HMS EAGLE in the Falklands
- Thread starter flasheart
- Start date
The Shock of War
People who live through traumatic or life changing experiences will often go through a period of delayed reaction where they are surprisingly calm and largely emotionally unaffected. It can last minutes, hours or even days before the full implications of what has happened sinks and will often have an almost crippling emotional effect on the person.
As he sat in his office just adjacent to his “war room” at Puerto Belgrano Naval Base (From which he had been running the South Atlantic theatre of Operations) Vice Admiral Juan Lombardo reckoned that he was experiencing one of these moments.
For a man who had in his own opinion had just overseen the destruction of his beloved navy and was now facing an at best future of eternal shame and disgrace (he was deliberately avoiding thinking about the worst case scenario) he was thus far remarkably calm.
He reflected that Operation Martillo had certainly lived up to its name in that there was a hammer involved. However, if it was a person they would have missed the nail and instead smashed every bone in their hand.
It hadn’t been a good start to the morning when he had been awoken early by an aid who had told him that Brigadier Menendez on the Malvinas had reported that Port Stanley airfield had been bombed and put out of action by British carrier-based aircraft. At the time of the report the fires were still burning and it was still dark so Menendez didn’t have an accurate figure for losses in terms of equipment and personnel but he was certain that the airfields runway was so damaged that it would be unusable for the foreseeable future. This had meant that the aerial part of Operation Martillo had had to be downgraded from a mass air attack by airforce Skyhawks, Daggers and Mirages refuelling on the Malvinas to a mere four Exocet armed Super Etendard’s being refuelled in mid air by the air forces only two KC-130H’s on a long-ranged strike mission. Later in the day when Lombardo had seen the writing on the wall for Operation Martillo he had ordered even this mission scrubbed to preserve what was now Argentina’s best hope for a desirable outcome.
Things had picked up later that morning when one of TG 79.1’s S-2 Tracker’s had located a British surface group meaning that the various Argentine units now had a confirmed target to steam towards. The Tracker aircraft had abruptly ceased transmitting not long after this and was assessed to have been shot down by a British Combat Air Patrol. While regrettable this confirmed the presence of at least one of the British Aircraft carriers.
The afternoon was when disaster had unfolded. Just after midday a signal had come in from the destroyer ARA PIEDRABUENA that she had lost contact with the other two ships of her group, her sister ARA HIPOLITO BOUCHARD and the cruiser ARA GENERAL BELGRANO. Attempts by Lombardo’s headquarters to communicate with either ships had been fruitless. The next signal came a little while later and truly stunned Lombardo and the other officers in the room. It stated that Both the BOUCHARD and the BELGRANO were believed sunk by a torpedo attack.
It hadn’t been an easy decision but he knew it had been the right one. If there was a British submarine in the area particularly if it was one of the much feared SSN’s then the PIEDRABUENA was sailing into extreme danger. Therefore, rather than attempt to pick up survivors from the other two ships which would most likely result in their number being added to the PIEDRABUENA had been ordered to make best speed west and hopefully away from the lurking threat. Many men in the war room had been visibly distressed at the thought of so many men being effectively abandoned to the mercy of the unforgiving South Atlantic weather.
Lombardo and his staff had been revaluating the progress of the operation in light of this development and debating whether or not it could proceed when something truly shocking happened. TG 79.4 reported that it was under attack by British ASM armed Buccaneer aircraft. The ARA GUERRICO and ARA GRANVILLE were reported destroyed and the ARA DRUMMOND was hit and burning. Captain had sent a distress signal trying to impress upon Puerto Belgrano just how dire his situation was and that he desperately needed assistance.
Lombardo had also been communicating with Rear Admiral Allara aboard the carrier ARA VEINTICINCO DE MAYO both of whom knew what was likely to happen next. Upon their fears being realised Lombardo had decided that the game was up and ordered the relevant signals be sent aborting the whole operation. He had then withdrawn to his office and spent a few moments in quiet contemplation.
