John Woodward, Leader of British Navy in Falkland Islands War, Dies at 81

Adm. John Woodward, who became Britain’s most acclaimed naval officer since World War II when he commanded the Royal Navy battle group sent to retake the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic after they were seized by Argentina in 1982, died on Sunday in Bosham, West Sussex, on England’s south coast. He was 81.

His death was announced by Britain’s Ministry of Defense.

The Falklands, a British territory comprising a group of windswept islands 250 miles off Argentina’s southeast coast, had been a source of dispute between Britain and Argentina for 150 years when an Argentine military dictatorship staged an invasion in April 1982. The landings on the islands — which the Argentines call the Malvinas but were named by the British in 1690 for Viscount Falkland, treasurer of the British Navy — brought a major military response by the government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in support of nearly 2,000 settlers, most of British descent....