Chapter Five

‘Lombardo’s Fork’

As 2 May began, Admiral Woodward was aware that the Argentine Fleet was out against him in full strength and, furthermore, he knew the nature of the threat, so that he could anticipate the timing of the first thrust.

Argentine naval operations were being directed by Contralmirante J. J. Lombardo, the Fleet Commander who was technically responsible for all Argentine operations in defence of the occupied islands. His plan, to be implemented when it was apparent that the Royal Navy was about to, or had already, begun the amphibious assault, was for a succession of blows from separate directions – rather than a simultaneous ‘pincer’ attack, it would resemble an oblique fork. The appearance of the Glamorgan and the two Type 21s off Port Stanley on the 1st and the detections and sightings of many helicopter movements persuaded the Argentine command in the islands that invasion was at hand and Lombardo set his counter-measures in motion, creating four task groups, each with a stand-off attack capability and an oiler in support to provide endurance and mobility.

Task Groups 79.1 and 79.2 remained in company for the time being. Led by the carrier 25 de Mayo, with her screen of the two Type 42 AA destroyers, these ships had been loitering off Deseado, 400 miles to the north-west of Port Stanley, but were now approaching to open the battle with a dawn Skyhawk strike, possibly in combination with a Super Etendard AM.39 Exocet strike from Rio Grande. The object of this first stage was to eliminate the two British carriers and it would be followed up by attacks by the two MM.38 Exocet-armed destroyers of TG79.2 (Segui and Comodoro Py). To the north of the Argentine carrier group was the newly-formed TG79.4, made up of the three 24-knot A.69 corvettes, Drummond, Granville and the recently-repaired Guerrico, each armed with a quartet of Exocets and one 100mm gun.

ARA 25 de Mayo and her A-4Q Skyhawks were initially seen as the Argentine Navy’s main threat to the British carriers. An ‘aunt’ (rather than sister) of the Hermes, this Light Fleet carrier had seen action off Hong Kong in late August 1945 as HMS Venerable and had served with the Royal Netherlands Navy as the Karel Doorman for 20 years before beginning her new career (via MoD)

The big guns, those of the 6in cruiser General Belgrano, were closer to Admiral Woodward’s TG317.8. The cruiser and two more Exocet-armed destroyers (Piedra Buena and Hipolito Bouchard) were operating from Ushuaia, the naval base on the disputed Beagle Channel, and had been in a holding position off Isla de los Estados (Staten Island) 300 miles to the south-east of Port Stanley, but had begun to make ground to the east, skirting the southern edge of the Total Exclusion Zone. By midnight on 1/2 May, Capitan Hector Bonzo’s Task Group 79.3 was to the south of the Falklands, poised for a run to the north or for a descent on South Georgia, two days’ steaming to the east. Unbeknown to the Argentinians, however, Belgrano, her destroyers and the oiler supporting them had had company for some hours, in the form of the submarine HMS Conqueror, which was quietly following, and reporting, the zig-zagging progress of the group.

The Argentine Navy’s other major unit, the cruiser General Belgrano, was even older than the venerable 25 de Mayo, having been the US Navy’s Phoenix from 1938 until 1951, when she was sold to Argentina. Her five triple 6in (152mm) gun turrets and 4in (102mm) armour made her a potentially highly dangerous adversary for any British surface force (via MoD)

Contralmirante Allara’s carrier and destroyer groups had managed to elude detection by the British submarines to the west and north of the Falklands, but from the interpretation of wireless traffic patterns and observation of the direction of approach of shadowing aircraft from the 25 de Mayo, Admiral Woodward was able to assess the position and progress of TGs 79.1 and .2. With his rear covered by the Conqueror, he could make the necessary dispositions to welcome the first Argentine arrivals. The British fully expected that the Argentine Air Force would make a major effort in support of the Navy, but this took no account of the latter’s ambition to save ‘las Malvinas’ almost unaided. Whether by intent or poor staff work, the Air Force was apparently not informed of the master plan, for the Southern Air Force Command (CdoFAS) planned only nineteen sorties for this crucial day, compared with fifty-six on 1 May.*

At 0325 on 2 May (half-an-hour before midnight, local time) a Sea Harrier was scrambled to investigate a radar contact detected to the north of the carriers and suspected to be one of the 25 de Mayo’s Grumman S-2E Tracker search aircraft. No interception was achieved, but Admiral Woodward ordered a surface search mission to be launched by the Invincible.

