Post Office Box 408 London

Acknowledgement: Thanks to Mike Barraclough for permission to quote from his 1982 correspondence with the MoD.

Address

Post Office Box 408 – or "Casilla de correos cuatro cero ocho, GPO, Londres, Inglaterra" as it was given out over the air – was the address to which Radio Atlantico del Sur invited its listeners to write.

I received this card  –  eventually. Note the address.

Motivation

Why did the station announce an address, given that its target audience – members of the Argentine forces on the islands – would be unlikely to be able to write in?

The answer is that everything aired by RAdS had one of two purposes:

1. Furthering its primary objectives of persuading Argentine troops to "hesitate before firing on British troops" and "consider positively the benefits of surrendering".

2. Establishing the station's credibility with the target audience so that the latter would be receptive to the messages in Point 1.

Announcing an address served the second purpose: winning and reinforcing credibility. It did this in three ways:

Authenticity: Even if they don't wish to do so, listeners expect a radio station to provide a means of contacting it.

Cover: The address helped to explain the bogus dedications that were read out to named members of the Argentine forces on the islands.

Transparency: A London address refuted any suggestion that the station was an unavowed black operation.

As a bonus, it might provide feedback. Which radio station doesn't want to hear from its listeners?

Win a candle-lit dinner with Mariana

Soliciting mail from listeners was neatly combined with the psychological tactics of RAdS's sole female presenter, Mariana Flores, whose work I have already discussed.

In an article on the station, the Times reported (5 June 1982):

There is currently a competition, offering a candle-lit dinner with Mariana to the sender of the letter that comes from furthest away from Ascension Island, though quite how the letters will reach her is not clear.

Mariana, the Times explained, was the station's "star" presenter, "the Tokyo Rose of the 1980s":

"I have not yet met the man of my dreams," she told the troops enticingly recently.

I write to the station

I heard Radio Atlantico del Sur give out its address on 20 May 1982 (its second day on the air). I wrote to it, describing what I had heard (a so-called reception report), explaining my interest as a shortwave radio enthusiast, wishing the staff success in their work and asking if they could send me their card. [1]

I addressed the letter to PO Box 408 - and back it came to me about 10 days later.

The address was correct  –  but it was returned to me

The envelope had been stamped INCOMPLETE ADDRESS with a penciled addition: "Not a Box No". I was amused to see that someone else had written "Try Bush House" (the HQ at the time of the BBC External Services). [2]

What had gone wrong? Perhaps the PO Box address was so new that not all sorting offices knew about it.

I heard that other radio enthusiasts had received replies from the Ministry of Defence's Main Building in Whitehall, and so the week after the end of the conflict I wrote again, using that address rather than the PO Box number. This time (and I still have a copy of my letter) I was able to congratulate the staff on a job well done and note that their work might have saved lives on both sides. 

About 10 days later I received the card shown at the top of this page. 

Who else wrote to them?

An MoD report written soon after the war said:

Listener response started slowly after about a week’s broadcasting, quickly rose to a steady stream and is still being received. More than 100 letters have been received from all over the world. Of most interest are those from Latin America which currently total 26. The vast majority speak in favourable terms of RAdS broadcasts which are generally described as informative and interesting. What emerged clearly is the dislike of most Latin Americans for Argentina and hence their approval of RAdS. Not surprisingly the five responses from Argentina are not favourable although they have confirmed the ineffectiveness of the attempts to jam and a keen awareness of RAdS in Argentina.

Three quarters of the letters, therefore, came from outside Latin America. It's likely that most of them were from shortwave radio enthusiasts (the jargon term is DXers) such as me. 

That's not to say that some of the enthusiasts were not also interested in the political and military aspects of the station's operations.

When my friend and fellow DXer Mike Barraclough sent in his reception report he added that he felt press criticism of the station was unfair and that psychological warfare was justified if it was effective. In reply, he received the following note:

Thank you for your letter and helpful comments. If you feel sufficiently strongly it would help our cause if you conveyed the same sentiments to the press. The Times and Observer have written articles which appear very prejudiced to us. You will appreciate that we cannot reply directly ourselves as MOD employees. Thank you again for writing.

The British press

The articles in the Times and Observer mentioned in that MoD reply to Mike were probably those published on 5 June and 30 May respectively. Both portrayed RAdS's broadcasts as amateurish.

