 Good afternoon everybody. My name is Toslay Jordan. I'm one of the co-directors of the Freeman Air and Space Institute here at Kings and a member of the Defence Studies Department which operates out of the now Joint Services Development and Staff College at Shrivenham. It's my pleasure to be with you today with Helen Parr, Professor Helen Parr, who will be talking about her work relating to Tupara and if Major General Chip Chapman manages to get his Zoom connection back and working, we will hear his thoughts of his experiences with Tupara during Operation Corporate. The timing for this panel, James has kindly set it up so you get to hear a limited amount from me to begin with before the more interesting element which will be Helen and then as I say if you're back with us Chip. My role really is to talk about the air element and I'll give you a few moments there if I may. One of the problems I think that we see with the air element of corporate is that the historiography, the history isn't necessarily that clear because a lot of the files were classified until 2012 and I think one of my former PhD students, Group Captain John Shields, who's written an excellent book on the air war in the Falklands based on his PhD may be on the call with us now so there's a risk of me having my homework seriously marked here but I think our previous speakers raised a number of interesting points relating to the lack of joint training and the lack of trust. If we go back to the 1960s, something called the Templar Committee which was on the organization of future air services, it concluded in one of the great understatements and great casually phrased conclusions for any reports I've seen that the arrangements for air services in the United Kingdom were quote pretty much right and that they were likely to remain so for quite some time but the period of the 1960s was marked by bitter interdepartmental warfare particularly between the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy to the extent that the temporary reports also included the state's relations between the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force was quote deplorable at least at senior levels and I think that some of the mistrust that arose during that period where you see the whole dispute over what's known as the island strategy, a lot of which is misrepresented for instance the claim that Royal Air Force moves Australia a thousand miles to kill off the carrier as far as any historians are aware of have encountered the movement of a thousand miles of Australia didn't take place but in a typographic error made by the Chief Scientific Advisor who in a report stated that Australia was in the Atlantic Ocean and I think that may well be where the a large amount of the misunderstanding comes from there is a evidence that people need to detain us now but the point is there's great mistrust and that filters through to some of our understanding of what went on in 1982 in terms of air power there is a dangerous tendency when we talk about air power to try to stowpipe the term so that it really applies only to air forces and of course as we saw in the Operation Corporate the majority of the air power that was involved in contact with the original science was of course overwhelmingly from the fleet air are supported by some exchange pilots from the Royal Air Force's Harrier GL-34s and indeed elements of number one fighter squadron who flew down with modified Harrier GL-3s led by the then will command the Peter Squire commanding officer ultimately of course the Chief of the Air Staff sadly no longer with us but the majority of our discussion seems to me to be predicated around two things first the role of the Sea Harrier well quite rightly received a lot of attention from the air side we also spend a lot of time talking about the merits or otherwise what's known as Operation Black Buck which of course most if not all of you on the call will be aware of is the raids by Vulcan bombers against the airfield reports down it seems that a lot of the coverage deals with just the first raid which occurred on the 1st of May 1982 placing a single thousand pound bomb into the runway and ignore some of the other operations and it also seems to be portrayed as quoting Hugh Malice's book one of the participants described as a desperate bid by the Royal Air Force to get involved in the war I'll briefly challenge that view about a bid to get involved a little later but I think we need to understand that the driving factor behind Operation Black Buck comes very clearly out of the files that in fact the Chief of the Air Staff ablates Sir Michael Betum so Michael spends quite some time trying to convince his fellow Chief's staff and Admiral Fieldhouse that the best platform to attack the runway is in fact the Sea Harrier because of the fact there's a much better avionics kit than the Vulcan which of course was designed in the late 1940s early 1950s and he's using equipment that is not entirely unfamiliar to Sir Michael Betum from his days as a Lancaster pilot in the Second World War but Admiral Leach in particular makes the point that there are only 20 or so Sea Harriers available and that it is vital to conserve them for the landing operations commanded by Commodore Clap and Major General Thompson of course and what we see therefore is the Royal Air Force arguing briefly for the employment of a fleet Aeron aircraft to do the job and the Royal Navy arguing for the employment of a Royal Air Force aircraft to do the job and the Royal Navy's arguments hold sway. Stanley has identified the airfield with Stanley has identified as being a major potential obstacle to British operations which therefore must be attacked and the files are quite clear on this the debate goes on do you attack it using members of special forces do you try to get ships into bombard the airfield with naval gunfire support or should you attack it from the air and if you do should you see Harrier or Vulcan the other options are discounted and for the reasons I've just alluded to the Vulcan is selective this requires an enormous feat of airmanship from not only the Vulcan crews to get the aircraft over the target but also the Victor Tanker crews who are supporting them and the strike of one bomb on the runway in some ways comes as a very pleasant surprise because their Chief Marshal beat him and informed his fellow Chiefs of Staff that he would like if they wished him to close the runway he would require at least 25 assortees to do this and he would prefer 50 to guarantee getting sufficient ordnance into the runway to do this the problem is that a lot of that debate is lost in some of the um it's going to sound terribly snobbish here but more populist coverage the sort of coverage that concentrates upon the fact that the Vulcan was a very impressive airframe um and coverage which also doesn't look at the context in which the whole black buck operation um of which of course there's seven sorties to abort sorties in which those are conducted a lot of the narrative after the after the war doesn't quite understand what's going on there and the fact that this is actually a very good piece of joint of thinking in all in many ways by the Chiefs of Staff although