Operation Corporate

Argentina seized the Falkland Islands on April 2nd, 1982.  The British government deployed a naval task force on April 5th to take them back.  As the force steadily converged from 8,000 miles away, the rest of the world wondered if the two countries would really fight over the remote and sparsely populated islands.  They did.  By the time it was over in June, 3,336 people had been killed or wounded; sixteen ships sunk; and 134 aircraft were lost.  The Falklands campaign is considered by many as the first technologically modern war.  In some ways it is a microcosm of what major fleet actions could look like.  Martin Middlebrook’s “Operation Corporate” gives us the details of what happened.