Written on 2 August 2011
One afternoon in 1982 when I was serving at the Joint School of Service Intelligence at Templar Barracks in Kent, a chap from DI3(Air)(ROW) rang me up out of the blue. His title told me that he was a middle-ranking officer in Defence Intelligence and that he had special responsibility for the air forces of the Rest of the World (ROW was then defined roughly as the entire world apart from the Soviet Union). "I can’t tell you why I want to know, but what can you tell me about the Pucara aircraft?" he said. I replied that I’d never heard of it but I would look it up and call him back in a few minutes.
I didn’t have a vast database of highly classified aircraft specifications that I could peruse but I did have an up-to-date copy of Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft on my shelf and that, of course, is unclassified and available to everyone. I called DI3(Air)(ROW) back and told him the exact page numbers he needed to learn everything there was to know about the Pucaro and the Argentine Air Force. "I’ll have to go down to the MoD library and see if they have a copy," he said, in a disappointed and rather worried tone. "If they haven’t got one, I’ll get you to make a photocopy of the relevant pages and you can fax them to me. It’s rather important."
The very next day news of the invasion of the Falklands burst into the world’s media and all of a sudden I knew the reason for the phone call of the day before. Discussing the matter with my fellows at Templar Barracks I opined that it was astonishing that the Ministry of Defence apparently had no knowledge of the Argentine Air Force’s battle order. One senior officer of the Army Intelligence Corps remarked that nothing about MoD ever surprised him!
History has revealed how ill-prepared the UK was for the 1982 Falkland’s War, and how lucky we were to have a single-minded Prime Minister and sufficient gallant servicemen to deal with it. Jump forward 29 years and I fear neither 'single-minded' nor 'sufficient' apply today. As I’ve blogged several times in recent years, we are, as far as the public can tell, once again totally unprepared and certainly ill-equipped to deal with another Falklands conflict. And once, again, it’s apparent that we should expect no help from the USA, other than words.
It seems every day now we read of further, arbitrary cuts to our Forces. Just today (2 August 2011) I found this quote in the Telegraph on-line version: "Argentina has announced it is developing a nuclear-powered submarine, leading to fresh warnings that Britain would face an ‘insurmountable’ task if the country invaded the Falkland Islands again." Successive Argentine governments have consistently maintained that they will never give up their aim of bringing what they call Islas Malvinas back into the fold. Perhaps the Ministry of Defence has a well-developed contingency plan to deal with anything the Argentines might start but it is so secret that we can’t be told about it?
I must now go and look up Jane’s Merchant Ships in my local library to see if there's a replacement available for the famous liner Canberra. You can read about a planned Reunion in 2012 for surviving members of Canberra’s crews here. Mind you, we would not require a ship with the capacity of Canberra to take a Strike Force to the Falklands this time.
You can read, if you so wish, a piece about my own subsequent involvement with the 1982 conflict on my RAF Years website starting here.