Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hello and welcome to this special bonus episode of the Battleground podcast. I'm Saul David and today Patrick Bishop and I are going to respond to many of the comments and queries you've sent in about our recent Falklands War series. And we're also going to play an amazing piece of audience that was recorded during the war and that's been just sent in to us.
OK, let's get started. The first message we got was an email and it said, nice comment to begin with, from Craig Hawkes. And it said, love this morning's podcast. You're both doing a cracking job with the series. I had a question regarding the role of British special forces in and around Stanley, both before and during the war. I've read some very minor mentions of them getting in amongst the Argentines during the initial invasion and to stir up a bit of trouble there.
Patrick, do you have any comments about that? The SAS and the SBS were inserted well before the landing at points all over the island on East Falkland and West Falkland and in locations where it was felt the enemy might be present. What they're doing there really is doing a job that the...
traditionally would have been done by the RAF, that is getting real on-the-ground information, which would have been gleaned from reconnaissance flights. But we didn't have that capability. It was just too far away. And the Harriers that we did have in the area weren't equipped to take photographs. So it had to be done in a kind of pre-modern age way of actually getting eyes on stuff on the ground. So that's what they were there doing.
Yeah, I mean, Craig mentions the blue on blue. I mean, there was one infamous moment where the SBS apparently sort of stray into the SAS territory in terms of patrolling on East Falkland and one SBS soldier was shot and killed. You know, so that was a tragedy that can happen, unfortunately, in war. The question more generally of why Craig hasn't heard more detail about Special Forces operations is,
It goes down to the question of a murder, doesn't it, Patrick? But the question is, who's actually keeping this a murder? Special forces still can't talk about their operations. Even 40 years ago, the most I've been able to get to in terms of my SBS book was 1948. So everything after that is pretty much...
you know, held under closure. And it's only when people break ranks like Sir Peter de la Villiere did after the Gulf War that you get some of these books. And generally speaking, those who do speak out will be PNG. That is...
In other words, persona non grata and not invited back to the regiment in effect. So that's why we don't know much about them. But we did have, as we flagged up earlier on the podcast, two SBS operators speaking for the first time about what they did. So I suspect there'll be more of that in the years to come. And it certainly strikes me, Patrick, that 40 years is long enough for Special Forces operations to be kept secret. Yeah, I can't see that there's much of a security risk involved there.
I think they've made a bit of a world for their own backs with this ethos of secrecy because, you know, they want to be able to tell their stories like everyone else does.
And there are ways of getting around it, as Sir Peter de la Billière found. Of course, that kind of opened, I wouldn't say the floodgates, but certainly there was a steady trickle of stuff that technically shouldn't have been allowed thereafter. I just want to get back to the subject of the efficiency of patrolling as a means of
of getting information and I'm afraid the answer is that it's not that efficient because for the simple obvious reasons of the restrictions all you've got is your eyeballs essentially your binoculars to see what's going on and you get a very restricted picture so I know that some of the battalion commanders in the Falklands
weren't terribly impressed by the quality of the SAS information they were getting back. They were more complimentary about the intel from the SBS because I think that was more tightly focused. It was on things like the condition of beaches. Was it possible to actually make a landing here, etc. But the miscalculations of numbers was a thing, feature we've seen recently.
throughout the story, isn't it, Saul? Yeah, absolutely right. And of course, it could have had real consequences. You know, the attack on Goose Green, we talked about the estimates of numbers there, you know, were probably, they thought it would be relatively similar numbers. There was actually a three to one disparity against. And the same thing going into some of the battles for Port Stanley itself. I mean, we heard about the
Of course, the brutal fight that the Scots guards do on Tumbledown and they expect many fewer people on top there. So, yes, it could have had a real consequence. Right, let's move on. Second email. This is another nice comment from a guy called Pete Snowden. Much enjoying the series apart from having to wait for a week.
For the next Monday, which is nice. He would like us to be talking more frequently than once a week. Are you going to cover the medical story of Commander Rick Jolly and others? And his last comment is, you may be interested to know that the story of Tumbledown is used in graphic detail to inspire the Scots Guards in their infantry training,
at the bayonet lesson exercise. Looking forward to hearing your take on it. So do you want to comment a little bit about Rick Jolly first, Patrick? Because that is a bit of the story we've missed out, and it is a remarkable tale of the Falklands War. Yeah, I do regret that we didn't actually take a look at that because it was a fantastic story, a great achievement. Rick Jolly, larger-than-life character, you know, terrifically inspiring man. He was on the camera on the way down. We all...
got to know him well and once he got ashore of course he set up the famous red and green life-saving machine in the disused refrigeration plant in Ajax Bay pretty sort of grim environment but it did a fantastic job I visited it a few times I remember actually going there just after an Argentinian pilot had been brought there having ejected from his fast jet over San Carlos water
And I was very impressed by the way that the Argentinians were given exactly the same treatment as everyone else. I think they even made a sort of special point of being extra kind of caring and attentive and kind to them, essentially.
to quell the fears which had been instilled by some of their commanders in them that they were up against this ruthless foe that were probably going to do them harm once they actually fell into their clutches. So that was all very good. And of course, part of the drama was that at one point a bomb lodged in the
in the Ajax Bay facility, unexploded bomb. We're going to come on to that a bit later on. And so they were working for some of the time with the thought any second the whole place would just go up with a huge bang. But that didn't deter them. Incredible,
camaraderie, incredible kind of esprit that they all showed. And they did a fantastic job patching people up before then sending them off to the hospital ship Uganda. Yeah. And just addressing the issue of the Scots Guards. I mean, that's fascinating, isn't it, Patrick? Still use today the attack on Tumbledown in their bare neck training. I mean, you referred at the time to the fact that this is very much a Second World War battle. But
You can see that the sort of aggression that's needed both from platoon leaders and junior NCOs to keep the men moving forward is absolutely vital to the training of the British Army today. And it's fascinating to me to realise that they use that very iconic battle, you know, to get them up for it.
