The Falklands war: the Bluff Cove disaster

Military Review, Nov-Dec, 2004 by Robert S. Bolia

(29.) Clapp and Southby-Tailyour, 319.

(30.) Middlebrook, Fight for the Malvinas 214; Oakley, 151.

(31.) Ibid., 214; Clapp and Soothby-Tailyour, 320-21.

(32.) Oakley, 73.

(33.) Van der Bijl and Aldea, 94.

(34.) Sandy Woodward with Patrick Robinson, One Hundred Days: The Memoirs of the Falklands Battle Group Commander (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1997), 323.

(35.) Clapp and Southby-Tailyour, 312. The withdrawal of Hermes was not the sole cause of the gap in Harrier coverage. There had also been a mishap at the landing strip at East Falkland that prevented the Harriers from taking off. See Van der Bilj and Aldea, 129-30.

(36.) Hastings and Jenkins, 322.

(37.) Ibid., 361-62.

(38.) Edwin Leigh Amistead, AWACS and Hawkeyes: The Complete History of Airborne Early Warning Aircraft (St. Paul, MN: MBI Publishing, 2002), 131-41.

(39.) Roger A. Beaumont, Joint Military Operations: A Short History (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993), 163.

(40.) Sir John Nott was appointed Secretary of State for Defence in 1981. His 1981 Defence Review called for disposal of older Navy assets to switch resources to new weapons systems.

(41.) Oakley, 22; Hastings and Jenkins, 24-25.

(42.) General Sir Peter de la Billiere, Commander-in-Chief of British Forces in Operation Desert Storm, provides excellent discussions of joint command issues in Command: A Personal Account of the Gulf War (London: Harper-Collins, 1992).

Robert S. Bolia is currently at the Collaborative Interfaces Branch of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. He received a B.A. from Wright State University and an M.A. from the American Military University. His article "Israel and the War of Attrition" appeared in the March-April 2004 issue of Military Review.

See also Bolia's review of John Wilsey's H Jones VC: The Life and Death of an Unusual Hero, page 82.--Editor