Excellent series – thank you Oriskany.

I never knew that one of the Argentinien Type 42 Destroyers and the British HMS Sheffield were in fact sister ships.

A question: If all or much of the fighting on land was at night, to mitigate the lack of cover, would the British or Argentian forces have used any kind of early night optical devices?

Finally, I remember one of the justifications I heard during The Falklands War, was the concern of the British government about setting a negative precedent: if the UK would not or could not defend the Falklands, then Hong Kong might be next.

Thank you @oriskany – the photos of the kit with the “starlight” scope are fascinating – I had kind of assumed that the British soldiers had pretty outdated equipment, given all the spending cuts on defence during the 1970s and 1980s, with priority given to the Tank Regiments in Germany, the Royal Air Force and the Polaris submarines.

I remember news report comparing the boots worn by the British and the Argentiniens – the professional elite British soldier had traditional leather combat boots which were not waterproof and so unsuited to the 50+ mile “yomps” across the rainy, cold and muddy East Falkland Island. The Argentinien conscripts, on the other hand, were fresh out of training and were equipped with modern light-weight waterproof boots. The conclusion, the Ministry of Defence needs to wake up and modernize their kit.

Actually, the difference in technology between the Falklands War and the 1st Gulf War only 8 years later does seem more like a 20 year difference (purely from a gut feeling, not based on any facts). Perhaps because new equipment like night optical devices, the guided missiles supplied by the US which you mentioned and rumors that the British were receiving intelligence gathered by US spy satellites, was probably all classified information at the time.

Perhaps also the sight of a rusty, about- to-be-scrapped, aircraft carrier hastily sent out as a part of the Task Force, and the story of the “1950s-era” Vulkan Bomber runs did not suggest “state-of-the art” war technology being available, but played to the British desire to take pride in our WW2 narrative of improvisation, pragmatism and  “make do and mend” but tough-as-nails underdog character.

Perhaps there was some kind of a misdirection / propaganda strategy to allow the Argentiniens think they had the upper hand already and so hope they would not send further reinforcements from Argentina.

Interesting also that after the Falklands War, the British replaced the L1A1 SLR and Sterling SMGs with the Heckler & Koch SA-80.

Anyway, perhaps this a topic for discussion for another day: the advantages and disadvantages of
option 1 – appearing vulnerable by keeping strategic and/or tactical advantage secret
option 2 – overstating your strength and hope to intimidate the enemy into avoiding a confrontation

I guess the answer will almost certainly be “depends on circumstances” but still, it might make for an interesting discussion.

@oriskany – thank you for the detailed answer. I did not know we Brits had modern kevlar combat helmet in the Falkslands – all I have ever seen are – daytime – photos of the Paratroop Regiment and Royal Marines in red and green berets respectively, Slow hiking or “yomping” across remote moorland with huge backpacks of Heavy Equipment – towards an entrenched more modern looking enemy.

As a 15 year old, at the time, I had absolutely no real concept of military tactics – but I remember thinking “why no camouflaged helmet?” And “why did they not bring any jeeps?”

Now I realise, that since the battles  took place under cover of darkness, they probably just put their kevlar helmets on beforehand – duh!

And know I now: the helicopter transports (helps being quicker than Jeeps) had all been lost in the Atlantic Conveyor – apparently due  to an exocet fired at a British Destroyer but which was misdirected by “chaff” and then locked itself on the next available target – the Atlantic Conveyor. As this was a conmercial freighter, it had no “chaff” or point defences to speak of and so got hit by “bad luck”.

Oh, I did not realise there is another Thread about this Episode of SitRep. Will go over and check it out now – sorry if I have inadvertently asked the same questions and/or raised the same issues on this Thread.

PS the photo of the soldiers with mix of kevlar helmets and Red para berets brings me to another question – why is it that so many soldiers do not appear to bother doing up the chin-straps? In every war film it seem they are always flapping about and being a distraction. I wonder if this is Hollywood “rule of cool” or something that real soldiers in a Battle just can’t actually be bothered with and films are being accurate about this detail.

Absolutely no worries, @aztecjaguar – as far as the chinstraps go, I just know that the ones we had were friggin’ annoying.  They never quite fit right, and so were always chafing against your face.  Also, there is webbing inside the helmet so it’s not resting directly on your scalp.  This makes it better to wear on your head, but that freedom of movement also means that friggin’ chin strap is always yanking on your face when moving.  Unbuckling one side was almost worse because now it was always flapping against your cheek.

You could unsnap both sides and just take it off altogether, always the preferred option at least when the NCOs weren’t looking.

The one exception was for any kind of PT (physical training) in field gear.  Running, calisthenics, obstacle courses, etc … it was useful to have the chinstrap fastened then.  Nothing is worse than finishing a course only to have to go back and do it all over again because you lost your helmet along the way somewhere.