OK, now we addressed a couple of questions before which we've had follow up messages about. And that was the derivation of the terms tabbing and yomping. Now, we've got quite an interesting suggestion for both of these, and they may well be correct. This came in from Bob Maycock, and he says on the subject of tabbing, I'd always understood that it stands for tactical advance with Bergen.
and not tactical advance to battle. I'm not entirely convinced about that one, Bob. I think it's tactical advance to battle. But we also got a follow-up on the YOMP, which none of us were sure about. And actually, this came in from one of the SBS operators who said, I'm pretty sure it means your own marching pace. Have you ever heard that before, Patrick? No, never heard that one. It sounds, dare I say it, a little bit...
technical, doesn't it? Your own marching pace. And it kind of wouldn't make much sense because if you decide that you're not going to keep up with the guy at the front, then very rapidly the column will be extending over several miles. So I don't know. It's a thought. It's a thought. It's a good one.
OK, moving on. Another very nice comment about the podcast. This is from G.R. and he said on my Twitter feed, thanks for the podcast. The whole series has been excellent. The interviews have been particularly interesting. Will you be able to make the full length versions available once the series is finished? Also, do you have any plans to cover other conflicts in future series? Well, we've already addressed the first question in our previous episode, which is we are moving directly on to the Ukraine issue.
as for the full length versions um we do have one or two we haven't played at all and one interestingly enough which sort of intersects with uh patrick's comments about the red and green life machine um that is a bomb disposal expert who was tasked with diffusing the bomb that was lodged there uh gave a wonderful interview and we'll be playing that in full in a future bonus episode so those are the responses for those two but thank you very much for uh for the uh query
Another comment, Andrew Hooper, avidly listened to every episode, all brilliant, so compelling, so well researched and produced, presented by a fantastic double act. I'm blushing as I hear this, Patrick. Timely interspersed with eyewitness reports, a magnificent tribute to all the brave men, many of whom were the same generation as me. So it's good to hear comments like that. Absolutely, yeah. But that's really the...
the highest praise without kind of you know i'm getting too big headed about it um i i think we we were really very chuffed to get such positive responses from the people who were actually there um just want to get back to the question of a further series uh yeah we are definitely doing this ukraine thing it's obviously going to be uh slightly different because it's a it's an ongoing thing
But I think there's a huge amount of interest in the kind of nitty gritty of the war and the big picture as well, which we're not getting from conventional media at the moment, as often happens. The initial kind of saturation coverage doesn't take long to fade. And so I'm now scrabbling around saying,
just from, you know, conventional newspapers and television news to find out what the hell is going on there. And I get a sense that quite a few people share that frustration. Don't you, Saul?
Yes, absolutely, Patrick. I mean, you know, I personally find it a little bit confusing as to what's going on at the moment. The news this morning, Luhansk has been effectively handed over to the Russians. So things are happening on the ground and we're not getting that much detail. So we're going to try and drill down a little bit further.
into this. We're going to try and give a summary, frankly, of what's happened in the previous week, but also to talk to some interesting people. We won't, as Patrick says, be able to go into quite the same forensic detail as we have been able to with the Falklands War. And that's, frankly, the difference between current affairs and history. But we hope that our contribution will, you know, will make a real, will give a real insight, frankly, into what's going on. And we'll fill a bit of a gap, which both of us feel is there.
Okay. So moving on to other comments, this is from Helena Hiset. I also found the episode that is episodes. Uh, that's the, uh, Sir Galahad episode. Uh,
interesting but confronting as well interesting she says confronting meaning quite difficult to to deal with some of the material we're talking about you know i think that's the point if you if you're talking honestly about war some of it is tough to to listen to it is fascinating she went on to write to listen to the veterans talk about their experiences you can still hear the trauma in their voices even after all these years veterans need significant and ongoing support love the pod great yeah um
Well, you're absolutely right about the truth that PTSD never really fades away.
I've become friendly with a guy who I didn't know at the time, but I've met since, who was a private soldier there in the parachute regiment. He rose through the ranks and ended up lieutenant colonel. And even after all that time, he was a bold soldier back in the day, one of the most aggressive paras you'd wish to meet. Very, you know, easygoing, happy-go-lucky sort of bloke, but...
You know, he's quite open about the fact that his life has been periodically blighted by PTSD ever since. He's very vocal on the subject. He's a campaigner on the subject. So, you know, that is very much a real thing. On the Galahad thing, it's still a...
you know, a very, very sore memory after all these years. There's still a certain amount of, you know, controversy and, you know, blame apportioning and all the rest of it. And again, you know, I think, you know, the passing of time does something to soften these memories, but I think it'll be a long time before it ever goes away.
