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Tuesday 5 February 2019

Malvinas Secret Files in 2072



Malvinas Secret Files in 2072





What could be in the 2072 Secret Falklands File we hear so often about? If Britain did hide military secrets for 90 years, what do you think they could be?

Nogging Grogg, former Retd British Army Major & Business Systems Analyst (1973-2009)


There is one thought that has run through my mind off and on right from the time it was decided to send 5 Infantry Brigade to support 3 Commando Brigade.
It is well known that original orbat of 5 Bde consisted of 2 Para, 3 Para & 1/7 GR. By the time the decision was taken to send 5 Bde down south it had already lost two of it's three battalions to 3 Cdo 2 Para & 3 Para.
Therefore two additional Battalions were needed to bring the Brigade up to strength. That of course turned out to be the Scots Guards and Welsh Guards. Both of whom had been operating in their public ceremonial duties role in London. Much has been made about the fact that they were not really fit for the task that was assigned to them at such short notice.
It is my contention that while it may have been necessary to use one of the Guards Battalions to bring 5 Bde up to strength, that it was not necessary to use two of them. There was another Infantry Battalion stationed in UK at the time which I believe would have been a much better choice. That was The Prince of Wales Own Regiment of Yorkshire 1 PWO. Now I have no personal connection or interest in 1 PWO but I suggest they would have been an infinitely better choice to send to the Falklands than one of the Guards Battalions. The reason is simple 1 PWO were assigned to the ACE mobile force. This was a multinational NATO force designed to be used on the NATO flanks in either Northern Norway or Turkey. It's prime purpose was political it was to be the multinational "blood sacrifice" to demonstrate commitment by all NATO nations. Therefore when the Falklands situation "blew up" 1 PWO had just finished several weeks of exercises in Norway north of the arctic circle in winter. They were almost as well trained at winter warfare as the Royal Marines and probably better prepared than 2 or 3 Para. If they had been assigned to 5 Bde then the brigade would at least have hade 2 of it's three battalions fully operational.
Now I have heard excuses from various MoD types saying that 1 PWO could not be touched as it was committed to NATO. To that I call Bullshit. All during the troubles in Northern Ireland the British Army robbed units from it's divisions supposedly assigned to NATO in Germany, and yet found a way to keep the Politicians happy. British Army battalions were always getting Rerolled and Redeployed.
A Brit Infantry Bn might spend a few years in UK in the Light role during which time it might be Sent to do a UN peacekeeping Tour in Cyprus, then it would be rerolled as a mechanised battalion and sent to Germany for several years during which time it might be pulled out to do a couple counter insurgency Northern Ireland tours.
1 PWO could easily have been reassigned to 5 Bde it would be a simple stroke of the administrative pen. They would not need to be issued with any winter warfare equipment as they already had it. The northern European Winter was coming to an end so if one of the Guards battalions were given 1 PWOs ACE mobile role their lack of Arctic training would not be a problem. The next ACE mobile exercise would be in Turkey in autumn plenty of time for a battalion to get battle ready.
I have long suspected that the Household Division used it's political muscle to pull a few strings and get itself involved in the Falklands operation. When suddenly it looked like the British forces were going to get into their first proper war (instead of all this internal security nonsense) in a generation and the Guards did not want to miss out on a chance of a few battle honours. The trouble is there may not be anything on file about this as the whole discussion may have been over the phone or possibly over a Gin & Ton.



  

BSc Mathematics, University of Southampton

I was looking at this some years ago, having read some papers on the campaign by US military personnel, and concluded the Guards Btns were almost the worse possible candidates.
1.      Like the majority of units not in key roles, they were under strength - it was (and prob. still is) usual for units to be at c. 90% strength, relying on the call-up of reservists to fill the gaps.
2.    As both Btns had been in the public duties role for at least 3 years (2 Scots did have a recent tour of NI under their belt), what recent experience did they have of combined arms or Bde level ops?
3.    Fitness - when part of the Welsh Guards started their march, they had to abort as the loads were too heavy. To be fair, even the paras struggled (in part due to the inadequacies of the boots, something they had pointed out earlier in the year).



Yes well I have to be careful here. I have some personal issues with the Welsh Guards in 1982. I was involved with getting the QE2 ready to embark 5 Bde as well as the actual embarkation itself. Suffice to say if it had not been due the brilliant performance and discipline of 1/7 GR we would not have made up for time lost earlier in the day.


Thomas Daley Former Marine Engineer
Talk in the Merchant navy in 1982, is that the paras and marines were pounding the decks running nearly all hours of the day on the way down. They knew shit could happen andit did.
The choppers got wiped out on the Atlantic Conveyor so walking, tabbing, yomping were needed.
The guards moaned about food and weather, sea state prevented physical exercise were their excuse. 30 minutes into an attempt at a night march, it were called off.
Unfit or their bergens were overloaded, the paras, marines and gurkhas all had the same. Unfit, unprepared and unsuitable …..


Long held suspicions? I would say correctly…The Guards and their officers both senior and retired are in a unique position to influence the MOD as well as politicians…significantly less now as the Conservatives are not off the national service era…and have much less army in them…! So yes…not fit enough..not hard enough…but wangled it!


 Guy BlackwellRegistered Nurse ex soldier
I was serving in a regional infantry battalion at the time and it was widely thought that the desision to send the Guards was entirely made at the personal whim of the Guards hierarchy. The are, and were, a fine body of men and performed admirably, but not a logical choice.

