There are conflicting stories regarding the part the French played in the war. I've read that their technicians in Argentine were doing everything short of outright sabotage, to prevent the Argies from making greater use of the Exocet. Diplomatic pressure from Nato, and in particular, the Yanks helped them find their "conscience".
While we were waiting to return to the UK, after it was all over, a few of us persuaded a Chinook crew to pick up the tail of a Dagger that had been shot down and crashed in the hills.
When we got it back we decided to cut out the areas of skin on both sides, that displayed the unit badge, as gizzits for the squadron crew room. While taking my turn to cut through the skin with a hammer and chisel that the farmer at Port San Carlos lent us, I noticed that there was another badge underneath. After a lot of scraping with the chisel we eventually uncovered an Israeli Air Force training squadron insignia.
After a lot more scraping we then revealed it's IAF aircraft number. On our return to the UK, one of the lads (who was a bit of an aircraft spotter) did a bit of research and we came to the conclusion that it had been hurriedly resprayed and flogged to the Argies during the conflict.
This was eventually widely reported in the press and predictably the Israelis denied it, saying that they were sold prior to the war. Although this was true, the aircraft number proved that this particular aircraft had still been registered as being on the Israeli Air Force inventory during the war.
I always wondered how many other back door arms deals were done at that time between Argentina and countries unknown.
