The Falklands secret.
SIR
– However important the supply of Israeli weapons may have been to the Galtieri
junta in the Falklands War, it was nothing to
the boost Argentine capabilities would have been given, had another vendor –
Britain – succeeded in concluding a massive arms sale just over a decade
earlier.
The
deal that Denis Healey as defence secretary pushed so hard to achieve (beyond
the limits of legality), would have rendered victory for the Falklands Task
Force impossible.
The
package, put together in the mid-Sixties, would have supplied two Sea Dart
frigates, nine Canberra bombers, two Oberon-class attack submarines, a nuclear
reactor and, most significantly, given subsequent events, a dozen Harrier GR1
V/STOL fighter-bombers.
Had
the Argentine navy possessed the latter aircraft, neither the Royal Navy nor the
RAF could have closed Stanley airport to fast jet operations. Confronted with
air strikes from two directions, the Task Force’s position would have been
tactically untenable.
The
deal was thwarted by pure chance. In 1967 a foot-and-mouth epidemic was
triggered by a batch of Argentine lamb that infected livestock near Oswestry.
Buenos Aires retaliated against the Ministry of Agriculture’s ban on Argentine
meat imports by cancelling the arms contract.
Despite
Healey’s efforts to strong-arm the Cabinet into breaking British and
international health legislation, Harold Wilson was persuaded (by Fred Peart,
the agriculture minister, and Sir Solly Zuckerman, the Cabinet scientific
adviser) to uphold the ban.
As
a result, although the sale of the Canberras went through and two Type 42
destroyers were eventually substituted for the frigates, the Task Force did not
have to face aircraft as capable as its own, operating at close range rather
than from the mainland.
An
Argentine pilot, shot down by a Sea Harrier, later lamented that things would
have been different had his own air force had an aircraft like that, little
realising that the big secret of the Falklands War was that they very nearly
did.
Hadrian
Jeffs
Norwich. Daily Telegraph.
Norwich. Daily Telegraph.
