Argentine forces invaded the Falkland Islands on 2 April 1982 in a military operation code-named Operation Rosario (Operación Rosario). The invasion served as a catalyst for the subsequent Falklands War. The Argentines mounted amphibious landings and the invasion ended with the surrender of Falkland Government House, due to the location of the fighting the invasion is occasionally known as the Battle of Government House.
Defence
Governor Rex Hunt was informed on 1 April 1982, by the British Government of a possible Argentine invasion. At 3:30 pm that day he received a telegram from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office stating:
We have apparently reliable evidence that an Argentine task force could be assembling off Stanley at dawn tomorrow. You will wish to make your dispositions accordingly.
Forces involved
The Governor summoned the two senior Royal Marines of Naval Party 8901 to Government House in Stanley to discuss the options for defending the Falklands. He said during the meeting, "Sounds like the buggers mean it."
Major Mike Norman was given overall command of the Marines due to his seniority, while Major Gary Noott became the military advisor to Governor Hunt. The total strength was 68 Marines and 11 sailors from the Antarctic patrol ship Endurance's survey team, commanded by RN Lieutenant Chris Todhunter. That number was greater than would normally have been available because the garrison was in the process of changing over—both the replacements and the troops preparing to leave were in the Falklands at the time of the invasion.
This was decreased to 57 when 22 Royal Marines embarked aboard HMS Endurance to join the 13-man British Antarctic Survey (BAS) team under base commander Steve Martin to observe Argentine soldiers on South Georgia. The Royal Navy and author Russell Phillips state that a total of 85 marines were present at Stanley.
Their numbers were reinforced by at least 25 Falkland Islands Defence Force (FIDF) members. Graham Bound, an islander who lived through the Argentine occupation, reports in his book Invasion 1982: Falkland Islanders at War that the higher figure of 40 members (including 15 ex-FIDF members) of the FIDF reported for duty at their drill hall. Their commanding officer, Major Phil Summers, tasked the volunteer militiamen (including his son Brian Summers) with guarding such key points as the telephone exchange, the radio station and the power station. Skipper Jack Sollis, on board the civilian coastal ship Forrest, operated his boat as an improvised radar screen station off Stanley. Four other civilians, former Royal Marines Jim Fairfield and Anthony Davies, a Canadian citizen, Bill Curtiss and Rex Hunt's chauffeur, Don Bonner also offered their services to the governor. Rex Hunt himself was armed with a Browning 9 mm pistol.
Before the main Argentine landings, nine of the British sailors present were placed under the command of the Chief Secretary, Dick Baker, and rounded up 30 Argentine nationals living in Port Stanley and placed them in protective custody next to the Police Station. He recalls:
There were a few local people to arrest, and I remember being terribly apologetic to them, and saying, 'Because you are Argentine or married to an Argentine, or work for LADE [an Argentinian airline], we have got to take you into custody.' We put them in the refreshment room of the Town Hall, which was near the Police Station.
The nine sailors came back to Government House, where they established an information service, leaving the prisoners in custody of RN Lieutenant Richard Ball.
Operation Rosario
The Argentine amphibious operation began in the late evening of Thursday 1 April, when the destroyer ARA Santísima Trinidad disembarked special naval forces south of Stanley. The bulk of the Argentine force was to land some hours later from the amphibious warfare ship ARA Cabo San Antonio near the airport on a beach previously marked by frogmen from the submarine ARA Santa Fe. The operation had been called Azul (Blue) during the planning stage, but it was finally renamed Rosario.
ARA Santa Fe
Rosario began with the reconnaissance of Port William by the submarine ARA Santa Fe and the landing of 14 members of the Buzos Tácticos near Cape Pembroke, including the commander of this elite unit, Lieutenant-Commander Alfredo Raúl Cufré. The reconnaissance mission began as early as 31 March, when the trawler Forrest was spotted through the periscope at 10:00 p.m. off Port Stanley. The next day, Santa Fe learned that the authorities in Stanley were aware of the Argentine plans, so a change was necessary. Instead of landing right on Pembroke, the commandos would initially take a beach nearby.
The commandos left Santa Fe at 1:40 p.m. and from the beach headed towards Pembroke peninsula in Zodiac boats. They reached Yorke Bay at 4:30 a.m. on 2 April. After planting beacons for the main landing, they took over the airfield and the lighthouse without encountering significant resistance. After the British surrender at Port Stanley, this team was given the task of gathering the Royal Marines and taking them into custody.
Attack on Moody Brook barracks
On the night of 1–2 April 1982, Santísima Trinidad halted 500 metres (1,600 ft) off the mouth of Mullet Creek, on the northern bank of Port Harriet, and lowered 21 Gemini assault craft into the water. They contained 84 special forces troopers of Lieutenant-Commander Guillermo Sánchez-Sabarots's 1st Amphibious Commandos Group and a small party under Lieutenant-Commander Pedro Giachino, who was second-in-command of the 1st Marine Infantry Battalion and had volunteered for the mission to capture Government House. Argentine Rear Admiral Jorge Allara, through a message radioed from Santisima Trinidad, had requested from Rex Hunt a peaceful surrender, but the request was rejected.
Giachino's party had the shortest distance to go: two and a half miles due north. Moody Brook Barracks, the destination of the main party, was six miles (9.7 km) away over rough terrain. Sánchez-Sabarots, in the book The Argentine Fight for the Falklands, described the main party's progress in the dark:
It was a nice night, with a moon, but the cloud covered the moon for most of the time. It was very hard going with our heavy loads; it was hot work. We eventually became split up into three groups. We only had one night sight; the lead man, Lieutenant Arias had it. One of the groups became separated when a vehicle came along the track we had to cross. We thought it was a military patrol. Another group lost contact, and the third separation was caused by someone going too fast. This caused my second in command, Lieutenant Bardi, to fall. He suffered a hairline fracture of the ankle and had to be left behind with a man to help him. We were at Moody Brook by 5.30 a.m., just on the limits of the time planned, but with no time for the one hour's reconnaissance for which we had hoped.
The main party of Argentine Marines assumed that the Moody Brook Barracks contained sleeping Royal Marines. The barracks were quiet, although a light was on in the office of the Royal Marine commander. No sentries were observed, and it was a quiet night. Sánchez-Sabarots could hear nothing suggesting any action at Government House nor from the distant landing beaches. Nevertheless, he ordered the assault to begin. Sánchez-Sabarots's account continued:
It was still completely dark. We were going to use tear-gas to force the British out of the buildings and capture them. Our orders were not to cause casualties if possible. That was the most difficult mission of my career. All our training as commandos was to fight aggressively and inflict maximum casualties on the enemy. We surrounded the barracks with machine-gun teams, leaving only one escape route along the peninsula north of Stanley Harbour. Anyone who did get away would not be able to reach the town and reinforce the British there. Then we threw the gas grenades into each building. There was no reaction; the barracks were empty.
The noise of the grenades alerted Major Norman to the presence of Argentines on the island, so he drove back to Government House. Realising that the attack was coming from Moody Brook, he ordered all troop sections to converge on Government House to enable the defence to be centralised. Around this time, most of the Falkland Islands Defence Force received similar orders and fell back to Drill Hall. Sergeant Gerald Cheek from the FIDF recalled: "We were requested to phone in to HQ whenever possible, and when I made the routine call at 06.00 hours Phil Summers informed me that the Governor had said FIDF members were not to engage with the enemy under any circumstances, and they were to surrender when ordered to do so without offering any resistance."
Although there were no Royal Marine witnesses to the assault, British descriptions of the state of Moody Brook barracks afterwards contradict the Argentine version of events. After the Royal Marines were allowed to return to barracks to collect personal items. Norman describes walls of the barracks as riddled with machine gun fire and bearing the marks of white phosphorus grenades—"a classic houseclearing operation". The Argentines maintain that the barracks were destroyed in an air attack by Harriers from No. 1 Squadron RAF on 12 June 1982—involving Flight Lieutenant Mark Hare and Wing Commander Peter Squire—that killed three conscripts and wounded their commander Major José Rodolfo Banetta from the 10th Mechanized Infantry Brigade Headquarters Company.
Amphibious landing at Yorke Bay
There was a more pressing action on the eastern edge of Stanley. Twenty LVTP-7A1 Argentine tracked amphibious armoured personnel carriers from Lieutenant-Commander Carlos Alberto Cazzaniga's 1st Amphibious Vehicles Battalion, carrying D and E Companies of the 2nd Marine Infantry Battalion (BIM-2) from Puerto Belgrano, had been landed from the tank landing ship ARA Cabo San Antonio at Yorke Bay, and were being watched by a section of Royal Marines under the command of Lieutenant Bill Trollope. Two Argentine-built landing craft also took part in the landings later that morning and would fall into British hands at the end of the fighting in June.
The armoured column drove along the Airport Road into Stanley, with three Amtracs in the vanguard, and, near the Ionospheric Research Station, at exactly 7:15 a.m., was engaged by a section of Royal Marines with anti-tank rockets and machine guns. Lieutenant-Commander Hugo Santillán later wrote an official post-battle report.
We were on the last stretch of the road into Stanley. A machine-gun fired from one of the three white houses about 500 metres away and hit the right-hand Amtrac. The fire was very accurate. Then there were some explosions from a rocket launcher, but they were inaccurate, falling a long way from us. We followed our standard operating procedure and took evasive action. The Amtrac on the right returned fire and took cover in a little depression. Once he was out of danger, I told all three vehicles to disembark their men. I ordered the crew with the recoilless rifle to fire one round of hollow charge at the ridge of the roof of the house where the machine-gun was, to cause a bang but not an explosion. We were still following our orders not to inflict casualties. The first round was about a hundred metres short, but the second hit the roof. The British troops then threw a purple smoke grenade; I thought it was their signal to withdraw. They had stopped firing, so Commander Weinstabl started the movement of the two companies around the position. Some riflemen in one of the houses started firing then; that was quite uncomfortable. I couldn't pinpoint their location, but one of my other Amtracs could and asked permission to open up with a mortar which he had. I authorized this, but only with three rounds and only at the roofs of the houses. Two rounds fell short, but the third hit right in the centre of the roof; that was incredible. The British ceased firing then.
The Amtrac on the right manoeuvred itself off the road into a little depression and as it did so, disembarked the Marines inside—including one wounded, Private Horacio Tello—out of view. This encouraged the Royal Marines to think that Gibbs had scored a direct hit on the passenger compartment of the APC. According to Santillán, this vehicle took 97 rounds and another lost its tracks.