Max Hastings - The Battle for the Falklands

THE BATTLE FOR THE FALKLANDS

Max Hastings, author of over twenty books, was editor of the Daily Telegraph for almost a decade and then for six years edited the Evening Standard in London. In his youth he was foreign correspondent for newspapers and BBC television. He has won many awards for his journalism, particularly for his work on the Falklands War. He was knighted in 2002.

Simon Jenkins is an award-winning journalist and author of over fifteen books. He writes for the Guardian and the Sunday Times, as well as broadcasting for the BBC. He has previously been political editor of the Economist and editor of The Times and the Evening Standard. He was knighted in 2004.

Hastings and Jenkins were awarded the Yorkshire Posts Book of the Year prize for The Battle for the Falklands when it was first released in 1983. The book became an instant bestseller.

Also in the Pan Military Classics Series

ABSOLUTE WAR

Chris Bellamy

COLDITZ

Major P.R. Reid

THE DAM BUSTERS

Paul Brickhill

DAS REICH

Max Hastings

DEFEAT INTO VICTORY

Field Marshal Viscount Slim

THE LONELY LEADER

Alistair Horne

OVERLORD

Max Hastings

First published 1983 by Michael Joseph Limited

First published by Pan Books 1997 with a new Introduction

This edition published 2010 by Pan Books

This electronic edition published 2011 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-0-330-53676-9 EPUB

Copyright Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins 1983, 1997

The right of Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that youre always first to hear about our new releases.

Maps

Introduction 1997

The 1982 South Atlantic war was one of the strangest in British history. At the time, many Britons saw it as a tragic absurdity. Most accepted that some military response to the Argentine invasion was necessary, but necessary only after a serious breakdown in British policy and diplomacy. Any dispute that required the dispatch of 20,000 men to fight for a tiny relic of empire 8,000 miles from home was bizarre. Even in victory, the government felt obliged to examine its own performance prior to the crisis, with a commission of inquiry under Lord Franks. Its limited remit and careful exoneration of the politicians involved was and remains unconvincing.

The war itself has sunk into history, a glow of military success tinged by only the occasional doubt. The British won, and against the odds. The war confirmed the quality of British arms and the effectiveness of British command and control in the field, a quality reconfirmed in the Gulf and Bosnia. The reckless Goose Green adventure and failures in the handling of 5 Infantry Brigade, as well as the shortcomings of naval tactics and equipment, have not obscured an overall success. Sending troops by sea halfway round the globe to seize a well-defended island was a huge gamble, and its outcome therefore a remarkable triumph. Those who risk their lives at their governments bidding deserve the tribute of history, especially when they win.

The aftermath has been chequered. The Tory government, whose political fortunes were greatly boosted by the success, was obliged by continued Argentine belligerence to spend some 2 billion fortifying the islands, building a vastly expensive air base and deploying there a garrison. These measures conceded a strategic importance to the Falklands which the same British government had emphatically denied in negotiating with the Argentines before the war. The Falklands encounter blighted every subsequent review of defence procurement policy.

For the enemy, the outcome was benign. The Buenos Aires junta under General Galtieri and his colleagues collapsed, ushering in a period of hesitant democracy under President Carlos Menem. As so often in war, the vanquished gained as much from the conflict as the victor. The Falklands defeat was probably the best thing to happen to Argentina in half a century. But it did nothing to diminish the vigour of that nations claim to the islands, which still sit offshore, an enticing target for dissident adventurers.

The account of the war that we wrote immediately it was over has not been superseded in any important respect since its publication. Few military or political revelations have emerged since 1982 to discredit our conclusions, although many details have been inked in. We now have a clearer idea of Argentine planning and strategy before and during the war. Some new material has come from military and political memoirs (less so from the latter) and from investigative journalism. Military and regimental memoirs do not, in our view, change the basic story as told in 1983 though some books are enlivened by their authors personal spleen towards colleagues and rival units.

Some commentators have criticised censorship by the Ministry of Defence during the war. The weight of literature on this issue chiefly reflects the medias inflated view of its own importance in war. We believe that any government has a right, and probably a duty, to conceal information that might be of value to any enemy when the outcome of a war is at stake. Such a right might even embrace deliberate deception. That said, in the Falklands as in much of the Gulf war, the military authorities on the ground enjoyed a virtual monopoly of communication. This is unlikely to be repeated in the age of the portable satellite phone.

Much investigation has been devoted to what supposedly went wrong in the conduct of the fighting. This has suffered from hindsight notably the completeness of the eventual British victory and from an exaggerated lay expectation of how military units perform in combat. Wars rarely go according to plan. If they are lost, every decision was a mistake. If they are won, every excess on the part of the eventual victor was a barbarity. The much-publicised casualties at Goose Green, including the death of 2 Paras CO Lieutenant Colonel Jones, indeed arose from what has been criticised as a reckless political battle. The bombing of Sir Galahad and Sir Tristram stemmed from sins of commission and omission by middle-ranking officers. Yet battles cannot be scrutinised like peacetime train crashes. War is characterised by uncertainty, surprise and overcaution followed by overreaction. Both sides blunder in ignorance, in circumstances seldom of their own choosing. Few journalists have personal military experience, and thus the temptation to deploy in war the techniques and values of domestic peactime journalism proves hard to resist.