British nuclear weapons and the Falklands War

The British War Cabinet never contemplated the use of nuclear weapons but the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, may have done so separately when considering how she would respond to a serious defeat.

Four of the British Royal Navy warships which were sent to the South Atlantic following the invasion of the Falklands initially carried a total of thirty nuclear depth bombs as part of their standard armament.

The War Cabinet decided on 8 April 1982 to have these weapons removed but reluctantly reversed this decision three days later due to the impracticality of offloading the depth bombs at that time.

The British government decided to retake the Falklands and very rapidly assembled and dispatched a task force of Royal Navy warships to begin this process.

[1][2][3] The military campaign was very risky for the British as the forces which could be deployed to the South Atlantic were not significantly superior to the Argentine defenders and it was difficult to sustain them at such a distance from the UK.

[15] The Royal Navy considered the existence of the WE.177A nuclear depth bombs to be a sensitive issue and they were first officially disclosed as part of the 1981 Defence White Paper.

[16] In 1967 the British government signed the Treaty of Tlatelolco which established a nuclear-weapon-free zone across Latin America and the nearby waters, including the Falkland Islands.

In June 1978 the British government issued a "Negative Security Assurance" as part of a process overseen by the United Nations' Special Session on Disarmament.

[16] On 27 April Viscount Trenchard, the Minister for Defence Procurement, stated in the House of Lords that "categorically ... there is no question at all of our using nuclear weapons in this dispute".

[28] A key issue underpinning the government's and public's views was a perception that the use of these extremely powerful weapons would have been grossly disproportionate to the threat Argentina posed to the UK.

While endorsing Freedman's conclusion that the War Cabinet did not consider the use of nuclear weapons, they stated that the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, had probably done so separately.

Hennessy and Jinks' source was the former Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence, Sir Michael Quinlan, who had stated in a 2013 BBC interview that Thatcher told him after the war that she would have considered using nuclear weapons had the British forces faced defeat.

[36] While some of the nuclear depth bombs could have been offloaded from warships at Portsmouth, this could not be done covertly and the unloading process would disrupt work to prepare other ships to deploy given that all major activities needed to cease in a 270-metre (890 ft) radius while the weapons were being moved.

He did not believe that they would be necessary and had no plans for them to be used, but thought it was desirable to have the weapons at hand in case the Soviet Union intervened in the war and its submarines attacked the British force.

[44] One option involved transferring the active and inert depth bombs stored on board frigates to the aircraft carriers or RFA ships where they would be less vulnerable.

[44] Due to the difficulty of offloading the nuclear depth bombs, the War Cabinet agreed on 11 April that they should be retained on board the task force's ships.

Thatcher stressed that the ships carrying nuclear weapons must not come within 3 miles (4.8 km) of the Falkland Islands as this could breach the terms of the Treaty of Tlatelolco.

The remainder of the nuclear depth bombs on board Resource and a training round were transferred to RFA Regent on 15 May before the former ship detached from the task force's aircraft carrier battle group to operate near the Falklands.

[43] The sinking of several British warships by Argentine aircraft in late May led to concerns over the consequences of a ship carrying nuclear weapons being attacked.

[43] This was after the end of the war, and at this time Hermes was the only carrier operating near the Falklands as Invincible was undergoing a period of maintenance at sea 3,000 miles (4,800 km) to the north east of the islands.

[38] Both RFA vessels unloaded their cargos of nuclear depth bombs and surveillance and training rounds at HMNB Devonport on the day of their arrival in the UK.

[51] Shortly after the Argentine invasion of the Falklands, the BBC World Service incorrectly reported that the nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarine HMS Resolution was operating off Argentina.

[52] In August 1984 New Statesman magazine published an article claiming that the British government had considered using one of the Royal Navy's ballistic missile submarines to attack the mainland of Argentina.

[31] The First Sea Lord during the Falklands War, Admiral Sir Henry Leach, stated that "we did not contemplate a nuclear attack and did not make any preparatory moves for such action" and that the ballistic missile submarines remained in their usual patrol areas.

[73] Following the Falklands War British ministers considered whether Royal Navy warships should continue to routinely carry nuclear depth bombs.

[74] Eric Grove, a naval historian and defence analyst, wrote in 1987 that it had been decided to "keep the stockpile [of nuclear depth bombs] ashore during peacetime".

[14] In contrast, defence commentator and historian Norman Polmar stated in 2007 that Royal Navy ships continued to carry nuclear depth bombs until the weapons were retired in 1993.

The Indo-Canadian political scientist T. V. Paul commented on this issue in the conclusions of a 1995 article focused on the implications of non-use of nuclear weapons in the Falklands and Yom Kippur Wars.

[80] In 1989 Evan Luard, a British international relations writer and former Labour member of parliament and Social Democratic Party politician, reached a similar conclusion.

He stated that while international relations theories hold that the ability of nuclear weapons to deter conflict is greatest when one country has them and the other does not, the Falklands War was one of several examples that demonstrated that this was not actually the case.