The Sea Harriers flew out at low level, not using radar but relying upon their passive radar warning receivers for a silent search until they were about 150 miles out, when they were briefed to ‘pop up’ and carry out a radar search for the Argentine carrier. At 0425, Flight-Lieutenant I. Mortimer RAF, searching in the north-west sector, duly climbed and switched his Blue Fox radar from ‘standby’ to ‘transmit’, whereupon he immediately detected a group of four or five ships less than ten miles ahead. Almost as promptly his warning receiver told him that he was being illuminated by a Type 909 Sea Dart tracking radar. As the nearest friendly 909 was 120 miles astern, this could only be the Hercules or Santissima Trinidad. It was indeed the former; the approaching ‘SHAR’ had been detected by the Argentine task group, the returning Tracker had been vectored out of the fighter’s path and the Hercules had been allocated the target. Mortimer gave no opportunity to engage, for he immediately broke away hard and dived to low level, to increase the missile system’s firing problem.

Admiral Woodward, who had been about eighty miles to the northeast of Port Stanley when the Tracker had detected the Carrier Battle Group, made ground to the south-east, moving towards the edge of the TEZ to increase the distance which Argentine strike aircraft would have to cover. By 0700 he had been rejoined by the five ships which had been detached for bombardment and the anti-submarine hunt, so that the Battle Group was in good order four hours before the 25 de Mayo’s strike could be expected, at dawn. The three Type 42s were stationed about thirty miles up-threat, to act as a picket line, and the Glamorgan, Yarmouth, Alacrity and Arrow formed an anti-aircraft and anti-submarine screen to protect the main body – the RFAs Olmeda and Resource and the two carriers. Tucked close in to the Hermes and Invincible were their two ‘goalkeepers’, the two Type 22s with their Sea Wolf missile systems to provicie close-range point defence. The Invincible/Brilliant combination was particularly potent, for the carrier was armed with Sea Dart, providing area defence behind the picket line. Only one essential asset was missing – airborne early warning to control the first line of defence, the Combat Air Patrols. The A-4Q Skyhawks, should they come, would do so at very low level. Beyond the radar horizon, which the picket line pushed out to about sixty miles from the carriers, the Sea Harriers would have to search visually and with their own intercept radars for the inbound enemy.

Hermes’ ‘goalkeeper’, HMS Broadsword, tucked in close. Although intended as specialised anti-submarine vessels, the Type 22s were particularly valued for their Sea Wolf close-range AA system – the forward ‘six-pack’ launcher can be seen between the four Exocet launchers and the bridge – and their lack of a medium-calibre gun did not prevent their use as general-purpose ships inshore (MoD)

The first CAP sections were flown off well before first light and took up their stations, while other pilots awaited on deck, strapped into their fighters, at immediate readiness to scramble to reinforce the standing patrols. The weather was good, but the attack, for which both sides were keyed up, never came. The 25 de Mayo, about 180 miles to the north-west, was ready to launch her eight Skyhawks but instead of the accustomed stiff breeze of these latitudes, the wind had fallen away almost to nothing. The carrier’s own speed and the catapult together could give the attack aircraft about 100 knots, but with sufficient fuel for the round trip and a load of three 500lb bombs, the Skyhawk needed at least 25 knots of natural wind as well. The Argentine command’s choices were to launch the strike with sufficient fuel for the mission but no bombs, to launch the aircraft loaded with bombs from a range of seventy miles, or to wait for the wind to return. The first would have been pointless and the second suicidal, so the frustrated strike pilots whistled for a wind all day, while the Royal Navy fighter pilots, whose answer to lack of wind was to increase the length of their take-off run, investigated Tracker and P-2H Neptune radar transmissions and wondered where the Skyhawks were. The only Skyhawk sorties on the 2nd were by lightly-loaded aircraft launched for Patrullas Aereas de Combate (Spanish CAPs), armed with old-model (AIM-9B) Sidewinders and their built-in 20mm cannon.

