Page 37 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

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1965. At this scale the Islands covered less than 2% of the sheet and showed little detail.
The Directorate of Overseas Surveys (DOS) had produced a larger scale product at 1:643
000, DOS 906 in 1966 which was a more manageable size and showed more detail.
At the planning scale, Military Survey had produced a 1:250,000 Joint Operations
Graphic (JOG) as part of a joint production programme with America. Field Marshal
Viscount Slim famously said that in his experience every battle took place at the junction
of map sheets. Well, the Falklands, despite their small size, were at the junction of 4
sheets and to complicate matters further - 2 grid zones! The islands fell across longitude
60° W which was the junction of two zones of the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM)
grid referencing system. The significance of the grid junction is that a single location
could have two different grid references depending on the grid zone being used. DOS
had also produced a two sheet series at 1:250,000 in 1964-65 and revised in 1977 but the
1971 JOG with its standard specification and grid was preferred for military use.
There were two series of civil maps at larger scales. The 1:50,000 DOS 453 maps
had been produced by the DOS as part of their responsibility to the Ministry of Overseas
Development. This series was in 29 sheets and produced in 1961-2, based on 1956 aerial
photography. Most sheets were ¼ degree by ½ degree in size though 7 were larger and
would not fit onto NATO size printing presses. Although the information on the maps
was 20 years old, there had been little development on the islands so they were still
reasonably accurate. In 1979 a second edition of sheets 14 and 15 had been produced,
the latter to show Stanley airfield. The series had been constructed on the Transverse
Mercator projection but did not have gridlines, only grid ticks in the neatlines of the
map. DOS had extended the grid zone right across the islands to avoid the inconvenience
of the grid junction mentioned earlier. This created the nightmare scenario of using two
map series -1:50,000 and JOGs - across the same area with different grid zones and
therefore different grid references. The other large scale series consisted of two sheets
at 1:2,500 over Stanley, also produced by DOS in 1966. It lacked contours and only
covered a small area.
Nautical charts were of course required and these were provided by the Royal Navy’s
Hydrographic Office. Nautical charts suffered similar problems to air charts and land
maps with some of the bathymetry on the smaller scale charts dating back to Fitzroy’s
survey 150 years earlier. Fortunately Brigadier Julian Thompson’s HQ possessed
detailed knowledge of the coastline of the Falklands in the person of Major Ewen
Southby-Tailyour, who was specially attached. A keen single-handed yachtsman and
artist, he had served in the Falklands for a year spending a lot of his time doing detailed
beach and coastal surveys and charting creeks, inlets and bays in the Falklands (of which
there are 10,000). He had written a manuscript which in December 1981 he had sent to
various publishing houses. Sadly, as there were no yachts or inshore fishing boats in the
area, there appeared to be no market for the book and it had been returned with regrets.
Fourteen weeks later because of the crisis the MOD impounded the manuscript and
classified it “Top Secret”! Southby-Tailyour’s manuscript and memory proved important
planning tools for the retaking of the Islands.