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Then calamity struck. Two Argentine A-4 Skyhawk bombers and two Mirage fighter-bombers suddenly swooped down over the 5,674-ton landing ships, anchored only 400 yds. from the Fitzroy beach. The attack was particularly unexpected because for well over a week bad weather had kept Argentine flyers away from the British fleet. There had even been speculation that the air force had been too badly crippled by losses to re-enter the fray. The British claimed to have downed about 70 aircraft. But according to U.S. sources, the Argentines had also received reinforcements: ten Peruvian Mirages flown from...
...hours later, Mirages attacked and sank a small British landing craft in Choiseul Sound; London said that four men died and two were wounded. Another wave of Argentine aircraft swept toward the Port San Carlos beachhead. They hit the 2,800-ton frigate H.M.S. Plymouth, one of the older vessels of its type in the 40-ship British task force. The Argentines claimed that the Plymouth exploded, but the British Defense Ministry insisted that while the ship had been damaged, it was still in service. According to the British, five men were wounded. The British said they shot down seven...
Meanwhile, British Royal Marine commandos, backed by 7.8-ton Scorpion tanks, which move with relative ease through swampy areas, had begun their own breakout from the beachhead. Traveling eastward from Port San Carlos, they were moving along roads that were no more than rutted tracks toward the Falklands capital of Port Stanley, 50 miles away. Their aim: to launch an attack on some 7,500 troops dug in around the settlement, the bulk of the force that precipitated the South Atlantic crisis with their own invasion of the bleak islands on April...
...attacks against the fleet on May 25, to coincide with Argentina's National Day celebrations. Waves of Skyhawk bombers soon began screaming over Falkland Sound. The Coventry, helped by other vessels, shot down four of the attackers but was hit and sunk by later sorties. Then the 14,946-ton Atlantic Conveyor, a merchant ship hired for the task force, was attacked by two of Argentina's deadliest type of warplane: the French-built Super-Etendard fighters that carry the sea-skimming Exocet missile. The aircraft fired their weapons from a distance of about 28 miles. One missed the Conveyor...
...Kinokawa Mam, a 92,207-ton ore carrier, pulled out of Tokyo harbor last week on its maiden voyage to Australia. When Captain Yukio Imai wanted to change speed, he did not order a crew member to yank the traditional brass-handled lever. Instead, he spoke through a microphone to the ship's computerized engine control, which has a voice synthesizer and recognition device developed by Japan's Sodensha Electronics Ltd. The control device can comprehend eleven verbal commands, from "Full ahead" to "Full astern," given by the captain or two of his officers. To show that...