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Presumably they thought the British would just capitulate.
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# ? May 13, 2013 22:00 |
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# ? Apr 29, 2024 07:31 |
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drgitlin posted:They were ruled by an unpopular and bellicose military junta and not a representative democracy? They underestimated the Iron Lady
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# ? May 13, 2013 22:04 |
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They also probably figured that no empire would want to spend the amount of money it would cost to reclaim some meaningless land on the other side of the world for the sake of ARE EMPIRE. Especially when they were in rough economic times. Boy, were they loving wrong.
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# ? May 13, 2013 22:06 |
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Weren't the British inclined to just hand them over beforehand? Now the existence of a British colony on the Falklands is a symbol of their geopolitical muscle and they'll never give it up.
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# ? May 13, 2013 22:36 |
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Christoff posted:But I mean what were they thinking the first time? That they'd win? They came very close to winning. One exocet hitting the right ship would have meant a complete loss. Losing the Atlantic Conveyor was pretty devastating but losing the Hermes or Invincible would have been game over. Granted they would not have been able to land any more men or equipment by sea because of the submarines but we would not have been able to provide any air defence. Vasudus posted:They also probably figured that no empire would want to spend the amount of money it would cost to reclaim some meaningless land on the other side of the world for the sake of ARE EMPIRE. Especially when they were in rough economic times. Boy, were they loving wrong. Granted it was ARE EMPIRE but it was the right thing to do to fight the junta. Mortabis posted:Weren't the British inclined to just hand them over beforehand? Now the existence of a British colony on the Falklands is a symbol of their geopolitical muscle and they'll never give it up. There were talks in cabinet of handing it over, but I think talk would have been about it. The Falklands are a pain in the arse and it would be a real blessing if the Argentinian government wasn't such a bunch of stupid tossers. 98% of the people on the islands voted to stay a British protectorate earlier this year so its going to be a long time before Argentina gets a sniff. Limp Wristed Limey fucked around with this message at 22:43 on May 13, 2013 |
# ? May 13, 2013 22:37 |
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Limp Wristed Limey posted:They came very close to winning. One exocet hitting the right ship would have meant a complete loss. Losing the Atlantic Conveyor was pretty devastating but losing the Hermes or Invincible would have been game over. Granted they would not have been able to land any more men or equipment by sea because of the submarines but we would not have been able to provide any air defence. Maybe, maybe not. We were fully prepared to give them the Iwo Jima crewed by American "contractors" in the event one of their carriers got knocked out of the fight. It wouldn't have been a 1:1 replacement, but it would have been enough if it had been deployed rapidly.
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# ? May 14, 2013 02:19 |
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Since I think the book club thread disappeared, can anyone recommend a good (kindle) book about the Falklands? Preferably something Mark Bowden style with views from both sides of the conflict?
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# ? May 14, 2013 02:32 |
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Everybody always talks exocets when the Falklands comes up but another interesting thing is that the only nuclear submarine to ever score a kill was during the conflict. The aptly named HMS Conqueror.
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# ? May 14, 2013 02:41 |
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front wing flexing posted:Everybody always talks exocets when the Falklands comes up but another interesting thing is that the only nuclear submarine to ever score a kill was during the conflict. The aptly named HMS Conqueror. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehime_Maru_and_USS_Greeneville_collision Your move hot shot
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# ? May 14, 2013 02:42 |
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mokhtar belmokhtar posted:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehime_Maru_and_USS_Greeneville_collision Never stop posting
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# ? May 14, 2013 03:00 |
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Elendil004 posted:Since I think the book club thread disappeared, can anyone recommend a good (kindle) book about the Falklands? Preferably something Mark Bowden style with views from both sides of the conflict? This doesn't meet your requirement but is an excellent book and gives a bit of insight into the mindset of the civilian population at the time: War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges. Hedges was a war correspondent (and he's CLEARLY got issues as a result) and got a good look at things during several wars, including the Falklands. It's a pretty small portion of the book, but his poo poo on Bosnia is interesting as hell.
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# ? May 14, 2013 03:18 |
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Was there a Military book club?! Hate to derail but any recommendations about why we hate communism so much? I mean I have the rough idea we all learn in High School but I'd like something that goes much deeper and further back in history. I just have a hard time wrapping my head around it all. Considering everything it's caused.
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# ? May 14, 2013 03:22 |
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Christoff posted:Was there a Military book club?! Here's a super super simple explanation of communism courtesy of Animal Farm: Some people are more equal than others.
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# ? May 14, 2013 03:27 |
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Christoff posted:Was there a Military book club?! It's an extremely complex issue that stretches all the way from the depression through current day. Each decade all saw various different reasons as to why (all under the pretext of hurf durf, freedom). The extremely over simplified version is that nobody really cared about communism and socialism prior to WWII. We had socialists run for president, communism was quite active. Even Vice President Wallace was a public Soviet sympathizer (he's a pretty cool guy overlooked by history, look him up). But when the USSR emerged as a world power, an antithesis to the US, the justification was hatred of communism. Which makes sense, in order to energize a war weary populace against a country that pretty much had it worse than anybody in WWII to include the Jewish people took you'd have to fabricate a serious ideological schism. It worked out well because it turned out that Stalin and the USSR were pretty corrupt and evil. However, the common reason for average Americans hating them (being communist) is a little shortsighted. It could've just been because they're evil.
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# ? May 14, 2013 03:31 |
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Nothing wrong with a little communism
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# ? May 14, 2013 03:35 |
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Prior to WWII the Western exposure to the Soviet Union was largely from sympathetic journalists (Duranty et al) and other bigwigs visiting Potemkin villages and eating propanda. Stuff like the Great Purges, Trotsky's murder, the famine of '33 etc just weren't told to or talked about in the West. People who leaked out and told horror stories were written off as nuts or discredited political dissidents. Remember, back in the '30s especially pretty much the whole world, including the US, thought the future lied in some mix of fascism/national socialism/communism (the differences were recognized as largely semantic.) It's a completely different matter to look back in hindsight as much of what we know of the Soviet suffering and cruelty didn't really come out until the '80s and '90s, and some of it still is being unearthed today. Same goes with the Chinese under Maoism. As it drifts back into history you have more and more people buying the Potemkin stories again.
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# ? May 14, 2013 03:46 |
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Christoff posted:But I mean what were they thinking the first time? That they'd win? Like Limp Wristed Limey pointed out, it was a lot closer run thing than people think. If they had a) effectively reinforced their forces on the islands during the initial stages of the assault (before the British submarine threat cut off the islands from the mainland), b) conducted effective joint ops (seriously, the Argentinian military was basically fighting three separate wars), c) gotten luckier with the Exocets, d) had better fuzes for their bombs, and/or e) targeted the British supply/landing vessels in San Carlos Water instead of warships, they quite possibly could've sent the British forces home with their tail between their legs. Vasudus posted:Here's a super super simple explanation of communism courtesy of Animal Farm: Some people are more equal than others. Orwell got it right. Also gently caress Duranty. e: Since this is the photo thread, the Atlantic did one of their photo features last year on the 30th anniversary of the war: One more: iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 04:22 on May 14, 2013 |
# ? May 14, 2013 04:13 |
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I will never stop thinking how funny it is that there was a minor scandal in Britain over the sinking of the Belgrano. I mean, seriously some housewife berated Thatcher a couple years later when she appeared on some call-in news interview show because if a warship is sailing away from the Falklands it can't possibly be dangerous therefore TORY WAR CRIME BLARGH And people still cite that call as a triumph of the news media. Nelson wept.
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# ? May 14, 2013 04:55 |
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:I will never stop thinking how funny it is that there was a minor scandal in Britain over the sinking of the Belgrano. I mean, seriously some housewife berated Thatcher a couple years later when she appeared on some call-in news interview show because if a warship is sailing away from the Falklands it can't possibly be dangerous therefore TORY WAR CRIME BLARGH Say what you will about The Sun, but their initial headline about the Belgrano sinking was loving hilarious. Also I'm reminded of the people who got pissed at Sharkey Ward for shooting down that Argentinian C-130 near the end of the war. Oh yeah, and I almost forgot...add "if their Navy had been halfway competent and not a bunch of pussies and had still deployed their carrier to engage the British fleet instead of forcing their entire naval aviation arm to attack from the limits of their range with very limited intel" to the list of things that might have tipped the balance in their favor.
