This is a new post of May 5th, as promised.
I can't say this 'Falklands Diary' project working very well, in terms of eliciting comments! Plenty of people seem to be reading it, but many report problems leaving comments. Are Blogger and Blogspot defective tools? I am such a tyro I can't tell. Perhaps as a second line of communication, anyone who wants to communicate with me directly can do so on peter.harper@cat.org.uk.

Oh well, I must get on. For the original entry I posted a facsimile of the original diary, mainly to show it was genuine and that I was transcribing faithfully. I assume readers did not bother reading this, but went straight to my transcript. Perhaps the facsimiles are not really necessary, so this time I will simply present the transcript, in italics, followed by notes composed 30 years later, indicated in {curly brackets} as before. [Square brackets] are used for clarifications in the text. The next entry in my occasional 1982 diary is May 5th.

Perhaps I should make a remark before it begins. It is widely noted that the sinking of the Argentinian Cruiser General Belgrano marked a change in pretty everyone's perception of the conflict. This entry records my own reactions to that event, reported in the UK media on 3rd May 1982, and then somewhat different reactions to the sinking of HMS Sheffield, the first British ship to be lost, reported on 4th May. It's as if there are two separate diary entries, but they all occur under May 5, 1982.


May 5 -- comments on the Falklands Crisis (sinking of cruiser Belgrano & HMS Sheffield just reported). {1}


In the few days before the Belgrano was sunk I continued to be very fascinated by the affair. It continued to seem like an elaborate war game. The British use of "minimum force" seemed to be working extremely well. There was a sense of surgical efficiency, scrupulous legality, and that peculiar air of invincibility that the Israelis seemed to have before the canal crossing of 1973 {2}. It seemed that the Argentines were avoiding the TEZ {3} both by sea and air, and that little action could be expected after the bombing of the runways on the Falklands {4}. I remember faint stirrings of, if not exactly patriotism, then at least quiet pride at the professionalism and scrupulousness of "our boys".


The Belgrano changed all that. Since it was sunk outside the TEZ it struck me as wantonly bellicose. Surely a proper declaration of war is required before attacking a ship in international waters? As of today it looks as if several hundred sailors have died, & that is already far too high a price to pay for the administrative status of the Falkland Islanders. And for the various principles? What is an appropriate price for them?


This incident changed my attitude to the government's policy, & I started to have grave reservations about the task force operation. Can it be justified to continue[,] with the amount of killing this presages?  An image of the all-powerful British Navy against an outdated scratch fleet, manned by dedicated but ill-trained and ill-equipped sailors, haunted my mind. That somehow it just wasn't fair. {5}


At this point Britain had not lost a single man, while Argentina had lost a submarine, a cruiser, a naval tugboat, two Daggers (a Canberra?){6} & an unknown number of Pucaras {7} and other grounded aircraft during the bombing raids -- not to mention the frigate and helicopter damaged during the original invasion of the Falklands and South Georgia.


But now a [British] destroyer has been sunk {8} and a Harrier {9} shot down. The image of invincibility crumbles. Curiously, the attack on the Belgrano looks suddenly justified. The Argentines start to look dangerous -- 'worthy opponents' {10}. Arrogance -- never far below the surface in the press and parliament -- looks out of place (recall the Sun joke about the marine and the Argentine soldiers){11}.
(The Sheffield sinking is reminiscent of the Hood -- a single lucky shot getting to a vulnerable part {12}. I wonder if this really was the case) {13}[brackets in original MS]
-------------------- {14}
Good article by Peter Jenkins in the Guardian May 5 -- seems to have similar attitudes to mine. However I must say that I still have a great interest in the football-match-type aspects of physical fighting. I expect an eventual (re)invasion and a part of me looks forward to it. But inevitably more people are going to get killed than the total number of islanders, who in any case were in no physical danger from Argentine rule (quite the contrary -- the British in Argentina, part of the ruling elite, do very well thank you under a right-wing regime). We might easily displace 1800 people from their homes in the course of building a motorway. But this is considered entirely justified for the greater public good. Hmmm.... {15}


NOTES ADDED 5/05/2012
{1} The General Belgrano was formerly a US Navy warship that had seen service in the Pacific in WWII, sold to the Argentinian government in 1951. HMS Sheffield was one of a newish class of Type 42 Destroyers, designed I understand, principally for anti-submarine warfare. Many of this class were involved in the Task Force. The news of the Belgrano's sinking was delayed for a day, from 2nd till 3rd May, perhaps for political reasons, while the loss of the Sheffield was announced fairly promptly, as I recall, on 4th.

