Casemate Publishers is distributing the latest installment of the Helion & Company’s Latin America @ War series, which focuses on the combat actions of the Super Etendard during the Falkland War in 1982. “Handbrake!” was the code word used by the British Task Force when an Exocet attack was identified on their radars.

The book is organized in a chronological order, with the first chapters devoted to the acquisition and limited training of the Argentinean pilots in France (in late 1980 and through 1981). At the outbreak of the conflict, France halted the delivery of aircrafts, pilot training and Exocet missiles - only 5 were delivered. Although some limited technical support was still provided in the early phases of the war by French technicians in Argentina, before they left to go back to France.

The next few chapters describe in detail the planning and method - developed by the Squadron- for combat missions with the Etendards. These rely heavily on long range patrol aircraft (provided by Neptune’s of the Argentinean Navy) which were on the end of their service life). A combat mission will launch only upon positive identification of a target, although this approach was not always supported (or tolerated) by the Admirals in the Argentinean Navy, who in some cases wanted to launch attacks on suspected targets, even if not positively identified.

Following the tactics developed by the Squadron, airplanes were launched on 5 occasions, although in two of the sorties they failed to locate the target. On the remaining three missions, they located the target and sunk them in two of the missions (HMS Sheffield and SS Atlantic Conveyor).

In the last mission, they located the British Fleet and launched the last Exocet missile. The book takes an in-depth analysis of what might have happened during that attack, in which Air Force Skyhawks were also involved. It is not completely clear - due to the “fog of war”- exactly what happened to the last missile but likely was confused by the chaff released by the British Task Force and eventually ran out of fuel.

The book describes a potential nighttime mission that the Argentinean Admiralty wanted to launch on a non-confirmed target -strongly opposed by the Squadron Commander who refused the comply with the order. The following morning the target was found to be a Soviet trawler near the area of operations.

The authors have done an impressive work of putting together different declassified documents (from both British and Argentinean archives) and first-hand interviews with combatants from both sides to present a full picture of the historical events.

The Squadron lost no pilot nor aircraft to enemy action. They were never even fired upon. Not even a fuel tank was dropped. They spent less than 20 minutes in the enemy radars while sinking two targets. The level of effort deployed by the British Task Force to prevent further hits was disproportionate relative to the small size of the attack squadron (4 planes, 5 missiles, 10 pilots) which proved that a small force of highly trained pilots with modern equipment can seriously hit a much larger naval task force changing forever modern naval warfare.

Surprisingly, or perhaps due to internal factions within the Argentinean Navy, most of the pilots of the Squadron never reached the rank of Admiral.

In my humble opinion, this is the best account of the Second Naval Fighter and Attack Squadron of the Argentinean Navy during the Falklands War.

I would like to thank Casemate Publisher, Helion and IPMS/USA for the review sample.