LancashireHussar
Lantern Swinger
I'd never heard this one before. Very interesting reading.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/12/29/nnat429.xml
Falklands can be defended with pre-1914 rifles, said MoD
(Filed: 29/12/2005)
A highly classified file released today reveals the secret weapon relied upon by the Government in 1975 to defend the Falkland Islands from an Argentine invasion - the pre-1914 Lee Enfield rifle.
A top secret assessment by British military planners carried out seven years before the invasion caused dismay in Whitehall by concluding that the islands could properly be defended only by the deployment of a full brigade.
But ministers baulked at the proposal on the grounds of its cost and the risk that the impending arrival of an effective garrison might provoke the Argentines into staging a pre-emptive invasion.
Both the Ministry of Defence, which was wedded to Nato operations in Europe and the North Atlantic, and the Foreign Office, which was anxious to seek an accommodation with Buenos Aires, preferred to ignore the Argentine threat.
Instead, they decided to continue to rely on a "tripwire" force, consisting of a platoon of Royal Marines and the grandly-named Falkland Islands Defence Force.
The latter was 100 civilian men scattered across an area the size of Wales, with only about 30 in Port Stanley, the obvious target for an invasion.
A Foreign Office file from May 1975 shows how the department fought with the MoD over the cost of equipping the defence force with modern self-loading rifles, as used by the British Armed Forces. Despite the tiny cost, the MoD refused to pay. That left the sheep farmers with a collection of antiques, including "pre-1914 303 rifles", one "ancient Vickers machine-gun" and more 303s and Bren guns from the Second World War.
The military planners concluded that should an invasion take place, the recovery of the islands would be a "major operation", although "far from impossible".
The Foreign Office was far less sure, arguing: "Defence against a full-scale Argentine invasion is not considered a realistic course of action and recovery of the islands after a successful invasion would be so costly and risky as to be impracticable.
"In the last resort the solution to the Falkland Islands dispute must be political rather than military."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/12/29/nnat429.xml
Falklands can be defended with pre-1914 rifles, said MoD
(Filed: 29/12/2005)
A highly classified file released today reveals the secret weapon relied upon by the Government in 1975 to defend the Falkland Islands from an Argentine invasion - the pre-1914 Lee Enfield rifle.
A top secret assessment by British military planners carried out seven years before the invasion caused dismay in Whitehall by concluding that the islands could properly be defended only by the deployment of a full brigade.
But ministers baulked at the proposal on the grounds of its cost and the risk that the impending arrival of an effective garrison might provoke the Argentines into staging a pre-emptive invasion.
Both the Ministry of Defence, which was wedded to Nato operations in Europe and the North Atlantic, and the Foreign Office, which was anxious to seek an accommodation with Buenos Aires, preferred to ignore the Argentine threat.
Instead, they decided to continue to rely on a "tripwire" force, consisting of a platoon of Royal Marines and the grandly-named Falkland Islands Defence Force.
The latter was 100 civilian men scattered across an area the size of Wales, with only about 30 in Port Stanley, the obvious target for an invasion.
A Foreign Office file from May 1975 shows how the department fought with the MoD over the cost of equipping the defence force with modern self-loading rifles, as used by the British Armed Forces. Despite the tiny cost, the MoD refused to pay. That left the sheep farmers with a collection of antiques, including "pre-1914 303 rifles", one "ancient Vickers machine-gun" and more 303s and Bren guns from the Second World War.
The military planners concluded that should an invasion take place, the recovery of the islands would be a "major operation", although "far from impossible".
The Foreign Office was far less sure, arguing: "Defence against a full-scale Argentine invasion is not considered a realistic course of action and recovery of the islands after a successful invasion would be so costly and risky as to be impracticable.
"In the last resort the solution to the Falkland Islands dispute must be political rather than military."