{2} This refers to the 'Yom Kippur' War of 1973. The Israelis had occupied the entire Siniai peninsula since the devastatingly effective '6 Day' campaign of 1967, having completely routed the armed forces of all neighbouring Arab states. There was definitely a sense of Israeli 'invincibility' on both sides. However in 1973 for once the Israelis were caught unprepared by a well-planned and executed crossing of the Suez canal by the Egyptian army. Although they quickly recovered and would have 'won' a continued war (international pressure forced a ceasefire) the Israelis reputation for invincibility had been lost. Probably the 'cred' and pride generated allowed Egypt to conclude a peace treaty with Israel a few years later.

{3} TEZ stands for Total Exclusion Zone. This was a circular area 200 miles around the Falklands, declared to be off-limits to Argentinian military activity. This was an important part of the diplomatic game. There was never any declaration of war, presumably because both sides wanted to emphasise their ownership of the Islands, and were merely 'asserting their rights'. The TEZ was a way of setting up Rules of Engagement that could limit casualties, prevent Argentine reinforcements of the occupying forces, and allow Britain to maintain its façade of effortless hands-off power. Having nuclear-powered submarines that could stay on patrol (or even submerged) a long time meant that any naval intrusion into the TEZ would be extremely risky, and presumably the British counted on this factor to keep the zone clear of Argentine ships, while the RAF could prevent aerial intrusions.

{4} One of the first military actions once the Task Force approached the Falklands, was to bomb the  airfields. I personally recall Brian Hanrahan reporting of the bombing harriers 'I counted them all out, and I counted them back', one of the most famous sound-bites of the entire war. That was a mark of the early, smug, invincibility phase of the war, when it was thought possible that Britain would gain the day with no losses whatever.

{5} The Belgrano was clearly outside the exclusion zone, though not by much. In fact it was probably cruising about, only a few tens of miles outside the TEZ. Presumably it was assumed the British would stick to their own rules, so it was an awful shock to everyone when the ship was torpedoed. It didn't really stand much chance. Most of the sailors got off in time and were rescued; about 350 died as a result of the attack itself. This event resulted in another famous sound-bite from an Argentinian diplomat, that 'Brittania may no longer rule the waves, but she certainly waives the rules'. Pretty clever eh?

The sinking of the Belgrano remains the most controversial aspect of the Falklands Affair, and much has been said about it. At the moment it was reported it obviously seemed to my 'diary self' to be unnecessary and 'unfair', but perhaps this only indicates that I had bought in to the British government's  image of effortless surgical power. At a stroke this illusion was destroyed, but we have to note that as a military tactic this action was extremely effective, because it kept the entire Argentine navy bottled up in port for the rest of the war.

{6,7} Daggers, Pucaras, Canberra, various types of Argentinian military aircraft.

{8} The Sheffield was hit by a single French-made Exocet air-to-surface missile, sustained enormous damage, lost 20 men to burns and blast injuries, caught fire and had to be abandoned, later sinking. This was another pivotal moment, immediately following the Belgrano. It was really shocking to see how vulnerable a modern ship could be to a single missile. It gave the impression that the modern Royal Navy made its ships out of plastic. Perhaps even worse, the incident showed that the much-vaunted anti-missile-missile defences had failed. If they failed here, was any part of the fleet safe? Was all this fantastic new military hardware just spin?

{9} The Harrier 'jump jets' were another part of the 'proud to be British' weapons systems, assumed to be superior in every way to the second-hand Argentinian kit. One did not expect to lose any at all, certainly not so early.

{10} This expression shows the fluid emotional narratives going on in my mind. Are wars really like football matches? When the England soccer team plays Argentina away it expects to lose. They are worthy opponents. When England play Leichtenstein there is a tendency to root for the underdog: it's 'not fair'. You can see my mind switching between these points of view.

{11} I cannot remember this joke, but of course there were lots, denigrating the Argentine troops and talking up the Tommies; no doubt in Argentina the same jokes were told the other way round.

{12} Famously, HMS Hood, pride of the Royal Navy, was sunk by the Bismarck in 1941, apparently by one lucky shell penetrating the main magazine and blowing up the whole ship.

{13} See remarks at 8 above. It was so difficult to believe that a whole ship could be sunk by one missile that I was asking myself could it have been just a single lucky shot (like the Hood), or were all the destroyers equally vulnerable? Later events showed it was not merely a lucky shot.

{14} In the original MS there are a couple of paragraph lines, as if I went away for a while and finished later. Yet I am quoting from a newspaper of 5th May, so presumably it was written on the same day.

{15} This is a theme I keep returning to in the diaries: how should we evaluate the interests of the Falkland Islanders? What should they be compared with?  In the UK people are forcibly removed from places where they have no formal permission to live, or through compulsory purchase in the case of major infrastructure projects. Or whole communities are forced to move because local livelihoods (like mines) are summarily closed. Is it a question of interests, or principles? Which principles?