Field Marshal Bramble the siege yes doesn't have a huge amount of input uh into the discussion you can see from uh the contemporaneous record that he that he's supportive of this idea that the idea must strike against the airfield because of the fact that it potentially creates all sorts of difficulties for the task force one point to be borne in mind of course is that the Chiefs of Staff are looking at this in terms of how would we make use of Port Stanley were we the Argentines and they're almost immediate conclusion in fact the conclusion they're reaching almost before the first Argentine um marine has set foot on the Falkland Islands when it becomes clear that an invasion is about to take place almost the first thing they think about is obviously we would extend the runway to make it much more viable as a forward operating location for our fast jet force the Argentinian junta of course has not thought of it in that way so in some ways our decision for that element of the air war is driven by considerations of British common sense planning and I think that's a very valuable point as our previous speakers have brought out a lot of what we can make complex through fancy words is in fact common sense and just finding a more complicated way of obscuring the fact that it is common sense but the whole approach that like as I say dominates the war in terms of the way people write about this I'd also suggest though that this is where the challenge in terms of the idea that the air force is desperate to get in on the act the air force is in on the act from the 31st of March 1982 when it becomes clear that there is something going on in the south Atlantic some hercules at Lyon and is loaded with equipment initially to be flown out to Gibraltar and then as it arrives in the Argentinian start the invasion they in fact night stop in Gibraltar and take the equipment down to Ascension Island for loading onto the Royal Fleet and auxiliary RFA Fort Austin and the transport force sets up an air bridge running out of most notably Gambia and Senegal, Panjul and Dakar and this again highlights some of the other elements which now we would call multi-domain integration but in 1982 I suspect we probably called sensible diplomacy which involved making sure that the governments of Senegal and Gambia are content to allow us to operate an aircraft most not only the hercules in the VC-10 but also some chartered aircraft making sure that we can tend to operate so we can operate them and their content is to happen. We see of course a very significant change to the air transport fleet or much of the air transport fleet and then realisation that the tyranny of distance the distance that makes the forklifts a viable maritime only operation supported by air because of the Portains Office Admiral Perry suggested the fact that we're talking about retaking islands the distance means that air-to-air refuelling is required and initially the hercules lose some of their cargo they to additional fuel tank and a very impressive and very quick piece of improvisation drawing upon spare refuelling probes taken off the Vulcan fleet that's been all the elements of the Vulcan fleet that have been retired that is introduced in a matter of three weeks a whole trial fit and tested and some of the Hercules crews find themselves conducting 24-hour long sorties including air-to-air refuelling to the point that crew fatigue becomes a concern and the Air Force has to trawl through a number of flying training schools and various ground jobs to bring Hercules air crew back to RF Lyonum then the operating base of Hercules to ensure that sufficient crew are available to avoid the risk of fatigue leading to accidents. The VC-10 force is also extremely heavily involved but we do see some charter operations as well formal Air Force Belfast retired in the 1975 defence review they have to be chartered back for a few flights and we also see the use of some commercial freighters but it does raise I think a notable question about logistics and the way in which we use air mobility to ensure that operations are supported and if one were to bring that to the modern era one could raise questions as to whether the air mobility force is big enough notably of course the 4th government retired C-130s in the next 12 to 18 months and the other angle the other aspect of the air war that gets admitted is of course the use of helicopter operations one helicopter in particular and understandably given all the achievements of its crew gets all the attention it's in and that is the Chinook Bravo November recently retired to an honour display position of the RAF Museum Cosford which I believe are now supposed to call the RAF Museum Midlands but that gets all the coverage indeed some of you may have seen a programme done by the journalist the automotive journalist Mike Brewer where he covered the history of the Chinook and notably Bravo November on TV this ignores the fact that the fleet air arm the Commando helicopter force operates very very extensively with its rotary wing fleet somewhere in the around a dozen fleet air arm and army air core helicopters are lost operationally that doesn't include those that are sunk aboard the Atlantic conveyor or which are lost when various vessels are sunk as a result of Argentine air attack and they are the vital and unsung element of operations that takes place Admiral Perry was too modest to mention his rather crucial role in the sinking of the Santa Fe at South Georgia and I think there's another area that is right for research which is looking at the forgotten areas of the air war as well as place as well as the more placing of them into context not leaving the aforementioned friend of mine John Shields alone in carrying the banner for looking on air contributed the final thing I think I should say is to talk about maritime patrol operations and some of the lessons there we have to remember that the Falklands does not take place in a vacuum the Cold War is a major concern and of course is one of the justifications whether or not one agrees with him or it is a separate issue but he's one of the justifications that Sir John not used for the 1981 review which was that he had to focus upon Europe now that meant of course the threat presented by the Soviet Union and the maritime patrol force was very heavily tasked so elements of that force again with probes being air to every few groups being fitted to aircraft notably to the reconnaissance Nimrods those aircraft play an important part um excuse me play an important part in delivering the effect in terms of looking at maritime aviation information but there is a problem and the problem there is that the Nimrod Mark II recently brought into service he's chosen as the platform of choice the aircraft of choice to avoid the jargon to conduct those maritime patrol operations but the search water radar doesn't work as well as everybody anticipated which leads to some information being transmitted to Admiral Woodward which is not quite as he expected or which lacks detail which requires a bit more speculative interpretation than anticipated so that is another area that we need to think about how do we make sure the capabilities that we require are available when needed because the Nimrod force had to deal with a whole host of challenges including a variety of urgent operational requirements that saw the aircraft being fitted with side-minder missiles and the harpoon anti-ship missile as well as the ability to deliver unguided ordnance in an anti-shipping role a thousand pound free for bonds now one of the human aspects of this I think I may have just seen it pop up is the fact that when we talk about generating air in the Falklands campaign we need to bear in mind that it's not just those who fly the aircraft but it's actually those who maintain them yet the maintainers aboard Hermes have a further complication imposed upon them as well as more aircraft than they're normally used to operating with they are asked to cover a whole host of operation and on top of that they have to deal with the Harrier GR-3s from number one squadron which although they're Harriers they're not quite the same thing and for various reasons not least in terms of the number of berths available all the vessels number one squadron is effectively forbidden to send as many engineers to support the Harrier GR-3s as they would like that means that the Fleet Aeron maintainers aboard Hermes are working extremely hard to support their RAF colleagues while their RAF colleagues when they can are working extremely hard to try to support their Royal Naval colleagues realizing that the Harrier and the Sea Harrier are slightly different and one story there just to illustrate that point if I may I suppose is the case of Flight Lieutenant John Leeming Flight Lieutenant Leeming had previously been a lightning pilot sadly he was killed in a mid-air collision in 1984 but John Leeming had been a lightning pilot and because of the desire to increase the number of pilots available to the task force the Harrier RAF Harrier force was trawled for pilots with air defense experience and John Leeming had been a lightning pilot volunteers to go down to the South Atlantic and he engages Argentine aircraft almost almost his first sorting and when he's firing the 31-meter cannon at them he discovers that he's missing and he's the solution to this is getting incredibly close he almost managed to blow up an Argentine aircraft himself as well as the Argentine aircraft these strikes with the cannon fire and it turns out that the gun sight is calibrated slightly differently on a Sea Harrier compared to a Harrier and because of his rushed conversions to the Sea Harrier this was a rather vital piece of information that's been missed but that I think is also illustrative the fact there are some challenges for the maintainers to have to deal with so when we look at air power and the forearms I think first of all we need to see this holistically we need of course to give due credit to the to the majority force that is down there the fleet air arm we need to recognise and as yet we have not done so adequately I'd suggest the role played by the rotary wing elements there the wessex the seeking the links we need also to bear in mind that the major focus of much of the Royal Air Force um historiography that's historiography about the Royal Air Force rather than generated by it concentrates on Operation Black Buck for good reasons that I hope I've out on it but in fact it often this is the context of where Black Buck sits it is good strong joint higher level thinking by Admiral's Lewin Leach Fieldhouse Air Chief Marshal Beatham and as I say Field Marshal Bramble and Admiral Woodward is also supported as the idea as he made clear at the Falklands witness seminar held a shrewd 20 years ago um this year and the other factor is that human factor which as I say is that air power cannot be generated easily if you don't have sufficiently maintainers to do this and those maintainers particularly maintaining all the confines of an aircraft carrier there yet that understanding of how air power is generated is missing from a lot of our understanding and finally our understanding aspect that doesn't excite the attention of the media very often that of air mobility air transport the vital logistic aspects that air power contributes to that is something that is also missing from our considerations and I think I'll I'll leave that there having hopefully offered a few insights related to the aspects of air power as they pertain to the Falklands and then hand over if I may to Helen to hear to hear her thoughts relating to the land campaign and to power thank you Helen over to you well thank you David that was a extremely interesting um so I think my contribution is perhaps a little bit different in that I'm talking sort of more broadly about the relationship between army and society and the experiences of some members of the parachute regiment during the campaign in the Falklands and that's based on the research I did for my book our boy's the story of a paratrooper so that starts with well when I was seven years old my uncle my father's youngest brother private Dave part of the second battalion the parachute regiment was killed at wireless ridge in the final hours of the Falklands war I remember very clearly hearing the news of his death and I remember very clearly his funeral six months later his coffin on a gun carriage was pulled slowly through the streets of Alton Broad the Suffolk town where he'd grown up I always wanted to write a book about the Falklands war but I think it's fair to say I didn't know quite what that book would be I began the research for the book I wrote in 2012 around about the time of 30th anniversary and I went with my father to Aldershop military cemetery for the 30th anniversary commemorations of the conflict we hadn't really been in touch with the parachute regiment since 1983 and the story that I'd grown up with was one of loss of seeing the effects of my uncle's death or my grandparents particularly on his mother my grandmother so I began the research by talking to people firstly to major Philip Neane the officer commanding D company to power the company that my uncle had been in and then to many others who had served with him and in other companies and battalions and also in three power and as soon as I started talking to people I could see that the story that I'd grown up with was only a partial one I could see that if I wanted to understand the parachute regiment in the Falklands war even a little bit then I had to try to understand things from the perspective of paratroopers and that perspective was entirely unfamiliar to me and only then could I attempt to write the book that I eventually wrote so to conduct the research I spoke to people soldiers of most ranks and also to family members of soldiers who'd been killed and I tried to understand what it was that they wanted to tell me but I also put the interviews into fuller contexts both social and military I did a lot of archival research particularly in the parachute regiment archives at the airborne assault museum in Duxford and by doing that I hope I was able to place people's stories and recollections within histories that were accurate and that made sense to them as well as to me so what I want to highlight is three main themes about the experiences of the parachute regiment and the the Falklands conflict