Okay, this is from Matt Rowe. This is another one coming into my Twitter feed. Absolutely fantastic podcast. The whole series has been gripping. I hope when the Falklands series is over, you can pick another topic and continue. Well, we've answered that response, but thank you, Matt. This is from Lydia Jane. I've listened to lots of podcasts and watched and read a lot of stuff about the Falklands War over the last few months. But this podcast with the two of you is staggeringly good.
highly recommended. Thank you so much, Lydia. We appreciate your comments. Does anyone say anything nasty about the podcast? I filtered those ones out. There were one or two. Honestly, I'm joking. Listen,
you and I both know you can't please everyone all of the time. And I haven't had a single highly critical, uh, a comment about the podcast. One, just maybe the odd, odd thing about we, we, we would have liked to have heard from Argentinian voices. And I think, you know, we should address that now actually, Patrick, because you and I and Matt, who's our fixer, who, uh, we gave a good shout out to, uh,
in the last episode, you know, made sterling efforts to try and get the voice from the Argentinian side. But sadly, there was no one who was actually prepared to stand up or at least we could contact and speak to us about that, which is frankly a bit of a shame, isn't it? It is a shame. I mean, I recently made a documentary about the Falklands, which went out on Channel 4 in March, when we did manage to find a couple of Argentinians who were very happy to talk, actually, about
And I have to say that what they came up with was not really terribly illuminating. I was really interested to hear how much thought they put into the conflict subsequently and a bit about their personal experiences. But it was quite sort of propagandistic. It was interesting.
this rather kind of, you know, dare I say it's a Latin American sort of rather macho approach to the whole thing that this was all about our honor and the Falklands belonged to them. They were the last middle of Venus. And it wasn't actually terribly illuminating. I'm not saying for a moment that there aren't loads of people that particularly, these were officers, you know, particularly among the conscripts. I'd love to hear from them. But, but,
And I'm sure that they would have had something rather different to say to what the officers were saying. But it was just, I'm afraid, beyond our resources. But it is something that I feel is a gap in the series.
OK, this is from Simon Thompson. Excellent podcast, by the way. My question is, and it's actually two questions. How close was the operation to failing because of one, the approaching Arctic winter or two operational factors such as insufficient supplies, ships, aircraft requiring maintenance, etc.? In other words, if the task force had left one week later, would the outcome have been different? Please answer this. It would make my day.
Patrick, what do you think? Well, I think you're absolutely right there. It was the biggest enemy ultimately was time. Time because of the weather, the conditions were day by day getting worse to the point where they would have been unbearable. And secondly, time because of the wear and tear of
particularly on the fleet, on the men on the ground shore, but particularly the fleet. You know, being out there in the South Atlantic after a couple of weeks, everything starts, things start going wrong on a regular basis. And trying a distance of 8,000 miles to keep up any kind of maintenance program would have been impossible. So I think you'd have seen a day by day, a reduction in the efficiency of
of every aspect of the task force to the point where it became impossible to maintain our presence there and we'd have had to have come home. I think that's what the Argentinians were banking on.
Yeah, it's fascinating, isn't it, to realise after the event, we discover that the original Argentine plan is to invade later in the year. And actually, they're bumped into it by the South Georgia crisis. And the plan, of course, is to force us to respond during their winter, when in effect, we wouldn't have been able to respond. So, you know, it would...
was a factor. Would a week, which was Simon's question, have made a difference? I'm not so sure a week would have made a difference, but you certainly get the sense from the commanders down there, Julian Thompson and everyone else, that time is of the essence. That's why he was so determined to crack on. That's why the whole business of Fifth Brigade became so controversial, because it in effect slowed up the land campaign. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. I think a week maybe not, but a fortnight perhaps would
Yeah. OK, so we've got another question. This is a different Simon this time. Question for the podcast relevant to Falklands, but came to mind when reading your great, in inverted commas, SBS book. Are all Royal Marine Commandos and are all Commandos Royal Marines in the UK forces? I guess the follow up question is, was there a change between the Second World War and the Falklands? Now, it sounds like a complicated question, but actually, I think the answer is reasonably straightforward.
Is this right, Patrick? If you're a Royal Marine, you're also a commando now. The two are sort of interchangeable. But it wasn't always the case, because as I explain in my book, commandos only begin during the Second World War. And during the Second World War, there was a distinction between army commandos and Royal Marine commandos. Now, only the latter exists. Is that correct, Patrick? I think that's the answer. Yeah.
Yeah, I think you've got it spot on there. Commandos of various forms have sort of been around. The idea of a commando starting most recently was in South Africa in the Boer War, which is, I think, where the modern iteration of it developed. The idea was sold to Churchill early on. Well, you know this very well. So there were independent companies and they become commandos. They had these training centres up in Scotland, Inverailort and Plymouth.
