Falklands 1948

In 1947-1949, the Royal Navy was arguably at its weakest in the 20th century: undermanned, underfunded, and poorly maintained due to Britain's financial troubles.

What if Argentina seized the Falklands in early 1948? The Royal Navy had one cruiser and two frigates on station in the Caribbean, one cruiser and two frigates on station in South Africa, and one old Dido cruiser and a handful of destroyers available in the Home Fleet. Of course, the recently-mothballed WW2 fleet could be built up, but it would take several months, and the southern hemisphere winter would soon set in...

I think it is militarily inevitable that the UK will take back the Falklands. But what cost in men and treasure? What will the diplomatic effect be? Could this be an earlier Suez, but under an Attlee government? Does his government survive?

Any thoughts?

The problem is, I don't think the Argentine political situation in 1948 would have been amenable to such an attempt. Though Maverick and Admiral Brown can obviously tell us more about that.

Interesting idea, though.

Well, in 1948 Perón was at the height of his power. He had a nationalistic rethoric, and he deployed the navy in Antartica in order to reinforce the Argentine soverignty claims. He also "nationalised" the railways, which used to be British (Well, to be more precise, he "bought2 them, as the operation had British consent, as they were given loses, and their owners wanted to sell them).

But in spite of his rethoric, commerce with Britain was high, and Perón knew it well. That's one thing. The other is that (I assume) Britain was being seen then as the Great power who had managed to defeat Germany in WWII. Britain's navy may have been in a weak state then (I didn't know that), but that weakness wasn't neccesarly percieved as such by outsiders. Britain had "ruled the waves" for more than a century, and was seen as having the best navy. That may have not been true any longer, but, as she hadn't been cathastrophically defeated, she was probably still seen by many as the greatest naval power in the world.

This perceptions don't change overnight. So, probably if Perón wanted a war, I think he would have gone aginst an enemy percieved as weaker than him. I don't think he would have started a naval war against the country which was seen as the having the best navy. Not unless there's something that show him the British aren't so powerful now (let's say, something like an earlier Suez crisis, or, better, a situation which has the British navy being forced to leave a certain area by the ships of another country, such as Russia).

Still, it's an "interesting" idea (in a Chinese sense). Maybe you could have the war starting accidentally, which then leads to the occupation of the islands...

Admiral Brown said:

Still, it's an "interesting" idea (in a Chinese sense). Maybe you could have the war starting accidentally, which then leads to the occupation of the islands...

Click to expand...

Precisely. As one of the goals of this exercise is to develop naval wargaming scenarios, I have looked into the possibility of a British cruiser opening fire on Argentine research vessels in the Antarctic. There were several such confrontations in the early 1950's, so this pretty plausible. To even things out initially, there were at least three escort carriers that the US ended up selling to Argentina to become merchant ships; these are possible sources of Argentine air power projection.

Admiral Brown suggests the need of an incident to show the British Navy is suddenly without much power... prehaps the following situation could go differently/Earlier?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Amethyst_(U16/F116)#Yangtze_Incident

Falkands 1948

This is an unlikely scenario. I am not siure what our strength was in terms of warships in active commission but Britain possessed 5 modern battleships, 5 modern fleet carriers numerous light carriers, cruisers etc of recent age and numerous older vessels awaiting scrapping.

Argentina had two obsolete battleships and about 3 cruisers, no aircraft carrier, they firest one had yet to be bought from Britain so they are unlikely to even have thought of it. 1n 1982 Britain had just two carriers neither of which could operate most strike aircraft as thery had no catapult and could only accomodate jump jets. The retention of the Ark Royal might have scared them off in 1982. With no air cover it wasn a non started.

The Suez scenario is also unlikely, Enrest Bevin was a leading force behind NATO, the Americans needed us. Also Peron was in power and there were similarities between Peron and fascism. The government would be unlikely to fall unless it did nothing.

They might have stood a better chance in 1940

Andrew Hudson said:

The Suez scenario is also unlikely, Enrest Bevin was a leading force behind NATO, the Americans needed us. Also Peron was in power and there were similarities between Peron and fascism. The government would be unlikely to fall unless it did nothing.

Click to expand...

This begs for another scenario, an Argentine invasion of Falklands during Suez crisis?