Reply To: South America

[Carlos69]

If you search for Operation Soberania you’ll see that the Argentinian army had plans to storm the the Andean passes. Given that Chile’s intelligence services knew what was coming, I wouldn’t have fancied their chances. Chile was able to put its forces on alert and even dynamited a couple of mountain passes.

The plan involved taking the Beagle Channel islands,  along with simultaneous thrusts through Patagonia  and through the Andean passes. Argentina was actually planning to take Santiago. Meanwhile their northern corps under Galtieri was to adopt a defensive posture against any possible intervention by Brazil.The CoS for the Argentinian army , controversially, gave an interview in which he expressed his belief that Argentina would have lost. In the end it was poor weather on the day that stopped the Argentine fleet from sortying.

Somewhere here I have a very good piece from a Brazilian military history magazine which goes into considerable detail on the whole thing. On a related note there’s a superb Chilean film on the  phoney war along the Patagonian border Mi mejor enemigo ( My Best Enemy). Well worth watching:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9hpLhhVD2I&list=PL855D1B78E80B476E