I forgot the name, Achnacarry, Achnacarry Castle. That's the great trading base. Worth a trip, actually. It's terrific fun. They've sort of kept quite a lot of the old... Enough of the infrastructure for you to get an idea of what it was like. And, of course, it's like a natural training area. You've got sort of rivers, mountains, all sorts of things you could exhaust yourself. Sounds hell to me. There's a great story, actually, about the...
about going ashore in Dieppe when four commando went ashore they were immediately met by all sorts of machine gun fire and water fire and someone piped up and said this is even worse than the carry it to give you a sense of how tough it really was
Great stuff. Okay, here's another one from James Collier. Congratulations on a really well produced and insightful podcast. It was great to hear the perspective of so many veterans from across the ranks and services. And while we do regret missing out on the Argentinian perspective, we were very keen, weren't we, Patrick, to make sure that this wasn't just, you know, a
upper middle class voices and that we would hear from, from all the ranks and all the services. But anyway, the, the, the questions that he asked are interesting prior to the conflict. What were the assessments of our likelihood of success, both within the MOD and amongst our allies? I'm sure I read somewhere that a pre-war USMC, that's obviously the Marine Corps, US Marine Corps study predicted that it was odds on we would fail to retake the islands. Do you know anything about that, Patrick? Yeah, I mean, this is, this is referenced, uh,
from time to time about this US Marine Corps study, quite why they would be doing it, I don't know. But yeah, I've come across it, but I've never actually managed to locate the study. But it's not really rocket science, is it? It's sort of pretty obvious that projecting force that distance with the resources that Britain had at that time was going to be problematic. I think the
The thing was, it was just about doable. And it was at the last point in recent military history, given the steady decline in numbers and resources, that it was possible. Yeah. OK. He's got a second question. Well, in fact, he's got three questions. The second one's also interesting. How close to run thing was it? Well, we've just dealt with that. But he goes into more specifics here. What would it have taken for us to fail? For example, the number of task force vessels were hit...
But these bombs did not detonate for various reasons. Had we lost a handful more frigates of destroyers, would that have ended the mission? Or would it have taken the loss of a carrier to really end the campaign? What do you think, Patrick? I think frigates and destroyers we probably could have lived with. The loss of a
would have been much more of a thing because, of course, it's all about air and protection that the carrier-borne Harriers could give to the ground forces. So I think if that had been taken out of the equation or a big chunk of the air defences provided by the Harriers had been removed, then the vulnerability factor zooms up for the carriers
for the land forces. And I think that might, that might have tipped the balance. The whole question of, of air cover, you know, this was perhaps the biggest single risk I think is the, is the imbalance in air forces. And I think that was probably the, the biggest gamble, something that perhaps needs a bit more focus, but that's certainly what, what,
what focused most people's minds on the way down when they were assessing the dangers. Yeah. And I think just to, you know, go back to the, we, we addressed the issue of, of the near sinking of Hermes by an Exocet missile when, uh, of course, sadly Atlantic conveyor went down instead. Um, we discussed whether or not that could have been a deliberate sacrifice of the, uh,
the tanker. I, I thought it might've been Patrick. You, you didn't agree with me, which is fine. We're, we're allowed to disagree, but the broader point here is that the carriers were absolutely crucial. So although Woodward may not have deliberately sacrificed it, he certainly was prepared to put, uh,
pretty much all his other ships in the way, including the Atlantic conveyor, as this so-called chaff wall to protect the aircraft carriers. And while that might seem to some listeners quite cold-blooded, it seems to me a completely logical use, sadly, in war. You sometimes have to
or at least put at risk other elements of your kit to save the more important ones. So, you know, to me, that would have been a perfectly legitimate use of other kit. Of course, it's not so easy for the families of people who die on those other ships to accept that. But that seems to me something that's always happened through war. OK.
OK, now the third part of the question from James Collier is what was the legacy from the conflict in terms of any major changes in UK military doctrine, strategy, tactics or procurement? Obviously, a lot of the plan cuts were halted or reversed. But otherwise, did we just go back to training and preparing for the same set of Cold War missions? Patrick, what do you think? Do you know what, James? I don't know the answer to that one, except in the broadest sense.
I think we did pretty much. Well, one thing that did happen was that there was certainly a feeling among the Marines afterwards that had it not been for the war, they might well have ended up on the scrap heap. They might have been one of the major casualties of the ongoing program of shrinking the British armed forces. So that was one thing you can say came out of it. The Marines survived and went on to prosper.
In terms of, I think it would have been, I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud here, but I think that it would have been pretty bizarre to have any kind of retilting of kind of future predictions.
about what kind of wars we might be facing in future on the basis of this one very bizarre war. It was an anomaly, an anachronism, etc. I mean, this is always the case, of course. I mean, who would have known that we would actually, a couple of decades later, be fighting guys wearing flip-flops and carrying AK-47s, that all our military resources would be going on to fighting this extraordinary sort of asymmetric wars in Iraq and Syria.
or post-Saddam Iraq and Afghanistan. So, yeah, I mean, as far as I'm aware, we just kind of went back to our sort of NATO Cold War posture, which, of course, was about very soon to come to an end as well.
Yeah, I think it's also worth saying that, Patrick, there were very real changes in terms of the sort of long term determination to keep some kind of air stroke sea power as part of the British Armed Forces. So you get a situation now where we have these two huge aircraft carriers, very controversial. Not everyone agrees with them, particularly if you're not in the Royal Navy. But I think the the.
