A catastrophe had befallen the Argentinians with the sinking of the Belgrano on May 2nd 1982, all in all 368 sailors died after it was torpedoed by the nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror.

While Argentina’s warships never ventured out to sea again, the diplomatic fallout from the sinking caused Britain to lose a great deal of good faith that she’d built up over the preceding few weeks. 

But it was only two days later that Admiral Anaya was going to take his revenge.

Before then, a few bits of action were recorded. On the night of 2nd May a Sea King helicopter was fired on by the Argentinian naval vessel the Alferez Sobral about 100 nautical miles north of the Falklands. The helicopter escaped damage and flew back to HMS Glasgow and Coventry, based nearby. Two Lynx choppers took off and guided by the Sea King took aim at the Sobral firing two Sea Skua missiles. The British recorded two explosions and the echo of the Sobral seemed to die away – they thought it had been sunk. 

It hadn’t. 

Out among the British ships, the crews were working their defence watches, second-degree readiness. The surveillance radars were picking up false echoes suggesting incoming aircraft, what was known as anomalous propagation. Several of the ships were chatting about this problem, HMS Coventry was in contact with HMS Sheffield which had taken over Coventry’s usual station at the south-west corner of the task force, about 40 miles south of Port Stanley.

When war erupted most of Sheffield’s crew thought they wouldn’t be joining the Task Team, they were off Gibraltar on their way home after 4 and a half months at sea. That’s quite a stint for a destroyer. After deployment on April 2nd, some thought they wouldn’t be heading further south than Ascension Island. Eventually and ironically HMS Sheffield was the first surface ship to reach the Total Exclusion Zone – ahead of the Task Force. 

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The Vulcan has just bombed Port Stanley airfield, causing significant damage and the Argentinians on the Falklands were about to experience a wave of attacks by Sea Harriers. 

While this was happening, Argentina’s most powerful warship the General Belgrano was steaming into the Atlantic for the last time as it turn out. 

To the north east, Vice-Admiral Woodward’s battle group of thirteen ships had entered the exclusion zone in the early hours of the 1st May and the flight-deck crews on board the carriers were prepping the sea Harriers for the next blow. 

Invincible had modern radar and the smaller air group and was designated as the air-defence ship, concentrating on providing combat air patrols to fly cover for the fleet.

The twelve Harriers on board Hermes were going to fly to the Falklands. The planes led by Lieutenant Commander Andy Auld of 800 squadron took off from the Hermes at first light, assembled over the fleet, then turned towards the Falklands’ Coast. Balancing the fuel against the bomb payloads had been a mathematical challenge, but Woodward made this easier by bringing his carriers closer than 70 miles off the coast to give the Harriers an opportunity to carry heavier bomb loads and less fuel. The 12 flew in low and fast, three aircraft detached to attack the Goose Green Argentinian base, the rest were aiming at Stanley runway and anti-aircraft defences. 

About 300 nautical miles west of the Total Exclusion Zone or TEZ, and close to the Argentine coast, two British submarines were venturing in search of the enemies boats. The Royal Navy knew that they had to find these before the largest and most dangerous entered the TEZ, particularly the General Belgrano. In early April 1982 the British War Cabinet had ordered the subs to keep away from the mainland lest they sink one of the more important ships and then damage the possible negotiations that but by the end of April, Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet changed their minds. 

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It’s late April 1982 and the British have retaken the island of South Georgia after a sharp fight against the Argentinians who’d seized the frozen outcrop the day after the Falklands were invaded. 

The Argentine fleet had returned to its base after the initial landing on 2nd April, its welcome as the force which had regained the islands muted by the United Nations resolution calling for a withdrawal and the news that the British had dispatched a task force. 

It would be at least two weeks before the British arrived so the Argentinians spent the time replenishing their ships and fixing a few mechanical defects. After London had declared a Maritime Exclusion Zone of 200 nautical miles from the centre of the Falklands, any Argentinian ship entering this area was likely to be sunk by the British submarines that were already in the area.

At least, that’s what the Argentinians believed. 

Submarines Spartan and the Splendid had headed off to the South Atlantic on the 1st April when it suddenly dawned on the cabinet and the Ministry of Defence that Buenos Aires was serious about invading the islands. By the 12 April these two nuclear submarines were on station – but what the Argentinians didn’t know was that the British sub commanders had not yet received permission to attack ships. 

The first of May dawned, and for Argentinians this was known as the start of the Falklands, although the British had believed that was the day of invasion – 2nd April. 

The bombing of Port Stanley airport by the British was an extraordinary feat of aviation endurance. First the action of the Aircraft Carriers Hermes and Invincible each with a squadron of Sea Harriers and many helicopters, along with ten destroyers and frigates supported by three supply ships gave the impression of an imminent attack. Operation Blackbuck was so unbelievably difficult, it’s difficult to believe that it was successful. 

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When we ended last episode, the Argentinians had just seized Gryviken in South Georgia on 3rd April 1982 and had begun to move new units into the Falklands replacing the commandos who landed on the 2nd.

The British cabinet had met and the Task Force was at sea within 5 days. Elements of the force converged on the Ascension Islands at the end of the second week of April 1982 and were under orders to prepare a number of options for the cabinet’s decision. 

Commodore Clapp and Brigadier Thompson aboard the Fearless were wrestling with how to recapture the Falklands. Thompson’s planning cell of officers was called the R Group, and were specifically instructed to concern themselves with land operations. The sea and air battle would apparently have been wrapped up by the time of their arrival at the islands. 

This was not what was going to happen, but they didn’t know that then obviously. 

Some in the cabinet preferred a lengthy blockade to any landings. But by far the biggest strategic debate early in this war was what to do about South Georgia. The island was 800 miles beyond the primary objective in hostile seas and anyone steaming there would be exposed to the Argentinian submarines. Whatever Thompson thought – sending his entire brigade to South Georgia was dangerous. 

So conversely the use of only a small force on the Antrim and Plymouth was less risky even if they failed to take South Georgia. Eventually the decision was taken to attack this island first and this was primarily political. The British public were baying for blood, Buenos Aires remained intransigent, Washington insiders were whispering that London was afraid of a showdown. The Antrim group was dispatched in haste to deal with South Georgia as a matter of urgency. 

The detached squadron led by Captain Brian Young in Antrim rendezvoused with Endurance 1000 miles north of South Georgia on 14th April. The British believed the Argentinians had placed only a small garrison on the bleak, glacier-encrusted island, but did not know that reinforcements were being sent.

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The Argentinians invaded the Falklands on 2nd April 1982 and as you heard last episode, the main force took the islands after a short firefight at Government House which left one Argentinian dead and two wounded and one Royal Marine wounded in the arm there. 

The Army’s 25th Regiment was already flying in from the mainland airfield of Comodoro Rivadavia to replace the marine landing force. It would be followed by the 9th Engineer Company, and these two units would constitute the first Argentine Garrison in the Falklands. 

Four of the important planes in the coming conflict, the Pucaras, of the 3rd Attack Group then carried out a fly-past and landed at Port Stanley airfield. The Argentinian 25th Regiment to be the main force in the garrison and they were chosen because they were the closest unit to the islands. Some have said they were chosen symbolically as superior troops selected from various units but Argentinians say this was false information.  

They were a normal unit with professional officers and NCOs but all the privates were conscripts. This was going to have a bearing on what happened when the fighting started later. The British were sending professionals, whereas the Argentinian backbone of soldiers were all conscripts and in the coming hand-to-hand battles in trenches, this would be a telling difference. 

The Falkands British officials were removed on the same day, including most of the Royal Marines which were quickly rounded up. Their commanding officer, Major Norman, later said that his men were treated well by the captors – except when the Argentinian 2nd Marine Infantry Battalion arrived. They weren’t involved in any fighting and yet had set out to humiliate the British troops. While this was going on, Argentina erupted in a day of ecstasy. A communique announced that the fifty two year-old commander of the Buenos Aires first army corps, General Mario Benjamin Menendez had been appointed governor of the Islas Malvinas. At a rally later outside the Casa Rosada presidential palace, General Galtieri told a jubilant crowd that the three commanders in chief of the junta had interpreted the will of the people. His voice constantly broke with emotion at the spectacle before him. Not since the days of Peron had a soldier been so well received. A few days before, this police had shot civilians in the same Plaza, now the square was filled with thousands weeping tears of joy. 

