PC/WI Menendez doesn't surrender at Stanley?

WILDGEESE

Gone Fishin'
Inspired by a couple or more Falkland War threads knocking about in the last few pages I thought I'd throw one in.

What if Argie Cmdr Menendez, having enough supplies and of his troops still being high in morale and combat ready forced the British Forces to recapture Stanley, house by house in street fighting?

What would be the ramifications for both sides?

Regards filers
 
the argentines weren't high in moral. most of them had been sitting in the hills for a couple of months with no rotation, inadequate supplies, wet and cold, and the prospect of being staked to the ground overnight if they said the wrong word in front of their officers. there's a good chance he gets murdered by his own troops, as do some other argentine officers, meanwhile other argentines may take revenge on the civilians. it won't be pretty, but i don't think you are going to see a mini-stalingrad either, since alnost all the argentine forces were incapable of anything but completely static defence from prepared positions (which incidentally were usually poorly prepared despite all the time they had).
 
The British win within a few days at most. If there are high civilian casualties, there will be political fallout. Economic sanctions perhaps?
OTOH, Menendez might expel the civilian population and send them west in a futile attempt to bother the incoming paras' logistics, so we just get more military casualties but little civilians ones.
 
The Marines and Paras had spent the best part of ten years learning street fighting on the Falls, the Bogside and the Creggan while the Argentinians were scared, miserable conscripts who just wanted to go home.

It's only going to end one way, the only question is of how many Argentinians are left alive at the end of it and whether any of them would be stupid enough to try and harm the civilian inhabitants of Stanley.
 
...there's a good chance he gets murdered by his own troops, as do some other argentine officers, meanwhile other argentines may take revenge on the civilians. it won't be pretty, but i don't think you are going to see a mini-stalingrad either, since alnost all the argentine forces were incapable of anything but completely static defence from prepared positions (which incidentally were usually poorly prepared despite all the time they had).
One telling fact here - after surrender the Argentinian officers were reportedly by and large very unhappy to be deprived of their sidearms. Not from any concept of honour, but because they were scared of their own troops and though they would need them for self-defence.

OTOH, Menendez might expel the civilian population and send them west in a futile attempt to bother the incoming paras' logistics, so we just get more military casualties but little civilians ones.
That might actually impose quite a significant delay on things - the rate of advance was very much controlled by the rate at which men and supplies could be moved forward.
Having said that, a few days of delay is all that it could achieve, at the cost of some pretty horrific international press: by this stage the British control the whole of East Falkland except for Stanley, including all of the high ground around Stanley.
They've got 105mm artillery forward, and indeed right before the surrender were engaging Argentine forces on the outskirts of Stanley with it. It should be noted that Stanley isn't Stalingrad here - the buildings are made of wood and tin, so offer essentially no cover against artillery. The civilian population have some value as human shields - without them the place is just one big target.

The Marines and Paras had spent the best part of ten years learning street fighting on the Falls, the Bogside and the Creggan while the Argentinians were scared, miserable conscripts who just wanted to go home.
Umm... you don't do FIBUA in an environment where you're fighting trained soldiers in the same way that you would patrol in Northern Ireland. You're not going to blow a series of Mouseholes to patrol down the Falls Road, for instance, or send a grenade through the hole before you follow through.
The British have indeed been training for it for years (ever since the Canadian experience at Ortona), but the modern facility at Copehill Down was only built in 1988. They'll probably be a bit better placed than the Argentinians, but the training that helps then will be for Germany rather than Belfast.
 
Umm... you don't do FIBUA in an environment where you're fighting trained soldiers in the same way that you would patrol in Northern Ireland.

True enough, but it would have meant they were at least aware of the threats in the urban environment (ie, we used to operating in a '360 degree' battle), were used to finding the enemy using houses as cover etc.

Obviously we couldn't blow half of the Creggan or the Falls up (which would, as we know, cause hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of improvements...) and it wasn't the perfect prep for a 'proper' FISH & CHIPS battle, but it was a sight more experience than your average half starved, half trained Argentinian conscript would have had.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
I'd say another two hundred casualties for the British, another thousand casualties for the Argentinians. The junta comes out looking even worse than they did IOTL.
 
If Menendez does not surrender as is seen by the western press as holding the civilian population as human shields against the British assault then the effect on western political attitudes to the Argentine Junta will harden very rapidly. If however the civilians are released on humanitarian grounds and then the Argentine conscripts take hugely greater casualties in an heroic but futile last stand then the press fallout might e negative towards the British for nor giving more time for a negotiated peace. If there was a final stand by the Argentine forces in Stanley I would not be surprised if their were major casualties in the Argentine officer corps as the rank and file take matters into their own hands and then surrender.
 
I don't think the Argentines had the cohesion for more fighting - the units had virtually collapsed.

As it was certain individuals went for a ramble into Stanley after the last of the Hill battles had finished (but before the Garrison surrendered) and were not stopped or challenged in any way.

I don't think it would have come to a fight - Maybe the remains of the 601st and 602nd Commandos would have put up resistance but the remains of the 2 Infantry Brigades had lost much of their equipment and nearly all of the sub units had taken losses some of them serious and morale was rock bottom.

IIRC Menendez was told by the British that he would be held personally responsible for any Civilian deaths if they had to take Stanley by force - as it was he was already held in utter contempt by the British commanders for forcing them to fight for the hills when it was obvious that the game was up.

So if the British had to fight for the place then we are given yet another example of Professional Soldiers triumphing over a mainly conscript army with large numbers of Conscripts surrendering while individuals and small units would show great courage in resisting.

The main difference being that if the action resulted in civilian deaths then the senior Argentine Officers would be far more likely to have been tried for war crimes at the Hague and this would have left some of them open to Spanish and other countries efforts to prosecute them for the Murder of European Citizens that they were implicated in during the 70s.
 
I don't think the Argentines had the cohesion for more fighting - the units had virtually collapsed.

As it was certain individuals went for a ramble into Stanley after the last of the Hill battles had finished (but before the Garrison surrendered) and were not stopped or challenged in any way.

I don't think it would have come to a fight - Maybe the remains of the 601st and 602nd Commandos would have put up resistance but the remains of the 2 Infantry Brigades had lost much of their equipment and nearly all of the sub units had taken losses some of them serious and morale was rock bottom.

IIRC Menendez was told by the British that he would be held personally responsible for any Civilian deaths if they had to take Stanley by force - as it was he was already held in utter contempt by the British commanders for forcing them to fight for the hills when it was obvious that the game was up.

So if the British had to fight for the place then we are given yet another example of Professional Soldiers triumphing over a mainly conscript army with large numbers of Conscripts surrendering while individuals and small units would show great courage in resisting.

The main difference being that if the action resulted in civilian deaths then the senior Argentine Officers would be far more likely to have been tried for war crimes at the Hague and this would have left some of them open to Spanish and other countries efforts to prosecute them for the Murder of European Citizens that they were implicated in during the 70s.

There were quite a few Argentine POWs who were wanted in European countries like Sweden and Spain, for throwing nuns out of helicopters and the like. They might have enjoyed a trip to Europe rather than being quietly repatriated.
 
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