Page 60 - Demo

60were flying from Stanley within 24 hours of the first attack and that theycontinued to operate from there throughout the campaign.Sir John Curtiss. I think that that point will be adequately addressedduring this afternoon%u2019s presentations, so perhaps we could leave it untilthen.Unidentified. Was the British government expecting a landing in theFalklands, or did it really come as a surprise?Sir John Curtiss. Did we expect the Argentineans to invade? No, Idon%u2019t think that we did, but some would say that the Foreign Office wasalmost desperate to get rid of the Falklands and didn%u2019t really care. Theywere about to withdraw Endurance and every other signal that they sentto the Argentineans indicated that the British weren%u2019t terribly interested.I am pretty certain that General Galtieri and his team thought they wouldhave a walkover. I think that they anticipated a lot of diplomatic activitybut that the whole thing would quietly die away and the Falklands wouldbe theirs. I am sure that that would have been their appreciation of thesituation and our Foreign Office had clearly done nothing to disabusethem of that idea.AVM David Niven. I was a squadron leader at the time and the AirAdviser to Peter de la Billiere, the Director of the Special Air Service. Idon%u2019t have a question, but I would like to make a point, to do withoperational security. We have heard that Sir Kenneth Hayr kepteverything pretty close to his chest and exercised the %u2018need to know%u2019principle rigidly, and I can assure you that Peter de la Billiere did exactlythe same. As a result, I came into conflict with Sir Kenneth on a numberof occasions over the %u2018need to know%u2019 principle. I always felt thatwhenever I approached Sir Kenneth, or others, asking for resources, Ialways got them but that it was always at the expense of some otheroperation. If we had shared some information, particularly between theSpecial Air Service and Sir Kenneth, we might have avoided interferingwith other plans which were equally essential to the campaign. The riderto this is that Sir Kenneth and I discussed this after the Falklandscampaign and I know that he applied the lessons learned when it came tothe Gulf War in 1991 and he was DCDS(C).