ARA General Belgrano

The Vessel

The ARA General Belgrano (C-4) was an Argentine Navy light cruiser, originally commissioned into the United States Navy as USS Phoenix (CL-46), a Brooklyn-class light cruiser, on 3 October 1938. She was 186 metres long, 10,800 tons standard displacement, and armed with fifteen 6-inch guns in five triple turrets. Her American service included the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 (she was at her mooring when the attack began but sustained no damage and sortied within hours), subsequent Pacific War combat operations, and decommissioning in 1946.

The Argentine Navy acquired her from the United States in 1951 for approximately $7.8 million. She was recommissioned as ARA 17 de Octubre (commemorating the date of the 1945 Peronist mass demonstration that had returned Juan Perón to power) and served as the Argentine Navy's principal flagship through the 1950s. Following the 1955 military coup that overthrew Perón, she was renamed ARA General Belgrano in 1956 after Manuel Belgrano, the Argentine revolutionary general and flag-designer.

By 1982 she was, at age 44, the oldest light cruiser in first-line service in any navy in the world. Her modernisation had been limited: she had been fitted with modern electronics and a Sea Cat missile system in the 1960s, but her main battery and her hull remained essentially as she had sailed in 1938. Her commanding officer in April 1982 was Captain Héctor Bonzo, 48, a career Argentine naval officer.

The Voyage

On 2 April 1982 Argentine forces invaded the Falkland Islands (Spanish: Islas Malvinas), which Argentina had claimed since the British occupation of 1833. The British government of Margaret Thatcher responded with the dispatch of a Royal Navy task force to recover the islands. The Falklands War followed: an Argentine occupation under Brigadier-General Mario Menéndez, a British amphibious task force under Rear-Admiral Sandy Woodward, and a naval campaign across the South Atlantic over the following ten weeks.

On 29 April 1982 Argentine Navy Task Force 79.3 (comprising General Belgrano and two destroyers, ARA Bouchard and ARA Piedra Buena) sortied from Ushuaia at the southern tip of Argentina, with a mission to patrol the waters south of the Falkland Islands and to engage British forces at opportunity. The task force was under the operational command of Rear-Admiral Eduardo Allara, embarked in the aircraft carrier ARA Veinticinco de Mayo. Task Force 79.3's specific mission was an attempt to draw British forces away from the main Argentine fleet's intended operation further north.

Through 1-2 May 1982 Task Force 79.3 was shadowed by the British nuclear-powered attack submarine HMS Conqueror, which had been tracking the Argentine cruiser and destroyers for approximately three days. Conqueror's commanding officer was Commander Christopher Wreford-Brown, 37, a submariner with significant Cold War hunting experience. Conqueror's mission under the British rules of engagement was to monitor the Argentine task force and to engage it if it violated the British 200-nautical-mile Total Exclusion Zone around the Falklands.

The Disaster

On 2 May 1982 Task Force 79.3 was operating approximately 35 nautical miles outside the British Total Exclusion Zone, heading in a generally west-southwesterly direction away from the Falklands. Under the formal rules of engagement in effect at the start of the campaign, General Belgrano was technically outside the zone in which she could be attacked. However, on 30 April 1982 the British War Cabinet had approved revised rules of engagement that permitted British forces to attack any Argentine warship, regardless of position, that posed a threat to the British task force.

At 15:57 on 2 May 1982, following direct authorisation from the British War Cabinet conveyed through the Ministry of Defence, Commander Wreford-Brown ordered HMS Conqueror to engage General Belgrano. He fired a three-torpedo spread of Mk 8 torpedoes (of a design dating from the 1920s but retained in service because of their reliability) at a range of 1,400 metres. Two torpedoes struck General Belgrano.

The first torpedo struck her bow at approximately 16:01, blowing off approximately 10 metres of her forward hull. The second torpedo struck her stern at approximately 16:01:30, destroying her after machinery spaces. The third torpedo missed the Belgrano but struck the accompanying destroyer ARA Bouchard; the hit did not detonate but sprung Bouchard's hull plates, reducing her speed.

General Belgrano listed to port within 30 seconds of the first torpedo strike. Her list progressed at approximately 3 degrees per minute. She capsized at 16:24 on 2 May 1982 at approximately 55°20′S 61°10′W in approximately 4,000 metres of water. Of her 1,093 crew, 323 died: 275 in the initial torpedo strikes and subsequent flooding, 48 from exposure in the freezing South Atlantic water before rescue arrived. 770 were rescued by ARA Bouchard and ARA Piedra Buena, and by a Chilean merchant ship that had been in the area.

The Legacy

The General Belgrano sinking was the single largest Argentine casualty event of the Falklands War. Her 323 dead represented more than half of the total Argentine military deaths in the conflict (approximately 649 Argentine military dead); combined with the approximately 360 Argentine dead at the Goose Green, Mount Longdon, Wireless Ridge, and other ground engagements, the 323 Belgrano dead were the largest single-event loss of Argentine military life of the war.

The political consequences in Britain were immediate and enduring. Margaret Thatcher's authorisation of the attack, which had been made with General Belgrano outside the declared exclusion zone, became the defining political controversy of the Falklands War and remained a subject of British parliamentary debate for more than a decade. The investigative programme on the decision, conducted by the journalist Arthur Gavshon and the television broadcaster Tam Dalyell through the 1980s, produced extensive documentation that the Belgrano had been steaming away from the British task force at the moment of the attack and had not posed an immediate threat to British forces.

The Falklands War's outcome — the British recapture of the islands by 14 June 1982, the Argentine military junta's fall from power in 1983, and Thatcher's 1983 electoral victory — was shaped in part by the Belgrano sinking. The sinking effectively ended Argentine naval participation in the war: the Argentine fleet did not sortie again after 2 May 1982, and the Argentine Navy's remaining capital ships (including the carrier ARA Veinticinco de Mayo) returned to base and did not engage British forces.

Commander Wreford-Brown was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for the Belgrano attack. He subsequently served as the Royal Navy's Director of Submarines before retiring as a Rear-Admiral. He died in 2012.

The wreck of ARA General Belgrano has never been located. Her position is known approximately from the 1982 British attack coordinates; she lies at approximately 4,000 metres depth in the South Atlantic, 50 nautical miles south of the 1982 exclusion zone. The Argentine government has not commissioned a search for the wreck, and the depth and the political sensitivities of the location make commercial salvage unlikely. The 323 dead are commemorated at the Monumento a los Caídos en la Guerra de las Malvinas in Buenos Aires, a black granite wall in Plaza San Martín inscribed with the names of the 649 Argentine military dead of the Falklands War. The Belgrano dead occupy the largest single column on the memorial. The annual 2 May commemoration is the principal Argentine national memorial day for the Falklands.