WI: Both escorts sunk with ARA Belgrano? Political and Military repercussions.

WILDGEESE

Gone Fishin'
In his book '100 Days' Sandy Woodward described meeting the Cmdr of the HMS Conqueror, Chris Wreford-Brown back home some time after the conflict.

According to his accounts, Wreford-Brown told him that after putting a couple of slugs into the Belgrano he was in two minds as to wether to make a 2nd attack and sink the escorts who were with her but thought it might be a war crime so didn't.

Woodward told him in no certain terms that it wouldn't have been a war crime and if he'd been there he wouldn't have hesitated to sink every ship even those rescuing the Belgrano's survivors.

If Wreford-Brown had made the 2nd attack and sunk both the escorts, (Allen M Summer class, complement around 340ish) and with the possible loss of life similar to that of the Belgrano at around 50%, what would the repercussions politically and military of doing this?

Regards filers
 

Cook

Banned
Neither escort had stopped to rescue survivors, so it couldn't be considered a war crime in any circumstances. I'm not even sure you could make a case for it being a war crime even if one of them had been stopped to pick up survivors; it's an armed combatant, not a hospital ship, and had not signalled any intention of surrendering.
It certainly would have had the desired effect of confining the Argentine navy to port for the duration of hostilities.
 
As far as I am concerned the British were well within their rights to sink, capture or burn any Argentine Warship and vessel supporting the Argentine war effort that they happened to chance across anywhere in the world - that they toned it down somewhat shows that they play the long game.

As it was both DDs were out of visual range of the ARA Belgrano due to the weather and had very little clue what had occoured other than the sound of explosions - but one of them the Hipólito Bouchard (D-26) believes that it was hit by the 3rd torpedo (that obviously failed to explode if the case) and post war investigation apparently turned up damage consistant with a potential hit! Equally it might have just been the underwater shockwave of the explosions. Had it been a hit then it was likely luck as Conquerors captain was only intending to fire the salvo at the Cruiser.

This all resulted in the DDs going evasive and as a result many Argentine Sailors that might have been rescued drowned or died of exposure as it was hours if not days before they were rescued.

The issue with sucessfully attacking all 3 targets is that Conqueror was armed with MK8 Straight running unguided torpedos (which she fired 3 of) and MK 24 Tigerfish wire guided/acoustic torpedos - that were largely untrusted in their primary role of Anti Submarine torpedo and found to be utterly useless in the surface attack role.

So while RN Sub Captains are high skilled in the art of Submarine Warfare and if anyone could pull it off it would be the captain of HMS Conqueror it would involve conducting a sucessful attack on all 3 warships which would likely involve the attacks on the DDs after thwey are alerted to the fact that they are under attack making any subsequant attack far more difficult.

So while it is not a war crime - I think such an attack is unlikely to have been sucessful and the effects more difficult for Britain politically i.e. idiotic tabloid comments like "Britain Waives the Rules" etc (not to mention the Suns vile 'Gotcha') had it been carried out.
 
I can't see that it changes much in all honesty. The initial reports from the Belgrano sinking was 1200 dead, when it later turned out to be much less.

The impact at the time was the escalation of the war from one of politics and posture to one where ships were being sunk and people killed. Therefore the Argies are still going to come out with their airforce and sink HMS Sheffield, their carrier Venti cinquo de Mayo is still going to hide in port through fear of the RN subs, a lot of posturing will go on in the background about the 200 mile exclusion zone but not a lot will change.

Oh and it wouldn't have been a war crime. The DDs were legitimate targets operating in a combat zone during a conflict, and they weren't rescuing survivors.
 
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