Those who assumed the easy victory in South Georgia meant Britain was
now gung-ho for action did not know the new Foreign Secretary. On 27 April, Francis Pym agreed with
Haig a compromise deal which, they both hoped, would avoid war. The terms were that the task force would be recalled and, in return, Argentina would withdraw its Falklands garrison. The islands
would then be governed by a tripartite US–Argentine–British ‘Special Interim Authority’, pending a final settlement. In the meantime, Argentina would gain the right to
appoint ‘representatives of the resident Argentine population’ – a hitherto unknown entity – to the islands’ local administration. The proposal made a hazy reference
to ‘taking into account’ the islanders’ wishes, but contained no explicit commitment to respect their right to self-determination as the basis for a final settlement. If the
Argentine and British governments could not reach a final settlement, the United States would propose and arbitrate a settlement of its own devising. What happened if this proved unacceptable to
either Buenos Aires or London was not addressed. There was the potential for years of impasse and non-cooperation, with all the consequences that such uncertainty about the future would create for
an inevitably dwindling number of islanders. It was certainly hard to see Argentina’s will crumbling during this period, especially if the islands became depopulated and, in effect, ceased to
be inhabited by anyone the British Foreign Office would be feel bound to defend.
There can be little doubt that the Foreign Secretary had negotiated away a position that the prime minister herself was unwilling to relinquish. In her memoirs, Thatcher wrote witheringly that
Pym’s deal would have allowed Galtieri ‘to swamp the existing population with Argentinians’ during the period of the islands’ tripartite administration and, if his proposals
had been accepted, she would have resigned.
30
This was no idle boast. Nott’s subsequent analysis was that the majority of the Cabinet and also
Parliament would have accepted the deal.
31
Such was the lack of faith in Britain’s being able to beat Argentina without unacceptable
casualties. However, before it got as far as the full Cabinet, let alone Parliament, the Pym–Haig deal had to be approved by the War Cabinet and there Thatcher found she was not alone. Nott,
nevertheless, persuaded her to withhold stating her position publicly until the proposal had been formally put to Buenos Aires. It was risky advice, for if the junta accepted the deal then Thatcher
would be in trouble. Pym was proposing to advise the Cabinet that if Argentina agreed to it, Britain should also accept it, otherwise ‘even friends and allies will wobble’.
32
He hoped that the loss of South Georgia would convince Galtieri to accept the offer of a peaceful way out. But in this Pym proved himself no psychologist of
the dictatorial mind. Galtieri was not looking for a way out. On 29 April, he rejected the Pym–Haig proposals, explaining that Argentina could not accept a provisional administration unless
the issue of future Argentine sovereignty over the islands was explicit. Where Whitehall offered
fudge, Buenos Aires frustratingly demanded clarity. The dispute would thus be
settled not by diplomatic contrivances but by the profession of arms. Bowing to the inevitable, Haig abandoned his peace efforts the next day. The United States duly embargoed military exports to
Argentina, but decided not to stop all trade or to sever credit for fear it might result in such a massive Argentine default that the world financial system could be imperilled. Sometimes, it paid
to be a debtor.
Sink the
Belgrano
!
The end of the Haig mission exposed the task force to imminent attack. It was now within range of about 160 combat aircraft of the Argentine air force, over eighty of which were
fully serviced front-line planes. Most flew from bases on the Argentine mainland, which was officially deemed out of bounds for a British strike (although a covert SAS mission on 17 May to destroy
Exocet missiles and Super Étendard aircraft at the Rio Grande airbase was only aborted after its reconnaissance helicopter was detected and had to ditch on the Chilean side of the border).
The first priority, therefore, was given to disabling the airfield at Port Stanley, the vital strip from which the Argentine garrison was being regularly resupplied. Hostilities on East Falkland
duly commenced on 1 May 1982, with an RAF bombing raid, codidd Operation Black Buck. Armed with 1,000-lb bombs, Vulcan bombers flew from Ascension Island, which, as a 7,860-mile round trip
involving ten mid-air refuellings, was the longest-range bombing mission in history. The raid created a neat line of craters, one of which was strategically almost slap bang in the centre of
Stanley’s runway. This was sufficient to prevent Argentine Skyhawks and Super Étendards from using the strip, but failed to make it totally unusable. Follow-up missions proved less
successful. Indeed, during the course of the war, the airfield peninsula was strafed twenty-two times, hit by 218 bombs and shelled by Royal Navy guns 1,200 times. Yet the results of so much
ordnance were underwhelming: Argentina remained able to fly in at least limited supplies until almost the very end of the conflict.
