If we blame the Junta then look closer, the invasion was actually planned by 2 Argentine Admirals who persuaded Galtiari to go for it. However, also we are to blame to a point, if the GOvernment hadnt been so concerned with military cutbacks, ignored the Argentine “testers” and basically hadnt messed up with Foreign Policy by allowing those idiots in the Foreign Office to ignore the Islanders hopes of being British citizens giving the Junta plenty of signs we werent bothered about the Falklands, then it might not have happened.

Irrespective of the signals given out by the British government, and of British military cutbacks the cause of the war was down to those who used military force to settle a dispute over sovereignty.

If Britain had had no military capability whatsoever that still would not justify the use of force by Argentina.

The dispute over sovereignty could have been raised in the UN but that did not suit the Junta. They had another agenda and needed this invasion to divert Argentine opinion from that agenda.

The Junta may have hoped to avoid war but when the shooting started all pretence of avoiding war evaporated…they could have given up at any point. They didn’t.

An interesting account about Black Buck 7 from ‘Task Force’ by Martin Middlebrook:

“The bombs were fitted with a radar-altimeter nose fuse set to detonate the bombs fifty feet above the ground. The object was not to crater the runway but to hit ‘soft targets’ on the airfield…

The unfamiliarity of the nose fuses, and some ambiguously worded instructions, led to the nose fuses being unarmed…

But the bombs were fitted with a reserve fuse in the tail, set to detonate on impact if the nose fuse failed.

…no investigation seems to have taken place over what became of the bombs, but the Vulcan crew were convinced that the tail fuses were armed and, although they did not see the flash of explosions, a prolonged ‘crummpp was heard/felt’ at exactly the right time interval, indicating that the bombs had exploded on impact, but it is not known where.”

I guess parking one of ther 747-400s on the golf course at Bangkok Don Muang Airport with the nose gear collapsed doesn’t count as an accident then?

Not if the pilots walked away from it! 😀

The Squid (and later Limbo) were three-barrelled muzzle-loading depth-charge throwers.

The key feature of their design was that depth-charges could be thrown ahead of the destroyer/frigate/sloop at a submerged submarine while it was still in ‘asdic’ (sonar) contact. With conventional over the side/stern depth-charges ‘asdic’ contact was lost as the destroyer/frigate/sloop steamed over the submerged submarine (which could use this opportunity to change course to escape the effects of the depth-charges).

I am told by one of the Black Buck pilots that the last raid dropped the bombs safe because of confusion over the switch labelled NOSE TAIL and NOSE TAIL AND VT.

In the case of the Falklands the correct selection for an airburst would have been Nose/Tail and VT. For an impact detonation the selection would be Tail and VT. If the airburst fuse, say the 952, failed then the tail fuse should have worked. However whether or not a nose fuse was fitted, it would be essential to select VT. If VT was not selected then neither a nose nor a tail function would work.

Now I am speculating but I do not think there was any intention to drop the bombs in airburst mode. In that case only the tail fuse would have been fitted. Fusing selection should have been Tail and VT. [There is a possibility that it was necessary to select Nose/tail and VT because of the VT wiring but it was 35 years ago].

The stick that failed to explode would have caused as much chaos and disruption as the one that did. Bombs that do not explode my be delayed action with delays from 30 minutes to 48 hours or even possible 96 hours. As they failed to explode the first task would have been to identify the impact area and impose a quarantine over an area at least 1600 x 500 yards and that only after you had located bombs 1 and X. I imagine there would have been a shortage of volunteers doing the initial survey!

Thanks for that very comprehensive post…and welcome to the forum.

Clearly the fusing arrangements were complicated enough for there to have been some confusion (in an unfamiliar role). Was the suggestion that the bombs were dropped to air-burst a way of covering-up the acute embarrassment of dropping of ‘un-fused’ bombs?

You make an interesting point about bombs failing to explode causing as much disruption as ones that did. I hadn’t even considered this aspect.

Thinking about it I wonder why some delayed-action bombs were not included in the twenty-one dropped. A bomb exploding two hours into the clean-up operation would have caused huge confusion (and alerted the Argentines to the possibility of more). Two more, one exploding at twelve, and one at twenty-four hours could have effectively closed the runway for another day and night.

I’ve never heard any mention of unexploded bombs having to be dealt with at Stanley airfield either by the Argentines during the war or by the British after liberation.

I do recall some mention of Vulcan bombs ‘deflagrating’ during the Falklands but cannot recall the source and I’m not sure if this related to the ‘un-fused’ bombs or to bombs landing on ‘hard’ ground (rock outcrops).

Surely even bombs dropped ‘safe’ wouldn’t just be left buried underground where they fell by the British would they?

Despite his TV alter ego I’d agree that JC does have a genuine respect for those who carried out the St Nazaire raid.

I was quite impressed by the documentary he made about his father-in-law who (IIRC) won the VC during operation Market Garden around Arnhem in 1944.

At the time I think there was talk of him making a series about the winners of the VC. Was the St Nazaire documentary the first of these or am I getting confused with another series about the VC?

Phew…glad I got that bit right!