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Shortly before sunset on May 2nd, 1982, the British attack submarine HMS Conqueror fired
three torpedoes and sank the Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano.
It was the largest warship sinking since the second world war- well, until recently- and
the most controversial moment of the Falklands War.
In this video we’re going to get to the bottom of why it happened, and whether it
was justified.
- By the start of May 1982, the Falklands crisis
had lasted a month since the Argentine invasion and was without resolution.
The British task force had spent the second half of April pushing relentlessly south,
resolved to use force to recover the islands if diplomacy failed.
The only diversion had been to recapture South Georgia, and the ships involved in that operation
returned to the main task force under the local command of Rear Admiral Sandy Woodward
on April 29th.
As the Royal Navy made its way south the British government had established a 200 mile Mari
time Exclusion Zone around the Falklands, designed to limit Argentine reinforcement
by prohibiting any ship from entering on pain of being sunk.
As the task force got closer to the islands and the risk of military confrontation went
up, at the end of April the UK government increased the strength of its measures.
The exclusion zone was expanded to become a Total Exclusion Zone, with aircraft now
also prohibited from going near the Falkland s.
The British task force crossed into the exclusion zone on the night of May 1st.
With diplomatic negotiations at an end and now with the full backing of the United States,
Britain loudly announced its task forces arrival, launching bombing raids against Stanley and
Goose Green airfields and bombarding Argentine land positions around the capital.
Argentina responded in kind, launching more than 40 aircraft to engage the British that
afternoon and bringing its powerful naval forces into play.
From the North West in two groups came the bulk of Argentina’s naval strength, including
the aircraft carrier Veinticinco de Mayo, with its Skyhawk attack aircraft.
The British had positioned two of their nuclear submarines in this area to try to find the
carrier, but had not been able to locate it.
To the south of the islands a third group was pushing eastwards, comprising the old
cruiser General Belgrano and the destroyers Hipolito Bouchard and Piedra Buena.
The two destroyers were of greatest concern- they were armed with Exocet anti ship missiles,
which could strike targets with a devastating warhead from 22 nautical miles away.
From the morning of May 1st, the submarine HMS Conqueror was in contact with the Belgrano
group and reported its progress to the British task force.
As the day wore on, the British became increasingly concerned about the whereabouts of Argentina’s
aircraft carrier.
With Conqueror continuing to report the Belgrano group heading east, the Royal Navy worried
that the carrier was doing the same, setting up a pincer movement against the British forces.
These fears went into overdrive when overnight on May 2nd an Argentine Tracker reconnaissance
aircraft was picked up on British radar.
A sea harrier flown by Flight Lieutenant Ian Mortimer was quickly readied and dispatched
to investigate.
It didn’t find the aircraft, but less than an hour after take off it picked up several
large radar contacts just 200 miles from HMS Hermes.
The harrier also picked up the same kind of radar emissions as those used by Britain’s
type 42 destroyers.
These had to have come from one of Argentina’s own type 42s- and this almost certainly meant
the presence of the carrier.
This was now the crucial moment for Brita vin’s decision to sink the Belgrano.
The British task force was at midnight about 120 miles north east of the Falklands, sailing
on a south east course around the islands.
200 miles to its north west, Rear Admiral Woodward now knew there was an Argentinian
carrier group, which would be in position to launch a raid against his ships at dawn,
in seven hours time.
No submarine was in contact with the carrier, and so a strike against it was impossible.
To the south of the Falklands, just outside of the exclusion zone, HMS Conqueror continued
to be in touch with the General Belgrano and its attendant Exocet-armed destroyers.
A position report from Conqueror placed it about 230 miles from the task forces area
of operations heading eastwards.
On this course the Belgrano group was not an immediate threat, but as Woodward puts
it: “The speed and direction of an enemy ship can be irrelevant, because both can change
quickly.
What counts is his position, his capability and what I believe to be his intentions.”
The Argentine destroyers could travel at 35 knots, so from their last-reported position
they could potentially dart into the exclusion zone and be within Exocet range of HMS Hermes
by the time the sun came up.
Conqueror would struggle to track all three ships at once, even if it could pass through
the shallow water of the burdwood bank without being detected.
Rear Admiral Woodward might then be faced with the nightmare scenario of having to position
his ships to defend against an air attack from the north west, only for sixteen Exocet
missiles to appear from the south.
Faced with this situation, Woodward decided he needed the Belgrano to be sunk and the
southern group dispersed, so that he could at least fully prepare for the expected air
assault.
The trouble was, even though Britain had publicly made clear that any warship posing a threat
could be sunk, its internal rules of engagement did not allow Conqueror to engage a ship outside
the exclusion zone.