The Carrier Battle Group turned back to the west shortly after noon (1600 GMT) to prepare for another bombardment operation. The RFAs were left on the edge of the TEZ and the Plymouth, which had been detached late on the 1st to reinforce the South Georgia defences, was recalled to screen them. RFA Fort Austin was approaching the TEZ from the north-east and the Yarmouth was despatched to shepherd her in.

The Argentine Navy Neptune shadower noted the Battle Group’s turn to the west and reported it to the naval air base at Rio Grande. Early in the afternoon Capitan de Corbeta J. J. Colombo led the Argentine Navy’s first Super Etendard/Exocet attempt. As the Royal Navy correctly believed, the Super Etendard’s normal radius of action was barely sufficient to reach the longitude of Port Stanley, but this did not take into account the aircraft’s air-to-air refuelling capability, of which the 2nd Fighter-Attack Squadron intended to make full use. On this occasion, however, although the two naval missile attack aircraft rendezvoused with the Air Force KC-130H Hercules tanker, the latter had technical problems which prevented refuelling and the mission had to be aborted.*

By mid-afternoon on 2 May, therefore, the opening moves of the Argentine Navy’s plan had been thwarted by lack of wind and technical difficulties. Admiral Lombardo ordered the three separate groups to withdraw, possibly to await an improvement in conditions which would permit a further attempt on the following day. Admiral Woodward kept his screen intact until 2200, by which time it was clear that the 25 de Mayo had not launched a dusk strike, and then detached the Alacrity and Arrow to bombard Port Stanley airfield. As it transpired, the Argentine carrier was never to launch a strike, for already the naval situation had been changed completely.

The Belgrano group, on the southern edge of the TEZ, had been causing the British naval commanders some concern. The cruiser and her two destroyers, trailed by the Conqueror, had been about 300 miles from the Battle Group since dawn and although she had been slowly making her way to the west during the 2nd, were she to turn to the north-east at nightfall, she would have fifteen hours of darkness to cover a run-in at twenty knots. As well as posing a threat to the Carrier Battle Group, the Belgrano was also well placed for a raid on South Georgia, 850 miles to the east – a move which could not be countered as long as the British carriers had to mark the 25 de Mayo group. Her presence, together with the two Exocet-armed destroyers, would alter the balance of forces in the TEZ appreciably, for although she was an old ship, scarcely capable of twenty-five knots, her 6in guns fired 105lb shells to a greater range than the British 4.5in guns and, the only armoured ship on either side, the Belgrano was almost impervious to their 55lb shells and well-protected against the ship-launched Exocets. Admiral Woodward had only two ship-killing weapons to cope with the cruiser – the submarines’ 21in torpedoes and the Sea Harriers’ 1,000lb bombs. The aircraft were none too numerous for their all-important air defence task and any diversion of effort would possibly prove to be expensive; while one submarine was already in contact it would face an immediate tactical complication if the Belgrano group was to turn to the north-east for a high-speed run into the TEZ.

To the south of the Falklands there lies a submerged ridge known as the Burdwood Bank, believed by some modern geologists to mark the boundary between the African and South American tectonic plates. The bank extends some 240 miles from east to west and is about sixty miles wide at its closest point to East Falkland, 100 miles to the north. To the south of the shelf the water is more than 10,000 feet (3,000 metres) deep but this shoals very rapidly to a depth of about 360 feet (110 metres) and the contours of the Bank are so uneven, with underwater cliffs and pinnacles, that this decreases to as little as 150 feet (45 metres) in places. For readily-apparent reasons, the Burdwood Bank is no place for a fast-moving submerged submarine, particularly when it relies upon its own ability to run at great depths to remain undetected while shadowing a high-speed enemy. There was thus a distinct possibility that the Belgrano could shake off the Conqueror, which would have as little as five hours in which to relocate and overhaul the Argentine ships once the latter were clear of the bank and making for the waters to the east of Port Stanley.

