WI: Belgrano Survives

If HMS Conqueror doesn't torpedo and sink the ARA Belgrano in the Falklands' War, how does it change the game if at all? For the sake of argument, say Conqueror loses its track on Belgrano because of the conditions and she slips away back to her rally point. With the threat of her guns being turned for shore bombardment, how much weight does the RN throw toward finding and sinking her? Possibly enough to divert some air cover from the islands themselves?
 
The British weren't concerned about shore bombardment. Their fear was that the Belgrano would attack their aircraft carriers while the harriers were operating elsewhere. So yes, if Belgrano slips away I can see the British fleet taking a more defensive position, even withdrawing for a while. If belgrano does press home such an attack, then the outcome would be anyone's guess.
 
I can't really see her cruising another couple of hundred miles chasing the British fleet without getting found by another sub. Remember the RN subs were considerably faster than Belgrano and could attack from all angles before being detected.

She loses Conqueror, she gets sunk a day or two later.

The most useful thing the Argentines could have done would be to beach in Stanley harbour.
 
Losing contact with the Belgrano is pretty ASB, those ex WW2 cruisers sound like a coffee grinder on speed to a modern sonar set. Even if it did happen for some magic reason, they know roughly where she is, shes a big fat radar target and the RN had a number of subs in the area. She either runs back to port or gets sunk somewhere else.
 
While it proved more difficult than it should have to locate Veinticinco de Maio, Splendid should've had her in the bag in a day or two, without the sudden shock of Belgrano's sinking that sent the ARG surface fleet to port OTL. British political will wouldn't have stretched to two large surface combatants being sunk (it took lots of convincing to get the permission to sink just one), so it's likely in this case that its VdM that gets the bullet here, though she might have time to get up enough steam to launch a Skyhawk strike, revealing her position as she does. I envisage Captain Bonzo's crew breaks off and goes to ground afterwards.
 

AndyC

Donor
The key output of sinking the Belgrano was that the 25th de Mayo and its escorts promptly returned to port - removing any possibility of Argentina successfully contesting the Air War (following the redeployment of long-range fighters away from airfields that could be used to reach the Islands towards Buenos Aires).

However, if they hadn't, you might well have simply seen the 25th de Mayo sunk instead.
 
I think that the chances of the Belgrano and its other cruisers meeting up with the Cinco de Mayo could have huge consequences on the British fleet in the area. Im not thinking Argentinian victory, but maybe a longer more drawn out war.
 
I think that the chances of the Belgrano and its other cruisers meeting up with the Cinco de Mayo could have huge consequences on the British fleet in the area. Im not thinking Argentinian victory, but maybe a longer more drawn out war.

Why?? More targets together just means a happier submarinbe captain...
Or does the juxtaposition of the heavy units somehow create magic that stops the RN from sinking them??
 
Indeed; it's hard to have a 'long drawn out war' when either side is packing anti-ship missiles and one side or the other will be reduced to blazing wrecks after the first proper salvo, to say nothing of the fact that as Astrodragon mentioned, only one side has submariners that know what they're doing (the closest ARG sub force managed was to miss a torpedo shot on a burning hulk).

Belgrano might've been better paired with the Arg type 42s for air defence instead of the Gearing and Sumner class... Which in the event wouldn't have changed things a jot.
 
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