the first theme is the relationship between army and society broadly speaking in a sense the Falklands conflict stood at a bridging bridging point between the period defined by the Second World War and conscription and the more contemporary period that we're familiar with now in 1982 the memory of the Second World War was still proximate men joined up in this period partly because it was for many families an expected thing to do even in families where there wasn't a history of voluntary ministry service boys often dreamed of becoming soldiers as I'm sure my uncle did and it was possible to establish from the the records that this was really just before the period in which unemployment began to influence recruitment in a much more obvious way so the generation who went to the Falklands I don't think they were joining up because they couldn't find jobs they were usually joining up because they didn't want the jobs that they could otherwise get most boys had done poorly at school but I'm talking about men who are entering the ranks of the parachute regiment obviously and they joined because they didn't want the jobs other men in their neighborhoods did they didn't want to go down the pit they didn't want to work in a factory they wanted adventure in the 1950s army advertising campaigns had focused on the fact that military service was a steady job with guaranteed housing but by the late 1970s it emphasized instead pictures of overseas beaches water skiing young women in bikinis this was also a time in which the concept of teenager was still being invented some people I think were joining up because they were reacting against that counterculture but in another sense I think it perhaps influenced people in ways that were slightly less obvious it was a time when young people were supposed to be expanding their horizons so of course some boys had grown up in very deprived circumstances histories of childhood spent in children's homes or experiencing domestic violence did seem to be comparatively common amongst people who I spoke to and also anecdotally from other sources some people were running away from something worse but I think that for most they joined because they wanted more from them from their lives they wanted to make something of themselves as one man who I interviewed who'd grown up in a mining area said you could go home in uniform show your mates it was brilliant so the second theme to emphasize concerns the making of a military masculine identity and the training that led boys to become paratroopers training was transformative the making of a paratrooper in training was indistinguishable from the making of a man Michael Asher paratrooper Michael Asher in his memoir said for me it was the symbol of passing from childhood to manhood money could not buy this no friends connections or privileges of birth could attain it the recruit trainers who ran the training program knew what they were looking for a willingness to put the collective good of the regiment ahead of the needs of the individual and they also perhaps particularly in this period believed in character or moral fiber they were looking for recruits who could separate their domestic lives from their army careers and who in shorthand were man enough for the job just to give you a flavor of this I was able to look through some of the record cards of that were maintained by the lieutenant in charge of recruit training at depot para and on the front of the cards they put quite rudimentary information you know where the boys from the age he was at the the marks in the some selection tests but on the back of the cards they could write their either sometimes they wrote their first impression well many of you may know this because you've actually done it but some of them would write their first impressions of the of the the new recruit in front of them and particularly they often made comments about the recruits if they didn't make it through training um on the card of and sort of through looking at those comments I think the sort of that connection between manhood and passing training was was was really evident on the card of one man who did not pass training the lieutenant wrote rather wet and pathetic individual with no moral values no mental stamina no physical ability using a groin strain as an excuse for not taking p company yet he still managed to impregnate his girlfriend yuck not recommended for re-enlistment so the process of passing training gave the recruits a powerful and collective loyalty to their regiment uh martin margerison said they put a flying horse in my head and it's still flying around to this day the loyalty that it instilled I think had a moral core that moral fibre or character but it was also aggressive if it came to it they had to be prepared to value the reputation of the regiment more highly than their lives but at least in the ranks they had a strong sense that they were the men who could be called upon in extremes to do what other units or other men could not withstand and it was through this lens the lens of the regiment that they talked about the experiences of the battles that they fought in the Falklands so obviously the experiences that people had were varied the experiences related to um to what they were asked to do the experiences related to the the specific positions they found themselves in not everybody experienced it in the same way um I want to emphasise that but then I also want to sort of to pick up on on some of the sort of the common ways in which people reflected upon the experiences subsequently so they had courage they wanted to be tested they wanted to see if they could match up to the high standards of paratroopers past they knew going to the islands that the Argentines were a conscript army and that they the parachute regiment were professionals they were the best they were young they thought they were invincible uh one man explained to me the beret makes you bulletproof the beret the holy grail from training they didn't believe that death could happen to them uh it could only happen to other people on the start lines private warrell recalled that he felt terrific I always wanted to kill I always wanted to be a soldier however when the the the fighting started sometimes the experience was not exactly as they had expected corporal martin margerison said I shot that first century coming off the start lines up the hill and that's a terrible thing to do not the fact that I killed him but that it was up to me whether he should die or not it wasn't like a john wane movie he didn't get blown back five or ten yards he just collapsed like a bag of jelly and I think there's something there uh I think you can see a sense of his responsibility according to his rank it was up to me whether he should die or not but also there's a kind of emptiness in the way in which he recounted it he'd done the right thing he'd taken the decision to shoot he'd probably saved the lives of his men but talking about it later it could be hard to recapture exactly that moment hard to recapture exactly how righty it'd be another corporal were called firing at the schoolhouse at goose green and during the the daytime during that battle he said I was one of the guys who fired