1982 Falklands (Malvinas) War: a view from across the pond

[Baco]

No regarthing teh air war... No side WON. Teh British never ever detented Air Superiority. Target were being hit hard from the air till teh last day.. now in any military book that can not be considered Air superiority. If the enemy attacks with impunity, well, it is a problem, right?
So I belive the Air war is more inclined to the argentinians, becouse of the amount of damage they inflcited on the task force.
Dammage unprecedented in a modern war, and not surpased till our days.

NATO ship defense policy changed, the phalanx system was developed by studiying the vulnerabilities of the "state of the art" Anti Air frigates of 1982. suposedlly inespugnable in 1982... Well that sounds like a victory to me...at least a mopral one

Argentinian fighters did not have the range and endurance to fight the Harriers. Besides the Mirages are High Altitude interceptors, and the harriers are low level multipurpose aircrafts... of course the Harriers never climbed to meet the Mirages.. and the few times the Mirages tried to tangle at lo altitude ir order to atract the CAPs to them to aloud the bombers to reach their targets, they payed the price. But it was a calculated risk, to atrack, the CAPs... Later the British did not engage the Mirages and decoy tactics didn´t work any more.

The other piont was that the Magic 1 missiles we had were crap. They would not track and engage over 70% of the time (the Shrafir was onlly marginally better), so it was determined that it was pointless to try to engage the enemy. Our best tactic was to drop bombs and get out...

[Osprey]

Originally Posted by Baco

No regarthing teh air war... No side WON. Teh British never ever detented Air Superiority. Target were being hit hard from the air till teh last day.. now in any military book that can not be considered Air superiority. If the enemy attacks with impunity, well, it is a problem, right?
So I belive the Air war is more inclined to the argentinians, becouse of the amount of damage they inflcited on the task force.
Dammage unprecedented in a modern war, and not surpased till our days.

NATO ship defense policy changed, the phalanx system was developed by studiying the vulnerabilities of the "state of the art" Anti Air frigates of 1982. suposedlly inespugnable in 1982... Well that sounds like a victory to me...at least a mopral one

Argentinian fighters did not have the range and endurance to fight the Harriers. Besides the Mirages are High Altitude interceptors, and the harriers are low level multipurpose aircrafts... of course the Harriers never climbed to meet the Mirages.. and the few times the Mirages tried to tangle at lo altitude ir order to atract the CAPs to them to aloud the bombers to reach their targets, they payed the price. But it was a calculated risk, to atrack, the CAPs... Later the British did not engage the Mirages and decoy tactics didn´t work any more.

The other piont was that the Magic 1 missiles we had were crap. They would not track and engage over 70% of the time (the Shrafir was onlly marginally better), so it was determined that it was pointless to try to engage the enemy. Our best tactic was to drop bombs and get out...

So you are saying that you were xxxx but this never happened





I suppose this wasn't hand ball either

[Osprey]

If you have a spare 2 hours

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NtDG0_PgCU

[IvanK]

Originally Posted by Baco

The other piont was that the Magic 1 missiles we had were crap. They would not track and engage over 70% of the time (the Shrafir was onlly marginally better), so it was determined that it was pointless to try to engage the enemy. Our best tactic was to drop bombs and get out...

Baco are you confusing the R530 with the R550 MAGIC I ?

The R550 MAGIC I was in fact a very good missile that actually had better "inside" the turn performance than the AIM9L. Its Auto search and lock capabilities were also pretty impressive. The seeker head was cooled and was from a detection and lock on point of view as good as the AIM9L. In the case of the FAA Mirages only the last seven IIIEA's delivered in 1980 were R550 capable.

The other Matra missile carried by the all Mirages was the R530 carried on the centreline was a real crapola missile. As I said earlier this missile had no end of fusing issues and employment was quite complex requiring a lot of radar work. Even after lock on there was up to 7 second delay (Harmonisation of the radar PRF to the missile) before it could be launched. The R530 was never designed for AA combat ok against High level bombers or non manoeuvring targets. In addition the radar version was pretty much unusable if the missile had to be fired through "the ground line" .... i.e.shoot down shot where the Firers Altitude was less than the range to target.

The Shaffir was only carried by the Daggers and was considered "useless" by the Dagger pilots in post conflict interviews. In short the Shaffir was about on par with early generation Sidewinders and absolutely no match for the AIM9L.

I followed this conflict with great professional interest as at the time I was flying Mirage III's in the RAAF. We operated with both the R550 and R530K. Later on the AIM9L on another type.

A year after the conflict Sea Harriers and Mirages met in exercises off the Australian coast. These were dedicated Air to Air engagements, both sides with GCI and similar in terms of range fuel issues. The Mirage in this environment acquitted itself exceptionally well with better than even outcome.... though notional kills of course

Given the conditions and range issues and lack of navigational capability the FAA had to work with I have nothing but admiration for the FAA pilots effort. Similarly from the RN side the tactics they applied to the task in hand were brilliant. They were fortunate to have the worlds best all round AA missile at the time in the AIM9L. The Sea Harrier and the GR3 were the only aeroplanes that could be used. In a WOT IF situation one could only wonder how dramatically worse things would have been for the FAA if the RN could have deployed F4K's an aeroplane infinitely superior to the Sea Harrier in just about every respect.