In London, the 2nd April was a brilliant spring day – but Westminster and Whitehall were in shock – chilled to the bone by the news. Everyone was talking in hushed tones. It was only hours before that Margaret Thatchers’ cabinet had been discussing methods of deterrence and now these ideas were moot. What was even more incredible, is that throughout Friday morning long after the Argentinians had seized Port Stanley, the British establishment was incredulous about a full invasion. Their communications had been difficult with the Falklands for a number of reasons – including the weather – and they were monitoring the Buenos Aires celebrations with a sense of disbelief. 

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The Argentinians have just landed commandos and attacked the Marine Barracks at Moody Brook, but missed their target as the 40 specialist brit soldiers have been on the move for more than a day already. 

As your heard last episode, the British finally managed to get a warning to their Falklands Governor, Rex Hunt, a few hours before the Argentinian fleet anchored off Port Stanley. 

Argentinian Rear-Admiral Büsser had been studying the problems of landing at the Falklands since January 1982 and the commandos had carried out the first obvious mission – to strike at the Marine Barracks “by surprise and without bloodshed” he told author Martin Middlebrook.

Büsser’s original plan was to land the Amphibious Commando Company during the night on a beach two miles south of Stanley, then to march overland and seize the barracks along with other key points in the town. The main landing force would then come ashore at dawn with an army platoon sent ahead to capture Government House and the governor, while the marines completed the sweep of Stanley. 

A small plane would fly from the mainland once the island was secure, and its occupants would prepare the airport for the arrival of a much larger army contingent which would replace the landing force and form the first garrison. 

Two more platoons were to be transported by helicopter from the Almirante Irizar to occupy Goose Green and Darwin area. 

However, he hit a snag. Firstly, there was no surprise, his own state radio had told everyone the night before that by dawn the Falklands would “be ours”. So the beach was going to be defended and the airport runway likely blocked. Worse, the Puma helicopter that was supposed to be used on board the Almirante Irizar  had broken loose in its hangar during the raging storm you heard about last episode and was damaged. 

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As we heard last episode, Argentinian businessman Senor Davidoff had chartered a boat to take 41 of his men to South Georgia to salvage metal and other materials from abandoned whaling stations. The had not reported to the British head of a scientific mission at the port of Grytviken despite being told to. 

It was March 1982 and the Bahia Buen Suceso had dropped off the scrapmen on the island who were breaking down the abandoned buildings. They’d also been joined by a French film crew who were forced to seek shelter at South Georgia. After they fixed up the broken tiller and mast, they sailed to Leith Bay from Grytviken to film the scrapping – having decided to forego their planned trip to the Antarctic which had almost ended in catastrophe. 

On the 23rd March, Lord Carrington the British Foreign Secretary sent an even stronger message to Buenos Aires. If the Bahia Buen Suceso was not ordered back to remove the 41 Argentinian workers left on South Georgia, the Royal Marines would do this forcibly. 

Endurance was now ordered to head straight for South Georgia and arrived there on the 24th March, then the crew awaited further orders. 

By the evening of the 23rd March, Admirals, Lombardo, Allara and Busser were gathered at Puerto Belgrano. The all-important army General Garcia was at V Corps HQ only 37 kilometers away. 

These men communicated and drew up a rushed plan by the evening of the 25th March. Junta leader Galtieri was told the invasion of the Falklands could begin on the 1st April, with a South Georgia operation planned for the same day.

The Falkland’s plan was simple. First they’d capture Stanley with its airport and Royal Marines barracks. Then they’d focus on the second largest settlement at Goose Green. 

The Argentine navy would carry out these invasions which was partly dictated by the amphibious nature of the operations. 

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As you heard last episode, Admiral Jorge Anaya had begun to plan an invasion of the Falklands by 1979, shortly after Argentina won the Soccer World Cup of 1978.

Anaya had been commander-in-chief of the Argentine Navy and a member of the military junta that controlled the country since 1976. But by far the most important player in this saga was General Leopoldo Galtieri who became president shortly before Anaya was installed as navy chief. 

Incumbent president Roberto Viola’s health had been deteriorating.