Falklands taught us, you need to prepare for all eventualities. And given the nature of the two conflicts we've recently fought, you might have imagined that that was going to be the future of warfare. So that also tells us, doesn't it, Patrick, with the Ukraine conflict now, you need to have kits that can be used in multiple different types of ways. And my personal feeling is that the aircraft carriers, although they cost an awful lot of money, actually will serve us very well. And in a war against
Russia, for example, if it ever comes to that, we hope it won't in terms of a hot war. That's exactly the sort of thing you need. Yeah. I mean, the thing is with the military, you can never say never when it comes to procurement, because, you know, five years ago, investing huge amounts of money into fast jets would seem to be perhaps sort of the wrong way of using your, again, you know, always money.
uh heavily pressurized resources but now fast jets uh they're pretty good things to have you know so it's a terrible procurement is a terrible uh thing to to have to be responsible for because you're almost always gonna get it wrong you can absolutely not predict the shape of future wars
Okay here's a question from Matthew. First of all he just wants to say how much he's loved the recent Falklands podcast. It's been really fascinating. His question is how did the paras and commandos as well as the special forces survive on those mountains for such a long period of time? In episode 12 you touched on how most people would have been hospitalized with exposure but these guys not only survived but then they went and fought the battles after that. It's astonishing. I'm
I understand these are tough men and they go through rigorous training, but in a practical sense, how do they actually get through it? Did they exercise to keep warm? Did they have decent shelter? Were they kitted out with adequate enough clothing? I mean, great questions, Matthew. And Patrick, you were in the mountains. So how on earth did everyone survive? The answer, Matthew, is I really don't know. I mean, it was it was unbelievable. It was just so miserable.
And the tent issue, as civvies, you know, we were saying, where are the tents? Where are the tents? There are no tents. What you do is you make a bivy out of a poncho, which was a kind of supposedly waterproof cape.
And, you know, any bits of wood you could find lying around, which of course were practically non-existent in the Falklands. And bits and pieces of kit, you know, entrenching towards. And with that, you kind of rigged up this, you know, pathetic little shelter over a shell scrape that you dug to protect, give yourself a little bit of minimal protection from Argentinian chilling. Of course, as soon as you
stuck a spade into the very thin topsoil on the forklifts. It filled up with water. So it was incredibly miserable. And the actual kit itself, boots, it all comes down to boots in the end. Our boots were rubbish. The DMS boot leaked. The sole was incredibly stiff.
uh and after about a couple of if you were wearing them for the first time after a couple of miles you were practically crippled of course lots of guys have made their own provisions they had their own boots brought their own boots the argentinian boots as i've said before were much much better the actual quality of the clothing was pretty lousy as well um so not very waterproof some of the officers have brought their barbers with them which served them much better than the than the kind of
outer covering, outer clothing that was sort of standard issue. So I think it basically came down to incredible fitness and morale. So
These guys were just kept going with the fact that they were physically very tough, mentally very tough. And that terrific sort of camaraderie that means that the weakest or anyone, the most vulnerable at any given moment is going to get massive support from the guys around him.
Okay, this is from Damien, slightly off topic as it is a Battleground podcast, but it would be interesting to know how the news media were reporting the events, what they knew were allowed to report and so on, particularly with journalists on the ground. Excellent podcast, Ian. So that's obviously a question for you, Patrick. I think we've answered some of that in the episodes, but if you could just go into a little bit more detail about the challenges you faced
reporting from, you know, what was really a sort of closed circuit in terms of you getting information out? Entirely, yeah. So there's about kind of 30 journalists there, all British. There's only one international news outlet, which is Reuters. It was a chap called Les Dowd from Reuters. Everyone else was from either BBC, ITN,
British National, the Sunday newspapers, regional newspapers. So an entirely British affair. The first thing we've got to mention is that there was censorship in place. The Ministry of Defence sent down some civilian officials who were meant to look after us, the minders they were known as, not always affectionately. And they were meant to basically...
to kind of manage us, but also to censor our copy. So what they were looking for was
was anything that gave away any operational details at all. This could be very widely, let's start by saying that none of us was interested in giving away stuff that was going to be of any use to the enemy because we were obviously going to be in the firing line if they heard it and acted on it. So yeah, we were perfectly happy to go along with that. Unfortunately, it was kind of some of the minders were more liberal and more intelligent in interpreting those parameters than others.
A huge problem, of course, was the actual business of getting your stuff out. So if you wrote something, you then had to leave where you were to get back to one of the ships to send it off, having been censored via the SAT communications. That meant you then had all the hassle of getting back to where you had been. So you had to think long and hard before you took that decision.
that decision. But the other thing, of course, is that everything was pooled. So everything that everyone wrote was available to any news outlet who wanted to use it. So the element of competition, which is very, very strong in journalism, was not really so present there. Now, that's the perspective from where we were. You could only really write about it all, in my case, write or broadcast anything.
in the case of the others, when it was all over. And there was plenty of great stuff that came out then. From the perspective of people operating in London, the two big leaks that really drove people crazy
enraged people on the ground. Well, let's talk about the main one. Was, of course, the Goose Green, giving away the fact that the Goose Green attack had begun even before it had actually been launched. So if that wasn't a breach of security, I don't know what was. Now, that didn't come from any of us down in the Falklands. That came from...
someone, strangely enough, who picked it up in a London club. Some politician had turned up for lunch at the club. It was dropped, the fact that the goose green operation was mistakenly said to be underway. In fact, it hadn't quite started then. And that was picked up by a BBC reporter who blindly went on to broadcast it. Astonishing now that the BBC would do that. It was a real security risk. It really did potentially endanger people.
