In April 1982, Argentina invaded and occupied the Falkland Islands and two smaller islets under the United Kingdom’s sovereignty in the southern Atlantic Ocean. After its defeat in a ten-week campaign, the humiliated military dictatorship in Buenos Aires surrendered the power to democratically-elected government the very next year.

Who arrived first?

The 12,000-square-meter archipelago of two large and 776 minuscule islands at some 480 kilometers east of the Patagonian coast in South America is believed to be first visited by English captain John Strong, who, en route to Peru and Chile coasts in 1690, explored the strait between the two major islands.

The islands remained uninhabited until the establishment of Port Louis on East Falkland in 1764 by French captain Louis Antoine de Bougainville and the foundation of Port Egmont on Saunders Island in 1766 by British captain John MacBride. Whether the settlements were aware of each other's existence is still debated by historians. In 1766, France surrendered its claim on the Falklands to Spain, which renamed the French colony Puerto Soledad. Britain and Spain nearly fought a war when the latter detected and captured Port Egmont in 1770. The next year it was restituted to Britain.

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The British and Spanish settlements coexisted in the archipelago until 1774, the year when London decided to withdraw its presence from the islands and Madrid filled the void with a garrison that guarded a prison. Following the Napoleonic wars in Europe, Spain withdrew from the area until 1811, and fishermen were the sole people who lived and worked on the Falkland/Malvinas. The British Crown reassessed its rule in 1833. When Argentina declared independence in 1816-18 and scattered the Spanish authority, it also inherited the claims on the Islas de Malvinas.

Why did Argentina use force?

In 1965, the United Nations called upon Argentina and the United Kingdom to reach a settlement of the sovereignty dispute. In fact, during 1966-68, the UK government, pressed by economic hurdles and budget cuts, negotiated a peaceful transfer of the archipelago to Argentina as part of its post-war decolonization policy, but the natives – descendants of early British colonists – vehemently opposed this move. London and Buenos Aires signed instead a trade agreement to boost bilateral ties between the archipelago and the continent, allowing the Argentines to do almost unrestricted business on the islands.

Argentine troops on march. 

And yet, Argentina insisted on its full sovereignty over the islands it continued to call Islas de Malvinas.
The decision of the military junta in Buenos Aires in 1982 to invade the Falklands was chiefly political. Suffocated with criticism for economic mismanagement and human rights abuses, the generals believed that the “recovery” of the islands would unite Argentines behind the government in a patriotic fervor.

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Argentine troops arrived in the Falklands on 2 April, rapidly overcoming the small garrison of 68 British marines, 11 naval hydrographers and 23 volunteers in the capital Stanley.

The next day they captured the associated island of South Georgia. Overall, Argentina sent some 13,000 conscript soldiers to occupy the archipelago, assisted by navy and air force. Brigadier General Mario Benjamín Menéndez, who was appointed the military governor of the “Malvinas”, ordered a part of civilians with anti-occupation feelings to be deported.

In spite of taking many casualties, the Argentines treated the captured prisoners of war well and thought that London would not bother to retaliate from a distance of more than 12,800 kilometers.

The empire strikes back

But Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had other opinions. She quickly earned the support of her cabinet and of the House of Commons to retake the islands militarily. The government assembled a taskforce comprising 127 vessels including a nuclear-powered submarine and two aircraft carriers and almost 26,000 men including paratroopers and SAS.

British commando occupying a height. 

Most European powers voiced support for Great Britain, but a majority of Latin American governments sympathized with Argentina, except for Chile, which had a territorial dispute with its neighbor. The perceived threat from Chile prompted Argentina to keep most of its elite troops on the mainland. In addition, Argentine military planners had hoped that the United States would remain neutral in the conflict, but Washington offered full support to the British, supplying its NATO ally with military intelligence, missiles, communications, and fuels.