33
Argentine retaliation for the Vulcan raid was immediate, with thirty-five air sorties engaging the task force during the course of 1 May. In this opening joust, the British Sea Harriers came out
on top with seven Argentine aircraft shot down and Caspar Weinberger’s Sidewinder missiles proving their worth. The Argentine jets’ only success was a hit on HMS
Glamorgan
, which
sustained superficial damage. Unharmed were the main targets,
Hermes
and
Invincible
. On board these carriers were the twenty Sea Harriers upon which the task force’s defence
depended. If the carriers were sunk, then so were Britain’s chances of regaining the Falklands. Thus it was that
the Royal Navy’s frigates and destroyers found
themselves acting as ‘pickets’, or decoys, ready to attract enemy fire and, if need be, sacrifice themselves in order to protect the prize targets. Unfortunately, only two of the ships
on picket patrol, the Type-22 frigates
Broadsword
and
Brilliant
(later joined by
Battleaxe
), were armed with Sea Wolf missiles capable of intercepting Exocet missiles. The rest
were protected by Sea Dart missiles which, while capable of shooting down missiles incoming from a height, were less effective against the low, wave-skimming path of the Exocet. It was the fear of
an Exocet strike that rightly exercised the minds of captains and crew alike.
The main theatre of war was the 200 nautical mile total exclusion zone that Britain had drawn in a radius around the Falklands. Any Argentine ships or aircraft intercepted within this zone were
deemed to be hostile and a legitimate target. However, a government clarification on 23 April made it clear that the existence of the zone did not preclude action being taken against any hostile
threat beyond the twelve-mile limit of Argentina’s territorial waters. Thus the Argentine fleet, hovering just outside the total exclusion zone, understood that it also risked attack. To the
north of the zone, the Argentine carrier
Veinticinco de Mayo
posed the greatest threat: not only were her aircraft easily within range to sink the two British carriers, but the
Veinticinco de Mayo
was accompanied by three escorts armed with Exocet missiles. Two of the three British nuclear-powered hunter-killer submarines in the area, HMS
Spartan
and HMS
Splendid
, were dispatched to track down the carrier, for while it remained at sea it possessed single-handed the capacity to destroy the entire British operation.
While Rear Admiral Sandy Woodward fretted about the Argentine carrier group to the north of the total exclusion zone, there was also a second enemy formation loitering to the south of it. This
consisted of the light cruiser
General Belgrano
and two destroyer escorts. Having survived a previous life in the US Navy at Pearl Harbor, the
Belgrano
was an elderly behemoth, but
she was armed with eight 5-inch and fifteen 6-inch guns, whose shells had a 20-mile range. These easily outmatched anything in Woodward’s armoury (his Type-42 destroyers had only a single
4.5-inch gun each – less impressive than that of a main battle tank – with a 13.6-mile range),
34
while the
Belgrano
’s two
destroyers were armed with eight Exocets each, able to sink a ship twenty-five miles away. If Woodward’s carriers and Sea Harriers were to be taken out by air strikes from the
Veinticinco
de Mayo
, the
Belgrano
and her escorts could pummel with impunity the remains of the task force, firing from a range at which there could be no retaliation.
Fearing a pincer movement from the carrier group to the north and the cruiser group to the south, Woodward requested permission to attack. While there was still no confirmed fix on the carrier
group, the submarine HMS
Conqueror
had the
Belgrano
group in its sights. During 2 May, the
Belgrano
sailed eastwards towards the task force while
skirting the outside of the total exclusion zone. It had already begun to change course back towards the west when the War Cabinet (minus Pym, who was away in New York) approved Woodward’s
request to attack. It would certainly have been less controversial to have withheld permission until the
Belgrano
had crossed into the total exclusion zone. However, Woodward feared that
waiting represented too great a risk, since, if the
Belgrano
were about to turn into the zone, she would follow a course over the underwater ridge known as the Burdwood Bank, where
Conqueror
could not easily remain in pursuit without endangering herself. With permission granted, three torpedoes were launched. The first missed. The second hit the cruiser in its bow. The
third hit its stern. Rather than pick up survivors, her escort ships scarpered, leaving the
Belgrano
to go down with 323 of her crew.
Shock at the news reverberated around the world, mostly to Britain’s disadvantage. President Reagan promptly pleaded with Thatcher to sheathe her sword. The attack confirmed the worst
fears of those European countries that were least keen to be associated with Britain’s actions. The Irish defence minister denounced Britain as ‘the aggressor’, while the Austrian
Chancellor, Bruno Kreisky, confirmed he was not prepared to support Britain’s ‘colonial’ claim to the islands. Sir Anthony Parsons observed a rapid change in attitudes at the UN,
where ‘It began to look as though . . . a horrid NATO country [was] clobbering a poor Third World non-aligned state.’
35
In Britain,
divisions were drawn between those who assumed that this sort of thing tended to happen in war – the cruiser was hardly on a sightseeing excursion – and those who thought the attack on
it represented a needless escalation, especially when the
Belgrano
’s position outside the total exclusion zone was admitted. The controversy that this last point generated in Britain
was rather lost on the Argentines, whose defence ministry later affirmed that the sinking was ‘a legal act of war’.
36
There were
certainly no qualms in the offices of
The Sun
at the time. The editor, Kelvin MacKenzie, and a small group of staff were trying to bring out their newspaper in the midst of an eleven-day
strike by the National Union of Journalists. The features editor, Wendy Henry, reacted to the breaking news by shouting ‘Gotcha!’ – a coarse sentiment that MacKenzie duly
immortalized on the paper’s front page. In fact, the most notorious headline in British newspaper history only lasted as long as the first edition. As reports began to suggest that there
might have been serious loss of life, even MacKenzie had second thoughts and replaced
‘Gotcha!’ with the less offensive – though more inaccurate – ‘Did 1200 Argies Drown?’
37
But it was the reflex
action that caused the trouble and, for many, summed up everything that was distasteful about Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing tabloid.
Distasteful or not, the sinking of the
Belgrano
ended the threat from the
Argentine surface fleet. Greatly alarmed, the
Veinticinco de Mayo
hastily returned
to the safety of her port, where she cowered impotently for the rest of the war. This was a huge blow to Argentina’s fighting effectiveness. Only the submarine
San Luis
remained on the
loose and, evading detection, fired torpedoes – which missed – at the frigates
Arrow
and
Alacrity
on 11 May. It is hard to reach any other conclusion than that the
Belgrano
’s demise was one of the turning points of the conflict which, at a stroke, all but removed one of Argentina’s three armed services from the battle. Of course, it did
nothing to lessen the threat posed by the other two Argentine services and, two days later, on 4 May, Argentine Super Étendard jets spotted HMS
Sheffield
. Despite being on picket
duty, the Type-42 destroyer was caught unawares, her radar temporarily inoperable while she was transmitting satellite communication messages. The ship’s chefs were busy deep-frying potatoes
when the Exocet missile ripped through the hull, engulfing the vessel in fire and killing twenty. Reduced to a burned-out hulk,
Sheffield
floated lifelessly for a bit and then sank, the
first Royal Navy warship to be lost since the Second World War. ‘In military terms, the Falklands war is turning into a worse fiasco than Suez,’ the
New Statesman
’s
political editor, Peter Kellner, hastily pronounced. Other commentators on the left were equally quick to interpret
Sheffield
’s fate as proof that Britain should no longer risk
pretending to be a medium-rank power. The eminent professor of politics Bernard Crick denounced ‘the narrowly legal doctrine of sovereignty’ which had ensured only ‘atavistic
routes of patriotic death when our last shred of power lies in our reputation for diplomatic and political skill’. If ever there was a time to subsume Britain within the greater pulling power
of the European Community, Crick was certain this was it.
38