And that, as I say, caused understandable fury among the people out there. Okay. Now, another comment. This is from an Ollie Ford. Enjoying the Falklands podcast. Why didn't the naval gunfire batter Mount Longdon before three power went up it?
rather than when they were on it, the element of surprise was never going to last. Do we know enough about the detail of Mount Longdon to answer that question, Patrick? I mean, I would have assumed that there was a certain amount of softening up from the naval gunfire even before they went in. But is that the point? It was a battle of surprise? Well, there certainly was a surprise element, as indeed there was in, I think, in all the mountain battles. But I'm afraid I can't answer that question, Ollie. I
I mean, there certainly was naval gunfire directed at London, but when it came in, how that decision was made, I'm afraid I don't know. Okay. Now I've got a, quite a detailed one here and I'm not sure we're going to be able to deal with all of it, but some of the comments are very interesting. Um,
Really enjoying your Falklands War podcast. This is from a Rob Barash. As a veteran of the Israeli Defence Forces, I wanted to point out that it's not axiomatic that conscription makes for poor soldiers, as the major participants in World War II would testify. There are a few key factors to making an effective conscription-based fighting force, though I never made it past sergeant and I'm neither a military historian nor a military affairs analyst, so I could be full of rubbish.
Uh, but he's got a couple of questions that I think is worth addressing. Actually, do the conscripts believe in what they're fighting for? Um, in other words, if they don't, uh, that doesn't help. And I think we could probably say that was, uh, that was true for some of them in the Falklands is conscription, uh, relatively universal. Uh,
are conscript suckers who don't have the money or connections to get out of the draft, e.g. Donald Trump and these infamous bone spurs, or as in Israel since 1948, it is almost universal. So again, the question is morale would be affected if you feel that you're the ones doing the fighting because of your sort of poor economic circumstances.
even if the military relies on conscription, says Rob, our combat units fill with people who want to be there. Even though we're all conscripts, the IDF's frontline combat units are filled with soldiers who asked to serve there. So he's constantly using the IDF as an example of conscription.
soldiers that worked. Uh, the question is, do they work in all cases? And I think you and I both agree, Patrick, in the Falklands, probably for some of the reasons, um, Rob's pointed out. He also talks about training, how effective, how effective his training, uh,
how long your service is. It helps, of course, if the service is longer, not short. And final comment he makes, a lot is made about the role of long-serving professional NCOs in NATO militaries, and I'm sure they're excellent, but our NCOs, who were only a year or two older than us, were fantastic, and our junior officers were excellent too. So some interesting comments there from Rob. Patrick, what do you feel? I mean, clearly some conscript armies are better than others, aren't they?
Yeah, there are conscripts and conscripts. And of course, with the IDF, you know, the Israelis, you know, it's a vital part of citizenship. So I think that's definitely at the top of the list.
of the scale of commitment and professionalism and so forth. And of course, morale and esprit, very vital elements. You certainly didn't have that in the case of the Argentinians. So I think there are two opposite ends of the spectrum if you're comparing the IDF to the poor old Argentinians. Yeah, it's really the strength of the contract, I think, that the state has with its conscripts. In the case of the
Of Israel, of course, it's very, very strong. In the case of Argentina, it wasn't at all. What you get is a sense, very, very strong sense that we referred to before, disconnect between the officers and the men, which is only going to create inefficiency.
Now, I got a fascinating email from someone called Rich Jackson, who messaged me about his father, who was a veteran of the Falklands. He was serving on Hercules in the RAF and the Hercules that were assigned to special forces. So we're back to special forces here. And he points out in his original email, followed up by an email from his dad, giving some of the details of the operations he was on. And it's really fascinating stuff.
Basically, he was assigned to the mission that was going to take out the Exocet bearing aircraft. That's the Super Etendard on the ground in Argentina. I mean, this was a mission that, you know, we know historians know was aborted, but it actually was going to go ahead. And he gives some fascinating detail. His job was, you know, to get the rear ramp down as quickly as possible. Now, you know, normally they went down reasonably slowly for obvious reasons.
But he devised a way where you could just drop it and just go bang. And of course, the importance was the guys get off as quickly as possible and they can get back on as quickly as possible. It very much reminds me of my Entebbe book, Operation Thunderbolt, where the Hercules came in. Very similar operation and undoubtedly would have inspired the SAS.
actually to doing this. The reason that doesn't go ahead, even after he's been given a bollocking by his boss not to use this quick release mechanism, is because they have problems with, well, first of all, they're told that they, you know, they're stopped as they're about to take off. But a similar operation he talks about is stopped because of in-flight refueling issues.
So there were all kinds of madcap missions that the SAS were going to launch from Ascension that Rich's dad was involved in. Harvey Jackson is his name. But they were, you know, fortunately, I suppose, in some cases stopped because of various technical issues, because the body count, I suspect, would be a lot higher if they actually had gone on those missions. Patrick, do you know anything about the detail of any of those?
I don't, but I do know that the forces, to an extent, is a kind of playground for special forces. They've got this unique opportunity to try out all sorts of, as you say, madcap ideas. And I have heard various stories, and we've heard stories from some of our contributors that we didn't broadcast about some of the things that they were asked to do. Do you remember the helicopter pilot who was asked by
the SAS whether the helicopter could hover over a suspected minefield and the SAS team climb onto the helicopter at the back, walk down the length of the helicopter and then disembark while it was hovering over the other side. I mean, this is sort of like you do think, well, hang on a minute. But there was clearly a lot of that going on.
OK, we're going to take a quick break now. And when we come back, we've got a real treat for you. It's a bit of audio from the last air raid against British naval ships of the Falklands War. And I promise you, it's pretty dramatic.
Welcome back. A few more questions now. Here's Carl Reid, and he asks us, why didn't the UK invoke Article 5 of the NATO treaty after the Argentine invasion, as the US did after 9-11? Patrick, do you have a thought about that? Well, you know, that's a really, really interesting question to which, once again, I have to say I don't have a specific answer. But of course,
Article 5 is an attack on one is an attack upon all, which I think the Falklands would have met that criterion. And I can only speculate that it was because of the peculiar nature of the conflict. This is very much a British thing. It's very much framed in sort of colonial style.
setting. So it would be pretty hard, even though technically it might meet the criterion, it's pretty hard to argue that an attack on a little island or some little islands would
many thousands of miles away from the rest of the kind of NATO sphere, it really presents any kind of threat to the common security. Of course, the other element is the colonial element, isn't it, Saul? You've got this very much, sorry, the post-imperial element. So, you know, Britain's very sensitive about this charge which is being made by the Argentinians that this is really kind of 19th century problem they're trying to resolve.
Yeah, for sure. And you've got the complication with the Americans in South America. They very much see the Argentinians as a bastion of agriculture.
anti-communism. And this was going to make it very unlikely, frankly, that they were going to respond to a request from Article 5. And it may be that alone, actually, which discouraged us from doing so. What we did do, of course, is make great efforts, successful as it turned out, in the United Nations for a condemnation of the invasion. So that was a diplomatic coup.
But the chances of getting NATO fighting on side in self-defense, in inverted commas, I think were frankly pretty unlikely. So they didn't even bother trying it.
OK, now we come to a really fascinating message from someone called Stan. Well, Will Stan Bowles, of course. You know, these nicknames the military will always give each other in this case relating to the famous 1970s footballer. But he was this is really fascinating. I was serving as a mine clearance diver on the fleet clearance diving team during the campaign. We were based on the Tristram, then Intrepid in the thick of it.
The divers are the Navy EOD IED operatives, you know, the bomb disposal, basically. And so were employed in making safe UXBs, unexploded bombs, amongst other tasks. Having been only 90 meters from the antelope when a thousand pound bomb was embedded in her and then detonated, I have witnessed the impact of air dropped weapons on the enclosed spaces in a warship.
Many ships were struck with 1,000-pound bombs that failed to detonate. Antrim, Argonaut twice, Glasgow, Broad Sword, Plymouth times four times.
and the Antelope. All the LSLs, with one exception, were struck by bombs in San Carlos. As you know, these LSLs carried a huge amount of kit. Had these weapons detonated, the damage and casualties would have been awful. The Plymouth, having been struck by four bombs, would have disintegrated. Likewise, the Argonaut. I could write much more.
Please understand that although pleased to have contributed, this is not a shout out for the divers, but a suggestion that the war would have looked very different if not lost had these weapons detonated. For an insight, you may wish to Google RN Divers Falklands War for a nine minute BBC feature with myself and my oppo, uh,
Tony Groom and I would absolutely recommend looking at that now it's interesting because we continue this conversation I responded and said thanks so much for your email I spoke with one of your colleagues a guy called Piggy Trotter who helped to remove the unexploded bomb from Sir Lancelot it was too late to include in the main body of the story but we'll add the whole interview as a bonus episode so that's going to follow on from this bonus episode probably
Hopefully this will remind people of the absolute vital work that you and the other divers did in the Falklands. I take your point about the fortune of so many bombs not exploding and will read out some of your email, which I've just done. Now, his response was also interesting. He goes on to say the Navy was alarmed but content fielding UXBs, which lasted only until broadcast by the BBC. Patrick referred to this, of course, before. Thereafter, the bombs were fitted with retard fins, slowing them down in flight and thus allowing time for them to become fully armed.
not ideal. As you, as you said, luck plays a massive part in war. Really? We should have been smashed. Um, Patrick, what's your feeling about that? I mean, it was a close run thing. This was a question asked before by, uh, another of our, our listeners. Uh,
Was this, you know, the difference between those bombs exploding because they were dropped at low level or not really the crucial difference? Well, I don't think it's possible to say that with any kind of authority or accuracy, but certainly life would have been a hell of a lot harder if those bombs
badly, wrongly fused bombs had been set correctly, there'd have been a lot more carnage in San Carlos water, a lot more lives would have been lost, a lot more stores and kit would have gone down. It would have made the job of the land forces immeasurably easier.
