2 April 1982.

In a desperate attempt to remain in power, the Argentinian junta decides to go to war over a trivial, ancient dispute: the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands.

A group of small islands—more like a gigantic sheep pasture than an ideal human habitat—about 400 miles off the East coast of Argentina, the Falklands offered General Galtieri’s military junta a tempting way out of an escalating domestic crisis. Armed British response, after all, was unlikely, since Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Government had been hacking the defense budget for years.

How wrong would that calculation prove.