Book Review - Battles of the Falklands War by Gordon Smith

 Battles of the Falklands by Gordon Smith

London: Ian Allen Ltd, 1989          ISBN 0711017921

This is a somewhat dry, but very useful book. Built around 40 maps, the book is a day-by-day account of the invasion of the Falklands and South Georgia by the Argentinians, the build-up of the British task force and their arrival in the conflict zone, and the battles naval, aerial and on land that led to the British victory. There is a potted history of the Falkland Islands at the beginning of the book, appendices at the end covering British awards for Gallantry, British ships lost and damaged, British and Argentinian air losses, and a useful bibliography.

Even though this could be almost classed as a reference book, there is still much to be gleaned and learnt about this short and vicious conflict, one that almost seems to have been forgotten these days. Not emphasised in this book, but still obvious, is the weather. In the middle of the Atlantic, at 51 degrees south, the weather even in summer can be treacherous, but in May and June, when the major battles of the war took place, the seas are rough and the land is cold and blizzard-prone. It's not mentioned in this book, but surely the Argentinian leaders assumed that by invading in April, the weather would be a protection from quick action by the British to re-take the islands.

They were so very wrong in thinking that. The British very quickly mobilized naval and land forces to head down to face the Argentine forces. This was a huge logistical effort, undertaken very quickly, and it is a credit to those that organised and undertook those logistical operations that they managed to transfer thousands of troops and dozens of ships and aircraft, and all the ancillaries, ammunition, food and fuel required so quickly, generally in an efficient manner.

That this was a battle about control of sea and air space was clear to the British command, but perhaps less so to the Argentinians (this book is written from the British viewpoint, so the reader gets little to no insight into the strategies, tactics or thinking of the Argentine side). From the sea point of view, the British would have thought that they had the advantage, which in the end proved to be the case. Although the Argentinian Navy was quite large, and did have some modern ships (ironically their modern ships were made by British shipyards), mostly they were older (the General Belgrano was an ex USN WWII cruiser) and had limited capacity against the modern ships of the RN. While the sinking of the Belgrano was shocking and controversial at the time it happened, strategically it made perfect sense: the Belgrano, with its 6 inch guns, could have made short work of the British carriers if it had got within range, but more importantly its sinking had the effect of sending the rest of the Argentinian Navy back to port for the rest of the war. This had a huge effect on not only the Argentinian ability to interdict and fight the Royal Navy, but to assist the Army troops on the Islands.

The battle for airspace was much more contested, and was a much more even fight. The British side were hamstrung by their very limited number of fighter and attack aircraft (approximately 40 Harriers/Sea Harriers), and no AEW capability. The Argentinian side were hamstrung by the distance from their bases to the Falklands, which left them very little time for battle flying once there, and the fact that the British carriers could position themselves much closer to the active area while being out of range to any Argentinian 'plane. It's fair to state that it was in the air where Argentina had its biggest successes - while not managing to down more than one British fighter (others were destroyed by ground fire or accident), they did manage to sink seven ships, several helicopters, and do other damage to naval vessels and on the ground. In achieving this, they lost over 50 aircraft, losses which were unsustainable and led to air attacks reducing as time went on.

In the end, after a few nasty battles, the Argentine garrison surrendered, not because they thought they couldn't fight, and fight well, but with the realization that without supply and support from the Navy, and with diminishing capacity of the Air Force to assist, the end was inevitable. The Argentinian commander onsite disobeyed the Junta in Buenos Aires and surrendered, thus no doubt saving many hundreds of lives on both sides.

Battles of the Falklands War is not a true history, but rather a chronology and as such doesn't go into the whys and wherefores of the battle. But there are things that we can glean from this sorry bit of history, some of which resonate now in 2023, more than forty years later. One is that undemocratic dictatorships eventually drown in their own dreams of power and glory, another is never dismiss democracies as unable to stand up to naked aggression, and the third is that, quite often, logistics win wars.

If you would like to know what happened when and to whom in the Falklands War, this book is worth fishing out. If you are after a more rounded history of the conflict, there are better books to read.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell