With the coming 30th Anniversary there will be lots of stuff on the Internet and mainstream media but one really great resource is the Twitter Hash Tag Falklands30
https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23Falklands30
This from BFBS
Starting today (Thursday) the collective museums of the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth, Hampshire, are running the day-by-day account of how the war unfolded in 1982.
Experts from the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport, the Royal Marines Museum and the Fleet Air Arm Museum are also contributing to the timeline.
Bill Sainsbury, marketing manager at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum, said: “Each one of the museums of the National Museum of the Royal Navy is engaged in telling the story of the last major naval war of the 20th century from our unique perspectives.
“We hope that by coming together and using Facebook and Twitter on a day-by-day basis that we can bring this account alive as it happened 30 years ago.”
The Facebook and Twitter timeline describes the build-up to the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands on April 2 1982 through to the surrender on June 14 1982, with the timeline concluding on June 25.
It starts on this day 30 years ago as Argentina cancels all leave for military and diplomatic personnel and five Argentine warships are sighted near South Georgia in March 1982.
You can follow the events of 30 years ago on twitter at #Falklands30
If ever there was a reason to get a Twitter account it is this, it has been riveting so far and very well written, within the confines of 140 characters of course.
Can we use the comments in this thread as a running record for all the stuff that will be out there in the coming months, news, forum posts, blogs, videos, lets have it all in one place?
I just noticed one of the re-tweets on that appears to be Katie Price, retweeting a bit about fears that an invasion of the Falkland Islands is imminent.
Am I bad person for crossing my fingers and hoping that she doesn’t realise it’s a tweet about history and that in actual fact she believes they’re talking about now?
Can’t you just follow that page? I don’t want a Twitter account or a FaceBook account for that matter.
X, yes, you can stay on the search page
Some really good stuff on there from the combined RN/FAA/Sub museums though, it is a brilliant idea
http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1460323-curiosa-justificacion-de-las-trabas-de-moreno-a-los-libros-importados
The mad bint is banning the import of books. Her little snowflakes might be hurt by the lead in the ink, apparently.
The Telegraph reports that the Parachute Regiment is returning to the Falklands for the first time in 30 years. The first roulement company will be Bcoy 3para.
That should give Crazy Doris something to shout about.
On what I am sure will be an emotional time at both ends of the Atlantic, with proper and appropriate commemoration of the dead, I’d like also to note those deaths suffered by Falkland Islands civilians (I believe there were 3), and the Chinese laundrymen on various UK ships (I believe there were 8 killed). There were Merchant Marine sailors as well who died.
Plus of course those hundreds on both sides who survived the conflict, but who later found their demons overcame them.
I was 16/17 over the course of the conflict, in receipt of an Army Scholarship to pay the school fees, and knew what I was going to do when I left school. I remember it very clearly, but with the sort of immature patriotism that was unreinforced by any form of reality check. 30 years later, my compassion for those serving on both sides remains undimmed, but I have through my own later service some perspective and experience of the unwanted calamity that war can visit on civilians, and of its’ lingering effects on those who come home and put up the campaign ribbon on their chest.
I was just 7 when the invasion happened, my abiding memory of the time is of the pictures of the Sea Harriers operating off the carriers and just looking like the coolest thing imaginable. It’s because of the Falklands that I’ve such an interest in the military.
I read somewhere recently that to date the Falklands was the last major war between two well equipped and well matched nations, major conflicts since have tended to be COIN, total mismatches or fought between poor countries without modern weapons. The Falklands saw warships being sunk, heavy bombers, nuclear submarines, dogfights, commando raids, pitched battles and amphibious landings. There hasn’t been a war like it since and there may never again be one.
One of the reasons I have been a bit light in the posting and commenting department of late, apart from being away and travelling, is I am re writing my earlier piece on the Atlantic Conveyor
Expect a monster
Stand By Stand By