Article

2011-04-21 Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Israel 'supplied arms to Argentina during Falklands War'

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Posted by Bright Pebbles 2011-04-21 10:27|| || Front Page|| [1 views ] Top

#1 I'd be more concerned about Obama's personal vendetta. As another post down below points out, Obama.2011 has been something else--testy, petulant, impatient, arrogant and increasingly a divider. I wouldn't put it past the man to maneuver the Brits into a bad position and then leave them hanging in the wind.

Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.

Posted by Procopius2k 2011-04-21 13:00|| 2011-04-21 13:00|| Front Page Top

#2 Provided them with Exocet, have we?

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2011-04-21 13:39|| 2011-04-21 13:39|| Front Page Top

#3 Provided them with Exocet, have we?

The French sold Exocets to the Argentinians before hostilities broke out. Once fighting began, the French embargoed Argentine requests for replacements, which is probably why Argentina had to turn to Israel (presumably for the French items in Israel's inventory).

Posted by Zhang Fei 2011-04-21 13:57|| 2011-04-21 13:57|| Front Page Top

#4 Items dated to 1967, Zhang Fei?

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2011-04-21 17:54|| 2011-04-21 17:54|| Front Page Top

#5 Items dated to 1967, Zhang Fei?

Israel flew the Mirage III and a bootleg copy of the Mirage V. After the French embargo, the IAF continued flying both planes, presumably with bootleg Israeli parts (created from stolen or handed-over blueprints - depending on whom you believe) that would have been made available to Argentina, if the Israeli cabinet so chose.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2011-04-21 18:13|| 2011-04-21 18:13|| Front Page Top

#6 And how did Israel get into the business of bootlegging French aviation parts? The story of the Kfir (Israel's Mirage V clone) is an interesting one:

The development of this aircraft has been attributed to covert action on the part of Mossad. After General De Gaulle embargoed the sale of arms to Israel, the IAF feared that in the future it would no longer have an upper hand over its regional adversaries that were being re-equipped with more advanced Soviet aircraft. The bulk of the Israeli Air Force had been locked into the Mirage but was quickly facing problems because it had been severely depleted after the Six-Day War. They did not have a better alternative than the Mirage. Mossad was able to acquire the plans for the Mirage III, which were used directly in the design process of the Kfir aircraft series. The Israelis are unwilling to give details on how they acquired the enormous documentation that was needed. In a work of fiction carefully written in the style of a historical narrative, Mirage, James Follett estimates that the Israelis received 150,000 drawings of press tools, jigs and piece parts; 400 main airframe drawings; 50,000 instrumentation drawings; and 4000 engines drawings, in addition to some 50,000 documents covering testing and service specifications. This is probably close to the truth - and it gives an idea of the enormous scale of this espionage coup - but it seems likely that the Israelis received all that from a variety of sources, not from a single source as in James Follett's book. The engine drawings did come from a Jewish Swiss engineer named Albert Fraunknecht - re-named Albert Heinkein in James Follett's book - as the Swiss were building Mirages under a licence from Dassault, but the rest is conjectural. It has been speculated that part of the documents came from accomplices within the Dassault company itself, but nothing has ever been proved. Similarly, Dassault is rumored to have violated the embargo by providing the Israelis with two Mirage 5 airframes, something Dassault denies to this day. Only one thing is certain: James Follett was right to write that "in sheer volume of documentation, it was the biggest espionage coup in history, and will probably remain so."

Posted by Zhang Fei 2011-04-21 18:19|| 2011-04-21 18:19|| Front Page Top

#7 India apparently supplied spare parts for Dassault Ouragan fighters to Israel in the 1950's when Israel was facing sanctions.

Posted by john frum 2011-04-21 19:10|| 2011-04-21 19:10|| Front Page Top

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