Arctic Force refuelling point

[Ross SC]

love the vulcan! been in one of them & the interior feels/looks like something from WWII! so dated!
i had well over half my hours racked up to apply for a pilots license, gutted i never went thru with it.
i really, really miss flying.

[Quickfire]

You should get it!

Yeah, the V-Force were very 50s inside for obvious reasons.

[Chopper]

Didn't Vulcan's hold a record for the longest bombing raid, during the Falklands war? They are magnificent planes. Here in Oz we are still hanging on to the old F-111's. Soon to be retired tho.

A mob near my folks in NZ are restoring a Vampire atm too. They also look dated up close.

[Sundance]

Yeah, the Vulcan carried out the Black Buck raid on Port Stanley. it was so long, they had to send out tankers to tank tankers to tank tankers to tank the Vulcan.

[Chopper]

From what I remember it was an exercise in "can we do it" rather than a tactical idea. Much like the Falklands war itself, I guess.

[Quickfire]

Yes, in terms of time and distance it was the longest bombing raid in history. At the start of the Afghan and Iraq wars the Americans flew Stealth Bombers and B1Bs from the States to the targets and back but I don't think it's quite as far, would be about 34 hours max in a Stealth Bomber, much less in a B1B. US F111s bombinbg Libya via Trafalgar is not even in the same league...

However, the Black Buck raids are controversial, the RAF trying to show it was relevant when assets and funds could have been deployed at the tactical level to the Task Force. Also the guys who aborted their mission and went to Brazil did not jettison their ordnance first including Shrike anti-radar missiles and the like. All for one bomb on the runway. When the Task Force Harriers went in they did a fair job of hitting equipment.

Overall, the RAF had already neutralised the Fleet Air Arm by showing it could provide air cover to naval assets anywhere in the world. How did they do this? Well, they had a black spot in the Indian Ocean so they "moved" Australia westwards.

Still, if they'd had some conventional Polaris missiles they could just have impacted a few on all the critical enemy airbases. If they'd kept theFAA Phantoms, Buccaneers and Ark Royal then we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

[Sundance]

if the damn Labour government back in 60-odd had not canned the CVA.01 carriers, we wouldn't be having this conversation either...

[Quickfire]

if the damn Labour government back in 60-odd had not canned the CVA.01 carriers, we wouldn't be having this conversation either...

Exactly. The new carriers are also red herrings (even worse, to be built by the French) and the Joint-Strike Fighter is too heavy. Better to play the Harrier angle.

After the Falklands, in '83 the UK Navy took on the US Navy in carrier based ops, the Harriers were winning at 14-1 kill ratio until the carriers were "sunk" by sheer weight of numbers... This was a record until post-Kosovo the US Navy took on the Israeli airforce. The results averaged out at an Israeli kill rate of 1000-1 due to their new helmet mounted sights and all-aspect missiles.

[Chopper]

I read "Ghost Force" by Ken Conner. He maintained, and it sounds correct to me, that the British Govt was at a point of cutting funding in a big way to the Armed Forces. When the Argentine's invaded the Falklands the military was over the moon as it gave them an avenue to justify their existence. That was at he point of the Polaris debacle too, wasn't it?

However, they were VERY unprepared. The SAS went in early and borrowed a lot of kit of the US special forces. Including stingers. The British govt also used it to their advantage. They wanted to have a conclusive win and prove that the British Empire was still intact and also bolster some nation pride. From a strategic point of view the Falklands and South Georgia were pretty unimportant.

If I were in Maggie's shoes, I'd have done the same thing mind you. If you want to bitch about Labour govt's, check out NZ's last one. Made a fuckin mess of everything and hung the military out to dry.

One thing I do remember from the Falklands war, was that the New Zealand Navy (we had one then) was put on alert and actually headed off in the general direction. They were then ordered to stay out of the combat zone. Pissed a few people off as I think the NZ armed forces were looking to test some gear too.

Mark

[Quickfire]

Yeah Ken Connor is a good guy and Ghost Force is probably the best book on UK SF: also how their role changed over time and they became bureaucratised even by mid-80s.

Basically Maggie and John Nott slashed the Navy to focus only on British Army on the Rhine and RAF Strike command. Carrington and the rest of the appeasers wanted to get rid of the Falklands (probably corruption too - well known that there were oil reserves down there and UK FCO and its agencies are inept and corrupt as f*ck in equal measure) so while the prevarication continued the First Sea Lord drove directly to Downing Street from the Admiralty (just up the road in those days, moved now for NuLab quarters) and said we can take the islands back - all his command were guys like Lord Lewin who'd served through WW2 etc - and Thatcher agreed. She knew SAS commander de la Billiere and G Squadron head Mike Rose from the Iranian Embassy siege and Mad Mike was up for the fight too.

UK SF had scrambled with what they had, a couple of their guys (possibly Connor) were in Fort Bragg and the US SF top brass (Col. Beckwith who ran the Desert One mission and created what are now US SF was trained in Hereford in the 70s) basically said take what you want so they got a few Stingers. G Squadron were in one of the first ships en route down there and got inserted via Sea King on long range recce to form a recce grid across the islands. Most were dug in for a month and when evacd had malnutrition and hypothermia in some cases. The remainder of the Squadron was used in the raid on Pebble Island, and then the critical action of the war, the long-range assault on Mount Kent with Commandos when an SAS patrol confirmed it was empty of troops, which was then held against substantial counter-attacks so the Commando Artillery could fly in and dig in (this was also a unilateral operation by Mike Rose). Later B Squadron were flown down to Ascendancy Island and prepped for the aborted raid on Rio Gallegos, but some eventually made it there on recce via helo, submarine insertion didn't quite work and they sat literally just offshore.

The Stingers worked in one instance - the cyro was charged - but the next attempt to fire failed as the guy didn't know to recharge it. The one set of manuals was already lost when a Sea King lifting part of G Squadron had a bird strike and went straight into the South Atlantic while "cross-decking" troops. So that was it on the US front, the only other role the US played (beyond pro-Brits like Caspar Weinberger musing about "loaning" a carrier) was allowing the continuance of USAF and USN contractor assistance to the Argentine Skyhawk fleet (from USN-Vietnam era) flying when there was a malfunction with the ejector seat settings which threatened to ground the whole fleet. In parallel, the French kept the Mirage and Super Etendard fleet flying. Everyone moans that they provided sat intel but that wasn't the case either.

The only thing that saved the Task Force was incorrectly fused bombs - they were primed to "unwind" the detonator after free-falling a hundred feet to protect the pilots, but as the Argies came in on the deck the bombs were often un-primed, thus bomb disposal could deal with many lodged in the fleet in San Carlos bay (tho' this didn't work in the case of HMS Ardent). The Admiralty would have taken the losses but at a practical level they would have been run close on sustaining operations. With more info available these days it seems that Rose, Chris Keeble, Julian Thompson and the First Sea Lord were the critical actors in the war, along with all the 17 year olds thrown at the enemy with bayonets on as usual (tho it is 18 year olds these days, how humane), the rest of the head sheds and commanders were useless. The whole operation was otherwise based on 'trusting in luck'and a lot of the flaws in the military (equipment, complacency, faulty operating procedures) brutally exposed.

Interesting to hear about the NZ navy, would certainly have helped ... as for Helen Clark, her reward for destroying the NZ and its airforce among other things has been to get the top job at UNDP.