WI 25 de Mayo had the catapult rebuild?

How would a strike of 7-8 A4Bs go against the British task force of 20 Sea Harriers on 2 carriers defended by at least 10 escorts including 3 Type 42s and 2 Type 22s? Keep in mind that the British knew the Arg carrier was at sea, they'd detected the ARA's T42 radars.

I'd imagine it would come down to the reactions on both sides, it would be the first carrier battle since WW2, and am I right in thinking would be the first attack on the task force. I guess the RN would win but might suffer some escort losses or Harrier losses possible.

Could/Would the task force counterstrike or would it need to use the SSN's to attack?

I imagine that a carrier battle would certainly change the post war views of the RN even more than the Falklands did in OTL.
 
The big benefit as I see it for a carrier launched strike is that it can come out of an unexpected direction. I know the British were away the she was at sea (and we know she was being semi-tracked on the day by a SSN). Was the SSN reporting location regularly? Obviously if this is the case then it won't be much of a surprise.

If not then there is a chance that the RN fleet will be in the wrong formation to receive an air attack (don't forget that those Sea Darts and Sea Wolfs had their own firing arcs for example). While the RN is very competent, if the fleet has just been subject to an attack from the mainland they may not have reorganised for all round defence.
 
The RN rarely operated close enough to be subject to attack from the mainland. Perhaps is there was a carrier strike the Arg Canberras might be able to launch a follow-up attack.
 
How would a strike of 7-8 A4Bs go against the British task force of 20 Sea Harriers on 2 carriers defended by at least 10 escorts including 3 Type 42s and 2 Type 22s? Keep in mind that the British knew the Arg carrier was at sea, they'd detected the ARA's T42 radars.

Not well.

In order to penetrate the screen you would need to have a jamming aircraft or pods which I doubt the Argentinean Navy had. You could have two strike packages emerging from different directions with four aircraft each, but that would be dependent upon their in flight refuelling capabilities.

Provided their plot is accurate and the RN taskforce hasn't altered course, after all Argentinean signal discipline wasn't great from memory. I am confident that the RN would have warning that a raid was inbound.So if they are able to synchronise their time over target, they are then attempting to sink ships at sea in deep ocean - not great with dumb bombs.

Thus if they are able to penetrate the outer and inner screens, perhaps one or two aircraft may get through and return home. I would think that it would be doubtful that an A-4 would be able to do sufficient damage to the taskforce, although someone could always get lucky.

I would probably say a black day in the history of the Argentinean Navy.
 
The RN rarely operated close enough to be subject to attack from the mainland. Perhaps is there was a carrier strike the Arg Canberras might be able to launch a follow-up attack.

Canberras would be easy targets for Sea Dart, and it doesn't have much chance if engaged by a Harrier either.
 
At 0325 on 2nd of May a Sea Harrier was scrambled to inverstigate a contact, which turned out to be a Tracker from 25 de Mayo, no intercepton was made. 3 Sea Harriers were launched to conduct surface searches out to 150 miles, at 0425 a Sea Harrier searching the north west popped up and detected 4 or 5 ships and was locked by a Type 909 from the ARA Hercules.

Before dawn Woodward made his dispositions with the 9 escorts at his disposal and flew CAPs from dawn, so the RN was ready for the strike. I think that the strike would have been destroyed, it wasn't strong enough.

Late that afternoon the Belgrano was sunk and the next day the 25 de Mayo went back to port.
 
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