50s: Starting with a storage ring

Chapter 527 A complete mess

In this operation, 43 British civilian vessels were ordered to participate in trade and to provide supplies, fuel, and materials to the task force.

These container ships and oil tankers formed an 8,000-nautical-mile logistics line between Britain and the South Atlantic during the war.

Not only cargo ships and merchant ships, but also many large passenger ships of 6 tons or more were forcibly requisitioned by the powerful Margaret Thatcher.

For example, the British passenger ship Uganda was carrying more than 150 British primary school students on a trip.

After the British government issued a mobilization order, the Uganda passenger ship docked in Italy and used commercial flights to transport primary school students back home.

Subsequently, the Uganda passenger ship arrived at the Gibraltar shipyard and was quickly converted into a medical ship with 1000 beds.

Because of the urgency, many ships were modified while still in operation.

For example, the Queen Elizabeth II was originally a large luxury cruise ship, which was converted into a large transport ship to transport the British 5th Infantry Brigade. The conversion was carried out while the ship was sailing.

This demonstrates the British leadership's ability to integrate peacetime and wartime preparedness.

In this war, one side was an Argentine army with severely insufficient combat experience, which had not fought a war for more than a century.

On the other side is the British Royal Navy, which is always on high alert, has hundreds of years of naval combat experience, and has personally experienced large-scale naval battles in World War I and World War II.

The outcome of the direct confrontation between the two sides was already predetermined from the day the war began.

These things would never be written into intelligence reports unless one saw them with their own eyes, and the media would hardly report on them.

Our family relies on external intelligence, so we have no way of obtaining the inside story of their battle, and the so-called learning from experience is out of the question; at most, we only get the superficial understanding.

While busy in the kitchen every day, Sun Zhiwei would also take the time to record everything he saw; these were the truly valuable combat experiences.

Once the battle begins, those are merely on-the-spot tactical commands; the deciding factors have already been placed on the scales that will determine victory or defeat.

As Task Force 317 sailed, more and more ships joined the fleet, and the entire formation grew larger day by day.

By mid-April, the Royal Air Force began deploying a large number of fighter jets to RAF Widjawick on Ascension Island in the Atlantic Ocean.

This included the McDonnell Douglas FGR.2 fighter-bombers responsible for escort, along with Vulcan bombers from the 44th Squadron and a group of Victory aerial refueling tankers.

Ascension Island is located in the mid-Atlantic and enjoys a very advantageous geographical location.

With this island, the Royal Air Force can extend the patrol range of its aircraft to cover both the west coast of Africa and the east coast of South America.

RAF Widjavik is the most important British military base in the Atlantic.

On April 12, the UK issued a blockade order, designating a 200-nautical-mile zone centered on the Falklands as a no-navigation zone, prohibiting foreign vessels from entering, which will also become a major war zone.

On May 1, the British counter-offensive began, and intelligence from the entire battlefield started to be gathered on the aircraft carrier in real time.

Now, we need to talk about the situation of the Argentine army. The last time the Argentine army fought a real battle was between 1864 and 1870.

At that time, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, and other countries were involved in the Paraguayan War.

During World War II, although Argentina declared war on the Allied Powers, it did not actually send troops to participate in the war.

In other words, during the long period of 112 years from 1870 to 1982, the Argentine army did not fight a single battle.

The combat effectiveness of an army that has been at peace for a long time is predictable. Even senior officers lack any combat experience and their command is based entirely on imagination. The army, in particular, has made many basic and common-sense mistakes.

For example, most of the 4000 army officers and soldiers they stationed on the Falklands were new recruits who had only been in the army for three to four months and had been rushed into the battlefield before even finishing their basic military training.

Before the war, they did not conduct any training or exercises on anti-landing operations or high-altitude operations, and some officers did not know how to organize anti-landing operations at all.

As for fighting spirit and willpower, well, I can only say 'heh'.

These are all information that Sun Zhiwei obtained from the aircraft carrier's bridge command room using spatial means.

On the second day after the start of the war, a burst of laughter suddenly came from the bridge command room. It turned out that the Argentine troops were sending a telegram in plain text.

It is common sense to use wartime codes and secure channels for communication during combat.

But the Argentine troops seemed completely unaware that this was a mistake, treating sending telegrams in plain text as a very normal thing.

In this almost one-way transparent battle, Sun Zhiwei really didn't know how the British army could lose.

Argentina's army is in a very weak position, but it has not yet landed, and Britain is unaware of this at the moment. However, Argentine air force and naval aircraft have begun to frequently fly over the fleet.

The battle has begun, and all kitchen breaks have been cancelled, with food now supplied 24 hours a day.

Modern fighter jets engage in dogfights using cannons. Although Sun Zhiwei couldn't see outside from inside the ship's cabin, he could still hear the roar of planes taking off and landing and the explosions of bombs.

This made him very uncomfortable; he had never put himself in such a dangerous situation before.

An aircraft carrier is large enough not to be particularly afraid of aerial bombs, but it is still afraid. Right now, it can only try to create as much space as possible and react immediately if it detects a bomb approaching.

He hadn't considered intercepting the bomb mid-air; the bomb was so fast that his brain simply couldn't react in time.

However, most of the armor-piercing bombs used by the Argentine Air Force now have delayed fuses, which gives them time to react.

At that point, it will be enough time to either remove the explosives from the warhead or cut off the detonation device.

He wasn't worried about encountering a small number of trigger-activated bombs, since those bombs exploded on the surface of the aircraft carrier and wouldn't affect the galley in the middle.

At this point, the fleet's weaknesses were exposed. It was at a disadvantage in air combat. Although the fleet had more than 20 advanced fighter jets, Argentina had more than 200 second-generation fighter jets.

As a result, the fleet began to suffer losses.

In the first week of the battle, the destroyer HMS Sheffield was sunk and several frigates were damaged, while the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible, where Sun Zhiwei was stationed, didn't even get a scratch.

After the British launched their landing operation on May 21, the Argentine Air Force achieved a record of sinking the British destroyer HMS Encouragement and the frigate HMS Antelope, and damaging several landing ships, which seriously affected the efficiency of the British landing operation.

On May 25, Argentina’s National Day, the Argentine Air Force launched a fierce air campaign with multiple A4 attack aircraft.

On the same day, the destroyer HMS Coventry and the transport ship HMS Atlantic Conveyor were sunk, and the frigate HMS Big Knife was damaged.

On June 1, the landing craft USS Foxtrot and the landing ship Sir Tristam were sunk, and the frigate USS Avenger was heavily damaged.

As the battle has progressed, the Argentine Air Force and Naval Aviation have performed exceptionally well, inflicting heavy casualties on the British task force.

(End of this chapter)