ABSTRACT
As the Task Force approached the Falklands in late April it was time for the Maritime EZ to be turned into a Total EZ. There were a number of issues. The first concerned the extension to cover merchant shipping. The traditional view was that merchant ships should not be attacked so long as they were not active participants in the hostilities. During the course of two world wars this view had been undermined, not only because of the wholesale attacks on merchant shipping but also the tendency to arm merchant ships and integrate them with warships in convoys. In the prevailing circumstances where the UK was acting in self defence, sinking an Argentine merchant ship could be justified if this was evidently part of the Argentine military effort at sea. This could be so whether the ship in question was operating in either the Argentine or British exclusion zones, and certainly if shown to be carrying supplies of arms or military materiel, or was itself armed.
