Falkland Islands: Explosions and Breakthroughs

Suddenly, a bridgehead became a blitzkrieg last week in the embattled Falkland Islands. Members of Britain's Parachute Regiment moved rapidly out of their hard-won corner of East Falkland near the settlement of Port San Carlos, taken by invasion only a week earlier, and descended 20 miles south near the settlement of Darwin. Using helicopters to hop across the boggy ground, the crack British troops confronted an Argentine garrison once estimated at about 600. There were reports of sharp fighting, and then the British Defense Ministry tersely announced that Her Majesty's troops had captured both Darwin and the neighboring settlement of Goose Green, site of an important airfield. Said Defense Ministry Spokesman Ian McDonald: "The Argentines suffered casualties, and some prisoners were taken." British casualties, said McDonald, were light.

Meanwhile, British Royal Marine commandos, backed by 7.8-ton Scorpion tanks, which move with relative ease through swampy areas, had begun their own breakout from the beachhead. Traveling eastward from Port San Carlos, they were moving along roads that were no more than rutted tracks toward the Falklands capital of Port Stanley, 50 miles away. Their aim: to launch an attack on some 7,500 troops dug in around the settlement, the bulk of the force that precipitated the South Atlantic crisis with their own invasion of the bleak islands on April 2.

The British troops were maintaining radio silence, and the Defense Ministry was keeping a tight control on what it blandly called "offensive land operations." Nonetheless, the dual attack showed signs of being a classic pincer movement. The outnumbered 5,000-man British force was relying on surprise and mobility to take the battle to the enemy. Only a day after British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher told the House of Commons that "our troops are moving forward," the British had taken a long stride toward the goal of winning the fierce, stubborn and frustrating war for possession of the Falklands.

In Buenos Aires, the government of Argentine President Leopoldo Fortunate Galtieri was slow to admit the recapture of Darwin or the general thrust of the British advance. Instead, the junta announced that a raid by British troops in helicopters had been repelled at Darwin, near Goose Green, the second largest settlement in the sparsely populated Falklands, and that a Harrier had been shot down at Port Stanley. Insisted Brigadier General Basilic Lami Dozo, commander of the Argentine air force: "The battle is going well for us. We have our capacity intact."

But the battle did not seem to be going well for Argentina, and at the very least a ferocious war had entered yet another stage—the British were poised for a major assault, and perhaps a bloody one, on Port Stanley.