The piece in the Times was particularly harsh. Headlined "The ultimate weapon – Radio station could be last straw for invaders", its opening sentence set the tone:

If the British artillery does not blast the Argentinians out of Port Stanley, or the RAF's leaflets cow them into surrender, it is just possible that the 8,000 Argentine troops in the islands will still give up just to get away from Radio Atlantico del Sur, the Ministry of Defence's propaganda service to the beleaguered troops.

The Times would not have known that the RAF leaflets to which it referred were prepared by the same MoD unit, the Special Projects Group (SPG), that ran Radio Atlantico del Sur.

The Observer's article – headlined "What Britain tells the enemy" – was more measured, reporting that RAdS's broadcasts were exploiting differences within the Argentine junta, in particular criticisms by the air force of the inaction of the Argentine army and navy.

But the Observer also spoke of RAdS's "crude and occasionally comic attempts at demoralisation".

A helpful civil servant?

My reply from Radio Atlantico del Sur came in a standard OHMS franked buff envelope stamped with a return address in the MoD's Main Building.

But fellow DXers John Campbell and Gordon Darling reported that their replies came in envelopes postmarked, respectively, Hemel Hempstead and Chesham & Amersham (all three are commuter towns to the north of London), suggesting that an interested member of the MoD's staff who lived in that area took it upon themselves to handle mail from hobbyists in a private capacity, rather than as part of office business.

Notes

[1] At the time, most shortwave radio stations solicited reception reports from listeners. The stations would generally reply with a "verification card", also known as a QSL card, confirming the listener's reception, and often other promotional items (pennants, stickers, leaflets).

[2] What is now known as the BBC World Service (operating in English and many other languages) was in 1982 still referred to as the BBC External Services – and in internal BBC bureaucracy as External Broadcasting (XB). At that time, the "World Service" name was reserved solely for the service in English. This distinction was abandoned in 1988 when the "External Services" name was dropped and all international broadcasting by the BBC came under the World Service brand.

© 2018. Material may be reproduced if attributed to Chris Greenway and any original source.

Radio Atlantico del Sur's signature tunes

Someone asked me last month on Twitter if I could identify Radio Atlantico del Sur's theme music.

Two pieces of music were used at the start of RAdS broadcasts, and Kian Sharifi kindly (and very quickly!) confirmed their identities.

The evening broadcasts began at 2300 GMT (2000 Falklands time) with an identification jingle consisting of a three-note "sting" (in the US radio industry it would be called a sounder) played on an organ, followed by the announcement "nueve setenta uno" ("nine seventy one"), referring to the station's shortwave frequency of 9.71 MHz (9710 kHz). 

The canned announcement was made by the station's sole female presenter, who used the on-air name Mariana Flores.

After that ID jingle was repeated, the station played "Treasure of San Miguel" by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass (written by Roger Nichols and released in 1967). 

Some way into this, a presenter would make a brief live announcement to identify the station, give its transmission schedule and say that programmes would start in a few minutes.

The next piece of music played was "Argentina" by the group Conquistador, written by Hans van Hemert and Piet Souer to support the Dutch team during the 1978 football World Cup in Argentina. It's played on flute, guitar and conga drums.

During this, the presenters would preview some of the key points of that evening's broadcast.

The opening sequence described above lasted five minutes.

Listen to the music

A studio recording of the first 90 minutes of the Radio Atlantico del Sur broadcast on 20 May 1982, including the opening music, can be found on Jonathan Marks's website.

Were these good choices as the theme music for the station? They certainly met the main criteria for any signature tune, being distinctive and memorable.

They were also "shortwave friendly" – wind and percussion instruments generally coming across well through that medium.

© 2018. Material may be reproduced if attributed to Chris Greenway and any original source.

Mariana Flores — Britain's psychological weapon against the Argentine forces

Unlike Axis Sally, Tokyo Rose or Argentine Annie she had no nickname, her real name remains unknown and there’s no known photo of her....

Disclaimer: I was employed by the BBC at the time of the 1982 war, and continue to be so. However, this is an entirely personal blog post, reflecting only my views. 