And what a painful costly moment that was,even i with no military experience whatsoever would realise that two ships anchored in a bay full of soldiers opposing a capable determined enemy airforce was a disaster waiting to happen getting everyone of and the ships back out to sea no more than basic common sense.




Gwyn Kemp-Philp Former civil servant
Referring to the O/P - I have often thought that the rank of Major is the most senior officer still capable of being a soldier. Above that, it is swamped in politics and mired in customs, seniority and ear whispering, anything except considered operational planning to make best use of resources available.
The Falklands campaign is living testament to that but nevertheless, it proves that the rank and file can still prevail despite their senior officer’s pre-WWI attitudes.



Bill Crean, lived in Saudi Arabia (1990-2015)

I would not be surprised if there were such Falklands files , after all there are still some secret files from WW2, namely what did Rudolf Hess say during questioning, in his imprisonment in England? That secret has been maintained for 77 years so far.
As with the Hess story, the Royal family could be affected and my guess is the secret Falklands files, if they exist, contain something about Prince Andrew, who served as a helicopter pilot during the Falklands’ conflict. I am sure the news will be all good, but I am not sure why they would want to make it a secret for so long.
After a standard period of 30 years some Falklands war secrets were released in 2012. This was essentially the refueling system they employed to bomb the Argentines on the Falklands from Ascension Island, 3000 miles away. The Argentines were so alarmed at the bombing that they evacuated their fighters to mainland Argentina, which reduced their impact in fighting the British because the fighters had to fly from the mainland to engage the British, a distance of 400 miles.



Martin Porter, B.Sc from University of Leicester (1991)


I would expect the main military secrets that remain to be revealed relate to intelligence gathering, especially the extent to which the UK received intelligence from the USA.
A curiosity of the campaign is that no overall theatre commander was ever appointed. Admiral Woodward looked after the fleet, whilst Thompson, and then Moore looked after the land war. There was no overall air strategy, and the air wings of the two carriers used different tactics throughout the campaign. All the coordination was done by Northwood Headquarters, 8000 miles away in Hertfordshire. Why?

The best guess is that they were able to use classified intelligence sources that could not be shared with the commanders in theatre. Some of this intel was no doubt from GCHQ intercepts. Some may very well have been from SAS teams and MI6 officers on the ground in Argentina. However, some almost certainly came from the USA. What this was, we do not know. Most likely this was satellites and electronic intelligence, the exact capabilities of which they would not want revealed at the height of the Cold War, but there is also the possibility of human sources that would be very sensitive indeed.
It’s not just the USA that might have supplied intelligence too. Chile was certainly helping the UK, although what intel they had is unknown. Then there was the French connection. It’s possible, although less likely, that France’s technical personal shared some intelligence with the UK, and even possible they didn’t do this voluntarily.
That this is what is in those files is just a guess on my behalf, but this is the question about the war that I would most like answering.


Max Jones, Aspiring filmmaker, knows a lot about Naval/Military History

I don’t know very much about the specifics, but imagine they would be relatively standard classified documentation. I don’t imagine there will be a great deal of massive controversies or terrible war crimes on the British end being uncovered, a lot of it is probably just reports and specific details of various notable events. Others might regard political deals or communications that weren’t so public at the time.
I don’t know very much about these files or anything concerning them, so these are only my assumptions based on my pre-existing understanding of everything that happened but I expect a lot of it is information simply classified the same way that militaries today won’t release everything they know about weapons tests, sales and equipment based deals and other details of operations to the public. Perhaps some is simply a matter of evaluating the performance of systems without giving away information that offers them a natural advantage through combat testing, like the capabilities of radar systems, missiles, etc.
Otherwise, the UK Government will finally admit the HMS Invincible was sunk 5 times in the war and Hermes never even existed to begin with, and there is actually a hangar somewhere with piles of inflatable naval vessels in case any are lost.





Dave Hopkin , former Troop Commander at Brtish Army (1977-1984)

There are several potential themes of why information should be held secret
1.      Documents relating actual warning that the Government had recieved and ignored (potentially to do with Caringtons resignation) or information of what was really happening in the cabinet and number 10 - I suspect the cabinet were not all in favour of sending the Task Force
2.    Details of the enquires into the loss of the Sheffield which may compromise operational activities
3.    Details of the after action report on Goose Green that may be critical of the actions leading to the of Lt Col H Jones
4.    Details of Intelligence shared by allies that may harm their relationships with Argentina
5.     Details of operations in Tierra del Fuego.



Mick Bacon
, works at Semi-retirement (2014-present)

The reason that files are closed for 90 years, rather than the usual 30 years, is that they contain information about individuals. 90 years ensures that no living person has personal information disclosed.
Therefore , the secrets disclosed will be information about individuals.





Joseph Wang, studied at Ph.D Astronomy UT Austin, Physics MIT

In for military stuff, it would be the details on the sinking of the HMS Sheffield and the General Belgrano, and general “lessons learned” from the amphibious assault operations. There are so few examples of post-WWII real military actions that I’m sure that Chinese and Russian military people would love to learn as much as they can about how missiles and amphibious assaults work under real world situations.
As far as political and diplomatic stuff, there’s always something juicy in them. It’s the nature of politics and diplomacy that people will do and say things that are highly embarrassing so you have these rules so that people are safely in the grave when the historians argue about them.