The indications of an Argentine ‘pincer’ movement, and the tactical dif-ficulties which this would involve, obliged Admiral Woodward to request an extension of the Rules of Engagement which would permit the Conqueror to eliminate the threat from the south-west. The request was passed up the chain of command and the Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Terence Lewin, himself explained the scenario to the War Cabinet: there was evidence that the Argentine Navy intended to attack the Carrier Battle Group from widely separated directions and the present courses and speeds of the Argentine groups were irrelevant. Tactical circumstances made an early revision of the Rules necessary. The War Cabinet approved the amendment to the rules to permit the submarine to attack the cruiser and the appropriate signal was transmitted to HMS Conqueror at 1330 GMT (mid-morning off the Falklands).

[Much was made after the war of an allegation by the then Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Argentine Government, Dr Nicanor Costa Mendez, that, by authorizing the attack on the General Belgrano, the British Government ‘scuttled’ a peace plan offered by President Belaunde Terry of Peru and which was on the point of acceptance by the Junta, if indeed it had not already been accepted. The argument ran on to claim that the sinking of the cruiser was the biggest single act of escalation and that thereafter the Junta could not accept any formula if it were to appear that Argentina was negotiating under duress. In fact, President Belaunde offered his plan direct to the Junta, only afterwards presenting it to the British Government through an intermediary (the US State Department). Furthermore, he publicly announced its existence before the Argentine leaders had replied or the British Cabinet even knew of its terms. Tactical situations tend to develop at a more urgent pace than diplomatic manoeuvres and although the Argentine Navy had attempted to make the first ‘escalatory’ moves on 2 May – the Air Force strike missions on the 1st might have been unsuccessful but they too were in deadly earnest – it was the Royal Navy which struck first on that day.]

Commander C. L. Wreford-Brown, commanding HMS Conqueror, received the 1330 signal amending the ‘RoE’ but, due to communications difficulties, it was not until 1730 that the amendment was clearly understood. The attack was set up with great deliberation, the submarine closing in to attack the zig-zagging cruiser while giving the widest possible berth to the two screening destroyers. By 1857 an ideal position had been reached, 1,400 yards on the Belgrano’s port bow, and Commander Wreford-Brown fired a salvo of three Mark 8** torpedoes. With the size of the salvo and the pattern used, it was expected that one hit would be obtained.

The Belgrano, thirty-five miles outside the TEZ and forty miles from one of the 150-foot patches on the Burdwood Bank, was dawdling at ten knots towards Isla de los Estados, off Tierra del Fuego, whither she had been ordered, presumably until the attack operation could be resumed. In spite of being so close to an area declared to be dangerous, the cruiser was not at a high state of damage control readiness and many of her sailors were gathered in the canteen space and on the mess-decks, enjoying an afternoon stand-easy. No look-out saw the track of the torpedoes and the two hits on the port side came as a total surprise. The destroyer Bouchard claimed that she too had been hit, by the third torpedo, which failed to explode.

Wreford-Brown had achieved far more than he had expected and he now took the Conqueror out of the area to avoid detection and counterattack. His torpedoes were almost identical to those used in the Royal Navy’s last attack on a cruiser – the Japanese Ashigara, in June, 1945 – and had been in service since 1932, longer, indeed, than their target. The cruisers of the US Navy’s ‘Brooklyn’-class had survived very severe damage from bombs, large-calibre shells, Kamikazes and Japanese torpedoes much more powerful than the old Mark 8. It was widely believed that the Belgrano could well survive these two hits, particularly as she had two intact destroyers with her, the sea was not particularly rough and she was within 100 miles of the lee of Isla de los Estados and only 240 miles from the naval base at Ushuaia.

