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The Falklands War podcast
The Falklands War or as it's known in Argentina, the Guerra de las Malvinas, broke out in 1982 and lasted just over two months. Two British dependent territories in the South Atlantic were invaded by Argentinian forces and the British dispatched a naval task force to take them back. The two territories, the Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, had been a source of conflict between the British and Argentina for 150 years before fighting began with the Argentinian invasion on 2nd April. .
By the time the Argentinians surrendered on 14th June, 649 had died along with 255 British military personnel and three Falkland Islanders.
The podcast is launching on the 40th Anniversary of the build-up to the war and will follow the conflict week-by-week. The presenter, Des Latham, will take you through the events and incidents from both the Argentinian and the British point of view.
This is the forty year anniversary of this war which was fought over a windswept group of islands closer to the Antarctic than to Great Britain.
GK Chesterton wrote once that “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”
For the Argentinian’s there was a lot of military historical water under the bridge and that bridge was built on the Malvinas. We must investigate these because they all add up to a crescendo that became a war.
The 200 islands in the Falkland Group lie 480 miles north east of Cape Horn straddling the line of 52 degrees latitude and comprising around 4 700 square miles of land.
That’s about two thirds the size of Wales. There’s a geological irony, as the rock formations and fossils suggest that in prehistory the islands may have been part of the land mass of southern Africa – but the tree stump fossils suggest a closer link to South America more recently. The islands were never inhabited by indigenous people, but by birds and seals.
The Theme music The theme music "Devastation and Revenge" by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.