Wreck of ARA General Belgrano

 place with historical importance, shipwreck

ARA General Belgrano was built in the US as the Brooklyn Class Light Cruiser USS Phoenix (CL-46) and served with distinction with the US Navy during WWII before she was sold to the Argentinean Navy in 1951. Serving as the lead ship for Task Group 79.3 during the Falklands War, the General Belgrano sortied from Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego on April 26, 1982 with her screen of two Argentine destroyers, the ARA Piedra Buena (D-29) and ARA Hippolito Bouchard (D-26) bound for Burwood Bank off the Southern Coast of the Falklands.

Tasked with monitoring and if need be preventing the British Navy from progressing any further South than her position, the Belgrano and her escorts began their patrols of the Burwood Bank on the 28th of April. The task force was still on their patrol loops when the British nuclear powered submarine HMS Conqueror spotted the formation on April 30th and began to shadow their movements over the next day. As the Conqueror began to close in on the Belgrano, the Argentinean Cruiser was well outside the British-imposed Total Exclusion Zone of 370 km (200 nautical miles) radius from the Falklands and therefore was was in neutral international waters. After three days of top-level discussions within the British Cabinet, the decision was made that the Belgrano and her escorts, though in neutral waters, posed a significant threat to British Naval units in the area and the order to attack the Belgrano was dispatched on the 2nd of May.

HMS Conqueror began her slow movements into a firing position on the Belgrano throughout the morning of May 2nd, and at 15:57hs (3:57pm) fired a spread of three conventional torpedoes at the Belgrano, two of which hit the ship. The first torpedo struck 10-15 meters aft of the Port bow and detonated, blowing off the bow of the ship and causing the partial collapse of a further 10 meters, but the internal bulkheads forward of the 40mm gunpowder magazine held, reducing flooding and saving the ship from a large ammunition detonation. With little or no warning before the impact, the crew onboard the Belgrano were taken totally by surprise and would have had mere moments to react before the second torpedo hit, this time aft of the main superstructure, just outside the rear limit of the side armor plating.

The second torpedo hit the side of the ship and tore through the hull before detonating in the aft machine room, which shared an armored wall that made up part of the ships anti-torpedo/anti-bomb armor plating over the ships vital spaces. The effect of this wall was to funnel the explosive force of the detonation upward through two mess-halls and a relaxation area on the Belgrano, which were full of sailors eating lunch. Reports taken from survivors indicate that as 275 crew were killed in this area from the explosion. In addition to the carnage in the mess halls the torpedo's detonation blew out a 20 meter (65ft) hole in the main deck, and left a gaping hole in her Port side. Smoke quickly filled the interior passageways of the ship and inrushing water knocked out the electrical systems onboard, preventing her crew from putting out a radio distress call to the escorting Destroyers, which continued on their course having not seen the attack due to foul weather.

Now powerless and beginning to list to Port with greater speed, the Belgrano was ordered abandoned at 16:24hrs, 20 minutes after the first torpedo struck. The crew who were still alive went over the side in life rafts, and shortly after 16:35hrs on May 2nd, the ARA General Belgrano rolled onto her Port side and sank at this location, taking 321 of her crew and two civilians with her.

Survivors in liferafts waited for rescue from the escorting Destroyers, which were then actively hunting the HMS Conqueror and dropping depth charges. By the time they ceased their anti-submarine efforts, many of the life rafts had been scattered by the foul weather and darkening skies. All 770 survivors were rescued by May 5th by both Argentinean and Chilean Navy ships.

To date the ARA General Belgrano is the only ship ever to have been sunk by a nuclear-powered submarine, and the second sunk by any type of submarine since World War II.

Ship Pics:
www.navsource.org/archives/04/046/04046.htm