In his mind there was no getting away from the fact that the whole thing was his fault. Both he and his superior Admiral Jorge Anaya had pushed heavily for this and convinced the junta that despite all the obvious risks a navy led strike against the British fleet was the best course of action. Operation Martillo had been his brainchild and he would bear responsibility for its catastrophic failure with all that that entailed. It was almost he thought as if the wave of enthusiasm and patriotic fervour that had swept the country after the Malvinas had been reclaimed had affected him and his staff and caused them to overlook the fact that they were trying to mount an attack against the military of a well-armed NATO country.
His mood was not helped later on when an aid reported that there was still no contact with the submarine ARA SAN LUIS which had now missed its communications window and wasn’t responding to signals. Given where her last known position was relative to the detection of the British ships Lombardo got a certain sinking feeling and felt that he knew the likely reason why the submarine was not responding. To be honest after what had happened today would it really make any difference if it he was right.
He dreaded to think about all those many hundreds of men adrift and slowly freezing to death in the South Atlantic at that very moment. The problem was he could not do anything to help them. The British had no longer playing by their own rules and were acting completely out of character. They had obviously decided that any and all Argentine warships wherever they were were now fair game and had shown they certainly had the ability to “deal with them”. For that reason, Lombardo felt that he could not risk sending any warships (not that he had many of those left now) on a recovery mission and so had his staff trying to get any trawlers, merchantmen and other civilian vessels to search for survivors. Even then he wasn’t sure if the British would let them even do this. He didn’t have a casualty estimate but based on the combined total number of men on the stricken vessels and how long it was going to take to get to any survivors he knew it was going to be easily over a thousand men.
The politicised nature of the Argentine military meant that the loss of influence and clout that would result from this defeat would probably hurt the navy almost as much as the actual loss of its ships. Lombardo knew that the junta and Admiral Anaya in particular would use him as a scapegoat to try and save face when the news broke of what had happened. Whatever happened with the rescue operation Lombardo also knew for certain that he would not be the one coordinating that or occupying this office when that got underway.
Throughout the day he had managed to avoid having to directly speak with anyone in Buenos Aries having instead detailed a staffer to provide the Libertador building regular updates. He was pretty sure that junta as well as this would had other sources of information in the war room. He knew what was coming next and the fact that his very life may well depend on what was said and for that reason he was glad that he was still feeling reasonably calm.
All that changed however when a certain phone on his desk started to ring. There was only one place that would be calling him on that particular phone. As he sat looking at it almost mesmerised he noticed in the corner of his eye that the sun had set outside. He wasn’t sure if he would see it rise again. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to. If he decided that he didn’t he knew he had something in his desk draw that could help with that.
On Monday the 3rd of May the world awoke to the news that a real battle had taken place in the South Atlantic. What had previously been characterized around the world as a music hall melodrama or described as two bald men fighting over a comb had become an actual shooting war.
The political and media worlds awoke to reality while the man in the street awoke to horror. Nothing quite brings the violence of war alive in the imagination like the loss of a ship (let alone eight of them) and the attendant loss of life.
In the UK the PM had called a press conference in the early hours of the morning once it was felt that the battle had been concluded and gave a short statement stating that the previous day the Task force had taken action against three groups of Argentine ships that had threatening British forces. She went on to state that aircraft from the aircraft carrier HMS EAGLE and “one of our submarines” had sunk an estimated total of eight Argentine warships including the aircraft carrier 25th OF MAY and what she described as the battlecruiser GENERAL BELGRANO and that there had been no British casualties.
After finishing her statement, she took some questions from the assembled reporters. The questions mostly revolved around why she had taken this action and almost certainly destroyed any hopes for peace. Her answers were mostly variations of “They were a danger to our ships” and that Britain would not stand by while its territory was invaded and its subjects oppressed under the jackboots of what she called a fascist gang. She ended by saying that the Argentine military junta and any other potential adversary of Britain would now know that their actions would have consequences. One American reporter wrote “The British lion has just roared again”.
Newspaper editors scrambled to rewrite the next days edition as they realised they had to include the only story anyone was going to be interested in for days afterwards. The events of that night would go down in media history as phones rang in editors and journalist’s homes with messages to get back to the office as soon as was possible and printers were told to immediately stop what they were doing and prepare to receive new presses.
