Falklands War

• 1. Introduction

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  The Falklands War was predicted out loud, in a private room, more than a year before it began. In December 1980, Nicholas Ridley, a British Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, had just been attacked in Parliament. Critics called his proposal for the islands a sellout. That evening, at a private committee meeting, he was reported to have said: "If we don't do something, they will invade. And there is nothing we could do."

  The war that followed is known in Argentina as the Guerra de las Malvinas. It pitted Argentina against the United Kingdom over remote South Atlantic islands. It lasted ten weeks, and neither government ever formally declared it. Even so, 649 Argentine military personnel, 255 British military personnel and three Falkland Islanders were killed.

  This documentary asks how a quarrel that diplomats had carried for years turned into shooting. Why did a ruling junta believe Britain would never respond? How did a fleet get assembled and sent south to retake the islands? And what did the outcome do to the governments on each side?

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• 2. Why War Came

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  In 1965 the United Nations called on Argentina and the United Kingdom to settle their dispute over the Falkland Islands. Argentina claimed the islands as its own territory and still does. Britain saw a Crown colony it had held since 1841. The islanders, settled there since the early 19th century and mostly descended from British settlers, strongly favoured British rule.

  Inside the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the islands looked like a nuisance and an obstacle to trade in South America. Officials were confident of British sovereignty, yet ready to give the islands to Argentina. In 1968 news of a proposed transfer broke, and supporters of the islanders organised a parliamentary lobby that blocked it. Talks continued without real progress. The islanders refused to consider Argentine sovereignty, and Argentina refused to compromise on it.

  A Communications Agreement signed in 1971 created an air link, part of a Foreign Office hope that dependence on Argentina would soften island opinion. Later the Argentine oil company YPF received a monopoly on the islands. In 1977, after Argentina occupied Southern Thule, the British prime minister James Callaghan secretly sent two frigates and a nuclear-powered submarine south. The mission was codenamed Operation Journeyman. Whether the Argentines noticed is unclear, though British sources say they were told through informal channels. Talks on sovereignty and economic cooperation opened that December and settled nothing.

  A leaseback scheme foundered on numbers as well as politics. Britain sought a lease of 99 years, while Argentina pressed for only thirty. The islanders opposed the idea in any case.

  Late in March 1981, General Jorge Rafael Videla handed power to General Roberto Eduardo Viola, and the country they governed was in trouble. Economic stagnation was devastating, and unrest was widespread against the National Reorganisation Process, the military junta in charge since 1976. In December 1981 a new junta took office under General Leopoldo Galtieri as acting president, with Air Brigadier Basilio Lami Dozo and Admiral Jorge Anaya. Anaya was the main architect of a military solution, expecting that Britain would never answer with force.

  By choosing military action, the Galtieri government hoped to tap old patriotic feeling about the islands. That would pull attention away from chronic economic problems and the human rights violations of the Dirty War. It would also prop up the junta's fading legitimacy. The newspaper La Prensa guessed at a step-by-step plan. It began with cutting off supplies to the islands and ended in direct action late in 1982 if UN talks failed.

  On the 19th of March 1982, scrap metal merchants raised the Argentine flag on South Georgia. Argentine Marines had infiltrated the group, and the act was later seen as the first offensive action of the war. On the 25th, a Royal Navy ice patrol vessel left Stanley for the island. The junta suspected Britain would reinforce its South Atlantic forces, so it ordered the invasion brought forward to the 2nd of April. One theory holds that press reports of a British submarine leaving Gibraltar on the 26th panicked the junta. Post-war research instead places the final decision at a junta meeting in Buenos Aires on the 23rd of March.

  Captain Nicholas Barker, commanding HMS Endurance, had warned repeatedly that an attack was coming. Britain was surprised anyway. Barker blamed the 1981 Defence White Paper of Defence Secretary John Nott. It described plans to withdraw Endurance, the only British naval presence in the South Atlantic. In Barker's view, it told Argentina that Britain was unwilling, and soon unable, to defend the islands.