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# ? May 14, 2013 05:20 |
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Argentina is a lovely country that had it coming.
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# ? May 14, 2013 05:57 |
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Casimir Radon posted:Argentina is a lovely country that had it coming. Not according to some prize English crazies. Somehow it's the fault of the British that Argentina decided to launch a surprise invasion of the Falklands.
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# ? May 14, 2013 06:08 |
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Not according to some prize English crazies. Somehow it's the fault of the British that Argentina decided to launch a surprise invasion of the Falklands. Because White People and Imperialism...duh.
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# ? May 14, 2013 06:56 |
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Not according to some prize English crazies. Somehow it's the fault of the British that Argentina decided to launch a surprise invasion of the Falklands. Thats because they are idiots. I have seen people on the left weep about the injustice of Israel taking Palestinian land and then in the next sentence complain about how awful Thatcher was for fighting a poor helpless military junta that murdered 20,000 of their political opponents. There was talk of US carriers helping if things got out of hand but again it was just talk and rumours. I would love to find out what the US would have done if the UK had been defeated. The Reagan administration was not happy with the conflict at all. They did provide a new version of the sidewinder though and they did provide satellite intelligence. The Frence surprisingly provided assistence, they gave us a lot of information on the exocet.
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# ? May 14, 2013 07:05 |
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Limp Wristed Limey posted:There was talk of US carriers helping if things got out of hand but again it was just talk and rumours. I would love to find out what the US would have done if the UK had been defeated. The Reagan administration was not happy with the conflict at all. They did provide a new version of the sidewinder though and they did provide satellite intelligence. I think people overestimate the amount of overt support the US would've been willing to provide had things gone terrible. Yes, we gave you guys the Lima and a shitload of satellite pictures, but I have my doubts that the whole "give you a carrier if the Hermes and/or Invincible got sunk" thing would've really gone down, because if you listen to Lehman talk about it, him and Weinberger were just going to casually give a loving US Navy aircraft carrier to a foreign government to use in a war based on the verbal authorization of the President and somehow were going to keep this a secret from literally everyone else in the Cabinet (most notably Al Haig), because Lehman and Weinberger were the only two who thought arming a foreign government with a US warship was a good idea. Also the French, in hilariously typical French fashion, also had a team on the ground in Argentina that was providing technical assistance with maintaining and prepping the few Exocets that the Argentinians had.
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# ? May 14, 2013 07:41 |
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We would have sided with Argentina because Monroe Doctrine, that's why
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# ? May 14, 2013 07:45 |
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front wing flexing posted:We would have sided with Argentina because Monroe Doctrine, that's why That and supporting every single pissant anti-Communist gang of thugs south of the Rio Grande meant we couldn't exactly condemn the idiot Argentines for launching an unprovoked invasion of an actual ally's territory. Even if it's the stupid punkass Brits. Thank you Ronald Reagan, your legacy is intact! Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 07:54 on May 14, 2013 |
# ? May 14, 2013 07:52 |
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Someone mentioned above that the carriers would have been supplied with "contractors", thats something I had not heard of. Talk of handing over a carrier sure but like you said I dont think it would be a simple case of handing them over. Also the logistics and training of manning the carrier with a Royal Navy crew. I have not served in the Navy but I dont think getting a ship you have never trained on and suddenly taking it into a warzone would be a very good idea.
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# ? May 14, 2013 07:58 |
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Not according to some prize English crazies. Somehow it's the fault of the British that Argentina decided to launch a surprise invasion of the Falklands. If I recall correctly, the kickoff of the conflict was over some dude bringing in work crews without visas/passports to disassemble an abandoned whaling station. (his contract for the dismantlement had expired, but he went ahead anyway.) A couple of weeks later Argentina invades and captures a group of unfortunate SAS who had been dropped off by submarine. poo poo just gets weird after that.
