Talk:Battle of Goose Green

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Contents 1 POV 2 Military blunder 3 POV? 4 number of Argentinean POWS 5 Pucara aircrafts

[edit] POV

The article is written with a slight bias toward the UK side. laddiebuck 01:02, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I suggest there is a POV problem in that the article tends towards hagiography in its treatment of H Jones. I will put a ref to "Not Mentioned in Dispatches" which "pretty much argues that the British were only victorious at Goose Green in 1982 because Colonel Jones managed to get himself killed"(!) [[1]] —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Springnuts (talk • contribs) 21:41, 14 December 2006 (UTC).

Definitely a British POV - and also it reads too much like it's been written by British military men, together with military jargon and slang. The jury's still out on Jones - was he stupid and foolhardy, or was he setting a brave example to his men? --MacRusgail 17:51, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Military blunder

Military Blunders: The How and Why of Military Failure by Saul David has Goose Green as an example of a failure due to outside meddling - a battle that was not absolutely necessary to be fought (and was also poorly executed). There is criticism of "H". GraemeLeggett 12:17, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Interesting point - there is a line saying that it "could not be ignored" in the article. Surely there was an argument for saying West Falkland "could not be ignored" at the time, but it was. The British were lucky in that the islands were treeless, and there was only one "major" settlement in the islands. Goose Green was the second town of the islands (but had under a hundred inhabitants), and Darwin was nearby, but there were few tactical objectives in Lafonia or the far south of East Falkland. --MacRusgail 17:54, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] POV?

"as it was a significant Argentinian position and close to the beachhead at San Carlos, it could not be ignored."

I suggest that this is probably the case, in my view, but that it is arguable. There are those who think it was a costly worthless battle, and that they could have taken Stanley without it. Another school of thought says that it was a propaganda victory, not necessarily of much strategic value, but a big blow to Argentine morale, since it was one of the largest massings of Argentines outside Stanley, together with the base on Pebble Island.

There is an argument to say that they should have invaded West Falkland, but this never came about - like Goose Green, there are strategic arguments for a mass scale invasion of the second biggest island, but it would have been extremely costly. --MacRusgail 17:49, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] number of Argentinean POWS

According to the article "Colonel ‘H’ Jones won a posthumous VC but his bravery did not undermine the defenders" by British historian Lawrence Freedman (in the links section) the number of Argentinean POWs was 961. In the second last paragraph of the article printed on TIMESONLINE Freedman has written "A total of 961 prisoners was accounted for and about 50 Argentine bodies were found and buried." Max Hastings got a number of figures regarding the Argentineans wrong. It was he who wrote that an entire Argentinean battalion defended Mount Longdon when in fact it was just a reinforced company

[edit] Pucara aircrafts

Several IA-58 Pucara planes of the FAA had a very active role in this battle, taking off from Darwin to support ground troops. No mention of this is done in the article, and it's something that should be included.

• The book "Falklands: The air war" by Rodney Burden (1986), asserts that the Pucará aircraft supporting Argentina's ground troops in this battle took off from Stanley airstrip. The only Pucaras remaining in Darwin were destroyed the previously weeks by British aerial and naval bombardment, although some of them continued to operate from that base until May 22 or so. One Pucará was shot down by a paratrooper with a Stinger missile, while another was lost in bad weather. The first pilot ejected and became POW, the other died in the accident. The latter was part of an air patrol that achieved the only Argentine air-to-air kill of the war, when one of the planes shoot down a Royal Marine's Scout over Darwin hill.

DagosNavy 03:46, 9 September 2007 (UTC)