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• 3. Invasion and Occupation

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  The garrison defending the islands on the 2nd of April 1982 consisted of 68 marines and eleven naval hydrographers. Another 23 volunteers of the Falkland Islands Defence Force had few weapons and served as lookouts. Governor Sir Rex Hunt gave command to Major Mike Norman of the Royal Marines. Against them came Operation Rosario, an amphibious assault.

  Lieutenant Commander Guillermo Sanchez-Sabarots led the first wave, his Amphibious Commandos Group. It attacked the empty Moody Brook barracks and then moved on Government House in Stanley. The defence was fierce but brief. When the 2nd Marine Infantry Battalion arrived with Assault Amphibious Vehicles, the governor ordered a ceasefire and surrendered. That afternoon he, his family and the British military personnel were flown to Montevideo, Uruguay, and later returned to the United Kingdom.

  The 25th Infantry Regiment, about 681 men drawn from across Argentina, flew into Port Stanley Airport as soon as the runway was clear. When it became obvious that Britain was sending a task force, reservists were recalled and two brigades with eight infantry regiments followed. By early May the garrison numbered around 13,000. Conscripts of the 1963 intake had only just been called up, so the previous year's intake was recalled as well. Brigadier General Mario Benjamín Menéndez became Military Governor.

  Argentine military police arrived carrying detailed files on many islanders. Major Patricio Dowling, an intelligence officer, used them to arrest and interrogate suspected opponents. Some islanders judged anti-Argentine were expelled, among them the Luxton family and David Colville, editor of the Falklands Times. That backfired, because the expelled gave interviews to the press. Fourteen other community leaders, including the senior medical officer, were interned at Fox Bay on West Falkland. Concerned by Dowling's conduct, senior Argentine officers removed him from the islands. At Goose Green, the civilian population spent nearly a month confined in the village hall.

  The occupiers also ran a medical and demographic survey. It included the islands' first population census and an analysis of blood types such as the Rh factor. Without that data, blood transfusions had carried serious risks.

  Life was harder still for the Argentine conscripts. Food shortages and poor logistics drove some of them near Goose Green to slaughter islanders' sheep. Private Alan Craig described rations arriving opened or with items missing. Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins, in The Battle for the Falklands (1984), reported severe hunger among troops at Port Howard. They also reported that attempts to go absent without leave were punished by beatings or by sitting for hours with bare feet in freezing water. Private Rito Portillo and Private Remigio Fernández were reportedly executed or died from abuse by their own officers. Many soldiers were allegedly forced to sign non-disclosure agreements after returning to the mainland.

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• 4. The Diplomatic Front

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  Eduardo Roca, Argentina's ambassador to the United Nations, began lobbying on the 31st of March against a British military build-up. On the night of the invasion he hosted a banquet at his official residence. Guests included the US ambassador to the UN, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and senior officials from the State and Defense departments. British diplomats already distrusted Kirkpatrick, who had urged closer ties with South American dictatorships, and the dinner deepened their suspicion.

  Sir Anthony Parsons, Britain's ambassador to the UN, had been told on the 1st of April that an invasion was imminent. His job was to win a Security Council resolution. He needed nine yes votes from fifteen members, and no veto from the other four permanent members. The meeting began at 11:00 am New York time on the 3rd of April, which was 4:00 pm in London. Resolution 502 passed by ten votes to one, with Panama against and four abstentions. The Soviet Union and China both abstained.

  Parsons's draft deliberately avoided the sovereignty dispute, which might have hurt Britain. It cited Argentina's breach of Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which forbids using force to settle disputes. It demanded the withdrawal of Argentine forces only. That left Britain free to retake the islands under its right of self-defence if Argentina stayed.

  Alexander Haig, the US Secretary of State, reached London on the 8th of April on shuttle diplomacy for President Ronald Reagan. He proposed an interim authority to run the islands while talks went on. Thatcher told him the task force would stay unless the Argentines evacuated. In Buenos Aires, the junta and foreign minister Nicanor Costa Méndez received him coolly and insisted that Argentine sovereignty be settled first. Back in London on the 11th of April, he found a cabinet in no mood to compromise.

