A catastrophe had befallen the Argentinians with the sinking of the Belgrano on May 2nd 1982, all in all 368 sailors died after it was torpedoed by the nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror.

While Argentina’s warships never ventured out to sea again, the diplomatic fallout from the sinking caused Britain to lose a great deal of good faith that she’d built up over the preceding few weeks. 

But it was only two days later that Admiral Anaya was going to take his revenge.

Before then, a few bits of action were recorded. On the night of 2nd May a Sea King helicopter was fired on by the Argentinian naval vessel the Alferez Sobral about 100 nautical miles north of the Falklands. The helicopter escaped damage and flew back to HMS Glasgow and Coventry, based nearby. Two Lynx choppers took off and guided by the Sea King took aim at the Sobral firing two Sea Skua missiles. The British recorded two explosions and the echo of the Sobral seemed to die away – they thought it had been sunk. 

It hadn’t. 

Out among the British ships, the crews were working their defence watches, second-degree readiness. The surveillance radars were picking up false echoes suggesting incoming aircraft, what was known as anomalous propagation. Several of the ships were chatting about this problem, HMS Coventry was in contact with HMS Sheffield which had taken over Coventry’s usual station at the south-west corner of the task force, about 40 miles south of Port Stanley.

When war erupted most of Sheffield’s crew thought they wouldn’t be joining the Task Team, they were off Gibraltar on their way home after 4 and a half months at sea. That’s quite a stint for a destroyer. After deployment on April 2nd, some thought they wouldn’t be heading further south than Ascension Island. Eventually and ironically HMS Sheffield was the first surface ship to reach the Total Exclusion Zone – ahead of the Task Force. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.