Herald, form, follows function but that deck looks so messed up it scares me.

Zounds, let's give 'em the Kitty Hawk or something.  That way, they can build just one new carrier and make it a good one.  For that budget you could get another Nimitz, no?  (And I say for a carrier, no nukes = rocks in head, but that's politics.)

I don't think there is any serious and competant doubt that CNS was precipitate in dispatching his TF.  Of course he had good 'political' reasons, for him it was a heaven sent oppurtunity to demonstrate the relevance of RN in the face of yet another round of defence cuts.  In my view if CDS had been in town it wouldn't have happened in the way it did.  The CDS actually knew a bit about landings, he'd been a platoon comd when his bn landed in Normandy on D+1 and the vulnerability of the beachhead seems to have made an impression.

 

I think that constructing a new hard runway to take Etendards in the FI winter by Arg forces in the face of a submarine blockade is in the realm of fiction.  While construction of Mt Pleasant was a bigger task the logisitics were non trivial.  And then there's the matter of doing it uninterrupted, the chaps from Hereford and Poole would have thought all their Christmasses had come at once.  The Arg plant would have been a sitting target, Milan anyone?  Of coure they also have let Arg beaver away and done a Pebble Island when they finished.

 

I'd also agree that if Arg had left their poorly equipped, badly trained conscripts over the winter with inadeqaute facilities then they'd have probably tried surrendering to the sheep well before UK troops arrived.  Of course come the end of winter Arg might have tried reinforcing/replacing with better quality.

 

As long as the rules of engagement had been appropriate and no neutral ships attacked then UK's rights of self defence under the UN charter were the trump card.  They could probably have got away with the odd attack on Arg mainland military facilities as long as they didn't overdo it or boast about it, a bit of plausible deniability would have worked wonders, blame the Arg homegrown leftists. 

 

The winter months would have given UK the oppurtunity to get the most appropriate units fully worked up, the good bit was always how similar Okehampton, Sennybridge and Otterburn terrain is to FI, who knows they might even have found the short exposure AD problem and got a Rapier mod out, even quickly acquired a swag of 20mm ADGs to help with beachhead defence and put army SHORAD on the ships as they did a few years later in the Gulf.  They could also have expedited the rotation of the last para bn out of Belize for the party.  Most importantly HQ 5 Bde could have been properly worked up.

 

Just returning to Okinawa, I repeat, that island was a stepping stone there were options if it went pearshaped at the first attempt.  FI was the strategic objective, the only options were try again or forget it.  There was no Georgi Zhukov waiting in the wings to secure the Chilean coastline or something, nor was there the wonder weapon that might force BA to surrender.  These were the luxuries the US had in mid 1945, even if the USN didn't know it at the time.   

I don't think there is any serious and competant doubt that CNS was precipitate in dispatching his TF.  Of course he had good 'political' reasons, for him it was a heaven sent oppurtunity to demonstrate the relevance of RN in the face of yet another round of defence cuts.  In my view if CDS had been in town it wouldn't have happened in the way it did.  The CDS actually knew a bit about landings, he'd been a platoon comd when his bn landed in Normandy on D+1 and the vulnerability of the beachhead seems to have made an impression.

 

I think that constructing a new hard runway to take Etendards in the FI winter by Arg forces in the face of a submarine blockade is in the realm of fiction.  While construction of Mt Pleasant was a bigger task the logisitics were non trivial.  And then there's the matter of doing it uninterrupted, the chaps from Hereford and Poole would have thought all their Christmasses had come at once.  The Arg plant would have been a sitting target, Milan anyone?  Of coure they also have let Arg beaver away and done a Pebble Island when they finished.

 

I'd also agree that if Arg had left their poorly equipped, badly trained conscripts over the winter with inadeqaute facilities then they'd have probably tried surrendering to the sheep well before UK troops arrived.  Of course come the end of winter Arg might have tried reinforcing/replacing with better quality.

 

As long as the rules of engagement had been appropriate and no neutral ships attacked then UK's rights of self defence under the UN charter were the trump card.  They could probably have got away with the odd attack on Arg mainland military facilities as long as they didn't overdo it or boast about it, a bit of plausible deniability would have worked wonders, blame the Arg homegrown leftists. 

 

The winter months would have given UK the oppurtunity to get the most appropriate units fully worked up, the good bit was always how similar Okehampton, Sennybridge and Otterburn terrain is to FI, who knows they might even have found the short exposure AD problem and got a Rapier mod out, even quickly acquired a swag of 20mm ADGs to help with beachhead defence and put army SHORAD on the ships as they did a few years later in the Gulf.  They could also have expedited the rotation of the last para bn out of Belize for the party.  Most importantly HQ 5 Bde could have been properly worked up.

 

Just returning to Okinawa, I repeat, that island was a stepping stone there were options if it went pearshaped at the first attempt.  FI was the strategic objective, the only options were try again or forget it.  There was no Georgi Zhukov waiting in the wings to secure the Chilean coastline or something, nor was there the wonder weapon that might force BA to surrender.  These were the luxuries the US had in mid 1945, even if the USN didn't know it at the time.   

Just to pre-empt any pedantry, I've used Zhukov rhetorically as an easy name.  In fact the Far East Theatre was commanded by Vasilevskiy, his subordinate Front commanders were Meretskov, Purayev and Malinovsky, with Pliev's Soviet/Mongolian KMG (basically an Army with a theatre strategic mission), but I don't know the names of his naval subordinates, the commanders of the Amur Flotilla and the West Pacific Fleet. 

You know, Yimmy, AR was not entirely out of options.,  Chilean card, eh?  How would you like to have a dozen 7/7 type events go off?  How hard would it have been for Argie secret service to run some guns, money, plastique to the IRA and show how they could do you in the eye?  Be glad it was as limited as it was. 

Hell, be glad Carter wasn't in office!  After Iran you think he wouldn't have screwed you if his 'conscience' or whatever told him to?  You should have a big statue of Reagan somewhere and sacrifice sheep to it dancing naked painted in blue woad.

As to the dentistry vs consanguinity stereotype question:  either way it's rather mean, is the point.  And dehumanizing.  And not the point.  Oh they're only niggers wogs kikes fags micks dagoes evangelicals gipsies papists cousin-shaggers and far away, who cares what happens to them?  You have a disturbing tendency to write off YOUR OWN PEOPLE when they're not your set or of no use to you or a little different from you.  And since I read you as at most a lower-middle-class product of the English class and educational system, you should know jolly well that next time to Whitehall or Downing Street maybe "it's only Yimmy."  Or Yimmy's family and all his neighbors and everybody he knew growing up.  My lifeboat only has room for blue- or green-eyed survivors, you brown-eyes go tell it to the next boat or to Davy Jones.

All or none, lad.  I would not have cheered if 9/11 happened in Harlem or Appalachia or Kansas, or England or France or maybe even Germany.  Blessedly neither Appalachia nor Kansas (nor all of Harlem) seemed to enjoy it happening in NY and DC and PA.  One minute FI are sacred English terrain, the next their inhabitants are worthless.  No conflict there?

Thanks for the laugh, I appreciate it.  It is always nice to relax for a few moments, turn the computer on, browse some facebook and read the rantings of internet forums.  I'm not quite sure if your argumentative and talk sh!t for sh!ts and giggles, like me, or if you actually believe yourself though.  If you presume to know me and my education through gibberings on the internet though, well, that says enough in itself.

Good stuff though, comparing some colonials who don't pay British taxes to any British person of different ethnicity as though they are in the same boat.