Falklands War: The Untold Story review – how it almost all went wrong for Britain
“These lessons do need to be learnt so that it doesn’t happen again. It’s not about catching people out and slagging people off, or anything like that. It’s about making a difference in the future, isn’t it?”
These compelling, undramatic words of Tom Navin, Combat Medical Technician in the Royal Army Medical Corps, spoken towards the end of this sobering documentary, encapsulate the purpose of Falklands War: The Untold Story.
This Channel 4 heavyweight production is as much about sharp journalism as it is about recapping well-known history. There is much that is fresh, revealed for the first time.
Another key to the programme’s success is what it is not. It is not an “I told you so,” Captain Hindsight special. It is not a Last Night of the Proms Rule Britannia nostalgia binge. Nor do the makers rush to judgement based on values of today applied to conflicts of yesteryear.
All that would have been too easy. Instead, this 40th-anniversary programme yomps a tougher trail, bringing fresh news and insights beyond anything uncovered by the post-war Franks Report in 1983. All comment is from those engaged on the front line — top brass to Tom Navin.
Only one armchair warrior is wheeled out. And as the armchair of the venerable Sir Max Hastings, then a tin-hat war correspondent was plunked behind a rock amidst whizzing bullets, the affable old cove was in the thick of it. Not a bar-soaked boondoggle for The Evening Standard’s man at the front.
The atmosphere is business-like. A grey countdown clock of the days of the conflict, with a moving red timeline at the bottom, marks each chapter, oddly running from right to left. Borrowed from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, perhaps?
Footage of the conflict may be familiar to those of us swept up in contemporary day to day news coverage but will come as a shock to a generation to which war of any sort is a distant experience, mostly in other countries.
There were frightful reversals, some threatening the whole operation.
The sinking of HMS Sheffield, pierced by an Exocet missile. The attack on the unprotected civilian transport, Atlantic Conveyor, by two Exocets resulting in the loss of six Westland Wessex; three Boeing Chinooks and a Westland Lynx helicopter requiring troops to land at San Carlos Water to “yomp” 50 miles to Port Stanley; the Sky Hawk attack on the troop carrier, Sir Galahad in San Carlos Water, resulting in 48 deaths — and many more acts of heroism from rescuers.
Although the outcome was conclusive, British victory was a close-run thing. The programme reveals, for the first time, how close.
General Michael Rose, commander of special forces operations, is scathing about a fragmented command structure and is clearly still fizzing at the ineptitude of decision making.
The most devastating revelation is that the battle of Goose Green, heralded as a stepping stone to victory at the time, was an unnecessary diversion that spread advancing forces into a thin red line and nearly cost us the war.
The death of former comrades allows the dogs of war criticism to be unleashed. Brigadier Tony Wilson, the leader of the 5th Infantry Brigade, which arrived late to the conflict, died in 2018. For the first time, he is flagged as prejudicing the outcome of the whole campaign.
In one scene, where he is briefing his troops, viewers could be excused for thinking he was auditioning for a Monty Python sketch. He tells his men that “intel” was so good they would know the names of each of the “Argies” facing them from the trenches around Port Stanley. Hmmm!
Michael Rose has waited 40 years to speak his mind. He speaks it now. The command chain was dysfunctional, the choice of RN Northwood as HQ — an operation best suited to anti-submarine warfare — risked a breakdown in extended communications.
Critical pluses, unacknowledged at the time for security reasons, were the satellite phones covertly provided by the Americans, access to Chilean listening operations and the location of a Nimrod surveillance plane on an offshore Chilean island.
The narrator is actor Tom Hardy. He walks a fine line between straight delivery and a resonating voice of doom. There’s a sense of conspiratorial authority, making us, the viewers, insiders.
Harvey Lilley is a producer with 29 credits on his tally, including military documentaries, Spitfire Women (2010), Bomber Boys (2012) and RAF at 100 (2018). This is another brilliant success.
As the conflict in Ukraine teeters towards a Russian disaster, Falklands War – the Untold Story is a sharp reminder that armed conflicts can turn on a dime. Remember, Waterloo was Wellington’s “close run thing”.
For the first time, we hear a tape of the surrender talks in Port Stanley, played on an ancient cassette machine, as transmitted to Northwood. “General Menendez confirms the surrender of West Falkland”. Michael Rose chips in — “War over”.
A cheering flotilla may have greeted the task force on its return to Portsmouth. Sir Max may opine that the Britain they came back to has changed, positively, forever. But this documentary never lets us forget. War is hell.