Page 36 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

676 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

Even Military Survey succumbed one year with a tasking for Exercise Nifty Ski that
involved digitising all the contours on Swiss mapping to an impossibly tight time frame.
Hence, when the Military Survey duty officer received a call in the early hours of 1
April1982 to say that Britain was going to send a Task Force to evict the Argentinean
scrap metal dealers that had landed illegally on South Georgia, his first reaction was one
of scepticism. Fortunately he investigated, for the attack by Argentinean amphibious
forces on 2 April confirmed that this was no joke and Military Survey was thrown into a
period of sustained geographic support.
This paper describes the products that were available at the time of the invasion and
then details the products that were provided to support the Task Force and its reclamation
of the islands. The author is indebted to Lieutenant-Colonel John Himbury and Mrs Liz
Manterfield in particular for their published accounts and memories of the time.

Background
Responsibility for providing Geographic Intelligence, including land maps and
aeronautical charts, to the Forces in 1982 was vested in the MOD’s Directorate of Military
Survey. The headquarters was based at Feltham, alongside the production capability, the
Mapping and Charting Establishment, Royal Engineers (MCE (RE)). The Map Library,
a worldwide collection of maps and charts, was 11 miles away at Tolworth whilst 8 Map
and Chart Depot RE at Guildford stored bulk stocks of mapping. The uniformed element
of Military Survey, 42 Survey Regiment RE (which included the War Reserve Map
Depot), was based at Barton Stacey and was able to provide additional production and
printing resources, as well as survey and map supply detachments. Although not strictly
correct, unless it is important to distinguish which part of the organisation had a key
role, for the sake of simplicity this paper refers to all the elements as ‘Military Survey’.

Products in existence at the start of Operation CORPORATE
Military Survey had not planned for an invasion of the Falkland Islands by Argentina.
During the Cold War it was a low priority area in terms of requirements and allocation
of survey and map production resources had been minimal. There were no contingency
plans stating the coverage and scales of maps required for the area, no maps in the War
Reserve Depot, and no medium or large scale military maps. Even the Library, usually
regarded as MOD’s insurance policy for mapping, had a limited collection of maps of
South America and the Falkland Islands and was considering relocating them to an off-
site store so that the space could be utilised for mapping of higher priority areas.
During the Second World War there had been a Garrison on the Islands which had
included Royal Engineers and, for a short time, a Topographic Section from 14 Field
Survey Company RE. They established the Sapper Hill 1943 datum and produced some
maps at 1:25,000 scale.
At the start of any crisis, the first request is for a general map of the country to establish
its location and principal points. All that was available for the Falkland Islands was the
Operational Navigation Chart at a scale of 1:1 million produced by the Americans in