Secret History: Sink the Belgrano

The major effect of the sinking was that the rest of the Argentinian
Navy returned to port and they and their aircraft carrier stayed there
for the duration, so tactically speaking the sinking was a success at
more than one level. Can't blame them really, their Navy wasn't the most
up to date and the Conqueror would have made mincemeat of them.

 

So you missed the bit that said they were about to make an air (i.e.
Exocet) attack on the British fleet and only the weather (not enough
wind for the aircraft to take off) stopped them; and the bit where
Admiral Woodward said they couldn't have fought another week. It was
a closer run thing than many people seem to believe.

 

And the Spanish Armada, in similar circumstances.

 

Also, IIRC if we are "at war" with a foreign nation then do we inter
all foreign nationals as we did in WWII? My memory of this has faded,
but I still think that declaring war has all sorts of political down
sides that the Gov were trying to avoid. Like the Argentinean who I
was at school with at the time. Stick her parents in a camp? We were
just outside Portsmouth - poor sod didn't have the best of times in
'82.

 

Eh? Are you claiming there's no difference between a suspected murderer
and an armed-to-the-teeth cruiser in an enemy navy during a war?

Even you can't be that dim, can you?

 

I never said anything about air attacks, only that their carrier and the
rest of the navy stayed in port. They made plenty of air attacks with
land based A4s and Exocet equiped Etendardes with some success, the
Royal Navy had a hard enough time without looking over their shoulder
for a carrier task force. Woodwards comment wasn't relevent to what I
said either.

 

The possible attack on the British fleet was relevant to ``their Navy
wasn't the most up to date and the Conqueror would have made mincemeat
of them.''

 

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the

He was simply a man who did what he had to do.
Still a ****, mind.

--

Dave

GS 850 x2 / SE 6a
SbS#6 DIAABTCOD#16 APOSTLE#6 FUB#3
FUB KotL OSOS#12? UKRMMA#19 COSOC#10

 

So it would, Conqueror was a state of the art (at the time) attack sub
and the Argentinian carrier was a second world war vintage ex-USN ship.
She did have steam catapults and the Etendarde was a modern aircraft and
Exocet a modern missile - but they stayed in port. There were air
attacks but all from land based aircraft so I say again that the sinking
of Belgrano was effective in that the rest of their navy stayed in port.
The sinking also demonstrated the Argentinian lack of anti-submarine
expertise.

 

Well yeah, seeing as how the carrier stayed in port they pretty much had
to didn't they. As I said further up in the thread ALL the Argentinian
air attacks came from land based aircraft.

 

And if I recall correctly the 42 was primarily an air defence ship - not
too good against a modern attack sub, they hadn't a clue until the
Belgrano was torpedoed that there was a sub anywhere near them, at which
point they buggered off sharpish. A proper Carrier screen would consist
of more than just a couple of air defence destroyers no matter how new
they were - there should have been at least three anti-submarine
frigates as well. Conqueror could have had the 42s as well IMO - they
were a long way from home with little or no support.

OK my mistake (I was RAF not Navy )- but she was WWII vintage.

 

Sandy Woodward (the Admiral i/c the taskforce) wrote a book about the
conflict.

A major headache for him was that the ships that were good at defending
against submarines were weak against aircraft/missiles, and vice-versa.
To be safe, they had to operate in pairs.