British Victory at Stanley: Falklands War Ends

Argentine forces in Stanley surrendered to British Major General Jeremy Moore on June 14, 1982, ending the seventy-four-day Falklands War. The final battles for the hills surrounding the capital, fought over the previous three nights in freezing conditions, had broken the Argentine defensive line. Moore's signal to London read: "The Falkland Islands are once more under the government desired by their inhabitants. God Save the Queen." Argentina had invaded the Falkland Islands on April 2, catching Britain and most of the world off guard. General Leopoldo Galtieri's military junta, facing economic crisis and domestic unrest, gambled that seizing the islands, which Argentina calls the Malvinas and had claimed since the nineteenth century, would rally nationalist support and that Britain would not fight for a remote archipelago 8,000 miles from home. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher dispatched a naval task force within three days. The British campaign was an extraordinary logistical achievement. Operating at the extreme limit of their supply lines, with no nearby friendly bases and limited air cover, British forces landed at San Carlos Water on May 21 and fought their way across East Falkland over three weeks. The war cost 255 British and 649 Argentine lives. Argentine conscript soldiers, many of them poorly trained teenagers from tropical northern provinces, suffered from inadequate food, equipment, and leadership. Six British ships were sunk by Argentine air attacks, including HMS Sheffield and the transport Atlantic Conveyor. The defeat destroyed Galtieri's junta and accelerated Argentina's return to democracy in 1983. For Thatcher, the victory transformed her political fortunes. She had been Britain's least popular prime minister before the war and won a landslide reelection in 1983.