On this day 38 years ago 1982..HMS SHEFFIELD was attacked...R.I.P. those members of her ships company killed in action and have no grave but the sea.

There had been a similar situation under the previous Labour government, who had dealt with it very quietly by send one of our nuclear subs down there and letting the Argentine govt find out.

Under Thatcher, the Foreign office were aware of a similar threat and did warn of it. It was ignored by the cabinet. Max Hastings wrote in his book on the Falklands War an account of how Richard Luce, a junior F.O. minister was so concerned he stood up in the Commons and spoke about it and was absolutely eviscerated, not by the opposition, but by his own backbenchers.

Instead, the signal we sent was to continue with John Knott's defence cut's, which were much greater than he wanted, but forced on him by the Chancellor and PM, and withdraw even the Ice Patrol Ship Endurance.

The Argentine military Junta, desperate to deflect attention from the home economy and out of control inflation, concluded that the UK no longer cared enough about the Falklands and lacked the capacity and the will to recover them.

Ironically, Luce and Carrington fell on their sword and resigned after the conflict ended, on the basis that the failure to avoid a war is a failure of diplomacy and their office, when actually they were the two Tories not culpable. Even more ironically is it led to Thatcher, who was most culpable and whose days had been numbered due to her disastrous economic policies, unemployment and inflation, being re-elected as a hero, rather than a villain, with a stonking majority, in part due to an ineffective peace loving opposition leader, to effectively wage an economic civil war on significant sectors of her own populace (miners strike) with a militarised and politicised police force, the fall out and dislike from which continues to this day. Not to mention the squandering of North Sea Oil revenues, the dismantling of British manufacturing, setting the path for de-regulation of the financial sector. Austerity (and therefore Brexit and the capacity and readyness of the NHS to deal with covid-19) has it's roots in the 1980's and sheer incompetence leading to an avoidable war.
 
Poor ship design (pipe and cable ducts if memory serves me correctly) led to the fires being able to spread all over the ship extremely quickly giving the crew no chance of saving the ship.
 
The Band of The Royal Marines played at Middlesbrough Town Hall to help raise money for the Combined Services after the Falklands War was over.
The band stayed at the old Halls of Residence on the corner of Linthorpe Road and Park Rd North.
Listening to some of the bandsmen telling their stories of lost comrades, many only in their 20s was very moving and I cant recall a dry eye left in the lounge.

Its not all jingoism and waving the flag.
Most of the lads had to look at a map to find out where the Islands were!

There is much to say about what was right or wrong about the design of the ships and whether Thatcher rode the waves back to power.
One thing is for sure and that is those lads were sent to do their duty.

Im sure there are those who served in the Senior Service are better informed than many of us to comment.
 
Lefty said:
There had been a similar situation under the previous Labour government, who had dealt with it very quietly by send one of our nuclear subs down there and letting the Argentine govt find out.

Under Thatcher, the Foreign office were aware of a similar threat and did warn of it. It was ignored by the cabinet. Max Hastings wrote in his book on the Falklands War an account of how Richard Luce, a junior F.O. minister was so concerned he stood up in the Commons and spoke about it and was absolutely eviscerated, not by the opposition, but by his own backbenchers.

Instead, the signal we sent was to continue with John Knott's defence cut's, which were much greater than he wanted, but forced on him by the Chancellor and PM, and withdraw even the Ice Patrol Ship Endurance.

The Argentine military Junta, desperate to deflect attention from the home economy and out of control inflation, concluded that the UK no longer cared enough about the Falklands and lacked the capacity and the will to recover them.

Ironically, Luce and Carrington fell on their sword and resigned after the conflict ended, on the basis that the failure to avoid a war is a failure of diplomacy and their office, when actually they were the two Tories not culpable. Even more ironically is it led to Thatcher, who was most culpable and whose days had been numbered due to her disastrous economic policies, unemployment and inflation, being re-elected as a hero, rather than a villain, with a stonking majority, in part due to an ineffective peace loving opposition leader, to effectively wage an economic civil war on significant sectors of her own populace (miners strike) with a militarised and politicised police force, the fall out and dislike from which continues to this day. Not to mention the squandering of North Sea Oil revenues, the dismantling of British manufacturing, setting the path for de-regulation of the financial sector. Austerity (and therefore Brexit and the capacity and readyness of the NHS to deal with covid-19) has it's roots in the 1980's and sheer incompetence leading to an avoidable war.
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Understood Lefty, and completely agree....thought you may have been referring to the Task Forces actions that day.

Look up Sir Henry Leach... he did more to get the Falklands back in the space of a few minutes than that Government ever did....and Thatcher was happy to take credit for it and bask in the adulation, while he and Sir Terence Lewin are largely forgotten.

"When he was asked if retaking the islands was possible, Sir Henry replied "Yes we can recover the islands." He then added "and we must!" Thatcher replied "Why?" Leach exclaimed "Because if we do not, or if we pussyfoot in our actions and do not achieve complete success, in another few months we shall be living in a different country whose word counts for little."
 
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