One of the more hawkish members of the Argentinian government was Admiral Anaya who was the longest serving member of the junta and some suggest he made the recovery of the Falklands a condition of his support for Galtieri as President. Some military leaders say this was a fallacy – it was in fact the other way around - that both Anaya and Air Force member of the Junta, Brigadier Lami Dozo, were approached by Galtieri to select a choice military project. This was not necessarily the Malvinas, but history will show that whatever the initial idea was, the islands were at the heart of propaganda campaigns. 

The military junta was in a rush. The top of the list for their foreign policy was the resolution of what they called the ‘Malvinas problem’. And of course, without the Navy’s full support there would be no resolution one way or the other. 

There was another significant event however before that year – and this the arrival on the international scene of someone called Margaret Thatcher. In May 1979 Labour was voted from power. While this initially led to more of the same when it came to the perception of the Falklands inside Whitehall by government technocrats, even Thatcher did not regard the islands as of great interest at least at first. 

Enter Constantino Davidoff an Argentine Businessman, who’d asked the Edinburgh-based firm of Christian Salvesen in 1977 whether it would sell the scrap material in four abandoned whaling stations in South Georgia. IT would. 

By 1979 he had a signed agreement and senor Davidoff paid one hundred thousand pounds for the rights to remove material before the end of March 1982. He’d only managed to leave Buenos Aires in March 1982 to collect his scrap metal but he had to check in at Grytviken first for permission from the all-powerful Steve Martin before salvaging at Leith and two other places called Husvik and Stromness. 

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This is episode three and we’re dealing with the period up to the invasion of the islands by the Argentinians on 2nd April 1982. 

Had it been a day earlier, most people across the world would have thought that the news was a horrendous April Food Joke – but it wasn’t. 

 As we heard last episode, by 1971 negotiations between the British and the Argentinians had vascillated between good intentions and terrible breakdowns. Throughout the 1960s, the British were trying to figure out how to offload the Falklands without causing political condemnation at home. That changed by the 70s. The British were becoming more hesitant about the whole idea despite pressure from the United Nations and other international agencies. 

At the same time, the Argentinian right-wing dictatorship had made the Falklands Malvinas their main target to instigate international anger – and to placate their own citizens. Foreign Minister Costa Mendes was leading the communication – he vocal and urbane, and a devout Argentinian nationalist.

The British parliament and then successive cabinets became instinctively hostile to Whitehall’s determination to pursue negotiations. The technocrats just saw rising costs at a time of economic fragility, but politicians were equally uncomfortable throwing the 1800 Falklanders under an Argentinian bus. 

As Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins ask in their excellent book The Battle for the Falklands, why didn’t the Foreign Office just simply give up? Instead they kept ploughing on, trying to find a negotiated solution. 

In January 1972 an Albatross flying boat landed off Port Stanley to commence a twice-monthly service to Comodoro Rivadavia – and soon, it was hoped, an airstrip would be hewn out of the heath. 

350 Argentine tourists arrived onboard the first major cruise liner called the Libertad. 

That single visit emptied Port Stanley of its entire stock of souvenirs. All seemed swanky, but then the backsliding began and it began with the British. 

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Those who fought in their twenties would be in their mid-sixties now – and there are quite a few thousand vets on both sides commemorating fallen comrades.

As you heard last episode, the ownership of the Falklands has been disputed for centuries although the islanders themselves are very clear who they are – they’re British. Through today’s podcast you’ll hear that at times, London was not so sure about that. What some forget is that the British government in the 1960s were close to doing a deal with the Argentinians to offload the Falklands at a time of great global pressure on the UK – specifically with regard to its many colonial dependencies and its stuttering economy. Both sides in the Falkland Malvinas dispute have very long memories. We heard how the Spanish had forced the French to hand ownership of Port Egmont on West Falklands back to the British in 1770. We also heard how the British left the Port having hammered a plaque on a door in 1773. 

 When we left off last, the British had returned to the Falklands with two warships the Tyne and Clio under the command of Captain James Onslow on the 2nd January 1833.

Argentinians all are also convinced that the Malvina’s belong to them, outrageously seized in 1833 by a distant European colonial power called England.

Across the Atlantic and an entire century and a half later, British Foreign Secretary Francis Pym was to announce in 1982 that Her Majesty’s government “…is not in any doubt about our title to the islands and we never have been …”

But did possession amount to nine-tenths of the law? 

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