Word: fleets
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Violence of some sort had been expected as soon as the British task force, led by the aircraft carriers Hermes and Invincible, reached the area of the Falklands on April 29. The first action of the fleet's commander, Rear Admiral John ("Sandy") Woodward, 50, had been to enforce a total air and sea blockade within 200 miles of the islands. In a daring, long-distance raid on May 1, a delta-winged Vulcan bomber blasted the airstrip near the Falklands' tiny capital, Port Stanley. Flights of carrier-based Sea Harrier jets pounded the airfield with more bombs...
...strikes had a limited, surgical purpose, in keeping with the declared British strategy of using minimum force and maximum diplomatic and economic pressure to make Argentina relinquish the Falklands. But this 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...
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...
...skipper of the British sub, Commander Richard Wraith, the Bel-grano's movements seemed to indicate that the cruiser intended to close with the British fleet. TIME has learned the details of what happened next...
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...