MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Falklands: Goose Green commemorates 35th Liberation day
Goose Green Village Hall where Islanders were imprisoned when the Argentine Military Junta took over the Islands in 1982. Falkland Islanders who were held prisoner in the Goose Green Community Hall by the invading Argentine forces in 1982, joined with members of the British 3 PARA to commemorate those who died during the battle to liberate the settlement which happened at 13:30 hours May 29th.
An estimated 100 residents, including women and children, from Goose Green and Darwin where locked up, for almost seven weeks, in appalling conditions, at the Community Hall by the occupying Argentine military.
When news came of the landing of the Task Force in San Carlos, Argentine forces dug into well defended positions. After two days of fierce fighting and threats of massive British air support and naval artillery, Argentine forces turned in their arms and surrendered.
According to military reports from the time PARAs suffered 15 killed including Colonel H Jones, and thirty wounded. Argentines lost 55 men and close to a hundred were wounded.
Top Comments
Disclaimer & comment rules-
-
-
Read all commentsMalvado 1833,
Jun 06th, 2017 - 02:09 am +5All those silly 19th century imaginings are of no consequence now. Perhaps you haven't heard that the island are British? And they'll stay that way until the joint occurrence of pigs flying and the Falklanders deciding perhaps on some other arrangement. Get used to it.
-------
Islander1: Some years ago I discussed the matter of the 1982 airport situation with a former RAF officer who visited us in Río Gallegos, a bit incognito in that his former work was kept mostly quiet. Apparently it was not the Vulcan raids that prevented the aerodrome from being made fit for argie fast-movers, but the lack of work done by them to make the facility suitable. There would have been a great deal of work to accommodate the fast jets, beyond the comparatively simple matter of lengthening the runway. It seems as though a good bit of steel matting was delivered early on but the surface preparation for expanding the runway couldn't be accomplished with the argie personnel and equipment on the island, and they quickly gave up on the idea, long before the Vulcan raids. The mat delivered for the runway then quickly found its way out to the trenches, where it showed up nicely on aerial recon photography.
But the argie Skyhawks could have more easily been accommodated there with a little bit of work, and doing so would have greatly improved their capabilities. But the argie navy couldn't figure that one out, either. So many phenomenal errors on the part of their leaders.
And speaking of psychological blows: there was an attempt by a damaged argie Mirage to land at that too-short runway near Stanley, but their own AA shot it down and killed their pilot. Another example of their lack of comparatively simple command and control. The result: fratricide. Or was we say, own goal.
Then there was a case of the argie destroyers running away as the Belgrano was sinking, effectively assuring the deaths of many. Tragic, but very argie.
Mr Tinkle, the prominent argentine tactician, avoids the mention of the Goose Green condition in which the defenders had ample time to prepare their positions and thus in addition to their numerical superiority and presence of heavy weaponry which included formidable 35mm antiaircraft guns deployed in ground mode, enjoyed what is normally regarded as a 3:1 defenders' advantage. The argies surrendered because.... they were fooled. Argentines are routinely deceived and certainly so in this case. The argies' own after-action assessment reported enormous tactical incompetence in the conduct of the defensive operations.
Jun 06th, 2017 - 02:12 pm +5So blatantly did the argentine commanders give up in violation of their own rules that they were later prosecuted and convicted for their malfeasance.
'Around 45-50 Argentinians were killed, and 'The Official History of the Falklands Campaign' conservatively reports 961 Argentinian prisoners taken, although as its author Lawrence Freedman noted “the counting process was possibly less precise than the number suggests”, and other accounts of the battle have reported a larger prisoner count.'
Various reports of the number of argies taken as POWs varies and numbers as high as 1400 are recorded.
The surrender of the argentines at Goose Green:
Jun 07th, 2017 - 03:37 am +5“........Some minutes later everything became clear as we watched about 1,000 soldiers marching up in files to surrender in the same way. It was an incredible sight. We held our breath hoping they wouldn't change their minds. It was a very significant situation. Here, the Argentines had all the resources to defend the settlement for a long time, but they lacked the bottle. This lack of will, evident throughout the whole Argentine ground defence, lost them the Malvinas. If their islands were such a precious Argentine possession, why were they not prepared to die to hold onto them? Clearly, the islands did not have that significance in the Argentinians' minds and the war was merely a device to distract the population from the desperate state of the government's fortunes on the mainland. I like to think that the evil that stalked the Argentine, in the shape of the right-wing dictatorship, was felled through the action on the Falklands and opened the way to a more liberal regime. That process started at Goose Green.....”
(Major Chris Keeble's account of Goose Green - a reminder that argentines should be forever thankful for the British roundly kicking their little pink arses in that war, since it laid the groundwork for the end of their military government )
Commenting for this story is now closed.
If you have a Facebook account, become a fan and comment on our Facebook Page!