Qualla: Bluff Cove Air Attacks

Bluff Cove Air Attacks: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ken Griffiths, CC BY-SA 4.0. The men were waiting below decks, packed into a steel hull with no escort overhead, when the Skyhawks came in low over Port Pleasant. It was the middle of the afternoon on 8 June 1982, and the Welsh Guards aboard RFA Sir Galahad had spent six hours loading equipment while their captain begged to sail the mission another night. The concession he was given changed nothing. Three 500-pound bombs struck the ship in seconds. In the inferno that followed, 48 men died aboard the Galahad - and the photographs of survivors being winched from the burning vessel became the defining images of the Falklands War.

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Image: Ken Griffiths | CC BY-SA 4.0

Bluff Cove Air Attacks: A Plan Built on Bad Luck

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mk._81,_Mk._82_Bombs_(2834533691).jpg: Cliff from I now live in Arlington, VA (Outside Washington DC), USA derivative work: JasperO, CC BY-SA 2.0. By the first week of June, Major General Jeremy Moore had the troops he needed to assault Stanley - but no way to move them. The container ship Atlantic Conveyor had been sunk weeks earlier, taking most of the British heavy-lift helicopters down with her. That left a single RAF C...

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Image: Mk._81,_Mk._82_Bombs_(2834533691).jpg: Cliff from I now live in Arlington, VA (Outside Washington DC), USA derivative work: JasperO | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bluff Cove Air Attacks: Spotted from the Hills

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mk._81,_Mk._82_Bombs_(2834533691).jpg: Cliff from I now live in Arlington, VA (Outside Washington DC), USA derivative work: JasperO, CC BY-SA 2.0. The attack did not come by chance. Argentine commandos of 602 Commando Company had worked their way onto the high ground around Mount Harriet, and from there they saw the ships sitting at anchor off Fitzroy. They called it in. At Rio Gallegos and Rio Grande on the mainland, Skyha...

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Image: Mk._81,_Mk._82_Bombs_(2834533691).jpg: Cliff from I now live in Arlington, VA (Outside Washington DC), USA derivative work: JasperO | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bluff Cove Air Attacks: Fourteen Hundred Hours

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mk._81,_Mk._82_Bombs_(2834533691).jpg: Cliff from I now live in Arlington, VA (Outside Washington DC), USA derivative work: JasperO, CC BY-SA 2.0. At around two in the afternoon, five A-4 Skyhawks of Grupo 5 fell on the anchorage. Three targeted Sir Galahad; the bombs released by First Lieutenant Carlos Cachon found their mark. The ship erupted. Of the 48 men killed aboard her, 32 were Welsh Guardsmen, eleven were other arm...

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Image: Mk._81,_Mk._82_Bombs_(2834533691).jpg: Cliff from I now live in Arlington, VA (Outside Washington DC), USA derivative work: JasperO | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bluff Cove Air Attacks: The Faces of the War

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mk._81,_Mk._82_Bombs_(2834533691).jpg: Cliff from I now live in Arlington, VA (Outside Washington DC), USA derivative work: JasperO, CC BY-SA 2.0. Among the wounded was a young Welsh Guardsman named Simon Weston, who survived burns covering nearly half his body. He would endure dozens of operations over the following decades and become one of the most recognisable veterans of the conflict. Years later, in a documentary film...

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Image: Mk._81,_Mk._82_Bombs_(2834533691).jpg: Cliff from I now live in Arlington, VA (Outside Washington DC), USA derivative work: JasperO | CC BY-SA 2.0