>>64180283

Actually I was wrong and misremembered they did take off from the mainland but they had Port Stanley Airport (not RAF Mount Pleasant which wasn't even built yet) open and available as a diversion base if say theoretically they had to get in an extended air engagement and burn a lot of fuel or in another purely theoretical exercise if a Mirage IIIE piloted by Capt.Cuerva of Air Grupo 8 was damaged by a sidewinder missile at 4:10 pm on May 1st 1982 and diverted to Port Stanley.

As to why they weren't actually stationed there it wasn't because the runway was some tiny zambian dirt airstrip it was a pristine 4,000ft tarmac runway designed for narrow body jet airliners. The reason they didn't operate fast jets from it was because it only had a small apron for at best a handful of jets and was an overall very cramped for combat operations. You don't want extremely valuable fighter aircraft sitting tightly packed together along with fuel trucks, starter carts, etc. on an apron. Literally 6 hours before the may 1st air battle Sea Harriers shwacked the apron and other base facilities with BL-755 cluster bombs and Vulcan bombing raids on Argentinian positions in the Falklands were announced like a week before this point.

Capcha HPH82