a 66 into the schoolhouse and you know the film Rambo when he fires into a cave there's a big explosion and that's what we were expecting but there was no who-who moment as such so again there's no resolution they wanted the opportunity to kill but when it happened men died but nothing stopped they had to keep going and sometimes if they saw their comrades killed or if they were themselves injured it could be tough one said one lieutenant said it was the first time most of us had come under fire at close range and obviously the deaths of two in such an apparently random manner brought home the seriousness of the situation it might sound rather naive to say so but up until then we were quite gung ho and confident death would only happen to somebody else when corporal Marjarrison was injured he was shot in the shoulder and jaw he said he didn't feel sorry for himself he said he felt disgusted and that was the word that he used that he had been caught out he felt disgusted with himself that he had as he saw it left his men on the ground he could no longer play his part in the regiment he loved and it could be hard also sometimes to explain the destructiveness of chance the reasons why sometimes one man was shot but another right next to him was unhurt and for some perhaps a small number is very hard to to to put figures on this when they look back on it later they could feel almost a sense of shame that they had not been good enough as they saw it to save their comrades one man said we thought we were the greatest fighters we were a bit shattered when it actually happened and there's a paradox there isn't there they won they matched the test that they've been set but even then it could still sometimes be difficult so the final thing to emphasise is what happens in the aftermath of the Falklands conflict so in many ways the conflict marked a turning point perhaps a different turning point to the ways in which it was perceived at the time the lasting change in practices of memorialisation was that the British government permitted repatriation of bodies of those who'd fallen on land for families who wished it that decision I don't think was anticipated at the start of the conflict it came about partly because some families requested it but it was apparent from the records in the National Archives that it was mainly because of a campaign in the tabloid press and after the conflict when TV footage was broadcast from the islands some footage was shown of the temporary burial of paratroopers after the Battle of Goose Green and that led some people who'd seen it to think that that was the the final resting place and they wrote to to say that it wasn't good enough the agreement to repatriate was authorised by Mrs Thatcher who I think genuinely wanted to alleviate the pain that families felt but who was also alive to the possibility that stories of families suffering could take the edge off Britain's victory and repatriation was also feasible of the 255 British deaths 174 have been at sea and their bodies could not be recovered officials who were assessing the the the possibility of repatriation did ask themselves whether the practice could create divisions between the services but they concluded that although the bodies lost at sea could not be recovered the families already knew the locations of the deaths there was nobody in that horrible no man's land so common during the world wars of missing presumed dead repatriation took six months to organise and eventually 64 bodies were brought home most as my uncle was were laid to rest in local civilian churchards with full military honours repatriation therefore brought military symbolism into britain street it was not yet the outpouring of emotion associated with wooden basses during iraq and afghanistan because this was 1982 and to line the streets at a funeral when a hearse passed by I think was still customary but it did draw attention to the feelings of what came to be called military families and it marked what we can see now as the inception of a change in british attitudes towards its soldiers in a break with past traditions soldiers were no longer seen simply as military men laid to rest where they fell with their comrades in the service of their country but they came over time to be seen as individual men who chosen the military path and they were men with families who loved them and over time perhaps we can think that that attitudinal shift contributed to to produce a more sentimental british attitude towards the armed services evident during the conflicts in iraq and afghanistan as people then express favour for the armed services even if they did not support the government or the campaign so that concludes my short presentation thank you Helen sorry that my mute button decided to misbehave there I'm I'm afraid it appears that uh general chimp may have been defeated by his internet connection and we won't unfortunately be able to hear from him as a result of that what I'd propose to do if I may is to have a sort of a brief period of discussion and to handle any questions that come in via the Q&A button or the chat with Helen and I may if I could be so bold possibly bring in a couple of our earlier speakers for one question that does appear to arrive and then we will move over to the two panel three a little earlier than anticipated um but thank you Helen that was a very interesting and a fascinating introduction to your to your research and of course I think it's I think it worth pointing out that we should also I think use the you know use the phrase for the phrases like award-winning because these are truly fascinating insights into the development of the of the parachute regiment in particular but I think there's some wider lessons in from there and I noticed that in the chat Tom Navin he remarked on his feelings about treatment received from the Ministry of Defense and and in his case the army and I was wondering if I might ask just to say particularly as you were talking about the funerals whether you had any thoughts on the way in which the veteran community from 1982 was treated I'm thinking at some of the some of the comments that human man has made in his Scars of War book relating to some of the PTSD issued I just wondered if you had any any thoughts or feelings from your research on the aspects of sort of the post-war treatment of those those who survived and came back and lived with the memories of the fighting might be interesting your thoughts on that please yes sure it is a it's a very good question and I'm interested to see Tom Navin's comment in the in the chat there as well on being treated terribly on return by the army and the MOD I think there's many things that can be said so I think you mentioned just then specifically PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder I think in 1982 I think it's important to recall the mood of the period so the the term PTSD had only entered the world psychiatric manual in 1980 and then it had entered it as a response to the American experiences in Vietnam and I think there was a presumption amongst the armed services but perhaps in some ways not unreasonably that the experiences of American conscripts were going to be very different to the experiences of professionally trained British soldiers and that therefore this sort of informed a general assumption that on return from the Falklands that the incidences of psychological trauma were going to be very low so in 1982 I think the possibility that men could be coming back with PTSD or any condition similar to PTSD was it's not really there in public or in military consciousness and that obviously makes it extremely difficult for anybody who returns home and is exhibiting those kinds of those kinds of symptoms I think that attitude only really begins to shift in the late 1980s so in the late 1980s there was a study done by actually by Stephen Hughes who'd been to Paris doctor during the during the conflict where he drew attention to relatively high amounts of of of of veterans who were exhibiting signs of trauma perhaps even as as many as a third of people who'd been in sort of in in close quarters combat so from the late 1980s I think military attitudes are beginning to be challenged and then from about the same periods it begins to to find more public examples of of people coming forward to talk about to talk about trauma so Simon Weston is probably the first one probably the first and still probably the the best known but then from the early 1990s there's there's other memoirs other parish including some parachute regiment memoirs published that begin to draw sort of greater public attention to the phenomenon of PTSD and I think it's in in the 15th year anniversary of the conflict when the armed services sort of directly talk about the sort of psychological legacy of of of combat so there's a there's a huge shift takes place but it doesn't really begin to take hold probably to the mid to late 1990s so that's one aspect of for the response to your question second aspect is thinking about the sort of the the formal memorialization so there was there was a sort of a military parade held in the city of London and one in the initial planning of the military parade the the notion that disabled veterans could form part of the the parade wasn't even considered and again I think that this is a sort of this is a reflection of of of the time it's something and it's a sort of it's another indication in some ways of how far away 1982 is from from the contemporary period I mean the idea now that you would just overlook veterans who'd lost limbs for example is is is unthinkable but in the initial planning for the for the victory parade I think it wasn't given consideration and then then there was sort of then there was pushback from from veterans it was raised in the House of Commons and in the in in the victory parade that took place the provision was made for some disabled veterans to to to take part so again I think there's a there's a sort of there's a huge generational shift taking place there um there was I think it was it was very difficult for veterans or who returned injured to access medical support sometimes it was very difficult for families sometimes even to do basic things like visit them in military hospitals to provide bandages and so forth those are things that I just remember being kind of highlighted in some of the press reports and I think again there was a sort of one of the things that was um in the National Archives was when um medals were sent out to families of deceased servicemen they were sent out in jiffy bags with self-assembly instructions and that was the M.O.D. were following protocol but again probably partly because of the sort of the the the changed circumstances of the time the change sort of way in which attention could be given to to military families that also sort of caused an outcry um with the you know the lack of respect kind of being shown to individual service service families so I hope that goes some way to answering your your question I don't know if we want to hear more from from Tom Yes I mean Tom please feel free to um Tom says anyone exhibiting PTSD um the posted outries were discharged from service without support and medals arrived in the boxing pieces they've just alluded to that um they're Helen I think that's you know that which reinforces reinforces your point um and I wonder and I don't know whether um General Julian or whether um Commodore Crapp indeed have any thoughts on this as well as I see they're still on the call um but it strikes me could would it be fair to say that this is a willful lack of um compassion but as you say it's protocol and process um which presumably would have been for just through the sheer scale of the first and then the second world was making that the human touch if you will making that almost impossible um wasn't the 1982 mod haven't thought about this in any sufficient detail um and it needs process do you think I think that is probably the case um and um so I think in some ways that that's that's one of the ways in which we can see that the fault was conflict kind of sits on this social turning point in a way and it is quite interesting that the the the tabloid press you know in a sense is also quite a player because the Falklands um relatives of of personnel who were experiencing difficulties their stories were were picked up in the tabloid press and therefore sort of received greater coverage than perhaps they would have done in a in an in an earlier period and that obviously then creates sort of political pressure and leads to a sort of an attempt to kind of to to change the protocol to change the process to respond sort of more obviously to um to to family's needs or or requirements um I think it probably also is moving from a period in which you know as you just said sort of in World War Two that kind of personalized experience wasn't possible and perhaps people didn't expect it moving into a into a period where although you know the numbers during the Falklands conflict are high for a short space of time they're still small enough to to warrant that kind of individual individual attention so I think it kind of it begins to prompt reconsideration of of um of those relationships between army and society and of how they play out in the public domain. Okay thank you um I know our chair James has a question that he might like to ask as well but just before we move to James I wonder if um Commodore Clap or um Major General Thompson whether you have any thoughts on any of those issues relating to the way in which um veterans were handled or some of the experiences that you might have had um in dealing with veterans um of the conflict under your command or perhaps a specificity signs of some sort of trauma um whether you have any thoughts on that I don't know but if you do I think it would be grateful grateful to hear them. Um as far as the Navy was concerned it was very difficult to find a trauma like that um because you're um I don't I don't remember meeting anybody who was showing obvious effects by particularly but I'm sure they were around um because I think mostly the the ones that were were ones that have been on a ship that had got bombed or something but um of course they disappear back home as as fast as they can go so they weren't actually coming to meet people like me and I couldn't get to see them in time. Yes thank you I think I think as well but perhaps a difference between the services and a difference between experience so that commonality of experience between the service of course would differ. Just before I go to um James um General Julian do you have any thoughts that you'd like to add or shall I move on to James? I'm not sure if General Julian can hear me so I'll hand over James over to you please if you'll call for a question. I thought I'd ask you a question because there wasn't one for you David so um talking logistics I mean something that today because we live in a society which always seems you know next day delivery we forget it's ridiculously difficult to get a palette from you know England all the way down to 8,000 miles away to the Falkland Islands and so now it's obviously been picked up and I think resonates with today how this was a completely almost isolated environment where um nothing could really be leaked too much apart from maybe the the pressure had gone down with the Falklands Task Force versus we've seen in Ukraine you know 20 seconds after something happens there's a tweet in a photo which I suspect will be very useful in the long run for obvious reasons but sort of looking at the RAF then um a lot of emphasis is put on what historians have called the decline and fall of the Royal Navy which is something I hate as a term being used in becoming this North Atlantic service the RAF also was was going through fairly reasonable cuts to some degree wasn't it because its mission was by then the nuclear deterrence mission was going etc and all that type of thing had gone and it was essentially tied to what was that continental commitment so how how did the Falklands impact the RAF sort of in that 80s and 90s period and then has it had any impact in this this longer period since that's a really good question and I think the I think the honest answer is it's not entirely clear the in the aftermath of there was some talk and Andrew Dorman has covered this in his book defense under and the Thatcher he's spoken to some former senior Royal Air Force officer at the time who said that there was discussion as to whether the fact that you could and this of course is something the United States looked at whether the um to use a buzzword the synergy um buzzword and her buzzword transmission ends um between long-range aircraft and carrier based aircraft the maritime forces whether that was something that that could be exploited and did this potentially justify retaining a small force of Vulcans in service and upgrading them so they could carry perhaps cruise missiles or precision weapons um the Vulcan was trial with um payway laser guided bombs during the conflict for potential future use including potentially against the mainland although the reports the reports of the planning for that said that no suitable targets have been identified the subtext being that they're jolly expensive bombs and if we're going to bomb some airfield in Argentina if Mrs Thatcher decides that's necessary um then we really want them to be work we really want the cost of the bombs to somehow match the target that we strike but there was no funding for it and the reason for that was because of the cost of bringing the tornado particularly tornado um GL-1 as it then was into service and the money simply isn't there isn't there to do that so the air force's focus turns fairly promptly back to the central front and it's interesting if you look at the central trials and tactics organizations um work in this and I know I don't know if he's still on the call I know Josh Shields has obviously looked at this as well but some of the lessons that come out are quite interesting and he do wants to get some of them can't be funded and some of them are the one notable or perhaps two notable things I'd pick up are first of all the blackbuckies held to demonstrate the importance and the validity of purchasing the JP-233 anti-runway system um because of the difficulties in striking a runway using unguided ordinance if it's not a specialized anti-runway kit um then of course the Americans had been involved in JP-233 but at some point somebody senior had looked at the operating uh all the profile for delivering the weapon and it effectively turned out to be its suicidal um we should spend the money on something cheaper and our standoff system and the Royal Air Force goes ahead and of course JP-233 is used in 1991 contrary to a number of admits only one of the JP-233 aircraft is actually lost in combat the others that are lost to carrying apart from the final loss they're carrying um thousand pound box JP-233 that was carrying aircraft that was lost probably um hit the ground as it was evading an incoming threat as well so that's the first one the other aspect is that flying at low level or ultra low level is seen to be perhaps the only way of defending yourself against um incoming enemy ground fire and although the Harrier Geoff free force a lot of aircraft take um superficial damage they do lose a number of aircraft of course squadron leader Jerry Pooke has to eject his aircraft sustained what is superficial damage unfortunately it's superficial damage um over a fuel tank and he runs out of fuel and has to has to punch out um so the the Air Force learns lessons that suggest that JP-233 and ultra low level are the way forward but of course they're thinking about this in the context of operating in Central Europe and this is why I think some of the issues related to Nimrod and the Air Transport Force it's worth exploring those and also looking at some of the lessons that we don't really seem to identify relating to the use of fleet air on helicopters because let's not forget the Commando helicopter force had World War III broken out there's a lot of it's been moving to support operations in Norway um well what did we did the Falklands validate lessons or ideas did he produce new lessons learned etc etc and we don't seem to see that and there is this element of taking for granted the maritime of the and air transport maritime patrol and air transport forces as well that is not something that occurs in the Royal Air Force but of course maybe it's something that's happened when the Air Force goes back to its routine preparing to fight the World War but in a way the Air Force is used to doing a lot of sort of short notice deployments using aircraft so in a way the Falklands doesn't come as a nasty surprise at one level because this is the sort of thing they've done um it doesn't come as a surprise to the Royal Navy of course it might come as a surprise to those who turn around to the Royal Navy's obsolete for anything other than operations in the North Atlantic um as previous speakers have outlined more eloquently than I have um but I think it does you know it does work slightly differently for the Air Force in that it's okay in terms of direct combat it's um relatively you know relatively limited and I'll I'll put in as well John um John Shields's point where he said the RAF position post not review um was looking pretty rosy tornado um coming into service Jaguar extended Harrier GR5 funded plus additional tankers and the additional F4 phantoms that were brought into service for UK air defense and the point I would make is return to normal operations