SS Atlantic Conveyor

The Vessel

The SS Atlantic Conveyor (Cunard hull 131) was a roll-on/roll-off container ship of the Cunard Line, built at the Swan Hunter yard on the Tyne and commissioned on 20 April 1970. She was 213 metres long, 14,946 gross tons, and had been designed for the Cunard Atlantic container service between Liverpool and New York. Her specific configuration included full drive-through ro-ro vehicle capacity, three cargo holds for containers, and a reinforced upper deck designed for the carriage of heavy military vehicles on Cunard's occasional NATO-exercise contracts.

At the outbreak of the Falklands War on 2 April 1982 Atlantic Conveyor was at sea, inbound from the United States to Liverpool. She was requisitioned under the STUFT programme (Ships Taken Up From Trade) on 14 April 1982 and diverted to the British naval yard at Devonport for urgent conversion to the specific role required by the Falklands task force: the carriage of RAF Harrier and Royal Navy Sea Harrier fighter reinforcements and of the heavy-lift helicopters needed for the subsequent ground campaign.

Her conversion was completed in the extraordinarily compressed period of nine days between 14 and 22 April 1982. Her forward cargo hold was reconfigured as a hangar for the 12 Harriers; her upper deck was adapted as a flight deck with crash barriers and arrestor gear; her after cargo holds were adapted for the carriage of four Chinook heavy-lift helicopters (the British Army's principal heavy-lift platform) plus vehicles, fuel, ammunition, and prefabricated runway tiles for the San Carlos beachhead.

The Voyage

SS Atlantic Conveyor sailed from Devonport on 25 April 1982 under the command of Captain Ian North, 57, her regular Cunard master, who had volunteered to retain command during her military service. Her crew comprised 33 Cunard merchant marine personnel and 67 Royal Navy and RAF personnel embarked for the Harrier and helicopter operations. Her course was from Devonport to the South Atlantic task force rendezvous at Ascension Island and then onward to the Falklands exclusion zone.

She reached Ascension on 5 May 1982 and embarked an additional eight RAF Harriers for the South Atlantic leg. She departed Ascension on 7 May 1982 and rendezvoused with the main Royal Navy task force in the South Atlantic on 19 May 1982. The Harriers and Sea Harriers were flown off to HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible over the following three days, substantially reinforcing the British task force's air power. The Chinook helicopters and the remaining cargo (including 10,000 sheep, tens of thousands of ration packs, and substantial fuel and ammunition supplies) remained aboard for transfer to San Carlos Water.

By 25 May 1982 Atlantic Conveyor had been operating for three days with the main task force, waiting for the right conditions to transfer her remaining cargo to the San Carlos anchorage. She was not, at any point in her operational service, a designated close-in target for Argentine air attacks; the Argentine command had identified her as a merchant support vessel and had given priority to attacks on the combat warships of the task force. Her protected position (approximately 110 nautical miles northeast of the Falklands, outside the principal Argentine air-attack corridor) reflected this assessment.

The Disaster

On 25 May 1982 (Argentine National Day), the Argentine Naval Aviation conducted its final major Exocet strike against the British task force. Two Argentine Navy Super Étendard aircraft, carrying one Exocet AM-39 missile each, were vectored to a position that would allow them to engage the British carrier HMS Hermes from the northwest. The Argentine strike had been planned for several days; its execution on 25 May 1982 had been selected to coincide with Argentine National Day for morale and propaganda purposes.

At 19:40 on 25 May 1982 the two Super Étendards approached the main British task force from the north-northwest. They released their Exocets at a range of approximately 40 kilometres from the British formation. The two Exocets were tracked by Royal Navy radar systems and engaged by the air-defence ships of the task force (HMS Hermes, HMS Invincible, and the escorting Type 42 destroyers and Type 22 frigates). The British defensive systems produced a substantial amount of chaff (radar-reflective foil) in the path of the incoming missiles. The chaff successfully decoyed the two Exocets away from their intended primary targets (HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible).

The two Exocets, redirected by the chaff clouds, acquired HMS Atlantic Conveyor as their final target. Both missiles struck her in quick succession: the first at 19:41, entering her port side and detonating in her cargo holds; the second at 19:42, entering her port side further aft and detonating in her engineering spaces. The combined detonations ignited the remaining Chinook helicopters, the sheep, the fuel oil, and the ammunition aboard. Her fire-fighting systems were overwhelmed.

Captain North ordered abandon-ship at approximately 20:00 on 25 May 1982. Atlantic Conveyor continued burning through the night. She sank at approximately 03:00 on 28 May 1982 at approximately 50°33′S 56°52′W in approximately 3,500 metres of water in the South Atlantic. 12 of her 100 crew died, including Captain North, who was last seen helping another crew member into a lifeboat. North was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in August 1982.

The Legacy

The loss of the Atlantic Conveyor was the most operationally consequential single event of the Falklands campaign after the sinking of HMS Sheffield. The loss of the four Chinook heavy-lift helicopters (three of which had been still aboard the ship at the moment of the attack) eliminated the British task force's heavy-lift capability for the remainder of the ground campaign. The subsequent British ground operations had to be conducted largely by Royal Marines and Paratroopers marching on foot (the famous "yomp" across East Falkland), because the alternative of helicopter airlift was no longer available.

The British subsequent investigation of the Atlantic Conveyor loss identified multiple contributing factors: the chaff decoy had been effective in deflecting the Argentine Exocets from their intended targets but had not been able to prevent the missiles from acquiring an alternative target; the Atlantic Conveyor herself had not been equipped with any defensive armament or electronic countermeasures; her position in the task force formation, chosen to minimise her proximity to the main combat group, had placed her in the chaff deflection zone of the incoming missiles. The chaff tactics that saved HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible inadvertently killed Atlantic Conveyor.

The British political consequences of the Atlantic Conveyor loss and the concurrent loss of HMS Coventry on the same afternoon (25 May 1982 was the worst single day of British naval casualties of the entire war, with 36 combined British dead) included a significant reassessment of the British task force's operational tempo. The Royal Navy had lost seven warships by 25 May 1982 (HMS Sheffield, HMS Ardent, HMS Antelope, HMS Coventry, Atlantic Conveyor, plus significant damage to HMS Broadsword and others); the British government had not publicly anticipated casualty rates of this magnitude; and the British public had begun to question the overall strategy of the recapture operation.

The subsequent Argentine surrender on 14 June 1982 vindicated the British strategic approach but at a higher cost than had been initially projected. Captain North's posthumous Distinguished Service Cross was the second DSC awarded to a Royal Fleet Auxiliary or merchant marine officer in British history.

The wreck of Atlantic Conveyor lies at 3,500 metres depth in the South Atlantic; she has not been formally surveyed but her position is marked in the Royal Navy records. The 12 dead are commemorated at the Falkland Islands Memorial Chapel at Pangbourne College, at the Cunard War Memorial in Liverpool, and at the Merchant Navy Memorial at Trinity Square Gardens, London. The name Atlantic Conveyor was carried by a second Cunard roll-on container ship (launched in 1984) until her scrapping in 2009; the name is currently not in service. The Atlantic Conveyor was the largest British merchant ship lost to enemy action in the 1982 war, and the most operationally consequential non-warship loss of any Royal Navy campaign since 1945.