Submarine Operations During The Falklands War by Lieutenant Commander Steven R. Harper

Author:Lieutenant Commander Steven R. Harper [Harper, Lieutenant Commander Steven R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, Iraq War (2003-2011), Persian Gulf War (1991), United States, Aviation
ISBN: 9781782896661
Google: khdvCwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2014-08-15T05:04:02+00:00

CHAPTER VII — ALTERNATE OPERATIONAL PLAN SUGGESTIONS

Argentine Operational Alternatives. To suggest a reasonable alternative operational plan for submarines, an end that would have achieved the Argentine objective -to get the British back to the negotiating table -needs to be defined. The Argentines needed to make the conflict so painful for the British that they would seek an end of the conflict Another strategy could be to make World opinion turn against the British and allow international pressure force the British to back down. This last possibility did not develop, especially after the British drafted Resolution 502. They presented Argentina as the aggressor and this opinion would be hard to change. Even if Argentina was seen by the World as the correct side, due to NATO commitments many countries including the United States would stand behind Britain. This leaves us the first strategy.

To make the conflict too painful for the British, the Argentines could either make the conflict costly in material or in people. In both of these cases a good way to achieve results with an economy of force would be to attack the more valuable ships in the British task force. They could try to sink a British aircraft carrier (material) or a troop transport (personnel). Since the Argentine fleet had been bottled up along the coast the attacking platform would have to be a submarine or an airplane. Raids tried by airplanes did not yield the results and the missiles used were somewhat indiscriminate; the missiles usually hit closest target not the biggest On the other hand, a submarine could identify its target visually before shooting a torpedo and the geometry of the shot could be made to assure that the desired target would be the one hit An attack by the submarine San Luis was the best option.

The difficulty was to get the San Luis in position to be able to attack one of the aircraft carriers or a troop carrier. Since the submarine had a limited search radius, she would have to get assistance from another platform. Since no useful satellite imagery was available to the Argentines, their best platform for searching large ocean areas was an airplane. Reconnaissance flights could have been flown to find the desired target and the submarine could have been vectored to this target. This would have involved more unity of command (jointness) than was used during the war. A diesel submarine working alone searching for a certain ship in a vast ocean area will not find that ship unless the submarine is either very luck or it receives outside intelligence. The Argentines could not count on luck; they had to use all their assets wisely to achieve their strategic goals. If the combination of air power assisting a submarine had existed, an attack on the desired target could have occurred. Given the difficulties with the SST-4 torpedoes, Mark 37 torpedoes or a combination of the two types of weapons could have been used against the target to assure a hit

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