Yes there is still a base there, guarding the British people who live there (so sheep may safely graze:D ) and also as I said earlier guarding Antartica from exploitation.

EDIT: can't spell Guard properly without 2 goes!

Well I don't have much an opinion of Thatcher one way or the other, but I thought her handling of the Falklands situation was excellent. The RNs slow deployment down to the Falklands gave time for world opinion to turn against Argentina, which your government was very convincingly able to cast as being in the wrong.

It reminded me of your countries efforts to turn US opinion against Germany and in favor of the Allies in WW1. It was very well played by Britian, especially for a country that, back then, was still thought of more as a former enemy than as a friend.

Weren't the Falklands first settled by British on one Island and the Spanish on the other main Island?? The British took it all over after a long period of time when the Islands were abandond. The Spainish at one point controled both (the Command of the Spanish Island had some grand idea's of expansion), but gave the British back the Island with an apology!

The American then weighed into the debate after the Islands were abaonded by both british and spanish settlers, declaring that the Islands were under no claim and were free.

The British had by this point had enough, and went down and occuiped the the Islands, which have stayed in there hands except form the time in 1982.

The Argentine claim on the Islands is based on the spanish holding. I have dates at home for all of the events that I've listed (they maybe a little out of order, but they're pretty much on the money). I don't know of the legal staus of the Argentine claim, but it looks a little weak to me.

possession is 9/10s of the law, as they say..

I dont think it was a matter of taking the time to turn world opinion against argentina, i think its a matter of it taking such a long time for the forces to get from britain where they had to be assembled, to the falklands! Think about it, how long does it take us in a type IX boat?? its a bloody long way.

As for the reasons behind the initial invasion, I suggest we look at the state of argentinian politics at the time. the govt was shaky, and in IR there is an idea which states that the best way to unite your people and take their mind off internal problems is to create an external threat, the 'us against them' idea.

My two pennies worth....

As I understand it Thatcher was warned that Argentinia was about to invade the Falklands some 8 months before it happened by the Americans. Instead of putting more troops in and around the Falklands, she actually did nothing(inviting the invasion)

When the "war" got under way, again the Americans had got Argentinia agree to talks with our government, and at almost the same time a nuclear submarime sunk the Belgrano(apologies if I misspelt its name)not in and also heading away from the exclusion zone. No-one to this day knows for sure who gave the order as the subs log books went missing on the way back here.

We know what happened next. An awful lot of lives were lost and Thatcher was re-elected on the back of the war.

I for one can't wait to dance on that womans grave! (it wasn't just the Falklands - that witch ruined our country, and we're still reeling from her control now)

Bit of trivia, to the extent of my knowledge it was the second time the Belgrano had sunk, the first time was as USS Phoenix (appropriately enough) at Pearl Harbour. As I say IIRC according to Wikipedia it survived the attack, I also thought it was the Carolina...

As many have mentioned here already, the central interesting thing about the Falklands war was that it tested many Cold War technologies that although long in service, but had not really been used in conflict before. Some cold truths regarding cruise missiles, nuclear submarines and VTOL aircraft were made painfully obvious to the two combatants, as well as the rest of the world. I suppose it remains to be seen, in the next real sea battle whether or not these lessons have been taken to heart.:hmm:

Iluminados por el fuego is a bad film from a bad book.

My dad's theory is that the Falklands War was probably based on false intelligence on the part of the Argentinians, deliberately fed to them by the CIA.
Thinking they could easily win the confilct, they went ahead and did it. The CIA of course, did this to topple the dictatorship in Argentina, which was taking all the CIA (under the table) funding for the war against communism in south america, without doing enough to stop it.
In fact, the Tupamaros had been infiltrated by Argentinian agents for some time, and were perpetuating a long dead socialist movement, just to keep getting the CIA's aid money.
So the Falklands War may well have been the CIA's revenge on a regime they no longer had any use for.

Nuclear Submarines? I know the Belgrano was sunk by a vintage, non-nuclear sub with ancient WWII torpedoes.:yep:

The sub was a reasonly modern nuclear sub. Yes it did use Mk 8 Torpedoes instead of the Mk 24 Tigerfish, but there were two reasons for this.

1 The Tigerfish was unreliable and didn't have a good history of reliablity

2 The Mk8 had a bigger warhead, wich they believed (correctly) that would do more damage to armored WW2 vintage vessal.

Of the three mk 8's fired two hit and exploded, sinking the Belgrano, one missed the cruiser and hit a destroyer, but failed to exploed! ( The argintinians heard it hit their ship, later examination found the dent and marks from impact.)

If you steal something, how many years of decades must go by before it is yours?

We showed Argentina
Now let's go and show these.
Make us feel tough
And wouldn't Maggie be pleased?

:smug: