[Tomvart]

Another (almost) casualty of the Falklands was the Defence Secretary John Nott.

He was the 'public face' of the 1981 cuts referred to by CliveH, I would have thought that Thatcher was pulling the strings in the background though.

Anyway - that announcement opened the door to the Falklands as far as Galtieri and Co were concerned........in my opinion Carrington just made sure that the door to the Falklands was left well and truly ajar........by doing nothing about the enormous amount of intelligence the FCO received on the Argentinian build up!

I recall seeing Notts ugly 'mug' on TV in 1981 when he announced the huge swathes of proposed defence cuts - the majority of which fell again on the RN. I was alongside in HMNB Chatham (in the frigate HMS Achilles at the time) - I can safely say that every soul on-board that ship (probably the whole Naval base) despised him at that time and the air was 'blue' in our messdeck.

The planned 'Nott' cuts originally included:

Scrapping HMS Endurance,
Reducing Frigate/Destroyer hulls down to 50 (from 60)
Selling or putting into reserve the RN Amphib. HMS Intrepid & Fearless
Selling HMS Invincible with no replacement
HMNB Chatham to be closed
Type 43 and Type 44 destroyer projects cancelled
Sea Dart MkII SAM project cancelled
Reducing RN manpower by 10,000

No wonder the Argentinians were encouraged!

I think he actually resigned after the Argies invaded - but 'the milk snatcher' was having non of it - and made him stay on, I think he went quietly after the conflict to be replaced by 'Tarzan' Heseltine.

Delighted to see that he was knighted for helping to get so many British and Argentinian servicemen killed in the conflict.