harder but it didn't happen and as we all agree you know luck is is incredibly important and the balance of luck I think we can say was on the British side throughout the whole campaign even though many things went wrong a lot more could have gone wrong
Yeah, that bit of information that Stan Bowles gave about the retard Finns is fascinating, isn't it? Because we'd always been led to believe, historians have always been led to believe, that actually the Argentines just dropped their bombs from a slightly higher height. And that gave them the chance to arm. But they actually found a technical solution.
that allowed them to keep coming in at low level, which of course was much safer for their pilots. So fascinating stuff. Thank you very much, Stan, for that. And I think we've saved the best till last here, Patrick, because this is not only a fascinating email, but also an amazing bit of audio which was sent with it. And this is the email from a man called John Hughes.
many thanks for a very enjoyable series at the episode at the end of episode 12 you invited listeners comments which is why he's uh writing in in 2022 the mass media's focus and the public understanding of the falklands campaign would seem to be limited generally to belgrano goose green the welsh guards at bluff cove etc etc there would have been no victory without the land campaign of course and the availability of tv imagery from ashore will always be significant but the fact
that Operation Corporate, that's the overall name for the Falklands campaign, was overwhelmingly a naval undertaking and a great success for the naval service overall is sometimes lost, I feel.
You touched briefly on Steyner Inspector and the repair of Glamorgan, but there is a huge story of endeavour and achievement to be covered in the logistics and support effort. From the initial effort by the organisation to store the task force, the dock yards that converted ships, fitted helopads and RES points to merchant ships, the RFA, the involvement of, you know, etc, etc, such as the shell and BP tankers that ferry fuel down to the task force and the merchant ships that took stores daily into St. Carlos.
These stories are never told. He goes on to say, for your information, you mentioned in an earlier episode that the new CO for Tupara parachuted into the sea and speculated he was picked up by a small craft.
A slow Hercules would have been let nowhere near the islands themselves. He was picked up by Penelope, in which I was a junior officer. That's HMS Penelope, which was the destroyer, some distance north of the islands. As we all watched him come down, one wag on board said that as he was an army officer, the next parachute would be for his Labrador.
And then we get to the really interesting bit of all of this, Patrick. Great email. On the night of the 13th and 14th of June, Penelope, in company with Cardiff, was escorting Nordic Ferry along the northern coast of East Falkland. We were jumped by some Argentine aircraft and, though the intelligence was not fully conclusive, it is believed that this was the final attack on a Royal Naval ship. The attached recording made on board that night...
Maybe interesting. So we're just going to play that recording because it is quite remarkable. Here it is. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
Jesus, what? Fuckin' shit, mate. I'm in. One. One. Come back to reloading, lads. Right, I want you to switch on one of these missiles, boys. Quick as you can, but safely, alright? Hang on till we get from this shot. Out as quick as you can.
Crystals are at the top of this, you know what I'm talking about. We're in auto-auto, I get it. We're in the fucking tunnel. We're not fucked. I don't know if we would have been. What was that first bend? It was the guns. Fucking resin. It was both of us, don't worry about it. Just think about what you've got to do. Have you had a look round? On what you've got to do on foreign air? For these three loaded guns.
I know what I've got to do, yeah. Right. Is everybody happy? Yeah. Yeah, I'm happy. Okay, you take charge. I want to be in between the extra sets. All right. And Snowy's got to go up. Snowy. Okay. On top of the seat out back. On the seat out back, all right? Mickey's up there. He's up there. Mickey's out there with a rifle. Yeah, but he's going to go as well. Just keep quiet. Do what you're told. All right? Snowy's got to be on the... Snowy's got to be there. He's got the crystals in, I say. Okay, but Mickey...
Yeah, I don't know. We're making sure a judge to do at the moment. It's pretty much on his feet. If Nicky's with us, fair enough. If he's not, he's three up there. Stage K1, no heads up. We're repeating, no heads up. Wow, that was quite something, wasn't it? I mean, what struck me first was the cacophony, this all-round...
barrage of noise you're getting, but contrasted with that is the astonishing coolness of the voices we hear. People are told to get on with their jobs calmly, you know, arm the weapon, but don't rush it, you know, don't take your time, don't make sure it's all safe. You know, that's really quite impressive, I found. Yeah, a great bit of actuality there. Just to get back to the point earlier that John made about, you know,
about logistics. Yes, of course, it's really unfair the way that the backroom boys, the people who aren't up at the front, who don't attract the attention of the cameras and the reporters, they do go unsung. Their feats are not recorded. They treasure the memories themselves. They know what they did, but no one else did. And it was a huge logistical victory. I mean, this was
that could not have been done were it not for the dedication and skill of this army of unsung heroes. So we salute them today. We do indeed. Now, just one extra bit of information to add. This came from John Hughes after an email exchange with me. He actually points out that the recording was made by a weapons engineering mechanic. And the chatter that you hear in the background is the team discussing the reloading of the Sea Cat. So, you know, great stuff, John.
A remarkable bit of audio from the Falklands War. OK, so I think that's all we have time for this week. Patrick and I are going to be signing off for a short time, short break. We'll play one or two bonus episodes in the interim and then we'll be back very shortly with Battleground the Ukraine. Do join us.