Word: belgrano
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...another source of the world's surprise. The fact that helicopters have proved able to pick off surface vessels is said to have astonished some military experts, who had not foreseen such possibilities. None of them could have been quite as astonished as the captain of the General Belgrano, however, at the devastating power and accuracy of the British Tigerfish torpedo; or as the captain of the Sheffield when the Argentines let fly their Exocet missile from an aircraft he could not even see. Before the Falklands crisis these weapons were untried toys, and war was target practice...
...believe it. A war that neither country wanted fought over a place that neither country needed? Even the taking of South Georgia did not bring the seriousness of the matter home: an Argentine submarine waiting for the assault like a turtle on its back; a farce-until the Belgrano. The lesson of the loss of life on that cruiser was not merely revulsion, but a recognition of the essential nature of the whole transaction. And was there not some hint of malicious fascination in all this too? In its darkest heart, had not much of the world been goading these...
...military restraint became one of the first casualties of the South Atlantic war. As the British fleet went to work in the Falklands, elements of the Argentine navy were also preparing for action. Some 36 miles outside the British total-exclusion zone, the 13,645-ton Argentine cruiser General Belgrano and two escorts had suddenly turned, according to the British, toward their task force...
Armed with surface-to-air Seacat missiles and 6-in. and 5-in. naval guns, the venerable Belgrano, first commissioned by the U.S. in 1939,* had more firepower than any ship of the British fleet. But unknown to the 1,042 men aboard the Argentine warship, the cruiser-was being watched. Shadowing the Belgrano, as it had been doing for days, was a British nuclear-powered attack submarine, H.M.S. Conqueror...
Wraith flashed the information of the Belgrano's course change to Fleet Commander Woodward, who passed it on to London. Admiral Sir Terence Lewin, chief of the British defense staff, took the news at once to the five-member emergency War Cabinet of Prime Minister Thatcher, which was meeting at 10 Downing Street. Lewin's recommendation was that the Conqueror act to defend the British task force. The War Cabinet agreed, and the order to fire was sent back to Commander Wraith...