to the RAF post conflict um and I think it's a very you know I think it's a very interesting set of experiences as well where for the Air Force we should remember that again in terms of casualties the Royal Air Force is one for talent is a Royal Air Force regiment officer for us and Garth Hawkins who's a forward air controller with two two SAS uh and who is lost in the uh crash of the helicopter when he's cross decking along with his along with the SAS teams that he's supporting um so the war is somewhat the war is somewhat different I think and the lessons are more okay so does this does this kind of shows that what we're doing is generally right and arguably it does the only problem is of course the Air Force the next time it goes to war it goes to war in in a desert um in 1991 so it's a very it show it shows the the challenges of the unexpected and being prepared to make the unexpected as best you can I think that would be my answer so it's slightly long-ended and it certainly appears that where the Navy and the Army got a lot more up in 1982 than the Air Force perhaps did but then the Air Force was faced with the Middle East in broad terms Afghanistan which it seems to be you know more reflective on because obviously the amount that it was involved in um the flip side of that we almost see there are naval personnel and Marines involved in Afghanistan but they've almost been completely forgotten and that hasn't been their experience of not being reflected on versus of course the Army and the the Air Force are reflecting on the Middle East quite a bit and I suspect there is now debate saying well how much are they going to reflect on the Middle East because things are looking at somewhere else now so it's a very interesting topic and I know I said earlier I'm wary of the term lessons learned um but it is very interesting to see how these organizations and how they remember things and how that impacts their thinking we can always say those old those arguments which resulted in 1981 the aircraft carriers the shock of the Falklands that was very much the same the same product because there was analysis of the Second World War which Air Forces came out of that in a very in a light which was this was the future and I and as I've always said in my own research Navy's look absolutely obsolete in 1946 where Air Forces if you're a young person you're seeing battleships taken away yet you're seeing nice shiny aircraft flying there's no comparison there is there really a sort of thing so there's a trend here in the military isn't there of this kind of lessons learned and what we learned from something how do you identify with Fletcher how do you address it and I think there's I think one of the things you highlight there potentially is this risk of people turning out saying oh will that service or that environment do you domain do you think temporary terminology it's obsolete and this is something that I think at any and this hints particularly at Admiral Chris's point earlier that he's actually arguably more occasioned it may will be that the equipment that you are using has to evolve it may will be the way you use it needs to evolve but to turn around and effectively say well Navy's obsolete that that infamous line in sands sands era where he took space to the bone the Navy future war is unclear well yes and no and I think there's a there's a tendency in all three environments to potentially turn around and say well we don't need to think about that now we're seeing we're seeing that debate take place with relationship to armor but actually does the British Army need to have as many main battle tanks as say the Ukrainians the Poles Germany for example does the air what does the air force need to invest more heavily in expression of any defenses capability or should be spending more on transport aircraft and then turning around saying well is a native what about Navy's will you need to see the Black Sea and and the the fact the Russian Navy is now missing the Moskva to say well actually these environments that become obsolete is the way in which they are used and the way in which they factor into the way the war is fought I think that's something we should probably learn from the forecast again talking about learning but it worries me that sometimes maybe we don't think that's in that way okay um well thank you um I don't think any additional um quite do apologize sorry um Alan Johnson comes in and says um did we not learn from US carrier ops and Pacific covering large areas of ocean supporting amphibious operations um I think I'm probably not quite as well qualified to answer that question as James is certainly not as well qualified as our naval officers um I would just say on that point that I think um one of the challenges that has has existed in terms of amphibious operations is that the Pacific does does factor into our thinking but the sheer scale of it as so often there's almost that we will never do this because remember one of the things not really specific for giving me one of the things in 1966 that's used to justify cancellation CVA01 um is that in essence the justification that he's presented is that the only sort of operation that we would ever need a carrier for is something that and they then goes on to describe effectively operation corporates but we're never going to do that so we don't need to carry it and I think that's um that's another one and the question about the RAF moved Australia's just popped up as I say the the evidence in the files very very thin um I'm being polite there the number of historians have looked for that evidence but haven't found it it almost seems to be a bit of a bit of an urban myth I think it's originated as I alluded to from this from the typo in the chief scientific advisors report or one of his staff which misplaces Australia and puts in a completely different ocean to the one it's really in that draft report I know um some Michael Quinlan said that there was a mistake on a on a map um but I've not I don't know anyone who's seen that map and it's also a case that the mistake is pointed out at the time so I think the I think again the the risk is that we we focus on um forgive me Alan this isn't that this isn't a comment on your question or I think it is actually an excellent point for me to for me to sort of wind up really is that there is a risk of focusing not on the output again forgive jargon but not on what could be achieved by putting all three services together in appropriate proportions um for the campaign that's being fought but the risk is that people use sight of the purpose of the services namely to fight wars again on behalf of the nation to defend the nation the nation's security interests and instead they start to understandably in peacetime to focus on budget and end up fighting one another and that is is fundamentally dangerous and the fact that um the particularly our veterans here represented were able to rise above all of that from the 1960s I think testament to their achievement but um I don't think there are any more questions so I'll conclude this part of the panel by saying thank you thank you very thank you very much to Professor Helen Barth for joining us today and for a fascinating