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Unlock This CourseThis lesson is part of the Paper 2 Section B breadth study on the changing nature of warfare, 1919-2011. By 1982 the big carrier battles of the Pacific War were almost forty years in the past. Yet conventional warfare, fighting between the armed forces of states with ships, aircraft and soldiers, had not gone away. In 1982 Britain fought a conventional war in the South Atlantic.
The Falkland Islands are a British territory about 8,000 miles from Britain and about 300 miles off the coast of Argentina. Argentina also claimed them. On 2 April 1982 Argentine forces invaded and took the islands, and soon afterwards they seized South Georgia. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher decided to take the islands back by force. Within days a task force of warships, supply ships and merchant ships, more than 100 in all, began to sail south. The war lasted until 14 June 1982.
Key terms:
An aircraft carrier is a floating airfield. Britain no longer had large carriers able to launch conventional fighters from long flat decks. Its two carriers in the task force, HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible, were smaller. Their aircraft were Sea Harriers, jump jets that could take off from a short deck. Some RAF Harriers joined them to attack targets on the ground.
The Falklands had no British airfield, and Argentina's airfields were far away. The carriers brought air power with the fleet. Sea Harriers shot down around 20 Argentine aircraft in air-to-air combat and none was lost to enemy aircraft. Without them, Britain could not have landed troops safely.
Only a small number of Harriers could be carried, so air cover was thin. Britain also had no aircraft that could give early radar warning of low-flying attackers, which left ships exposed. The two carriers were so important that they were kept well to the east, away from Argentine aircraft.
Compare this with the Pacific War, where huge fleets of large carriers fought each other. In 1982 there was no carrier against carrier battle. Argentina had a carrier, but it stayed in port, and most Argentine aircraft flew from bases on land.
A nuclear-powered submarine has an engine driven by a nuclear reactor, so it does not need to come up for air. It can travel fast, stay under the water for weeks and move silently. Britain sent several of them south, and they arrived long before the surface ships.
On 2 May 1982 the nuclear-powered submarine HMS Conqueror, which had tracked the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano for more than a day, fired torpedoes at it. The Belgrano sank and 323 men died. The ship was just outside the exclusion zone, and the sinking is still argued about, but Britain said it was a threat to the task force. It was the first time a nuclear-powered submarine had sunk an enemy ship in war.
The effect was huge. The Argentine navy, including its carrier, went back to port and stayed there. From then on, Argentina's attacks on the fleet came from the air.
On 4 May 1982 an Argentine aircraft flying from the mainland fired an Exocet at the British destroyer HMS Sheffield. The sea-skimming missile hit, 20 men were killed and the ship later sank. On 25 May Exocets hit a merchant ship, the Atlantic Conveyor, which was carrying helicopters. Twelve men died and most of the heavy-lift helicopters needed to move troops were lost.
These attacks showed that a cheap missile, fired from far away, could sink a modern warship. They are why the carriers were kept well away from the coast, and why the task force took such care to protect them.
British troops landed at San Carlos Water on 21 May 1982 under the protection of the fleet and the Sea Harriers. They then advanced across the island, and Argentine forces in the capital, Port Stanley, surrendered on 14 June. About 255 British and about 650 Argentine servicemen died.
What changed and what stayed the same: carriers still gave a navy air power far from home, as in the Pacific, but they were smaller and the danger to them came from missiles and submarines, not from enemy carriers. The lesson The First Gulf War and Nuclear Submarines continues the story of submarines.
Explain TWO ways in which the use of aircraft carriers in the Falklands War (1982) was different from their use in the Pacific War in 1942. [6 marks]
Remember: one way alone cannot score more than half marks. Each way must say something about BOTH wars.
One difference was the size of the forces and how they fought. At Midway in June 1942 the Americans had three large carriers and sank four Japanese carriers using aircraft, so carriers fought each other. In 1982 Britain had only two small carriers, Hermes and Invincible, carrying Sea Harriers, and no carrier battle took place because the Argentine carrier stayed in port.
A second difference was the main danger to the ships. In 1942 carriers were mainly sunk by enemy carrier aircraft such as dive-bombers and torpedo aircraft. In 1982 missiles and submarines were seen as the main threats to the fleet, as an Exocet sea-skimming missile showed when it sank HMS Sheffield in May, and a nuclear-powered submarine, HMS Conqueror, showed when it sank the General Belgrano. So the British kept their carriers well away from the coast.
What lifts it to the top level: two different ways, each with a precise fact about 1942 and a precise fact about 1982.
Use a linking phrase such as "whereas in 1982" in each paragraph. It forces you to put a fact on both sides.