Simviation Forums

Could you consider it as a "clean" war?
Say soldiers vs soldiers without any civilians getting slaughtered?

i'll be honest with you, but i dont recall hearing of any civilian casualtys. But i could be wrong.

I don't know the exact details but 3 British women civilians were killed.

http://www.darlingtontown.co.uk/newsfile/The-Falklands-War.shtml

A total of 255 British men and women were killed during the Falklands War.

Sources state that there were 123 British Army personnel, 88 Royal Navy, 10 Royal Fleet Auxiliary, 9 Merchant Navy, 25 Royal Marines, 1 RAF, and 3 women civilian casualties.

The number of British causalities killed, was less than in the Korean War, Malaya and Northern Ireland until 1982, but more than in Cyprus, Aden and Borneo. The 3rd Parachute Battalion suffered the most losses for a single unit lost with 23 killed during the Battle of Mount Longdon and two days of shelling.

I didn't check on Argentinian casualties but this should be easy enough to find.

I'm not sure how it would have turned out if the occupying troops hadn't surrendered. From what I heard at the time these were mostly conscripted troops with little incentive for fighting.

There weren't any as far as I know... The Falklands being very sparsley inhabited ment that there where only isolated buildings outside of Port Stanley. Most of the inhabitants of these had been moved to Stanley by the Argentines. Even the small contingent of 70 Marines stationed at Stanley were taken unharmed.. despite the fact that they put up a token fight.

For more info see http://freespace.virgin.net/gordon.smith4/NAVAL1982FALKLANDS.htm

EDIT: The only civilian casualties were caused by Naval shelling of a house on the outskirts of Stanley.

While in Spanish, this site gives a strict, practically day by day account ('this happened ...) with no opinionating.

http://www.yendor.com/vanished/s-falklands-war.html

It states 635 dead for the Argentines.

The numbers do not adequatley describe the hard fighting that went on, in the air and ground.

My cousin was in 40 Commando and was in the Falklands. Apparently most civilian casualties were caused by randomly sewn (and not mapped) mine-fields (Anti-personel mines), although a woman was hit by a negligent discharge from a soldiers rifle coming through a window and clipping her. Also the penguin community suffered greatly because of these.
Things would have been much worse if it hadn't been for the peat soil absorbing much of the blasts.

Ozzy

Ps. A good book on the conflict is The Falklands War 1982 by Martin Middlebrook published by Penguin in their Classic Military History range

PPs. The troops that took the Islands were professionals, the ones tasked with holding it were conscripts.

A friend of mine was with 2 Para on the Falklands ... It's something that he still refuses to talk about.

I get the impression he was involved with some of the hand to hand fighting that went on when clearing trenches.

cheers
eno

There are some really good sites out there about the Falkland War.

Like this one:
http://www.raf.mod.uk/falklands/

I always thought it was Falklands War (with an S).

One reason the loss of life was minimal was that when the English discovered how deadly Exocet missiles were they bought every one they could find.  The ones that were not bought were destroyed (and not in a friendly manner).

I also expected the English to do the right thing - wait a few years and give the stupid islands to Argentina.  It's been  25 years, what are you waiting for?

Jim the people on those islands are British by choice, mind you if America sets Hawaii free maybe we'll think about it

Point taken.  I just doubt that Argentina sees it the same way.

You can please some of the people some of the time...

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I also expected the English to do the right thing - wait a few years and give the stupid islands to Argentina.

If the Argentines had asked nicely in 1981 then they probably would have got them. But once they'd taken them by force they suddenly became very important to the British Isles. And as the Argentines tried to take them from us there is not much chance of them going back to Argentina any time soon.

There have been negotiations throughout the years (before 1982) on letting the Malvinas go to Argentine jurisdiction - conditioned upon the inhabitants WANTING to ...   Even though there are many (and increasing) commercial ties with Argentina, the people there want to remain British subjects.

[quote]


There have been negotiations throughout the years (before 1982) on letting the Malvinas go to Argentine jurisdiction - conditioned upon the inhabitants WANTING to ...