  A final round of talks in Buenos Aires made little progress. Just as Haig's party was leaving, they were told Galtieri would meet them at the airport VIP lounge to offer an important concession. The meeting was cancelled at the last minute. On the 30th of April the Reagan administration announced that it would publicly support the United Kingdom.

  Britain made one more offer. On the 18th of May, UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar presented its final negotiating position. Britain gave up its earlier red line that British administration should return once Argentine forces withdrew. Instead a UN administrator would supervise a mutual withdrawal and then govern in consultation with island institutions. The reference to self-determination was dropped, and future sovereignty talks would run through the UN. Argentina rejected the proposals the same day.

  Elsewhere, Britain's friends were busy. Australia, Canada and New Zealand withdrew their diplomats from Buenos Aires, and New Zealand expelled the Argentine ambassador. Prime Minister Robert Muldoon, who was in London when war broke out, wrote in The Times: "The military rulers of Argentina must not be appeased... New Zealand will back Britain all the way." Thatcher later told the Commons that New Zealand had been "absolutely magnificent" in its support. Australia's prime minister, Malcolm Fraser, offered to cancel the planned purchase of HMS Invincible. Britain quickly accepted, leaving the Royal Australian Navy without a replacement for its only aircraft carrier.

  On Good Friday, the 9th of April, the Political Committee of the European Economic Community met at the Egmont Palace. It proposed a total ban on imports from Argentina. Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Luxembourg and Ireland agreed at once. France, Germany and the Netherlands were persuaded before the meeting ended, and Italy, with its close cultural ties to Argentina, consented the next day.

  France's president, François Mitterrand, embargoed arms sales and assistance to Argentina. France let British aircraft and warships use facilities at Dakar in Senegal, and trained Harrier pilots against the French aircraft Argentina flew. French intelligence also helped stop Argentina buying more Exocet missiles. In a 2002 interview, the British Defence Secretary John Nott called France Britain's greatest ally.

  Yet in 2012 it emerged that a French technical team employed by Dassault had stayed in Argentina through the war, fixing faults in Exocet launchers. Nott said he had known of the team and thought its work unimportant. The French intelligence service DGSE also knew, through an informant in the team. It called the help "bordering on an act of treason, or disobedience to an embargo". Four Exocets ordered by Peru were kept off an air delivery by the French government. After British pressure, because Britain suspected they would be passed to Argentina, their release to a Peruvian ship was delayed until the conflict was over.

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• 5. The Task Force

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  Admiral Sir Henry Leach, the First Sea Lord, spoke at a crisis meeting chaired by Margaret Thatcher. "Britain could and should send a task force if the islands are invaded," he advised. On the 29th of March, ministers had already ordered the auxiliary Fort Austin south from the Mediterranean to support HMS Endurance. A nuclear-powered fleet submarine was sent from Gibraltar, and another was ordered south from Scotland the next day. Lord Carrington wanted a third, but that was deferred over concerns about operational commitments. On the 1st of April, Leach told a Royal Navy force exercising in the Mediterranean to prepare to sail south.

  After the invasion, an emergency cabinet meeting approved a task force to retake the islands. An emergency sitting of the House of Commons backed it the next day. News of the landings had reached London from Argentine sources. A Ministry of Defence operative held a short telex conversation with Governor Hunt's telex operator, who confirmed the Argentines were in control. Later, the BBC journalist Laurie Margolis reached an islander at Goose Green by amateur radio, who described a large Argentine fleet.

  The British campaign was named Operation Corporate, under Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse. It ran from the 1st of April to the 20th of June 1982. On the 6th of April a War Cabinet was set up to oversee the campaign day to day. It met at least daily until it was dissolved on the 12th of August. The historian Lawrence Freedman, in the Official History of the Falklands Campaign, notes that Thatcher dominated it but still consulted others. Once a decision was reached, she "did not look back".

