The day Argentina knew Falklands War was lost

Twenty-five years ago today the British won the Falklands war. Argentina did not surrender for another three weeks, but by nightfall on what the military called D-day, 3,000 Royal Marines and paratroopers had scrambled ashore at the little farm hamlets around San Carlos Water on East Falkland, and the game was up. They were still 90 miles from Stanley, but privately Argentinian commanders conceded that once the taskforce had secured the bridgehead, they could not be defeated.

Not that it seemed like that at the time. It was a perilous operation. The textbooks say that for an amphibious operation an army should have secure lifelines, air superiority and a troop advantage ratio of 3 to 1. British forces were about to mount the biggest amphibious landing since Suez, 8,000 miles from home, with limited air cover and no missile defence shield. Nor did the numbers match up; the enemy, well dug in, was estimated at 11,000 men. As Brigadier Julian Thompson, the head of 3 Commando Brigade and the architect of the land campaign, told his unit commanders: "This will be no picnic."