The Battle for the Falklands (Pan Grand Strategy) (Paperback)

Finally, there are three excellent appendices: A covers the British task force, giving everything from silhouettes of the ships and airplanes through list of the units involved complete with their commanders; B lists the honors given to Falklands veterans; and appendix C contains the Franks Report on the conflict. The maps contained in the book are excellent, as are the numerous black-and-white pictures.

This book is quite fascinating, and highly informative on the war. I found myself completely unable to put this book down, but just had to read a little more, and a little more, and a little more... I wish that it contained more information on the Argentine side, which would give the book more all-around information. However, that said, it is a great book, giving the reader a good idea of what happened both on the battlefield, and in the halls of the politicians (a great deal of the British side was run for more political, rather than military reasons).

This is a great book, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in this fascinating war.

The authors start off with covering the history of the Falklands, which is quite useful background. Simon Jenkins does a good job detailing the political developments right up to the invasion. It would appear that the conflict was as much a result of the fallacies of modern diplomacy as a perceived need by the Argentinean regime to deflect the population from the domestic situation. That’s at least the message I took home from reading the authors’ account of the Seventeen Years’ War and Galtieri’s Gamble.

The actual war is recounted in quite some detail, but largely from the British point of view as Argentinean sources were not freely available at the time of publication (1983). The book also gives the impression that the British were in a bit of trouble quite a number of times during the conflict, but that as a result of a lack of co-ordination (or call it rivalries) between the different services of the Argentinean forces, they got away with their own shortcomings. The authors note that if the different services had better co-ordinated their efforts, the British task of regaining the Islands would have been much harder if not impossible.

At the end of the narrative, there are three excellent appendices on the Falkland Islands Task Force, the Honours List and the ‘Frank Report’ examining the ‘why it hadn’t been prevented in the first place’ issue.

This is an excellent book on the subject.

If there is one improvement that could be made, more detail on the attacks themselves would certainly have been of interest to me - both in the maps and the text.

However, this is a strategic, not a tactical history and, as such, is one of the best examples of modern military history I have read.