  A nuclear-powered submarine sailed from Faslane on the 4th of April, and two aircraft carriers with escorts left Portsmouth a day later. An ocean liner returned to Southampton from a world cruise on the 7th of April. It was requisitioned and sailed two days later with 3 Commando Brigade aboard. The Queen Elizabeth 2 left Southampton on the 12th of May carrying the 5th Infantry Brigade. The whole task force came to 127 ships: 43 Royal Navy vessels, 22 Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships and 62 merchant ships.

  The historian Arthur L. Herman reports that the US Navy rated a British counter-invasion "a military impossibility". Britain had 42 aircraft for air combat, against about 122 serviceable Argentine jet fighters. It had no airborne early warning aircraft. Planners also feared Exocet-armed vessels and Argentina's two Type 209 submarines.

  By mid-April the Royal Air Force had built up a base on Ascension Island, sharing Wideawake Airfield. It held Vulcan bombers, Victor tankers and Phantom fighters to guard them. On the voyage south, an Argentine Air Force Boeing 707 shadowed the fleet. Sea Harriers intercepted several of these flights outside the Total Exclusion Zone but did not attack the unarmed aircraft, because diplomacy was still under way.

  Meanwhile a small force had gone ahead to recapture South Georgia. Operation Paraquet, under Major Guy Sheridan, involved 240 men from 42 Commando, the Special Air Service and the Special Boat Service. HMS Conqueror arrived on the 19th of April, and a Victor with radar-mapping equipment flew over the island the next day. SAS and SBS troops landed on the 21st. A plan for an observation post on the Fortuna Glacier was abandoned after two helicopters crashed in fog and high winds.

  On the 25th of April, the Argentine submarine Santa Fe, having resupplied the garrison, was spotted on the surface by a Wessex helicopter. It attacked with depth charges, and other helicopters joined in with a torpedo, machine-gun fire and AS-12 missiles. Santa Fe was too badly hit to dive, and its crew abandoned it at the jetty at King Edward Point. Sheridan gathered the 76 men he had and decided to assault that same day. After a short march and a naval bombardment demonstration by Antrim and Plymouth, 190 Argentines surrendered without resistance.

  The message sent to London read: "Be pleased to inform Her Majesty that the White Ensign flies alongside the Union Jack in South Georgia. God Save the Queen." Thatcher told the press to "Just rejoice at that news, and congratulate our forces and the Marines!"

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• 6. Sea and Air War

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  On the 1st of May, a Vulcan bomber flew an 8000 nmi round trip from Ascension to bomb the runway at Stanley. The mission, Black Buck 1, needed several Victor tankers refuelling in concert, including tanker-to-tanker transfers. Only one of 21 bombs cratered the runway, and that hit at the edge was probably the best that could be hoped for. The crater stopped Mirage III jets from using the strip but not smaller fighters, the Pucará or the Hercules. Historian Lawrence Freedman says the raids' significance remains controversial, and Falklands veteran Commander Nigel Ward dismissed them as propaganda. Of the five Black Buck raids, three targeted Stanley and two were anti-radar missions with Shrike missiles.

  The islands had only three airfields, and the paved runway at Stanley was too short for fast jets. Argentina therefore had to launch its major strikes from the mainland. Incoming aircraft had little time over the target area, so attackers often hit the first ship they saw rather than the best one.

  The first major Argentine strike, on the 1st of May, involved 36 aircraft, sent in the belief that a British landing was under way. Only Dagger aircraft of Grupo 6 found ships, attacked them and returned safely. That boosted morale. The pilots now knew they could survive an attack on modern warships, using radar clutter from the islands and a late pop-up approach. Elsewhere Sea Harriers shot down a Dagger and a Canberra.

  Sea Harriers of 801 Naval Air Squadron also met Mirage III fighters of Grupo 8. Neither side would fight at the other's best altitude until two Mirages came down to engage. An AIM-9L Sidewinder destroyed one. The other, damaged and short of fuel, headed for Stanley and was shot down by its own side's defenders. Afterwards Argentina used Skyhawks and Daggers only as strike aircraft, flew Canberras only at night, and used Mirages as decoys. A squadron of civilian jets, the Escuadrón Fénix, flew around the clock to imitate strike aircraft. On the 7th of June, HMS Exeter shot down one of its Learjet 35A aircraft. The crash killed Vice Commodore Rodolfo de la Colina, the highest-ranking Argentine officer to die in the war.