To those on board the cruiser there was, from the first, no real prospect of saving the ship. The first torpedo had struck right forward, between the bows and the foremost 6in turret, and the second exploded under the after superstructure, in line with the engine rooms. Argentine sources had described a ‘heat wave’ or ‘fireball’ spreading through the ship. Whatever the cause of this phenomenon – the ignition of inflammable vapour or dust – it indicates that doors and hatches, which were designed and installed to contain flame or heat, as well as water, were open over a considerable part of the ship. Most of the 321 men lost with the ship were killed in the canteen or on their mess-decks by the initial explosion or the fire.*

The flooding of the machinery spaces deprived the ship of all power and quickly brought her to a standstill. The auxiliary generators, which should have provided emergency power for fire-fighting and counter-flooding pumps, could not be started, and all normal lighting and communications failed. Capitan Hector Bonzo and 879 of his ship's company abandoned the ship but took thirty minutes to do so — a long time, even in darkness lit only by emergency lanterns — before they were all aboard thirty thirty-man inflatable liferafts. The flooding spread unchecked through the ship as the men left and she had a heavy list to port by the time that the last man was clear. Fifteen minutes later the General Belgrano rolled over on her port side and plunged by the bows, a remarkably fast end for a 10,800-ton cruiser with a high reserve of buoyancy.

The two destroyers, Bouchard and Piedra Buena, did not witness the end. They hunted for the Conqueror, initially to the west of the position of the attack (thus giving rise to the canard that they had promptly headed for home), but thereafter spreading the search wider, dropping small patterns of depth-charges or single charges from time to time. The peculi-arities of the channelling of underwater explosions led to some of the depth-charges being felt quite strongly by the submarine, but the destroyers were never close enough to be any real danger and the Conqueror quietly moved away from the scene, so that she too neither saw nor heard the cruiser's last moments.

After hunting for two hours, the Bouchard and Buena returned to the scene of the torpedoing but were unable to find any trace of the cruiser (which had foundered more than an hour previously) or of the thirty brightly-covered liferafts. Darkness had now fallen and the weather began to deteriorate, the wind increasing to up to sixty knots in gusts and the waves building up. The liferafts were buffeted by wind and sea but, although they were uncomfortable, their occupants were protected from exposure by the inflatable bottoms and roofs and all who got off the Belgrano survived. However, their ordeal was to last for twenty-four hours after the sinking before the first raft was sighted by searching ships and another day was to elapse before all were picked up.

Admiral Woodward, when he received the Conqueror's report of the successful torpedo attack, knew that the threat from the south-west had been ‘taken out’, although he, like the rest of the world, was not to know that the Belgrano had sunk. That still left the carrier force to the north-west and the three A.69 corvettes. At 2300 radar contact was made with what appeared to be a group of ships to the north-west and the Carrier Battle Group prepared for a surface action, the two Type 21s being recalled from their bombardment mission.

HMS Conqueror returns from her South Atlantic patrol. For the expenditure of three torpedoes of even greater antiquity than their victim she ensured that the Argentine surface fleet would not again challenge the Royal Navy (MoD)

In retrospect, it seems likely that the contacts, which faded, were caused by climatic conditions* or even large flocks of birds, but they led to the next encounter with the Argentine Navy. At 0130 a Sea King of 826 Squadron engaged on a surface search to the north of the Falklands reported a radar contact and closed to identify visually. A darkened ship was seen and, as the helicopter approached, it opened fire. The Sea King opened the range, reported that the contact was definitely hostile and settled down to shadow.

