Falklands War Campaign - Battle of Mount Tumbledown

DATE: 24/10/2024

TIME (GMT): 18:00

ERA: Cold War

MAP(S): Falklands

TYPE: COOP

GAME: Arma 3

EVENT: Official

AUTHOR(S): Sclembi for Brothers in Arms

SLOTS: 62 / 75

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RATING: (5)

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The Battle of Mount Tumbledown was an engagement during the Falklands War. The engagement was an attack by the British Army and the Royal Marines on the heights overlooking Stanley, the Falkland Islands capital. Mount Tumbledown, Mount William and Sapper Hill lie west of the capital. Due to their proximity to the capital, they were of strategic importance during the 1982 War.

The attacking British forces consisted of the 2nd Battalion, Scots Guards (2SG), mortar detachments from 42 Commando, Royal Marines and the 1st Battalion, 7th Duke of Edinburgh's Own Gurkha Rifles (1/7 GR), as well as support from a troop of the Blues and Royals equipped with two Scorpion and two Scimitar armoured vehicles.

At 9 p.m., half an hour after the start of the diversionary attack, Major Iain Dalzel-Job's G Company started its advance of nearly two miles. Reaching its objective undetected, the company found the western end of the mountain undefended and occupied it easily, but later came under heavy shellfire.
The Argentinians, later learned to be of company strength, directed mortar, grenade, machine gun and small arms fire from very close range at the British company.

For four or five hours, a mixed bag of Marine/Army defenders representing six platoons of Argentinian infantry, engineers and one platoon of mortar men on Tumbledown pinned the British down. To help identify the bunkers, the Guardsmen fired flares at the summit. The Guardsmen traded 66 mm rockets and 84 mm anti-tank rounds with the Argentinians, who were armed with anti-tank rifle grenades and protected in their rock bunkers.

The 2nd Battalion Scots Guards had lost eight dead and 43 wounded. According to Sergeant Thomas MacGuinnes from 13 Platoon, who had been instrumental in rolling up the Argentine defences, another 20 or 30 Guardsmen from Left Flank Company lay motionless, suffering from concussion caused by Argentine artillery, mortar and rifle-grenades or after taking a bad fall among the wet rocks in the middle of the protracted gun-battle.

The Guards took 30 prisoners, several of them RI 6 soldiers from Bravo Company. The bodies of 30 Argentine Army and Marine soldiers were found in and around the 5th Marine Battalion perimeter.