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It's interesting how many strings Britain was able to pull to get advantages in the Falklands War. It also was reported [0] that Thatcher convinced the French t
by dmurray 6y ago
It's interesting how many strings Britain was able to pull to get advantages in the Falklands War. It also was reported [0] that Thatcher convinced the French to hand over IFF codes that would effectively prevent Argentina's French-made Exocet missiles from targeting British ships. The war might have gone very differently if Argentina was the one with powerful diplomatic connections.
Yes, both France and the Netherlands are broadly aligned with the UK, and would fight alongside them in the case of any existential threat. But for colonial wars one might think they'd be happy to see Britain get some egg on her face.
[0] I'll just link to skeptics.se here, where the accepted answer is that the evidence does not completely support this, but there are plenty of links for more reading https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/11152/can-exocet-missiles-be-remotely-disabled-with-secret-codes https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/11152/can-exoce...
- barry-cotter 6y ago> Yes, both France and the Netherlands are broadly aligned with the UK, and would fight alongside them in the case of any existential threat. But for colonial wars one might think they'd be happy to see Britain get some egg on her face. Any “friend” who won’t help with small things is a lot less likely to help when it really matters. And the Dutch and French both also have possessions in the New World full of people perfectly happy with the status quo who deserve protection from would be conquerors.
- pnako 6y agoAccording to this source (perhaps not completely credible) she called then French President Mitterrand and threatened to nuke Argentina if he did not give her the codes https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/22/books.france https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/22/books.france
- redis_mlc 6y agoArgentina ordered 15 Super-Etendards and AM39 Exocets from France. They received 5 of each, with 1 plane used for parts. The Sheffield was destroyed with one exocet, and 2 sank the Atlantic Conveyor (with most of the Army's supplies and helicopters.) An AM38 sank the Glamorgan. Looks like the IFF info didn't help. (Had either of the British carriers Hermes or Invincible been sunk, Britain would have retreated.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exocet#Falklands_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exocet#Falklands_War