And these could only be changed by the government in London.
An urgent request for an alteration was quickly sent, and luckily, back in London both Vice
Admiral John Fieldhouse and Rear Admiral Peter Herbert had reached the same conclusion as
Woodward and were putting the wheels in motion.
The issue was taken to that mornings meeting of the British War Cabinet, and action was
taken.
Contrary to depictions in lots of popular media, there was no moment where Margaret
Thatcher declared “Sink it!”, but instead a directive was issued that began:
“All vessels positively identified as either an Argentine aircraft carrier, cruiser, destroyer,
frigate, corvette or submarine may be attacked” This order gave effect to the warning issued
on April 23rd, and would mean that any Argentine warship could now be sunk anywhere across
the south Atlantic.
By the time this order was issued, Belgrano had actually reversed course and was heading
westwards.
This was because the planne d Argentinian pincer attack had been cancelled before dawn,
due to wind levels being insufficient for the Skyhawk attack aircraft to get airborne
with the required munitions and fuel.
The Argentine navy had previously been offered an aircraft that would be able to operate
in these low-wind conditions, but had turned it down.
This aircraft was, of course, the Sea Harrier.
With their offensive foiled by the weather, the carrier group under Rear Admiral Gualter
Allara was ordered to head back near to the mainland, to await further developments.
The British expected the Argentine ships to simply be repositioning for another attempted
attack that evening, and the Royal Navy was not about to rely on the weather to prevent
it again.
And so, as the sun began to set Commander Chris Wreford Brown of HMS Conqueror began
his attack run on the ARA General Belgrano.
The submarine ghosted in close to its targets and at 2.57pm fired three Mark 8 torpedoes.
These were old world war 2 vintage torpedoes with massive warheads- which would be needed
to punch through the Belgrano’s thick world war 2 era armour plating.
In quick succession two torpedoes found their mark, blowing the bow clean off and causing
a sheet of flame to burst through the deck at the stern.
The cruiser ground to a halt and began to sink fast.
At 3.17 Captain Hector Bonzo ordered abandon ship, and minutes later General Belgrano was
gone.
323 sailors went down with her.
The rest of the Argentine navy, now firmly aware of the exceptional danger that Britain’s
nuclear submarines posed, went straight back to port and stayed there, with Argentinian
naval power playing no further meaningful role in the war.
-- The sinking of the Belgrano made global headlines
as soon as news of it was released.
On May 3rd, The Argentine government announced the loss of the cruiser, and called its sinking
a “treacherous act of armed aggression” as it had occurred outside the exclusion zone.
To an international audience, the attack on the Belgrano came as a brutal shock, with
hundreds of conscript sailors killed without warning by a British submarine.
International support for Britain wavered, not helped by its own statements on the sinking
being riddled with untruths.
The defence secretary John Nott referred on May 3rd to the Belgrano “closing on elements
of our task force which was only hours away” when it was sunk.
This was completely untrue- the Belgrano had been heading away from Britain’s ships when
she was sunk.
The British government, for years after the sinking was evasive and secretive about the
attack on Belgrano, both to the public and to parliamentary inquirires.
It’s frankly bizarre that they acted like this though– on the face of the information
available to the British at the time of the sinking, its difficult to see what other option
they had.
To allow hostile naval forces to move into threatening positions at will would be to
take a colossal risk with their own ships and sailors.
Ultimately, Argentina had begun hostilities the previous month, and towards the end of
April had been warned in a statement that a ship “which could amount to a threat to
interfere with the mission of British forces in the South Atlantinc will encounter the
appropriate response.”
The implication of this was that irrespective of a ships location in relation to the exclusion
zone, if it was deemed a threat it could be sunk.
Argentina’s navy recognised this.
The commander of Argentina’s carrier group said later that “After that message of 23
April, the entire South Atlantic was an operational theatre for both sides.”
Hector Bonzo, the captain of the Belgrano, also spoke up, arguing that “The sinking
of the cruiser was an act of war.
It was not a crime.
It was a legal, most unfortunate and lamentable action…”
To him, and other senior Argentine officers, hostilities had commenced the previous day
and they could expect to both take and receive blows.
Indeed, Captain Bonzo went on to say that “..if the submarine should have been before
me having emerged for repairs, I would have opened fire with the fifteen guns until it
sunk.”
The sinking of the Belgrano was the largest single loss of life of the entire Falklands
War and its most controversial moment.
But it was just the beginning.
Only a couple of days later, the Royal Navy would suffer its own shattering loss as Argentina
struck back, and the war moved towards an eventual amphibious landing on the shores
of East Falkland.
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