While TV and radio stations were not affected by such issues and able to start broadcasting special reports almost immediately they did share one common problem with their colleagues in the newspaper world. Apart from the Prime Ministers statement they didn’t really have much information to go on. A total of 29 members of the media had sailed with the Task Force but had found themselves severely hamstrung in how they could operate. There were two big problems. One was that they had to use the equipment on their respective ships to file reports meaning that they could only send text or voice signals not TV transmissions or even photographs. The other was that anything they did send had to pass through the hands of various military vetting officers who would censor details and had the power to completely cut off a reporter from contact with the outside world.
There were also no photographs of battle available at the time meaning that most reports resorted to using stock images and footage of the ships involved, particularly HMS EAGLE. More than one editor was embarrassed that instead of HMS EAGLE they had mistakenly published photos of her sister HMS ARK ROYAL which was still in the Tamar awaiting scrapping. Many maps of differing accuracy and artists impressions were produced detailing the course of events based on the limited information available at the time.
The BBC had been noted up until this point for maintaining what was felt to be a neutral and objective stance on the conflict and continued to do this. One of their reporters Brian Hanrahan was imbedded aboard HMS EAGLE and filed a report that would become one of the most enduring and almost iconic images of the conflict. He described his conversation with aircrews who had flown combat sorties that day and responding to the PM’s claim about their being no British losses stated “I’m not allowed to say how many planes joined the raid but I counted them all out and I counted them all back”.
The Sun had taken a firmly pro war stance and infamously printed an edition with the headline Gotcha leading to widespread condemnation. The Sun’s owner Rupert Murdoch notoriously refused to pull the headline leading to accusations that he was revelling in the deaths of so many Argentinians and resulted in a boycott campaign against the Sun.
By contrast the Daily Mirror had taken a decidedly anti-war stance and described the events as an act of aggression by the British and a brutal way of terminating any hopes for a negotiated settlement and largely dwelled on the likely large loss of life.
In the house of commons the Prime Minister defended the actions of the Task Force and found that despite some hostile questions and accusations from some of the more left leaning members of the opposition the house was largely supportive and swayed by the argument that if there was to be a war it could not be fought half-heartedly.
To the man in the street attitudes ranged from support of our boys down south to shock over the loss of life and relief that this hadn’t happened to the Task Force. Many agreed with the argument of necessary evil as news reports all stated that the Argentine ships were believed by the British military commanders to have been moving to attack the Task Force leading to an attitude of it was them or us.
There was something of an almost depressed mood in the towns of Birkenhead and Barrow In Furness where the ARA HERCULES and the ARA VEINTICINO DE MAYO had been built (The latter as HMS VENERABLE). Though they had been flying under an enemy flag many residents who had helped to build the ships felt a certain sense of grief over their destruction.
In Argentina the news could have only been described as shattering. This was particularly felt in the costal towns where the families of many of the Argentine sailors lived and especially in Puerto Belgrano Naval Base where the large and empty harbour was now little more than a reminder of those ships that would not be coming back. A mood of misery hung over these places after the news broke. This was made worse by the fact that at this stage there was no way of knowing the status of their loved ones. When days later survivors and recovered bodies had started to return to the mainland and the Malvinas and the process of body counting and identification had gotten underway the mood did not lift much. Far too many families were given the news they dreaded and even the survivors were initially kept isolated in military barracks as the junta attempted to control the flow of information.
The Junta had been unsure of how to deal with the news. Their natural instinct had always been to suppress or downplay bad news but how could they keep a catastrophe of this magnitude under wraps particularly when the British were shouting about it constantly. In the end the angle they went for was of an unprovoked British attack on brave (no one could say heroic) Argentine citizen (sounded better than conscripts) sailors who had been protecting the Malvinas.
Overnight the patriotic euphoria that had been felt since the liberation of the Malvinas had vanished and been replaced by a national mood of shock and horror and a grim assessment of the realities of war.
The big fear was that despair may turn to anger and that the military government may again find itself endangered. They were working hard to ensure that when the anger broke it would be directed at the British.
On top of this they still had to workout how to proceed with the conflict now that the navy had been all but wiped out and now that they were most certainly in a shooting war with the British.
Even worse the economy had already been in tatters when this had all started and to put it mildly being involved in a war wasn’t exactly helping things on that front.
Naturally the events of the 2nd of May created a major stir in the diplomatic world. The Argentinian ambassador to the UN had practically screamed murder about the British recapture of South Georgia and spent the entire day somehow almost incandescent with rage while trying to play for the sympathy card and trying to gather diplomatic allies against the British.
The sinking of the Belgrano in particular caused some distress in the USA where she had been built and had served in the second world war as the USS PHOENIX. The US government was upset that two countries that it considered allies in its face off with the Soviet Union were now instead fighting each other. While US public opinion was divided between those who thought that Britain and Argentina should negotiate a settlement and those that thought that the US should back its ally militarily President Regan felt he had no option but to back his NATO partner not least for the sake of that organisation.
Many western leaders had been worried about the possibility of Britain invoking Article 5 but given what had just happened now felt this rather less likely.
The USSR had been keeping a close eye on events in the South Atlantic as this was an opportunity to see a NATO power in action. Publicly they took a predictable anti British stance calling them imperialists and implying that Washington was somehow responsible for an “Unprovoked attack on an independent peace loving nation”. Behind closed doors in the military buildings of Moscow however there was considerable unease at just how easily the Royal Navy seemed to have brushed the Argentinians aside.
As he sat in his office just adjacent to his “war room” at Puerto Belgrano Naval Base (From which he had been running the South Atlantic theatre of Operations) Vice Admiral Juan Lombardo reckoned that he was experiencing one of these moments.
For a man who had in his own opinion had just overseen the destruction of his beloved navy and was now facing an at best future of eternal shame and disgrace (he was deliberately avoiding thinking about the worst case scenario) he was thus far remarkably calm.
He reflected that Operation Martillo had certainly lived up to its name in that there was a hammer involved. However, if it was a person they would have missed the nail and instead smashed every bone in their hand.
It hadn’t been a good start to the morning when he had been awoken early by an aid who had told him that Brigadier Menendez on the Malvinas had reported that Port Stanley airfield had been bombed and put out of action by British carrier-based aircraft. At the time of the report the fires were still burning and it was still dark so Menendez didn’t have an accurate figure for losses in terms of equipment and personnel but he was certain that the airfields runway was so damaged that it would be unusable for the foreseeable future. This had meant that the aerial part of Operation Martillo had had to be downgraded from a mass air attack by airforce Skyhawks, Daggers and Mirages refuelling on the Malvinas to a mere four Exocet armed Super Etendard’s being refuelled in mid air by the air forces only two KC-130H’s on a long-ranged strike mission. Later in the day when Lombardo had seen the writing on the wall for Operation Martillo he had ordered even this mission scrubbed to preserve what was now Argentina’s best hope for a desirable outcome.
Things had picked up later that morning when one of TG 79.1’s S-2 Tracker’s had located a British surface group meaning that the various Argentine units now had a confirmed target to steam towards. The Tracker aircraft had abruptly ceased transmitting not long after this and was assessed to have been shot down by a British Combat Air Patrol. While regrettable this confirmed the presence of at least one of the British Aircraft carriers.
The afternoon was when disaster had unfolded. Just after midday a signal had come in from the destroyer ARA PIEDRABUENA that she had lost contact with the other two ships of her group, her sister ARA HIPOLITO BOUCHARD and the cruiser ARA GENERAL BELGRANO. Attempts by Lombardo’s headquarters to communicate with either ships had been fruitless. The next signal came a little while later and truly stunned Lombardo and the other officers in the room. It stated that Both the BOUCHARD and the BELGRANO were believed sunk by a torpedo attack.
It hadn’t been an easy decision but he knew it had been the right one. If there was a British submarine in the area particularly if it was one of the much feared SSN’s then the PIEDRABUENA was sailing into extreme danger. Therefore, rather than attempt to pick up survivors from the other two ships which would most likely result in their number being added to the PIEDRABUENA had been ordered to make best speed west and hopefully away from the lurking threat. Many men in the war room had been visibly distressed at the thought of so many men being effectively abandoned to the mercy of the unforgiving South Atlantic weather.
Lombardo and his staff had been revaluating the progress of the operation in light of this development and debating whether or not it could proceed when something truly shocking happened. TG 79.4 reported that it was under attack by British ASM armed Buccaneer aircraft. The ARA GUERRICO and ARA GRANVILLE were reported destroyed and the ARA DRUMMOND was hit and burning. Captain had sent a distress signal trying to impress upon Puerto Belgrano just how dire his situation was and that he desperately needed assistance.
Lombardo had also been communicating with Rear Admiral Allara aboard the carrier ARA VEINTICINCO DE MAYO both of whom knew what was likely to happen next. Upon their fears being realised Lombardo had decided that the game was up and ordered the relevant signals be sent aborting the whole operation. He had then withdrawn to his office and spent a few moments in quiet contemplation.
In his mind there was no getting away from the fact that the whole thing was his fault. Both he and his superior Admiral Jorge Anaya had pushed heavily for this and convinced the junta that despite all the obvious risks a navy led strike against the British fleet was the best course of action. Operation Martillo had been his brainchild and he would bear responsibility for its catastrophic failure with all that that entailed. It was almost he thought as if the wave of enthusiasm and patriotic fervour that had swept the country after the Malvinas had been reclaimed had affected him and his staff and caused them to overlook the fact that they were trying to mount an attack against the military of a well-armed NATO country.
His mood was not helped later on when an aid reported that there was still no contact with the submarine ARA SAN LUIS which had now missed its communications window and wasn’t responding to signals. Given where her last known position was relative to the detection of the British ships Lombardo got a certain sinking feeling and felt that he knew the likely reason why the submarine was not responding. To be honest after what had happened today would it really make any difference if it he was right.
He dreaded to think about all those many hundreds of men adrift and slowly freezing to death in the South Atlantic at that very moment. The problem was he could not do anything to help them. The British had no longer playing by their own rules and were acting completely out of character. They had obviously decided that any and all Argentine warships wherever they were were now fair game and had shown they certainly had the ability to “deal with them”. For that reason, Lombardo felt that he could not risk sending any warships (not that he had many of those left now) on a recovery mission and so had his staff trying to get any trawlers, merchantmen and other civilian vessels to search for survivors. Even then he wasn’t sure if the British would let them even do this. He didn’t have a casualty estimate but based on the combined total number of men on the stricken vessels and how long it was going to take to get to any survivors he knew it was going to be easily over a thousand men.
The politicised nature of the Argentine military meant that the loss of influence and clout that would result from this defeat would probably hurt the navy almost as much as the actual loss of its ships. Lombardo knew that the junta and Admiral Anaya in particular would use him as a scapegoat to try and save face when the news broke of what had happened. Whatever happened with the rescue operation Lombardo also knew for certain that he would not be the one coordinating that or occupying this office when that got underway.
Throughout the day he had managed to avoid having to directly speak with anyone in Buenos Aries having instead detailed a staffer to provide the Libertador building regular updates. He was pretty sure that junta as well as this would had other sources of information in the war room. He knew what was coming next and the fact that his very life may well depend on what was said and for that reason he was glad that he was still feeling reasonably calm.
All that changed however when a certain phone on his desk started to ring. There was only one place that would be calling him on that particular phone. As he sat looking at it almost mesmerised he noticed in the corner of his eye that the sun had set outside. He wasn’t sure if he would see it rise again. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to. If he decided that he didn’t he knew he had something in his desk draw that could help with that.
On Monday the 3rd of May the world awoke to the news that a real battle had taken place in the South Atlantic. What had previously been characterized around the world as a music hall melodrama or described as two bald men fighting over a comb had become an actual shooting war.
The political and media worlds awoke to reality while the man in the street awoke to horror. Nothing quite brings the violence of war alive in the imagination like the loss of a ship (let alone eight of them) and the attendant loss of life.
In the UK the PM had called a press conference in the early hours of the morning once it was felt that the battle had been concluded and gave a short statement stating that the previous day the Task force had taken action against three groups of Argentine ships that had threatening British forces. She went on to state that aircraft from the aircraft carrier HMS EAGLE and “one of our submarines” had sunk an estimated total of eight Argentine warships including the aircraft carrier 25th OF MAY and what she described as the battlecruiser GENERAL BELGRANO and that there had been no British casualties.
After finishing her statement, she took some questions from the assembled reporters. The questions mostly revolved around why she had taken this action and almost certainly destroyed any hopes for peace. Her answers were mostly variations of “They were a danger to our ships” and that Britain would not stand by while its territory was invaded and its subjects oppressed under the jackboots of what she called a fascist gang. She ended by saying that the Argentine military junta and any other potential adversary of Britain would now know that their actions would have consequences. One American reporter wrote “The British lion has just roared again”.
Newspaper editors scrambled to rewrite the next days edition as they realised they had to include the only story anyone was going to be interested in for days afterwards. The events of that night would go down in media history as phones rang in editors and journalist’s homes with messages to get back to the office as soon as was possible and printers were told to immediately stop what they were doing and prepare to receive new presses.
While TV and radio stations were not affected by such issues and able to start broadcasting special reports almost immediately they did share one common problem with their colleagues in the newspaper world. Apart from the Prime Ministers statement they didn’t really have much information to go on. A total of 29 members of the media had sailed with the Task Force but had found themselves severely hamstrung in how they could operate. There were two big problems. One was that they had to use the equipment on their respective ships to file reports meaning that they could only send text or voice signals not TV transmissions or even photographs. The other was that anything they did send had to pass through the hands of various military vetting officers who would censor details and had the power to completely cut off a reporter from contact with the outside world.
There were also no photographs of battle available at the time meaning that most reports resorted to using stock images and footage of the ships involved, particularly HMS EAGLE. More than one editor was embarrassed that instead of HMS EAGLE they had mistakenly published photos of her sister HMS ARK ROYAL which was still in the Tamar awaiting scrapping. Many maps of differing accuracy and artists impressions were produced detailing the course of events based on the limited information available at the time.
The BBC had been noted up until this point for maintaining what was felt to be a neutral and objective stance on the conflict and continued to do this. One of their reporters Brian Hanrahan was imbedded aboard HMS EAGLE and filed a report that would become one of the most enduring and almost iconic images of the conflict. He described his conversation with aircrews who had flown combat sorties that day and responding to the PM’s claim about their being no British losses stated “I’m not allowed to say how many planes joined the raid but I counted them all out and I counted them all back”.
The Sun had taken a firmly pro war stance and infamously printed an edition with the headline Gotcha leading to widespread condemnation. The Sun’s owner Rupert Murdoch notoriously refused to pull the headline leading to accusations that he was revelling in the deaths of so many Argentinians and resulted in a boycott campaign against the Sun.
By contrast the Daily Mirror had taken a decidedly anti-war stance and described the events as an act of aggression by the British and a brutal way of terminating any hopes for a negotiated settlement and largely dwelled on the likely large loss of life.
In the house of commons the Prime Minister defended the actions of the Task Force and found that despite some hostile questions and accusations from some of the more left leaning members of the opposition the house was largely supportive and swayed by the argument that if there was to be a war it could not be fought half-heartedly.
To the man in the street attitudes ranged from support of our boys down south to shock over the loss of life and relief that this hadn’t happened to the Task Force. Many agreed with the argument of necessary evil as news reports all stated that the Argentine ships were believed by the British military commanders to have been moving to attack the Task Force leading to an attitude of it was them or us.
There was something of an almost depressed mood in the towns of Birkenhead and Barrow In Furness where the ARA HERCULES and the ARA VEINTICINO DE MAYO had been built (The latter as HMS VENERABLE). Though they had been flying under an enemy flag many residents who had helped to build the ships felt a certain sense of grief over their destruction.
In Argentina the news could have only been described as shattering. This was particularly felt in the costal towns where the families of many of the Argentine sailors lived and especially in Puerto Belgrano Naval Base where the large and empty harbour was now little more than a reminder of those ships that would not be coming back. A mood of misery hung over these places after the news broke. This was made worse by the fact that at this stage there was no way of knowing the status of their loved ones. When days later survivors and recovered bodies had started to return to the mainland and the Malvinas and the process of body counting and identification had gotten underway the mood did not lift much. Far too many families were given the news they dreaded and even the survivors were initially kept isolated in military barracks as the junta attempted to control the flow of information.