The Lynxes from, first, HMS Coventry and then HMS Glasgow were flown off, armed with two Sea Skua missiles each, to investigate the ship and attack if necessary. Homed by the Sea King, Coventry Flight picked up the target and, when fired upon by a medium-calibre gun, fired both Sea Skuas. The pilot and Observer watched as the radar-guided missiles homed and hit and the ship sank in a large explosion. Half-an-hour later the Glasgow’s Lynx, which had been delayed by radio problems, gained contact with another vessel in the same area and was also fired upon. The Lynx, an hour’s flying from the destroyer, was low on fuel, but the crew worked round to a good firing position and was rewarded with an observed hit by one of the two Sea Skuas fired.

Glasgow Flight’s target had been the Argentine patrol vessel Alferez Sobral, a 700-ton ocean-going tug which had been transferred from the US Navy and was rated by her new owners as a ‘corvette’. The Sea Skua had hit her in the bridge structure, killing the commanding officer and seven ratings, but she managed to reach Puerto Deseado two days later. There is considerable mystery as to the identity of the Coventry’s Lynx’s target: it was believed that this was the Sobral’s sister-ship Comodoro Somerella, both ships being employed on air-sea-rescue duties at the time of the attack (though this was not known at the time), but the latter has been seen since the war and was therefore not the victim. The aircrew believed that their target was larger than the patrol craft and it has been suggested that they had attacked an A.69, which would tally with the report of a larger gun than the 20mm cannon arming the Sobral, and that the heavy explosion was caused by a hit on an Exocet canister.

The Lynx/Sea Skua combination proved to be successful in its first engagements even though the full acceptance trials of the missile were not officially complete (‘Soldier’ Magazine)

The British ships were unable to attempt any rescue operations, but in the hope of minimizing loss of life from the sunken ship the flagship broadcast a life-saving message on all International Distress radio and wireless frequencies, giving the time and position of the attacks.

To date, the Royal Navy had damaged a submarine with forty-year-old depth-charges, sunk a cruiser with fifty-year-old torpedoes and shot down three aircraft with an up-dated version of twenty-five-year-old missiles. The Sobral and the unidentified ship had been hit with a weapon which was not yet officially in service, for the Sea Skua had not yet completed the full range of trials needed for Service clearance for use! Another such weapon was on its way south. The Stingray lightweight anti-submarine torpedo had been given an abbreviated and accelerated trials programme to clear its release from Lynx and Wasp helicopters and from RAF Nimrods and from mid-May several frigates would be equipped with this advanced weapon.

The weather which had given the Belgrano’s survivors such an uncomfortable night reached the Carrier Battle Group’s operating area during the morning of 3 May, bringing low cloud and visibility of no more than a mile, as well as high winds and rough seas. The British ships attempted no offensive operations, replenishing while the Sea Kings maintained their surface and anti-submarine search patrols. The CAP was scrambled once to look, unavailingly, for a fleeting contact on a shadowing Neptune and then, at dusk, for a search for shipping which took them 240 miles to the south-west of the carriers.

The 25 de Mayo, having had insufficient wind on 2 May, had too much on the 3rd and was unable to operate her fixed-wing aircraft. Following the news of the attack on the Belgrano, all Argentine warships were pulled back to the west, to operate in shallow water where the big Fleet submarines would not follow. In effect, the latter had won the first major victory by torpedoing the cruiser. As the news of the heavy loss of life reached the world, Argentina began to enjoy widespread public sympathy, but this does not win wars and the Junta could not afford the loss of prestige which would have attended the sinking of 25 de Mayo or the Type 42 destroyers and they played no further effective part in the war.

* Sources for Argentine intentions on 2 May include: R. L. Scheina, US Naval Institute ‘Pro-ceedings’, May, 1983; Adm J. J. Lombardo, BBC TV ‘Panorama’ interview, 16 April, 1984; S. Mafe Huertas, Air International, May, 1983.

* Scheina, op. cit.

* Scheina, op. cit. Later sources, particularly those continuing the political controversy, have quoted up to 368 men killed and missing.

* In certain circumstances the radar pulses become trapped under a temperature layer and follow the curve of the Earth; the reflections do not always return in an order which can be sorted out by the receiver circuits into an intelligible picture and very convincing contacts are displayed on the radar screen.