  The most controversial sinking came on the 2nd of May. Britain had declared a 200 nmi Total Exclusion Zone on the 30th of April. Admiral Sandy Woodward's carrier battle group entered it on the 1st of May. Admiral Anaya had split his warships into three groups. The third, approaching from the south, was led by the Second World War-vintage light cruiser General Belgrano. A British nuclear-powered submarine found it on the 1st of May and trailed it. By the next day the cruiser was outside the zone, about twelve hours from the task force.

  Woodward feared being caught in a pincer with the Argentine carrier group approaching from the other direction. He did not know that the carrier Veinticinco de Mayo had failed to catch enough headwind to launch her aircraft. He ordered the cruiser attacked, and the War Cabinet confirmed the order. Two torpedoes hit General Belgrano at 4 pm local time on the 2nd of May, and she sank an hour later. In all, 321 members of her crew and two civilians on board died. More than 700 men were rescued from the open ocean after up to 30 hours in overcrowded life rafts.

  The loss drew heavy criticism from Latin American countries and from opponents of the war in Britain, and some European allies wavered. The United States stayed supportive. Strategically the sinking was decisive. Apart from one diesel-powered submarine, the whole Argentine fleet returned to port and did not sail again. That freed British nuclear submarines to move to the Argentine coast, where they could give early warning of air attacks leaving the mainland. Controversy over the exclusion zone and the cruiser's heading persisted. In 2003 her captain, Hector Bonzo, told a documentary crew that she had been manoeuvring rather than sailing away. He added that he had orders to sink any British ship he found.

  Two days later, the destroyer HMS Sheffield was struck by an Exocet missile from Argentina's 2nd Naval Air Fighter/Attack Squadron. She had been sent forward with two other Type 42 destroyers to act as a radar and missile picket far from the carriers. Fires gutted her, killing 20 crew and seriously injuring 24. She was kept afloat for four days, partly in the hope of luring Argentine submarines into a helicopter hunt. She sank under tow on the 10th of May. She was the first Royal Navy ship sunk in action since the Second World War. Admiral Woodward, a former commanding officer of Sheffield, describes the incident in the first chapter of his book One Hundred Days.

  Around the landing zone, British ships struggled against air attack. One was sunk on the 21st of May after being hit by nine bombs. Another was lost on the 24th when attempts to defuse unexploded bombs failed. On the 25th an air-launched Exocet struck a ship with the carrier battle group. It destroyed three of four Chinook helicopters and five Wessex helicopters, along with maintenance equipment, runway-building equipment and tents. Twelve of her crew were killed. Another ship was lost that day while acting as a decoy to draw Argentine aircraft away from San Carlos Bay.

  Many British ships survived because of how Argentine pilots had to fly. To avoid the thickest air defences, they released bombs at very low altitude, and the fuzes had no time to arm before impact. The Argentines fitted improvised retarding devices, and on the 8th of June thirteen bombs hit British ships without exploding. Lord Craig, a retired Marshal of the Royal Air Force, is said to have remarked: "Six better fuses and we would have lost". The Argentines lost 22 aircraft in these attacks.

  Admiral Woodward blamed the BBC World Service for the change. It had reported the lack of detonations after a briefing from a Ministry of Defence official, and Woodward argued the Argentines then fixed the problem. He wrote that the BBC cared more about being "fearless seekers after truth" than about the lives of British servicemen.

  On the 30th of May, two Super Étendards took off to attack the carrier Invincible. One carried Argentina's last Exocet. Four A-4C Skyhawks escorted them, each carrying two 500 lb bombs. Argentine intelligence tried to find the carriers by studying British flight routes. But Britain had a standing order for all aircraft to transit at low level, which hid the carriers' position. The strike hit a group of escorts 40 miles south instead. HMS Exeter shot down two Skyhawks with Sea Dart missiles, and HMS Avenger claimed the Exocet with her 4.5-inch gun, though that claim is disputed. No British ship was damaged. Argentina claimed during the war to have damaged Invincible and still does, but no evidence of damage has surfaced.