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# ? May 14, 2013 08:19 |
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Packed Lunch posted:If I recall correctly, the kickoff of the conflict was over some dude bringing in work crews without visas/passports to disassemble an abandoned whaling station. (his contract for the dismantlement had expired, but he went ahead anyway.) The SAS tried to liberate South Georgia by landing covertly on a glacier, but that didn't go well. The Navy disabled an old Argie sub (using helicopters!), then carried out a bombardment demonstration on the hills beside the whaling station, and the Argie marines surrendered after 15 minutes. The signal sent to notify London of the liberation was the best part: "Be pleased to inform Her Majesty that the White Ensign flies alongside the Union Jack in South Georgia. God save the Queen."
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# ? May 14, 2013 08:35 |
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Limp Wristed Limey posted:Someone mentioned above that the carriers would have been supplied with "contractors", thats something I had not heard of. Talk of handing over a carrier sure but like you said I dont think it would be a simple case of handing them over. Yeah the giving them a carrier with retired sailor contractors familiar with the ship is just verbatim from Wikipedia. Not saying that's where he got it but yeah
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# ? May 14, 2013 11:54 |
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Limp Wristed Limey posted:Thats because they are idiots. I have seen people on the left weep about the injustice of Israel taking Palestinian land and then in the next sentence complain about how awful Thatcher was for fighting a poor helpless military junta that murdered 20,000 of their political opponents. There were serious disagreements between Jeanne Kirkpatrick and Weinberger, but Weinberger won, and US support was more than just AIM-9Ls and satellite images, the war wouldn't have been possible without using Ascension Island and the USAF base there.
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# ? May 14, 2013 12:25 |
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Some Syrian pilots having a bad day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZjgqpQrL_4 Here's what did it,can anyone spot what is special about it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXGuUXbS3eo
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# ? May 14, 2013 12:34 |
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Not according to some prize English crazies. Somehow it's the fault of the British that Argentina decided to launch a surprise invasion of the Falklands.
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# ? May 14, 2013 12:54 |
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Brown Moses posted:Here's what did it,can anyone spot what is special about it?
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# ? May 14, 2013 13:12 |
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evil_bunnY posted:External power supply? That's right, they've jury-rigged the battery to accept an external power supply, overcoming the limitations of thermal batteries.
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# ? May 14, 2013 13:13 |
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drgitlin posted:There were serious disagreements between Jeanne Kirkpatrick and Weinberger, but Weinberger won, and US support was more than just AIM-9Ls and satellite images, the war wouldn't have been possible without using Ascension Island and the USAF base there. Granted Ascension was important but I am not sure you could class it as mission critical. It looks like a lot of the fuel released for our use was used in the Black Buck raids. I would not say these were a huge success.
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# ? May 14, 2013 13:14 |
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Brown Moses posted:That's right, they've jury-rigged the battery to accept an external power supply, overcoming the limitations of thermal batteries.
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# ? May 14, 2013 13:28 |
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The Argentines named their top football league the belgrano first division recently
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# ? May 14, 2013 15:24 |
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Its also worth noting that the Belgrano was sailing out of a warzone with its water tight doors open.
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# ? May 14, 2013 15:45 |
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# ? Apr 29, 2024 07:31 |
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Christoff posted:Yeah the giving them a carrier with retired sailor contractors familiar with the ship is just verbatim from Wikipedia. Not saying that's where he got it but yeah No, I've read that somewhere reliable, I forget exactly where, though. The plan was actually very Cold War style probably-technically-legal: The entire crew of the Iwo Jima would be "retired" and then immediately re-hired as "contractors", I forget if they would be U.S. government employees or work for a shell company. Basically, it would have been the flimsiest of pretenses to deploy the Iwo Jima under command of whoever was in charge of the British task force. As I recall, we had the paperwork ready and everything. Someone was asking after a good read on the war, I recommend Max Hastings' The Battle for the Falklands.
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# ? May 14, 2013 15:56 |