Acknowledgements: I must thank Alejo Miguel Díaz, whose 2016 academic thesis Las Operaciones Psicológicas en el Conflicto del Atlántico Sur ("Psychological Operations in the South Atlantic Conflict") presented at the army university in Buenos Aires is a rich resource for anyone researching Radio Atlantico del Sur. The thesis has a section dedicated to the Pausas Sentimentales, which I am happy to acknowledge as a key source for this post.

I continue to be grateful for the encouragement from my Argentine friend Adrian Korol; and to professional researcher Lee Richards and his excellent website PsyWar.Org, without which I would probably not have started this blog last year.

(Update: This article was written in 2018. The section below on "Who was Mariana Flores?" was updated in May 2022.)

Mariana Flores and her "Pausas Sentimentales"

A regular feature of Radio Atlantico del Sur's output was its Sentimental Breaks (or Interludes) ("Pausas Sentimentales").

In each Sentimental Break, the station's sole female presenter – who used the on-air name Mariana Flores – would dedicate some lines of poetry and a record to named individuals said to be among the Argentine forces on the islands. 

Flores put on her most empathetic manner to do this. For RAdS's producers, it was key that the segment be presented by a voice with which the target audience could form an emotional connection. [1]

A written summary in the MoD files of the opening of the first day's RAdS broadcast put it bluntly: Sentimental Break was hosted by an "attractive girl presenter".

In his thesis, Alejo Miguel Díaz says Mariana Flores cultivated an ambiguity in how her (exclusively male) target listeners would see her, depending on their age, family circumstance and inclination: 

[She] set her voice in a gentle way, between mother and confidant, so as to awaken in the audience the feeling of being in front of a beloved and missed woman: a mother, a wife or a friend.

Psychological intent and technique

The sole aim (unspoken, of course) of the Sentimental Breaks was to demoralise the audience.

This was done across all of RAdS's output by reinforcing feelings of homesickness and unsettling the listener through an implicit but regular reminder of his predicament – he was a long way from home, isolated, facing a determined, well-equipped and well-trained enemy, and without hope of reinforcement or relief. (By the time RAdS was launched the islands were under a British air and sea blockade.)

Díaz notes the subtlety of Mariana Flores's approach. While speaking "in a gentle way", to gain the listener's attention, there was also "a hint of coldness in the intonation".

This reminded the listener of his hopeless situation and was in line with the first of the two aims that RAdS had formally set itself, to persuade Argentine troops to "consider positively the benefits of surrendering". (The other objective was to increase any inclination to "hesitate before firing on British troops".) 

Having seduced the listener with her sympathetic tone, Mariana let him down with cold comfort. 

With luck, RAdS's producers must have hoped, an Argentine soldier would feel miserable at the end of her little interludes – but not of course blame Mariana for that.

Examples of three Sentimental Breaks

Each Sentimental Break lasted just a few minutes. They went out every half an hour or so during each broadcast.

Three Sentimental Breaks can be heard in a studio recording of the first 90 minutes of the RAdS broadcast of 20 May 1982, on Jonathan Marks's website. 

On the recording's timeline, the three examples can be heard at 00:23:20, 00:49:50 and 01:21:05. 

Flirting on the airwaves

In this particular broadcast (the day after the station was launched), the two main presenters introduce themselves as Francisco Marín and José Miguel Antonov. 

In the first Sentimental Break of the evening (at 00:23:20 on the recording), Francisco Marín engages in some on-air flirting with Mariana Flores as he introduces her segment:

Francisco: The programme is called La Pausa Sentimental with Miss Mariana Flores. And here is the señorita again. How are you, Mariana? 

Mariana: Very well, Francisco, thank you. How are you? 

Francisco: I'm very well. But you are pretty, as always. [Mariana wordlessly acknowledges the compliment.] Hey, I think our audience has been waiting for you since we finished yesterday at 2300, because your dedications and your verses were magnificent. [2]

Mariana: Thanks. 

Francisco: Look, I hope you have more tonight.

Mariana: I hope so...

Mariana then reads a poem by the Spanish writer Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) which she says is from all the Argentine women "who regret being without husbands, sons or boyfriends" (in other words, because they are, most unfortunately, with the forces on the islands, and no doubt as unhappy about that as their womenfolk are). 

She ends this particular Sentimental Break by playing Julio Iglesias singing De niña a mujer (From girl to woman). Díaz notes that this song would have been intended to resonate with an older listener, perhaps an officer or a senior NCO, who might have a teenage daughter.

