As Al Haig’s shuttle diplomacy raced on, two further ships departed from Gibraltar to take their place in the ranks of Operation Corporate.
Frigates HMS Broadsword and HMS Yarmouth had actually left the Rock a couple of days earlier but returned to harbour to resupply and sailed again on Thursday 8 April.
Broadsword, which had been taking part in Exercise Spring Train, was a relatively new Type 22 frigate, closer to an old-style cruiser than the smaller, older Rothesay-class HMS Yarmouth, which was approaching the end of her Naval career.
Yarmouth had just set out on a deployment to the Far East when she was turned around at Gibraltar.
Both ships would go on to play important roles in the Conflict.
On the diplomatic front, Secretary of State Haig held talks with the British government in London on 8 April, but was preparing to fly to Buenos Aires for face-to-face talks with members of the ruling Argentine junta.
He would not have been able to have made the journey with Aerolíneas Argentinas, as the Argentine flag-carrier was barred from flying to and from the UK on 8 April – British Caledonian, the only UK airline with a scheduled route to Buenos Aires at that time, also suspended operations to Ezeiza airport and to Peru when the two South American countries closed their airspace to UK operators.
* These posts can only give a brief sense of what was a complex and fast-moving situation 40 years ago, and cannot cover the involvement of every ship, squadron and unit in detail – for a much more comprehensive account see naval-history.net at https://www.naval-history.net/NAVAL1982FALKLANDS.htm
Today’s image from the Imperial War Museum collection (© IWM MH 27578) shows Rothesay-class frigate HMS Yarmouth. To explore the IWM collection go to https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections
