Malvinas: The War of Air and Water

At this point, the amount of things written, filmed and photographed about the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) tends toward infinity. The constant production of collective memory about what happened in the South Atlantic theater of operations and the direct consequences on the participants, families, and those who fell in the conflict is a genre in itself. It is intrinsically tied to the permanent memory of one of the most crucial events for our country in the 20th century, one that paradoxically took place in its final stretch.

But today I want to focus on a very specific part of the conflict: the air war. Among those of us who are more or less interested in the finer details of war (the battles, the tactics, the strategy), the dominant role played by Argentine soldiers who attacked the British fleet with aircraft is extremely well known. Names like Dagger, Super Etendard, A4 Skyhawk, Mirage, Pucara, and C-130 are part of that common language. This was largely due to the early sinking of the ARA General Belgrano, which cut off the possibility of safely deploying the Argentine naval fleet.

The outstanding results of the air campaign left a toll of eight ships sunk and over a dozen damaged, inflicting near-fatal damage on the enemy. There is even the controversy surrounding the HMS Invincible, a Task Force aircraft carrier that Argentine pilots claim to have hit, which Great Britain has always denied. All documents related to the case are classified for the rest of the century.

The work of Argentine pilots from both the Air Force and Naval Aviation was so impressive that it rewrote the rules of air-naval combat, establishing that a "lesser" force can inflict damage on a "greater" one if it has the right means. Consider a Super Etendard fighter jet crossing the sky at 1,000 km/h, barely five meters above the waves to avoid radar detection, suddenly releasing an Exocet missile that strikes a 150,000-ton warship head-on.

That is why today I bring three works that explain all of this in three different formats, while also representing an evolution in how to present known information and thus multiply its audience reach. A book, a comic, and a documentary.

Exocet, by Emilio Villarino (1982)

I owe my entire understanding of the heroic feat carried out by Argentine soldiers to this book. Essentially, it rescues the radio communications from every air mission that attacked the enemy in the Malvinas and transforms them into a book. It is a crucial document where all the names that give substance to the history of the war in the air appear. It is ground zero for the construction of air combat memory.

The book has two editions, both quite old, that can be found on MercadoLibre. I also have a special fondness for it because I read it one summer in Puerto Madryn, surrounded by the same landscape that makes up the Islands and the settings where the war was fought. It recounts crucial episodes, for example how Air Force engineers managed to adapt surface-to-air missiles into air-to-ground missiles in just two weeks so they could be launched from moving aircraft, something that was never part of their original design.

Malvinas: el cielo es de los halcones (Malvinas: The Sky Belongs to the Hawks), by Nestor Barron and Walther Taborda (2010)

Taborda and Barron fulfill every kid's dream. The information that Villarino compiled, organized, and canonized in Exocet becomes the base material here to tell the story of the pilots who carried out each feat. With absolutely stunning artwork, the comic is an excellent introduction or a great resource to get children, nephews, or friends who are allergic to reading into the Malvinas story.

The comic was first published in France, I imagine partly because of the interest in making young French people aware of the not-insignificant detail that the greatest damage inflicted on the Royal Navy since World War II was done with a French aircraft and a French missile. On top of France's great tradition of promoting comics as a cultural medium. In Argentina, it was only published in 2020 and can be found at any comic book store. You can also read an excellent interview with its authors in Revista Paco.

1982: Malvinas, la Guerra desde el Aire (1982: Malvinas, the War from the Air), by Cesar Turturro (2009)

Finally, the definitive documentary about the air war. A gem, a television masterpiece. Originally broadcast on History Channel, it achieved its ultimate success when it reached YouTube.

From first-person interviews with the pilots to 3D animations that visually and intuitively explain the feats of our soldiers, it is exactly the same information as Exocet and Malvinas: el cielo es de los halcones but in documentary format, with animations that perfectly explain each operation. Truly a luxury, and that is why it is about to reach 4 million views on YouTube, being a machine for creating respect for the work of our combatants.

The only thing missing to close the cycle is a Top Gun-style movie but about Malvinas. With that, we would guarantee that the next ten generations of Argentines know about the feats of our combat pilots and the thousands of tons of British steel sleeping on the seabed of the South Atlantic.