British Saw South Georgia Recovery Campaign as a Way to Avert a Falklands War

Dear Fellow Earthlings, On the 24th of April 1982 the British task group "317.9" was some 1550 kilometers to the east southeast of the Falklands, very close to the British colony of South Georgia. Two weeks earlier, on the 10th of April, the three ships of the task group, under the name "Operation Paraquet" (the second word a rare alternate spelling for "parakeet") had set forth from Ascension Island. The group's mission: to recapture South Georgia from the Argentines. It was hoped that once Argentine military leaders learned that South Georgia, which they had captured in a surprise attack three weeks earlier (on the 3rd of April) had been recaptured by the British, they would realize that they should abandon their South Atlantic land grab attempt. As it turned out, the Argentines failed to see the writing on the wall. They reasoned that South Georgia had been too far away from them to allow them to utilize their Air Force in its protection -- and that there was no possibility that a similar scenario would happen on the Falklands, which even had a nice landing strip already in place to accommodate the comings and goings of Argentina's 150 plus warplanes. Task group 317.9, which had met up with other small British forces and vessels already in the vicinity of South Georgia, was on this day, able to locate an Argentinian submarine (the Santa Fé) that had constituted a serious threat to British Forces and target it. The Santa Fé was seriously damaged by British Forces the very next day. Also on that day, the Argentine forces on South Georgia would surrender to the British. Steve Walker Earthsaver and Jingles Creator

© 2013 Steve Walker, The Jingles-The Japan Foundation for English Pronunciation, Summit Enterprises.