A mistake in translation

For the evening's second outing of Sentimental Break (at 00:49:50), Mariana is introduced in a rather more restrained fashion by the other main presenter, José Miguel Antonov.

It is in this segment that she makes a brief but serious mistake. 

After José Miguel's introduction, she reads some more poetry "for all of you in the Malvinas" and then introduces the song A Little Peace. 

This had been the winner of that year's Eurovision Song Contest, which had taken place the previous month and where it had been the West German entry, sung in German as Ein bißchen Frieden.

An English version of the song is then played (chorus: "A little loving, a little giving, to build a dream for the world we live in, a little patience and understanding, for our tomorrow, a little peace"...).

A good choice of song to undermine any martial ardour in the listener and, understandably, Mariana introduces the English-language disc by giving its title in English. But she then makes a homophonic error when translating its name into Spanish:

Y ahora, dedico una canción que se llama A Little Peace, un pedazo chico.

In short, rather than translating A Little Peace as "un poco de paz" she says "un pedazo chico" (a little piece).

It is perhaps unfair to highlight such a passing error, made on live radio (station manager Neil ffrench-Blake was insistent that all of RAdS's broadcasts be made live) in the early hours of the morning (almost 1 a.m. London time) by a young volunteer who possibly had no previous broadcast experience.

Dedication to a fictional lieutenant?

In the third outing of Sentimental Break that evening (on the recording at 01:21:05) you can hear Mariana send greetings to a second lieutenant, whose name she is careful to enunciate as Juan Esteban Olmedo Zigorraga, before her reading and musical dedication.

But did such an officer exist?

A listener's anecdote

Writing on a radio hobbyists' website in 2002, a shortwave listener in Brazil, Sérgio Dória Partamian, reminisced about Mariana Flores and her Sentimental Breaks.

Presumably recalling his own memories of listening twenty years earlier, he said Flores would suggest that "while the Argentinian soldiers suffered difficulties, their captured commanders would be amusing themselves with British women".

Assuming that Partamian's memory was correct, this was a classic demoralisation technique, used by both the British and Germans in the second world war: hinting that while the combat soldier endured his lonely hardships at the front, his more fortunate compatriots – civilians and senior officers back home, or those lucky enough to have been captured by a decent enemy – enjoyed an easier life.

Who was Mariana Flores?

We don't know. The identity of her Argentine counterpart, Silvia Fernández Barrio, who broadcast to British forces anonymously as "Liberty", became public knowledge soon after the war, and Silvia Fernández has been happy to talk about her secret work in 1982.

But Radio Atlantico del Sur's presenters – said to have numbered nine in total, with all except Mariana being male and serving members of the British armed forces – remain known only by their on-air pseudonyms. Along with Mariana they included Francisco Marín and José Miguel Antonov (both mentioned above), Mario Santana and the station's resident military commentator, Jaime Montero.

Perhaps this makes them the perfect psychological warriors. For eternity they will exist only as voices on the radio, that most ephemeral of media. 

Update in May 2022: In a TV documentary aired in April 2022 to mark the 40th anniversary of the war, a retired British major, Terence Scott, confirmed that he had played the part of "Jaime Montero" and that "Mariana Flores" was a cousin of his. 

Further listening

Thanks to Adrian Korol for pointing me towards a complete recording of Sentimental Break's theme music. 

Notes

[1] Contrary to misunderstandings at the time – including within the British government – and since, the sole target audience for Radio Atlantico del Sur was Argentine forces in the islands and, to a lesser extent, in their mainland coastal bases. It did not target an Argentine civilian audience, still less one elsewhere in Latin America (though the nature of shortwave meant that it had listeners in those places).

[2] Radio Atlantico del Sur's evening broadcasts went out at 2000 to 2300 local time (2300-0200 GMT). When Argentine forces invaded the Falklands on 2 April 1982 the local time in the islands was 4 hours behind GMT. The occupying forces decreed that local time in the islands would be the same as that in Argentina, which was 3 hours behind GMT. As an act of civil disobedience, the islanders refused to recognise the imposed time zone. Throughout this blog, I use the Argentine-imposed time zone (GMT minus 3) as Radio Atlantico del Sur was only targeting Argentine troops, and announced that time on the air.

© 2018. Material may be reproduced if attributed to Chris Greenway and any original source.