An assessment of whether the Argentine Republic could take and hold the Falkland Islands by force, prepared after an American offer to settle the matter, with particular reference to range, tankers and the weather.
Twenty-four second-hand aeroplanes with the wrong sort of tanker do not take islands. They arrive, look at them briefly, and go home. This was also the finding of 1982, arrived at more expensively, and Mount Pleasant was built so that it need never be arrived at again.
The distances, aircraft, ships, weapons, dates and quotations are real and referenced; the scenario judgements are the Department’s own. Two hundred and fifty-five British and six hundred and forty-nine Argentine servicemen, and three islanders, died in 1982. The jokes are about arithmetic and politicians, and none is about them.
