“I also said I wanted 20 more Blowpipe AA missiles and these were promised but never arrived,” he said. He claimed in his statement that he did not receive the extra air raid ammunition requested before the operation. Green wrote: “I was not too happy about the operation and felt that it was ill-advised to send an LSL round unescorted, and to remain there without protection for at least one day if not two seemed to me to be folly … The whole operation struck me as being hastily mounted without sufficient thought or planning.”

He further described the operation as “hastily mounted without sufficient thought or planning”. Green, who died in 2009 aged 74, recalled in his statement how he had raised concerns two days before the ill-fated operation about the lack of protection being afforded to the two landing vessels against potential attacks from the Argentinian air force. In the released account, given 10 days after the attack, Capt Robin Green, who commanded Sir Tristram, recounts in a six-page statement how he had strongly warned against the “folly” of the attempted landing of men via his ship and Sir Galahad. One key statement has now been disclosed after a freedom of information request by Crispin Black, a retired colonel who was among the survivors of the attacks on Sir Galahad and who has since written a book about the events of the day, Too Thin for a Shroud. The documents are due to remain sealed until 2065 despite efforts since by MPs on behalf of the survivors to find out more. Some in the military and elsewhere later blamed the Welsh guards who were on the ships for not disembarking quickly enough.Ī trove of witnesses statements and summaries put before the inquiry were not made public at the time, nor since, as the government said they had been given in confidence. An official board of inquiry, held in private, found in September 1982 that the tragedy in the freezing waters between Bluff Cove and Fitzroy, west of the capital, Stanley, was not due to “error” but could be put down to the “ordinary chances of war”.

Green rider book 8