Getting targettng information from reconnaissance to all the attacking units would have been quite a trick.Piecemeal attacks would have been RN defeated in detail[As it was.].

Its easy to ex post facto what the Argentinians could have tried from an armchair, but as I see it from this far remove, I'm frankly astonished that both sides achieved so much against each other, with the limited means they had.

Especially the Argentinians, they did far more damage than anyone expected. Its am glib bunch of commentators who criticize their air force's professionalism or commitment.

Strictly blind man's bluff around the Falklands it was with both sides groping for each other using radar and sonar; it was a  well fought air/sea campaign by both sides given the mutual technical inadequacies, the geography, the weather and the logistics.

What did you expect the Argentinians to do?  Have OTH radar and  maritime patrol bombers?

They didn't have that, nor did they have a Russian style naval command structure that could coordinate surface air and submarine strikes. Not even the Russians ever figured out how to make that complicated nonsense work.

Herald
 

Had she been with the Belgrano, Conqueror would have sunk her.

Had she left port, she would have been sunk. (We had an SSN watching her - they asked if they could sink her but Thatcher decided against, as she was not a threat.)

Had she been at sea at the start of the conflict, but not with Belgrano, she also would have been sunk.  It would have simply taken longer.  She would have been a priority target, and could have been attacked either by SSN, Harrier, or ship-launched Exocet.

The topic doesn't make sense.  25 de Mayo was operational and did sortie.

The long and short of it is that the Argentinians wanted to do a 3-pronged strike on the battlegroup.  The three prongs consisted of a group centered on the Belgrano, a group of destroyers and frigates, and a group centered on 25 de Mayo.

The whole thing turned into a debacle.  25 de Mayo tried to launch Skyhawks, but couldn't get enough wind over the deck due to calm weather and her engineering problems.  Between that and the sinking of the Belgrano, the Argentines lost the stomach for it and didn't sortie their fleet again.

If you mean, what if 25 de Mayo had been in better material condition and had been able to make enough knots to launch aircraft, the outcome would probably not have been vastly different.  In the event, her Skyhawks were able to operate from land, so her aircraft contribution wouldn't have made much of a difference one way or the other.  The only way she could have affected the outcome is if she had carried a worthwhile air to air fighter, because then the Argentinians would have had a fighter that had the range to really threaten the Harriers.  But the Skyhawks weren't going to make much difference whether launched from land or from the little CV.

Had she kept at sea, and somehow amazingly evaded being sunk, she would have been a very real threat.  Not because of air-air fighters, but because her strike aircraft would be able to reach our carriers - which tended to hide down in the South East, out of range of Argentinian aircraft from the mainland.

Are you sure thats accurate? I read a report on it that sad the british sub never saw  the carrier. and what about the S-2 ASW aircraft?they could have attempted to use S-2s escorted by skyhawks.

Jessmo, as best I recall the carrier was docked in port, with the SSN waiting outside.