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• 7. Fighting on the Ground

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  Some of the war's strangest missions were never meant to be seen. A plan code-named Mikado aimed to fly SAS troops by C-130 to attack the home base of Argentina's five Étendards at Río Grande. Planners dropped it as unlikely to succeed. A replacement had a submarine put SBS marines ashore at night to destroy the Exocet stockpile, which was not actually at the target. On the night of the 17th of May, a Sea King carrying an SAS reconnaissance team lifted off from HMS Invincible. Bad weather forced it down 50 mi from its target.

  The pilot flew on to Chile and left the SAS team south of Punta Arenas. The crew of three destroyed the helicopter and surrendered to Chilean police on the 25th of May, and were sent home after questioning. The burnt-out wreck drew international attention. The SAS team crossed into Argentina but cancelled their mission when Argentine troops began searching for them. They returned to Chile and flew home on a civilian flight.

  Other secret efforts used Chile too. Operation Folklore would have flown two Canberra photo-reconnaissance aircraft in Chilean markings to Punta Arenas. It was abandoned at Belize after part of it appeared in the British press. In Operation Acme, a Nimrod surveillance aircraft flew three sorties from Isla San Félix. On the last, on the 17th of May, it narrowly avoided being shot down by the Chileans. Operation Fingent placed a radar on high ground in Tierra del Fuego to watch southern Argentine air bases. The RAF crew dressed as a sales team.

  On the 14th of May the SAS raided Pebble Island, where the Argentine Navy had taken over a grass airstrip, and destroyed several aircraft. On the evening of the 20th of May, an SBS troop and artillery observers attacked an observation post at Fanning Head. The SAS staged a diversionary raid at Darwin.

  On the night of the 21st of May, Commodore Michael Clapp's Amphibious Task Group launched Operation Sutton. It landed around San Carlos Water, on the northwestern coast of East Falkland. British forces nicknamed the bay Bomb Alley, for the repeated attacks by low-flying jets. 2 PARA and 40 Commando landed at Blue Beach. 3 PARA landed at Green Beach and 45 Commando at Ajax Bay, with 42 Commando held in reserve. Major Ewen Southby-Tailyour led the waves of landing craft. Rapier missile launchers were carried as underslung loads beneath Sea Kings. By dawn there was a secure beachhead, and Brigadier Julian Thompson set up headquarters in dugouts near San Carlos Settlement.

  From early on the 27th of May until the 28th, the 700 men of 2 PARA advanced on Goose Green and Darwin. The Argentine 12th Infantry Regiment held both. They had naval gunfire from HMS Arrow and artillery from 8 Commando Battery, Royal Artillery. The battle ran through the night and into the next day. Eighteen British and about 50 Argentine soldiers died, and 961 Argentine personnel were taken prisoner, including 202 airmen from Condor airfield. Lieutenant Colonel H. Jones, commanding 2 PARA, was killed leading an assault and received the Victoria Cross after his death. Jones blamed the BBC for disclosing the planned attack on Goose Green.

  Around Mount Kent, Argentine generals wanted to tie down British troops. On the 27th and the 28th of May they sent transport aircraft with Blowpipe missiles and commandos, in an operation called Autoimpuesta, meaning Self-imposed. For a week the SAS and the Mountain and Arctic Warfare Cadre fought patrol actions against the 602nd Commando Company under Major Aldo Rico. On the 30th of May an SAS Stinger missile brought down an Argentine Puma helicopter, killing six gendarmes and wounding eight. The next day, at Top Malo House, 13 Argentine commandos under Captain José Vercesi were trapped by 19 marines under Captain Rod Boswell. After 45 minutes, with their ammunition almost gone, they surrendered. Two Argentines died, Lieutenant Ernesto Espinoza and Sergeant Mateo Sbert, and both were later decorated for bravery. Brigadier Thompson later wrote that D Squadron's reconnaissance had saved 42 Commando from ambush on landing.

