly her captain wasn’t going to argue with it too much-- from the moment the war began in
earnest Grau took fire from every Argentine naval vessel equipped with anything stronger than a
.50 caliber machine gun.
It was the Grau that would claim the first Peruvian naval victory of the war. On October 25th, two
weeks after the first major tactical engagement between Chilean and Argentine ground forces in
the Andes, the Peruvian flagship cornered and sank an Argentine cruiser off Argentina’s Tierra
del Fuego coast. Like the Chilean victory in the Andes, Grau’s sinking of the Argentine warship
was trumpeted as a great success in the steadily escalating border war; Peru’s official state TV
and radio networks aired live interviews with her captain and executive officer, while photos of
the stricken Argentine cruiser in its last moments before going under were splashed across the
front pages of Peru’s major newspapers. Just about every Grau crew member above the rank
of seaman got a promotion for their troubles; in fact, the captain of the Almirante Grau would go
on to retire from the Peruvian navy with the rank of vice-admiral.
Chapter 3
While Argentina’s navy was giving Chile a bloody nose at sea, her air force kept smashing key
military and industrial facilities throughout northern Chile and had mounted a punishing surprise
attack on the port of Valparaiso. The Valparaiso raid was carried out partly with the tacit help
of Peru, whose military had planned to attack Chile in 1975 only to scrap those plans when the
government changed; the outbreak of the Chilean border war with Argentina had prompted Lima
to retrieve its own war plans from mothballs. Under the pretext of holding training exercises to
test its pilots’ navigational abilities, the Peruvian air force dispatched U.S.-built A-37s to distract
Chilean air defense commanders from the Argentine strike force. By the time those air defense
commanders realized what was actually going, most of the Argentine strike jets were already
crossing back into their own airspace and the rest were just a stone’s throw shy of the Chilean-
Argentine border.
The Valparaiso air strike would have repercussions far beyond Latin America. Impressed
by the airtight operational security surrounding the Argentine raid on the Chilean port city, the
Israeli air force would use it as a template for their own plans when bombing the Iraqi nuclear
reactor at Osirak in 1981; a decade later the U.S. and its coalition allies would incorporate the
lessons of the Valparaiso raid into their air war strategy for Operation Desert Storm.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
One of the better-known aspects of the Chile-Argentina border war is the so-called
“Guerra de las Montes”(war of the mountains) campaign in which the Chilean and Argentine
armies fought each other tooth and nail for control of the Andes. Since the 19th century Latin
American wars for independence from Spain military strategists have been keenly aware of
the mountain range’s importance as a natural defensive barrier to any potential invader; when
the 1978-80 border conflict began in earnest, each country did everything it possibly could to
render these mountains impassable to the other. Taking a page from the Viet Cong, Chilean
and Argentine soldiers strung homemade booby traps wherever they could in order to hinder
the passage of enemy forces-- and they didn’t shy away from employing more sophisticated
devices either. One particularly sadistic and inventive Argentine officer positioned a series of
tripwires across certain trails that, if broken, would set off cluster bombs powerful enough to
kill a dozen men in one fell swoop or tear a vehicle apart like it was made out of paper.
But occasionally even these lethal devices weren’t enough to deter an advancing troop
detachment from venturing into hostile territory-- and when that proved to be the case, fierce
firefights would ensue. It was during one of those firefights that the Chilean army would gain
its first significant tactical victory of the war; on October 11th, 1978, just two over two months
into the conflict, a Chilean infantry battalion patrolling a footpass at the southern end of the
Andes encountered an Argentine commando detachment whose mission was unclear at the
time but was later determined to involve sabotage of Chilean industrial facilities. In a moment
of panic one of the Argentines drew a pistol and fired at the Chilean battalion commander. The
Chileans immediately returned fire, and a brief but intense skirmish ensued in which two of the
Chilean soldiers and four of the Argentine commandos died and another Argentine soldier was
seriously wounded. When Chilean air force attack jets began strafing the commandos’ seriously
exposed position, the remaining Argentines decided discretion was the better part of valor and
hastily retreated back to their side of the border. Although the Chileans were disappointed at
not having been able to capture any of the commandos, the fact they’d succeeded in repulsing
the Argentine attempt to disrupt Chilean industrial production filled them with considerable pride.
It also helped elevate Chile’s collective national morale. Augusto Pinochet went on Chilean
state television that evening to laud the infantrymen as heroes; despite the relatively small scale
of the engagement, Pinochet hyped it like it was the Battle of Waterloo. A massive government-
sponsored rally in Santiago drew one hundred thousand people to celebrate the thwarting of the
Argentine commando operation, and when the battalion commander went home on leave he
was greeted by an enthusiastic welcoming committee along with a three-hour parade at which
all his hometown’s leading dignitaries turned out to honor him. Not surprisingly the Argentines
saw matters a tad differently; then-Argentine president Jorge Rafael Vidala accused the Chilean
army of luring the commandos into an ambush and threatened to have every Chilean POW who
was in Argentine custody shot in retaliation. Although this threat was never carried out, the fact
Vidala issued it drove home the intensity of the conflict between Chile and Argentina. While the
Argentine army tried to figure where it had gone wrong with the commando mission, the Chilean
army looked for a way to take the fight to the Argentines’ own backyard.
In the meantime, the Peruvian navy was stepping in to aid its Chilean allies in harassing the
Argentines at sea. One vessel which would play an especially notable part in this regard was
the Peruvian cruiser BAP Almirante Grau. The flagship of the Peruvian navy at the time
the Chile-Argentina border war started, the Almirante Grau not only coordinated attack missions
by other Peruvian warships but also saw plenty of action in her own right; the British newspaper
Daily Mirror gave her the unofficial title “the most frequently-fired on warship in Latin American
history”, and few on Grau’s personnel roster would have been inclined to question that moniker.
Certainly her captain wasn’t going to argue with it too much-- from the moment the war began in
earnest Grau took fire from every Argentine naval vessel equipped with anything stronger than a
.50 caliber machine gun.
It was the Grau that would claim the first Peruvian naval victory of the war. On October 25th, two
weeks after the first major tactical engagement between Chilean and Argentine ground forces in
the Andes, the Peruvian flagship cornered and sank an Argentine cruiser off Argentina’s Tierra
del Fuego coast. Like the Chilean victory in the Andes, Grau’s sinking of the Argentine warship
was trumpeted as a great success in the steadily escalating border war; Peru’s official state TV
and radio networks aired live interviews with her captain and executive officer, while photos of
the stricken Argentine cruiser in its last moments before going under were splashed across the
front pages of Peru’s major newspapers. Just about every Grau crew member above the rank
of seaman got a promotion for their troubles; in fact, the captain of the Almirante Grau would go
on to retire from the Peruvian navy with the rank of vice-admiral.
Peru and Chile have had long-standing grudges for a while. Not to the intensity as the disputes between Bolivia and Chile (that is certain), but somewhere close. It's Latin America - governments holding grudges and territorial ambitions against other countries is commonplace.
Wait, why are the Peruvians helping the Argentines mount a successful air attack and then turning around and sinking Argentine ships?