I think Airhead is joking.
BTW, the Argie ship was called the Belgrano. There was controversy at the time in Britain, because she was sailing away from the Islands and was 'out of the combat zone'.
However, I would say that if the U.S. had supplied AIM-9L Sidewinders and satellite intelligence to Argentina rather than Britain, then the outcome could have been much different.
Yes, and if the US had supplied a couple of tactical nukes to Argentina the outcome would have been much different. What a bizarre point to make. What's the deal with Americans trying to take credit for every damn little thing?
And why should the US support some South American dictatorship against its supposedly 'oldest and most valuable ally'?
As it was, Argentina did pretty well given that they only had 6 Exocets and had to jury-rig them to even be able to fire them from aircraft (France cut off support before the missiles were made fully operational). If they had gotten the British carrier (they came very close with their daring Exocet sneak attack), the British would have needed a U.S. carrier to save their butts or they would have been slaughtered by Argentine air power.
Yes they did pretty well. They invaded an island right off their coastline belonging to a nation a fraction of the size and several thousand miles of Atlantic Ocean away. They did pretty well apart from the 3000 casualties versus the few hundred British ones. They did pretty well against a British force that had no helicopter transport, was low on supplies and that had to fight a pitched battle after marching 50k in hostile, open terrain.
The fighting was quite brutal. American Mercenaries and American trained Argentinian special forces were present. The American mercenaries were executed according to some accounts ('Excursion to Hell' is a book by a former Para that was the subject of a war crimes investigation after its publication).
The Falklands War was an unmitigated disaster for the Argentinians.
