Sunday 2 May 1982 began in the South Atlantic with the two opposing forces trying to work out what their enemy was up to.
The British bombing and bombardment of Stanley the day before, as well as increased activity in the carrier task group over the preceding days, had persuaded Argentine commanders that an amphibious assault was imminent.
That being the case, they planned to commit their naval forces to the conflict , with the two Royal Navy carriers, HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible, being the main target.
Argentina’s Task Group 79, which was split into sub-groups, was a potent threat, especially when support by the range of land-based aircraft that had probed at the British defences the day before.
The main Argentine threat came from the aircraft carrier ARA Veinticinco de Mayo, which was escorted by two ships which would be very familiar to many on the British side – ARA Hercules, a Type 42 destroyer ordered by Argentina in 1970 and built in the UK, and sister-ship ARA Santisima Trinidad, built in South America with British support and commissioned less than a year before the Falklands Conflict.
Veinticinco de Mayo was also known to UK forces as she was launched in late 1943 as the Colossus-class aircraft carrier HMS Venerable, serving in the British Pacific Fleet during World War 2.
She was sold to the Netherlands in 1948, serving with the Dutch as HNLMS Karel Doorman until 1968 when she was bought by Argentina.
Late on Saturday 1 May a patrolling Sea Harrier of 801 Naval Air Squadron was illuminated by radar linked to the Sea Dart anti-air missile system of ARA Hercules, allowing the pilot to report the location of the carrier group back to British commanders.
This carrier group wasjust outside the Total Exclusion Zone to the north of the Falklands at the time, and was believed to have been preparing a strike by Skyhawk aircraft against the British carriers, which was cancelled because of light winds and doubts as to whether the British invasion of the Falklands Islands was under way or not.
Also to the north were two further sub-groups of Argentine forces, one consisting of two Exocet-armed destroyers ARA Segui and ARA Comodoro Py – World War 2-vintage American destroyers which would have followed up the Skyhawk attack – and a group of three modern French-built Exocet-armed corvettes, ARA Drummond, ARA Guerrico and ARA Granville, which had been under surveillance by HMS Splendid while the submarine hunted Veinticinco de Mayo at the end of April.
The final sub-group of Task Force 79 was centred on the elderly light cruiser ARA General Belgrano, which had been launched as the USS Phoenix in early 1938 and won several honours in the Pacific theatre of World War 2.
Bought by Argentina in 1951 (originally as ARA 17 de Octobre, but renamed five years later), General Belgrano and two escorting ships – ARA Piedra Buena and ARA Hipolito Bouchard, two more World War 2-era American-built destroyers – were loitering to the south of the Falklands on 2 May, just outside the British-declared Total Exclusion Zone of 200 miles radius.
Admiral Sandy Woodward, the British Battle Group Commander, was expecting the Argentines to attack his group from several directions at once, with the carrier Veinticinco de Mayo and ARA General Belgrano forming the main claws of a pincer move.
Unknown to the commander of General Belgrano, Capt Hector Bonzo, his group had been shadowed by submarine HMS Conqueror since Friday 30 April.
Now, as they manoeuvred in the vicinity of the Burdwood Bank shallows, where the sea bed was barely 150ft deep in places, the Argentine ships became the main focus of British defensive plans which required at least one claw of the pincer movement to be removed.
The problem for Admiral Woodward and his team was that if either Veinticinco de Mayo or General Belgrano (or both) turned towards the British task force, in relatively benign sea conditions and with long hours of darkness, they could be in position to launch a deadly attack with aircraft or Exocet missiles within hours.
If they had succeeded in sinking one of the carriers, Operation Corporate would in all likelihood have been doomed.
With Veinticinco de Mayo’s exact position unknown at the time, and a high risk of Conqueror losing touch with General Belgrano in shallow water, the only option was to stop General Belgrano, which would require a change in the Rules of Engagement – and which could be a lengthy process involving commanders and politicians back in the UK.
But the urgency of the situation meant that, with all the stops pulled out, the appropriate key figures people were swiftly briefed and permission to attack General Belgrano was granted by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her war cabinet on the morning of 2 May.
The speed of the decision was aided by the interception of Argentine naval signals by British intelligence, indicating that a concerted naval and air attack on several fronts was imminent.
The decision to attack General Belgrano was relayed to Cdr Christopher Wreford-Brown in HMS Conqueror, and at shortly before 1500 local time the nuclear-powered submarine fired three decidedly old-fashioned Mk 8 torpedoes at the cruiser – the newer Tigerfish guided torpedo she also carried was deemed less reliable in the circumstances.
Two of the torpedoes struck General Belgrano, the first blowing off the ship’s bows, the second striking her flank and causing an explosion which killed many of the victims of the sinking outright.
Flooding fast and with a damaged power system, the old cruiser was doomed, and as she listed to port and sank by the bows, Capt Bonzo ordered abandon ship.
Her two escorts were out of sight of the stricken cruiser, and were unaware of her fate until darkness had fallen, although one of the ships (ARA Hipolito Bouchard) may have been struck by Conqueror’s third torpedo, as damage was later found to her hull consistent with a torpedo which fails to explode.
A total of 323 died in the Belgrano sinking, two of them civilians, while the remaining 772 men were picked up from life rafts over the next two or three days.
Conqueror was the first nuclear submarine to sink another warship in combat.
Although the sinking caused controversy at the time, as it was widely claimed General Belgrano was sailing away from the Falklands at the time it was attacked, subsequent analysis and interviews with key figures suggested that the attack was legitimate in a conflict.
The Argentine ruling junta had immediately put out a statement that accused the British of treacherous behaviour, but the British had made it clear more than a week before the sinking that the TEZ was not a fixed boundary, and that any military action in the South Atlantic would be enough to spark a response, a reality that Argentine commanders also recognised.
Capt Bonzo himself, in later interviews, acknowledged that the ship was manoeuvring locally at the time, not sailing away, and that he and his ship’s company were preparing to attack British ships; he reportedly regarded it as an act of war and not a war crime.
The attack did, as intended, remove one claw of the feared Argentine naval pincer movement, but also had a much wider beneficial effect for the British campaign, in that Argentine naval forces (including Veinticinco de Mayo and her escorts) immediately withdrew back to port and rarely ventured out after 2 May, remaining in coastal waters.
This meant that Argentine air attacks on the British task force and during the campaign to retake the Falklands had to be carried out by land-based aircraft over long distances, which blunted their effectiveness.
It also made the task of the British nuclear submarines somewhat simpler; they did not have to shadow fast-moving groups of enemy ships, allowing them more time to gather intelligence, particularly giving early warnings of impending air attacks.
Other Operation Corporate activity continued as before on 2 May – including small Fleet tanker RFA Blue Rover entering the TEZ while supply ship HMS Resource sailed from Ascension.
Away to the east, tanker RFA Tidespring, with 150 Argentine Prisoners of war and 40 civilian workers from Leith on board, sailed from South Georgia for Ascension Island, escorted by destroyer HMS Antrim, leaving a frustrated M Coy 42 Cdo as garrison and ice patrol ship HMS Endurance serving as guardship.
The Royal Marines of 42 Cdo had been out at sea with Tidespring when South Georgia was retaken.
Today’s image from the Imperial War Museum collection (© IWM FKD 34) shows HMS Conqueror, which sank General Belgrano, returning to Faslane after the Falklands Conflict in July 1982.
* These posts can only give a brief sense of what was a complex and fast-moving situation 40 years ago, and cannot cover the involvement of every ship, squadron and unit in detail – for a much more comprehensive account see naval-history.net at https://www.naval-history.net/NAVAL1982FALKLANDS.htm
