Dan Snow's History Hit - Falklands40: The Sinking of the Belgrano

Episode Date: May 1, 2022

On this day 40 years ago the HMS Conqueror, a British nuclear submarine, propelled silently through the South Atlantic stalking the Argentinian light cruiser the ARA General Belgrano in the vicinity of the Falkland Islands. At 2.57 pm Conqueror was given the order to torpedo the enemy warship. With two direct hits to the ship, more than 300 Argentine sailors were killed in what remains one of the most controversial actions of the Falklands War.To mark the 40th anniversary Dan speaks to Vice Admiral Sir Tim McClement who was second in command on the HMS Conquerer about those tense moments as the torpedoes were launched, as well as Will Butler from the National Archives and Naval Historian Iain Ballantyne about the controversy and the information leak that rocked the heart of government.Iain Ballantyne is Editor of the monthly naval news magazine WARSHIPS International Fleet Review and author of the books 'Hunter Killers' and 'The Deadly Trade' which both feature accounts of how the British submarine HMS Conqueror sank the Argentine cruiser ARA General Belgrano.Need to catch up on our Falklands War Anniversary coverage? Try Falklands40: What Started the Falklands War?Produced by Mariana Des ForgesMixed and Mastered by Dougal PatmoreIf you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.

Hello everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. It's another in our series of Falklands War 40th Anniversary podcasts today. If you go back a little bit on the feed, you'll find a couple of episodes talking about the Falklands War, the Argentinian invasion of those islands. And today we're going to be talking about really the first significant loss of life, the first large act of violence of that war, which was the sinking of the argentinian ship the general belgrano so on the 2nd of april 1982 an amphibious assault was made on the falcons at stanley port stanley the argentinians claimed sovereignty over the islands this all sounds wearyingly familiar now, and decide to press their claim at the tip of the spear. The Argentinian military junta believed that it would be a pushover, that Britain would

not seek to contest the conquest of the islands. The military junta was wrong. Britain immediately responded by sending a task force, a big fleet carrying the necessary ground forces to retake the islands by force. It was an astonishing logistical challenge, apart from everything else for the British, who were going to engage the Argentinian military 8,000 miles away from home. And the nearest friendly airstrip airport was basically Ascension Island, sort of halfway there. The British Naval Task Force was fairly rapidly assembled from whatever vessels were available. They sailed south through April and among the vessels were submarines, including HMS Conqueror, which set sail from Faslane, Scotland, on the 4th of April.

In all, 127 ships with 28,000 British troops headed south. By late April, the Argentinians had around 10,000 troops on the Falklands. The vast majority of these were poorly trained conscripts without proper food, clothing, shelter, or really any idea what they were doing there. And these men would now bear the brunt of one of the world's finest militaries. Many people, including many of the people on board the task force, as you'll hear, never thought there would actually be a shooting war. There would be some kind of negotiated settlement. Despite the fact there already had been combat, for example, on South Georgia as British special forces retook those islands. On the 2nd of May 1982, the true nature and scale

of this war was made very clear when HMS Conqueror, the submarine, sank the Argentinian ship, the General Belgrano. It was a Second World War era vessel. It had actually been in the US Navy in the Pacific War as USS Phoenix. She had big guns designed to sink enemy vessels or bombard shore positions and she carried potent anti-aircraft missiles as well. She represented a threat to the British task force that was nearing the Falklands. Quite apart from its importance in the Falklands campaign, it was a remarkable bit of history in its own right. The sinking was a very clear demonstration

that this war was escalating and would likely be resolved on the battlefield. Hundreds of men were killed as the torpedoes tore through the ship's hull. More were killed as the ship sank and men the ship's hull. More were killed as the ship sank and men were thrown into the icy cold South Atlantic in growing darkness and rising sea conditions. The poor weather, the poor communication between Belgrano and its escort ships meant that 323 men were killed in the attack.

We're now going to hear in this podcast all about the attack. We'll hear from Sir Tim Clement. He was second in command on the nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror. He played an absolutely essential part in the sinking. His calculations, his maths ensured those torpedoes struck their target. We're going to also, though, hear from Will Butley, head of military records at the National Archives for the UK. those torpedoes struck their target. We're going to also, though, hear from Will Butley, head of military records at the National Archives for the UK.

