The Scandal of The French Supplied “exocet” Missiles

H.M.S. Sheffield ablaze she sank six days later, with 20 dead and 24 seriously injured sailors.

Rescue ships attended quickly and the dead and dying sailors were rowed ashore for medical treatment.  The Sheffield continued to burn for 6 more days such was the ferocity of the fires.  Eventually the warship sunk and was declared a total loss.

Drastic action was needed to try to counter this sophisticated missile.  Helicopter pilots volunteered to take picket-duty which involved hovering their helicopters around British warships in the hope that an Exocet missile would strike them and not the warships.  This was indeed heroic but a suicide mission for sure.

The British public (Including my family) were outraged.  As a nation we understood the horrors of war and deaths were the price paid by Airmen, Soldiers and Sailors.  What the British people couldn’t accept and didn’t accept was anymore Exocet missiles being sold to Argentina when Britain was engaged in a war over the sovereignty of its land and the freedom of its people.

France issued a statement that it would not supply Argentina with anymore Exocet missiles, however that was not true!  Margaret Thatcher ordered the Secret Services of Britain to make sure France didn’t sell Argentina these missiles.

H.M.S. Sheffield moments after the Exocet missile strike.

The full text of these operations is only now just coming out as the secrecy priority has been reduced.  It is claimed by our secret services, that France was selling the Exocet missile systems to Peruvian arms dealers who were immediately selling them on to Argentina!

By using a middle man France appeared to not helping an enemy of Britain but secretly they were enjoying the financial gain of supply arms to Argentina. British secret services thought up a “Sting” operation, they set special agents up as arms dealers operating out of Peru.  They supplied the agents with false I.D.s and plenty of cash to pose as well to do arms dealers.

There were rumours of Britain buying up Exocet weapons that had been sold to middle east countries as well.  It was a world wide operation to stop Argentina having possession of these state of the art missiles.  One more Exocet missile was fired in the Falklands war which damaged another British warship the “Glamorgan” however due to excellent fire-fighting the ship was saved.

My feelings on this subject are strong I remembered the shocking images of British sailors burning to death being shown on the news.  I am not so naive to believe it is only France that profits from arms sales.  Britain has a history of producing weapons of all kinds and shipping them around the world.

I suppose it hurt the British people more because of the two World Wars when Britain along with her allies saved France from being a German state!  Only to be repaid 37 years later by France supplying Britain’s enemy with a weapon we had no defence against! 

We do now have a defence system against missile attacks to our warships.  Its nick-named “The wall of lead” the system is a much up rated version of the “Gatling gun” which fires bullets at such an incredible rate of fire the missile impacts the lead bullets and explodes. 

I feel this historical episode confirms that some people value money over anything including life itself!  What a sad state of affairs between Britain and France considering we are linked by a railway tunnel and only separated by 22 miles of sea.

Lord Banks