Word: cruisers
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...dead boys float in the South Atlantic, and there is no doubt on earth what those dark festivals were leading to. Last Monday, after the sinking of the cruiser General Belgrano, British armchair admirals were smugly analytical about the deficiencies of the Argentine forces. One day later Mrs. Thatcher listened ashen-faced in the House of Commons as her Defense Secretary announced the death toll from the destroyer Sheffield. Sobered, the world sat upright. It was precisely because the war had seemed so playful initially that it seemed so dreadful now. If anything, it appeared worse than...
...first major naval engagement in nearly 40 years-that gives it a terrible stateliness. Ships go down slowly. The people on them die twice: once when hit, once when drowning. They give you time to consider their faces, time to imagine what it was like on that cruiser or destroyer, after the sides of the vessel were punctured and there was a scrambling for rafts and then a silence. A touch of World War II as well: high waves, black water. Memory mingles with imagination. Easy to visualize, the war seems larger than...
...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 lines toward each other from the start; praising peace...
...Brooklyn-class cruiser had a distinguished history. As the U.S.S. Phoenix, she survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and subsequently carried then Secretary of State Cordell Hull to the 1943 Casablanca conference. She was sold to Argentina in 1951 for $7.8 million...
...principle of 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...