High -ranking MPs have requested an investigation into the claims that France deliberately retained secrets about rockets that killed 46 British seafarers in 1982.
The Telegraph was informed that the exocet steering aircraft produced in France contained a "kill switch" that could have disarmed them, but that France contested that such a device existed.
Before the 40th anniversary of an exocet attack on the HMS Sheffield on Wednesday-who demanded the first British fatalities in the conflict-France was asked to clarify what it was done and what it was not shared by the government of Margaret Thatcher.
Tobias Ellwood, the chairman of the Parliament's Defense Committee, said the matter "needs further investigations", while Liam Fox, a former Minister of Defense, said that France - an important defense partner of the United Kingdom - should be "open and honest".
Three Royal Navy ships were hit during the Falkland conflict of Exocets, two of which-the HMS Sheffield and the Merchant Ship Atlantic Conveyor-sank. Sailors died on all three ships.
The rockets were produced by the French company Aerospatials, and when the Task Force sailed the Royal Navy south to recapture the islands from their Argentine occupiers, asked Great Britain to provide information on how they could work and whether they could be deactivated.
British experts believed that the exocets contained an emergency clerk, which weapon manufacturers sometimes secretly incorporate into weapons so that they can be deactivated when they fall into the hands of an enemy state.
According to a high-ranking source, France denied that the Kill-Switches existed but British civil servants were convinced that it was not the truth, partly as a result of studies that were carried out on an earlier variant of the rocket that had been bought by Great Britain.
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