On the April 2, 1982, Argentine forces invaded the British overseas territory of the Falkland Islands, sparking one of the largest major conflicts for the UK since the Second World War.

Now, more than 40 years on, a monument to Argentine combatants who died in the conflict is to be inaugurated at the site of a historic Scots shipwreck.

The memorial will pay homage to the A4 “Skyhawk” Squadrons of the Argentine Air Force, which operated from the Río Gallegos Military Air Base, the main military airfield in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina, in the far south of the nation.

Seventeen Argentine Air Force “Skyhawk” pilots were among the 649 Argentine military personnel killed in action in the short undeclared war, known as “Guerra de Malvinas”  in Spanish, which ended ended with an Argentine surrender on June, 14 1982.

A total of 255 British military personnel and three Falkland Islanders were also killed during the hostilities.

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The event is being held next to the wreck of the Marjory Glen ship, which is located near the town of Punta Loyola in the Rio Gallegos estuary, around 1,600 miles from the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, and 400 miles from the Falkland Islands.

It is due to be attended by a delegation of more than 120 guests, including veteran Falklands pilots,and relatives of the deceased, alongside technicians who worked on the planes that operated from the Río Gallegos Military Air Base.

The shipwreck was used by the Argentine Air Force for combat practice in the early days of the conflict, and as such is deemed to have played a “fundamental” role in the Falklands War in being “crucial for the success of many of the missions that Argentine pilots carried out”.

Argentine daily TiempoSur said: “The boat from Punta Loyola played a fundamental role during the war in the Falkland Islands. 

“During the month of May 1982 and in the framework of the context of the war, it was used as the target to carry out tests of the Air Force. It was the squadrons of A-4 B Skyhawk pilots from the V Brigada Aérea from Río Gallegos that attacked the British fleet.

“The pilots managed to master the low-flying bombing technique and fly to their targets five meters or less above the sea, thus evading radar and flying at 900 km/h. It was a radical change in warfare tactics that came out of this area.”

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The bullet-ridden Marjory Glen was built in 1892 by The Grangemouth Dockyard Company, a shipbuilding and ship repair firm on the Firth of Forth, to the order of Messrs Wm Blair and Co in Glasgow for general trade. In 1911, it then passed into the ownership of a Chr. Hannevig in Norway.

That same year, the 213-ft long cargo ship became stranded inland, more than 100 meters from the coast, near Punta Loyola in the Rio Gallegos estuary after catching fire while transporting around 1,800 tonnes of coal from South Shields in Tyne and Wear to southern Patagonia under a Norwegian flag.

Two of the ship’s 17 crew lost their lives from asphyxiation while trying to control the fire.

Writing about the shipwreck in 2007, Buenos Aires publication Pagina 12 noted: “The case of the Marjory Glen was not exactly a shipwreck but an abandonment of a ship after a terrible fire in which two of its 17 crew members died. The fire spread when the ship was already anchored in the port of Punta Loyola, which shocked the inhabitants of the area before a spectacle that would never be repeated. When all the coal was burned, the fire was extinguished and the boat was left adrift, without captain or sailors. 

“And like a true ghost ship, it sailed the length and breadth of the estuary, damaging the town’s drainage systems and even colliding with a barge belonging to the Import and Export Limited Company of Patagonia. The versions about how the ship got to its current location are divergent, but the most widely accepted indicates that it was swept away by a strong storm.”

The burnt-out hull remains in situ, accessible on foot, and is considered a historic monument and place of touristic interest – despite its current state of abandonment and ruin – for visitors to the nearby city of Río Gallegos, Argentina’s most southern continental city.

Last year, on the 40th anniversary of the Falklands conflict, a deployment of aircraft from the Argentine Air Force carried out a training exercise entitled ‘Exercise Sobernia (Sovereignty) 2022’ at  Río Gallegos Military Air Base.

As well as “dogfight practices over the Patagonian skies”, the exercise saw a simulated attack take place on the Marjory Glen shipwreck in homage to its use for combat practice during the Falklands War. 

Rather than a one-off, the simulated attack reportedly takes place whenever training exercises that take place at Río Gallegos Military Air Base involve Falcon aircraft from the 5th Brigade of the Argentine Air Force.