After crossing the Atlantic Ocean from north to south, the British force retook South Georgia on 25 April, capturing in the process one of Argentina’s vintage diesel-electric submarines. On 2 May, the submarine Conqueror sank Argentina’s World War II-era cruiser General Belgrano, an event that determined Argentina to keep most other ships in port limit its navy’s contribution was limited to naval air force and one newer diesel-electric submarine.

The sinking of the Argentine cruiser ARA Belgrano. 

The British naval force and land-based Argentine aircraft engaged in pitched battles. Argentine air forces consisted mainly of several dozen U.S. and French fighter-bombers armed only with conventional high-explosive bombs and lacking electronic countermeasures or target acquiring radars.

Because the Falklands were at the extreme edge of the Argentine planes’ combat radius, they could take only one pass at the task force. British ships therefore remained out of range except when closing in to attack Argentine positions.

Britain’s might

For the British, the problem was their dependence on two aircraft carriers, as the loss of one would almost certainly have forced withdrawal from the war theater. Air cover was limited to around 20 short-range Sea Harrier jets armed with air-to-air missiles. Destroyers and frigates were stationed ahead of the main ships to serve as radar pickets.

However, not all of them were armed with full antiaircraft systems or close-in weapons for shooting down incoming missiles. This left the British ships vulnerable to attack, and on 4 May the Argentines sank the destroyer HMS Sheffield with an Exocet missile (pictured below).

The Argentines, meanwhile, lost some 20–30 percent of their planes. Thus weakened, the Argentines were unable to prevent the British from making an amphibious landing on the islands. Apparently expecting a direct British assault, General Menéndez centralized his forces around the capital Stanley to protect its vital airstrip.

Instead, the British navy task-force commander, Rear Admiral John Woodward, and the land-force commander, Major General Jeremy Moore, decided to make their initial landing near Port San Carlos, on the northern coast of East Falkland, and then mount an overland attack on Stanley. They calculated that this would avoid casualties to the British civilian population and to the British soldiers.

The Britons landed unopposed on 21 May, but the Argentine defenders, some 5,000 strong, quickly organized an effective resistance, and heavy fighting was required to wear it down. The Argentine air forces, meanwhile, kept up their attacks on the British fleet, sinking two frigates, a destroyer, a container ship carrying transport helicopters, and a landing ship disembarking troops, but didn’t even damage any of the aircraft carriers. They also lost a considerable portion of their remaining jets as well as their Falklands-based helicopters and light ground-attack planes.

British soldiers in Stanley.

From the beachhead at Port San Carlos, the British infantry advanced rapidly southward under extremely adverse weather conditions and captures the settlements of Darwin and Goose Green. After several days of hard fighting, some of it hand-to-hand, the British seized the high ground west of Stanley. They surrounded and blocked the city and its main port.

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After considering the situation, Menéndez decided to spare the lives of more than 10,000 exhausted men, with many sick and wounded, and surrendered on 14 June, effectively ending the conflict.

On 20 June, the remaining Argentine troops occupying the South Sandwich Islands were evacuated.

Costs and consequences

The British captured some 11,400 Argentine prisoners during the 74-day war, all of whom were released afterward. Argentina lost 649 — about half of them in the sinking of the General Belgrano — while Britain lost 255. Three local civilians lost their lives too.

Argentina’s military government was severely discredited by its failure to prepare and support its own military forces in the invasion, and civilian rule was restored in Argentina to a democratically-elected government in 1983. Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher converted the nationwide patriotic support into a victory for her Conservative Party in the parliamentary election the same year.

The Falklands Flag.

The Falkland Islanders won a commitment providing that any sitting government discussing their future would step forward to question them about their choices. London has also increased economic investment and military presence on the archipelago since the end of the conflict.

Although Argentina is a democratic country now, its government is plagued by corruption and anti-western sentiments. To date, Buenos Aires has not given up its claim to the Falklands.

Sources: Wikipedia, UK Government, Britannica, IWM, National Army Museum, HistoryExtra