Ian_Gere
Retired Moderator
- Apr 1, 2012
- 6,417
- 2,050
Just got made aware of this in an Arrse email -
The startling revelation is contained within new eyewitness accounts of the tense days aboard anti-submarine frigate HMS Brilliant during the 1982 conflict in the southern seas.
Radar on the Royal Navy ship was unable to distinguish between attacking 'Wolf Packs' of subs and a pod of whales.
In one instance, two of the mammals were killed by torpedoes and the third was attacked by one of the ship’s helicopters.
Read more...
As a vegetarian-whale-loving-pinko-long-haired-liberal-goddam-progressive-leftist-peacenik, with a lifetime of accusations and probably inclusion on several watch lists to prove it, I feel pretty guilty about finding this hilarious!
Many of you will be too young to have experienced the Falklands conflict in real time, and I expect that I'd not have brought quite so much critical thinking to bear on the news as we received it, since I was only 14, had it not been for the fact that I knew people who were deployed there. No doubt you are aware of the media machine which has sprung up around the various Middle East conflicts which have been part of our daily infotainment since Gulf War I, but back in 1982 it was in its infancy and not at all sophisticated by today's standards.
It was obvious that there were many things going on down there which were, and I apologise for this, fishy, but the govt. and our much loved news readers generally managed to keep straight faces while they painted a picture of righteous action conducted with the kind of professionalism and efficiency one would hope for from our "best in the world" military. Now, this all became important when we were told that the order to sink the Argentine Navy Cruiser the General Belgrano had originated from Downing St., essentially from the PM Maggie Thatcher.
Through the miracles of modern command and control infrastructure, it was possible for frontline commanders to relay precise details of an engagement to anyone further up the chain of command who could thus base their decisions on accurate intelligence. There was a controversy which had several angles: was the Belgrano within the our declared Naval Exclusion Zone; if so was it steaming towards our forces or away; did it actually pose any threat either way; were the "Argies" aboard aware of any British forces which a strategic examination of the whole picture might determine were under threat; etc.?
We were assured that the decision to dump the complement of around 1100 Argentinians into the South Atlantic during bad weather (and that's bad for down there where 'good' is nothing we temperate clime dwellers would recognise as ok to be without survival gear within easy walking distance), out of their 44 year old ship, was taken calmly by experts in possession of all the facts...
...turns out that for all the commander of HMS Conqueror, the sub which fired 3 torpedoes at the radar blip, Chris Wreford-Brown, knew, the 'battle group' threatening our Task Force could very well have included substantial elements of the 5 ª Malvinas Flota Territorial, Mamífero Marina Especial Escuadrilla :lol:
A British warship fired on and killed three whales during the Falklands War after mistaking them for enemy submarines.The startling revelation is contained within new eyewitness accounts of the tense days aboard anti-submarine frigate HMS Brilliant during the 1982 conflict in the southern seas.
Radar on the Royal Navy ship was unable to distinguish between attacking 'Wolf Packs' of subs and a pod of whales.
In one instance, two of the mammals were killed by torpedoes and the third was attacked by one of the ship’s helicopters.
Read more...
As a vegetarian-whale-loving-pinko-long-haired-liberal-goddam-progressive-leftist-peacenik, with a lifetime of accusations and probably inclusion on several watch lists to prove it, I feel pretty guilty about finding this hilarious!
Many of you will be too young to have experienced the Falklands conflict in real time, and I expect that I'd not have brought quite so much critical thinking to bear on the news as we received it, since I was only 14, had it not been for the fact that I knew people who were deployed there. No doubt you are aware of the media machine which has sprung up around the various Middle East conflicts which have been part of our daily infotainment since Gulf War I, but back in 1982 it was in its infancy and not at all sophisticated by today's standards.
It was obvious that there were many things going on down there which were, and I apologise for this, fishy, but the govt. and our much loved news readers generally managed to keep straight faces while they painted a picture of righteous action conducted with the kind of professionalism and efficiency one would hope for from our "best in the world" military. Now, this all became important when we were told that the order to sink the Argentine Navy Cruiser the General Belgrano had originated from Downing St., essentially from the PM Maggie Thatcher.
Through the miracles of modern command and control infrastructure, it was possible for frontline commanders to relay precise details of an engagement to anyone further up the chain of command who could thus base their decisions on accurate intelligence. There was a controversy which had several angles: was the Belgrano within the our declared Naval Exclusion Zone; if so was it steaming towards our forces or away; did it actually pose any threat either way; were the "Argies" aboard aware of any British forces which a strategic examination of the whole picture might determine were under threat; etc.?
We were assured that the decision to dump the complement of around 1100 Argentinians into the South Atlantic during bad weather (and that's bad for down there where 'good' is nothing we temperate clime dwellers would recognise as ok to be without survival gear within easy walking distance), out of their 44 year old ship, was taken calmly by experts in possession of all the facts...
...turns out that for all the commander of HMS Conqueror, the sub which fired 3 torpedoes at the radar blip, Chris Wreford-Brown, knew, the 'battle group' threatening our Task Force could very well have included substantial elements of the 5 ª Malvinas Flota Territorial, Mamífero Marina Especial Escuadrilla :lol:
