Mexican and Argentine relations were coming to a breaking point with Mexico trying to break them by doing what Austria-Hungary did to Serbia and issued a ultimatum to Argentina to:
- Break all relations with the Axis.
- Give up all Axis weapons.
- End all hostile actions towards Mexico.
- Juan Peron must step down from power .
- Argentina must accept the Commonwealth's ownership of the Falklands islands.
It was the last two terms that struck a nerve with Argentina and that was the final straw; on March 13, Juan Peron made an announcement on radio that Mexico and Canada are Argentina's enemies and they want to rip Argentina apart and declared war on the Allies.
This finally gave Mexico the excuse they needed to attack the Argentine Naval dock in Buenos Aires and cripple the Navy long before they can even set sail. On March 15, three Mexican aircraft carriers departed from Mexican Guiana and silently arrived on the 16 at the Rio de la Plata and on the break of dawn on the 18, Mexican modified Stukas took off on 6:30 a.m. and began dive bombing on the Argentine Navy, specifically targeting the aircraft carriers and the Battleships, Argentine planes were desperately trying to scrambled but were cut down by Wildcat fighters, this time unlike the Japanese they wanted to make sure that the Argentine Airforce was destroyed, by 8:30 the planes left and the Argentines thought the attack was over and began trying to put down the flames and save what could be saved, ARA
Independencia was now a burning hunk and ARA
Veinticinco de Mayo was barely afloat, while for Battleships
Libertad was taking in water while
Independencia was largely undamaged.
What the Argentines thought that the worse was over was actually going to get a lot worse: because twenty minutes later came the second attack, apparently when the Mexican bombers left it was because they needed to rearm and now they're back. Again the Argentine Airforce was desperately trying to take off and again they were cut down by Wildcats, while the bombers focused all their bombs on threw targets:
Independencia, Libertad and the
General Belgrano and after the second attack
Independencia was no more and
Libertad has now been sunk, while the
Belgrano was on fire.
View attachment 477646 ARA
Independencia
View attachment 477647 General Belgrano
Both before the attack
View attachment 477654 Argentine destroyer destroyed
After the second attack the planes returned back to the carriers and they returned back to Guiana certain that it was mission accomplished. The Battle of Buenos Aires leveled almost all of the Argentine modern ships with only
Belgrano being salvaged partly, and this basically eliminated an Argentine attack on the colonies, so much so that Peron had to abandon his join the IJN and fight the Pacific fleet and instead focus on just the Falklands.