  Disaster struck at Port Pleasant, often called Bluff Cove. During the British build-up, Argentine air attacks killed 56 people. Thirty-two of the dead were Welsh Guards aboard the landing ships Sir Galahad and Sir Tristram on the 8th of June. Surgeon-Commander Rick Jolly of the Falklands Field Hospital counted more than 150 men burned or injured, among them Simon Weston. An advance by 2 PARA to Fitzroy and Bluff Cove, beyond its orders, had left 30 mi of indefensible positions. Ferrying troops by sea then required complicated planning.

  Accounts differ on why the Welsh Guards were slow to disembark. One narrative says Major Ewen Southby-Tailyour gave a direct order to leave the ship and it was ignored. A Royal Navy report, partly declassified in 2024, disputes that. It states that "At no time was a direct order to disembark given" to the Welsh Guards commander by a superior officer. It also says Sir Tristram never passed on warnings of Sir Galahad's arrival, so no one was ready to unload her promptly. Watchers on Mount Harriet, some 10 mi away, saw the delay. Skyhawks hit Sir Galahad with three bombs that did not explode but started uncontrollable fires, and two bombs hit Sir Tristram. The strike put off the attack on Stanley by two days. ITV News footage showed helicopters hovering in thick smoke to winch survivors from the burning ships. It gave the world some of the war's most sobering images.

  On the night of the 11th of June, 3 Commando Brigade, backed by naval gunfire, attacked the ring of high ground around Stanley. The battles of Mount Harriet, Two Sisters and Mount Longdon began together. Mount Harriet fell at a cost of 2 British and 18 Argentine lives. At Two Sisters, British troops faced resistance and friendly fire but took their objectives. Mount Longdon was the toughest fight, with troops pinned by rifle, mortar, machine gun, artillery and sniper fire. Sergeant Ian McKay of 3 PARA died attacking a bunker with grenades and received the Victoria Cross after his death. That night an Exocet fired from an improvised trailer-based launcher, taken from a destroyer by Argentine Navy technicians, struck a British warship and killed 14.

  The second phase began on the night of the 13th of June. 2 PARA took Wireless Ridge with light armour from the Blues and Royals. It cost 3 British and 25 Argentine lives. The 2nd Battalion, Scots Guards took Mount Tumbledown, where 10 British and 30 Argentine soldiers died. A raid by the SAS and SBS on the oil tanks in Stanley Harbour was beaten off by anti-aircraft guns.

  With Tumbledown breached, the Argentine defence of Stanley faltered. Private Santiago Carrizo of the 3rd Regiment recalled his platoon commander ordering the men into the houses. The order ended with the words "if a Kelper resists, shoot him". The company did nothing of the kind. A daylight attack on Mount William by Gurkhas found the positions deserted. A ceasefire was declared on the 14th of June, and Brigade General Mario Menéndez surrendered to Major General Jeremy Moore the same day. On the 20th of June, British forces accepted the surrender of the Southern Thule garrison at the Corbeta Uruguay base. They then declared hostilities over. Argentina had built that base in 1976, and until 1982 Britain had contested it only through diplomatic channels.

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• 8. Legacy

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  In Argentina, patriotic feeling ran high during the war, but the unfavourable outcome set off large protests against the ruling military government. They hastened its fall and the return of democracy. In the United Kingdom, the Conservative government was re-elected the following year with an increased majority. The conflict left a smaller mark on British politics and culture than on Argentine, where it remains a common topic of discussion. It has inspired books, articles, films and songs.

  Diplomatic relations between the two countries were restored in 1989, after a meeting in Madrid ended in a joint statement. Neither side made any change in its sovereignty position explicit. In 1994 Argentina adopted a new constitution that declared the Falkland Islands part of one of its provinces by law. The islands, meanwhile, continue to run themselves as a self-governing British Overseas Territory.

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