The Junta had been unsure of how to deal with the news. Their natural instinct had always been to suppress or downplay bad news but how could they keep a catastrophe of this magnitude under wraps particularly when the British were shouting about it constantly. In the end the angle they went for was of an unprovoked British attack on brave (no one could say heroic) Argentine citizen (sounded better than conscripts) sailors who had been protecting the Malvinas.
Overnight the patriotic euphoria that had been felt since the liberation of the Malvinas had vanished and been replaced by a national mood of shock and horror and a grim assessment of the realities of war.
The big fear was that despair may turn to anger and that the military government may again find itself endangered. They were working hard to ensure that when the anger broke it would be directed at the British.
On top of this they still had to workout how to proceed with the conflict now that the navy had been all but wiped out and now that they were most certainly in a shooting war with the British.
Even worse the economy had already been in tatters when this had all started and to put it mildly being involved in a war wasn’t exactly helping things on that front.
Naturally the events of the 2nd of May created a major stir in the diplomatic world. The Argentinian ambassador to the UN had practically screamed murder about the British recapture of South Georgia and spent the entire day somehow almost incandescent with rage while trying to play for the sympathy card and trying to gather diplomatic allies against the British.
The sinking of the Belgrano in particular caused some distress in the USA where she had been built and had served in the second world war as the USS PHOENIX. The US government was upset that two countries that it considered allies in its face off with the Soviet Union were now instead fighting each other. While US public opinion was divided between those who thought that Britain and Argentina should negotiate a settlement and those that thought that the US should back its ally militarily President Regan felt he had no option but to back his NATO partner not least for the sake of that organisation.
Many western leaders had been worried about the possibility of Britain invoking Article 5 but given what had just happened now felt this rather less likely.
The USSR had been keeping a close eye on events in the South Atlantic as this was an opportunity to see a NATO power in action. Publicly they took a predictable anti British stance calling them imperialists and implying that Washington was somehow responsible for an “Unprovoked attack on an independent peace loving nation”. Behind closed doors in the military buildings of Moscow however there was considerable unease at just how easily the Royal Navy seemed to have brushed the Argentinians aside.
"If the Brits could do this with ramshackle force of hardware mostly old enough to vote, what could a USN carrier strike group do?"
By design and laying down, some of it is nearly old enough to draw a pension - Eagle in particular was laid down in '42, probably designed in about '39-'40 as they were enlarged Implacables.
Gorshkov will be hitting the liquor cabinet heavily for the next few months.
In @Cymraeg's Fireflies of Port Stanley, the Soviet Ambassador to the UN was making jokes about some surplus T-34s after 17lb Shermans had defended the Falklands. I wonder if some diplomat here is going to be musing with his British counterpart in a comradely way about deploying Aurora or some other elderly unit? Another Vodka, Comrade Ambassador?
How did the american media report on the war orginally?
Also would it be any different here (american media reporting) with an actual naval battle, i can see war hawks, the navy and pro brits being even more supportive especially the navy as they have vindication of their views being proven correct.
Also would it be any different here (american media reporting) with an actual naval battle, i can see war hawks, the navy and pro brits being even more supportive especially the navy as they have vindication of their views being proven correct.
Which makes me wonder what this will mean for a possible soviet carrier program. The Project 1153 was canceled in the late 1970's but it could still be revived, I think...
Conversaly, a reapraisail of soviet anti-CV tactics will surely come. I expect, at the very least, acelerated development of air-refueling to allow long range fighters to escort anti-CV bombers, as well as a boost to the SSGN fleet.
There's a few American news reports on youtube, but nothing like a comprehensive record (that I can find).
Agreed.
Of course, whatever Gorshkov's staff studies recommend, the hardware will just be reaching the pipeline when the Wall comes down anyway.
Honestly: a defeat of this magnitude might be enough to topple Galtieri even without a British ground campaign to liberate the islands. This is a far greater defeat than the sinking of Belgrano was in OTL. There is going to be more than a few whispered conversations in Buenos Aires that with the navy wiped out, it's just a matter of time before the Malvinas fall.
The junta desperately needs to get on the board, and the natural instinct is going to be a heavy set of land-based air attacks (it's the only thing left in their toolbox) on the RN TF's as quickly as possible, hoping they can get lucky with a few Exocets. The problem is, Woodward's boys will be expecting precisely that - and he is free to redeploy all his assets to air defense now.