He's going to be telling us about the official decision made to sink Belgrano and what happened after, as the attack proved controversial and the British government scrambled to justify it in Parliament and the press. We're also going to hear from Ian Ballantyne, a legend. He's been writing about the Royal Navy for more than 20 years. He's rarely off naval ships and his book on Bismarck last year was one of the inspirations

for my podcast series and history hit TV show on the sinking of Bismarck. With those three guests, we'll be talking not just about sinking itself, but its impact on the wider war. Also, the controversy. It led to court cases back home as a British civil servant, Clive Ponting, released papers to a Member of Parliament suggesting that the British government has not been entirely honest about its motivation and decision-making around the sinking of Belgrano. So without further ado, here is the story of Belgrano, 40 years on.

of Belgrano, 40 years on. First up, we're going to hear from Will Butley, he's Head of Military Records at National Archives, and he's going to be filling me in on what happened between the Argentine invasion of the Falklands and the days leading up to the sinking of Belgrano. Will, thanks very much for coming on the show. Not a problem at all. Thank you very much for having me.

Very excited to talk to you today. So we live in a world now where everyone moves around a lot all the time and you can shoot hypersonic missiles all over the planet. But actually, after Argentina landed in the Falklands on the 2nd of April, what was the kind of British presence in the South Atlantic? Who went where on what platform? So immediately after the invasion, a task force of around about 100 ships was dispatched from the UK on around about the 5th of April, so three days after the invasion. So that was on its way towards the South Atlantic quite quickly, quite early on. It's kind of old-fashioned. It's get on some ships and sail down there. There's no nearby friendly runways. You can just land everything you need. Not at all. It's a very long way away from mainland Britain. So yeah, everything had to be transported, you know, in particular soldiers and

all of the equipment that they were going to need. So they did have a stop off point at Ascension Island as well, which is east of the Falklands and also South Georgia as well. But it's an awfully long way away. So it took over three weeks to get anywhere near the south atlantic for those forces and now if you're defending some islands like the forklands you can either wait until people land on your beaches and try and shoot them all when they do that or you interdict them you get them intercept them at sea right when they're all packed into ships and so what are the argentinians doing about this approaching flotilla of british ships so they're all packed into ships. And so what are the Argentinians doing about this approaching flotilla of British ships? So they're regularly patrolling

around a few hundred miles away from the Falkland Islands. So again, about 10 days after the initial invasion, the UK government declares a maritime exclusion zone, what it calls a maritime exclusion zone, which covers around about 200 nautical miles from the centre of the Falkland Islands themselves. That essentially meant that the UK government is saying any ship that moves into this exclusion zone is a threat, is viewed as a threat. The British government is incredibly concerned about the vulnerability of this task force as it sails, and the abilities of the Argentine Navy to intercept it and actually do something

to stop it and cause large casualties in doing that. And this really kind of escalates throughout April. As the task force gets closer and closer, you know, those realities come even more into the forefront to the point, in fact, that then eventually, at the end of April, Britain enacts a total exclusion zone. So that includes also any aircraft that might be deemed a threat to British forces. And obviously, there's a bit of ambiguity there. What does it mean by being deemed a threat? There's a subjectivity to that. But the British government is very clear in what it's trying to do to ensure the safety of its forces as it makes its journey towards the islands. And is this where the Belgrano comes in? Talk to

me about this Argentinian ship, Belgrano. Absolutely. So there's a number of ships that are deemed to be a large threat. So there's an Argentine aircraft carrier, the Vienchenco de Mayo, the 25th of May. Apologies for the pronunciation there, but it's an aircraft carrier which is deemed to be quite a large threat at the end of April, as is the General Belgrano. So what these vessels are doing are essentially patrolling on the outskirts of this maritime and then later the total exclusion zone. So they're outside of it, but they're moving in such a way that it's deemed, again, certainly by HMS Conqueror, which is the submarine that eventually engages it,

but also throughout the Naval Department and then the government, it's moving in such a way that it's being deemed as a threat. At least initially, it's moving towards the task force. Again, still on the outskirts of the total exclusion zone, but it's positioning itself, the British government believes, in readiness to attack the task force ultimately. Is that when the British government decides to destroy it? So there's an awful lot of discussion that goes on back and forth. Again, there's lots of distance involved in all of that. This is 1982, it's not instant communications in that way. So there's lots of back and forth. There's lots of discussions within

the War Cabinet about the rules of engagement in all of this. Can Britain legally and justifiably attack the General Belgrano, especially because it's still located outside the total exclusion zone? So there's a lot of back and forth and a number of warnings are given. So there was a warning given on the 23rd of April from the UK to the Argentine government, again reiterating this point that any vessel that is deemed a threat to the task force will be engaged. But certainly by then the 1st of May, the day before the attack is made, the decisions are made really for HMS Conqueror to engage and it does so on the 2nd of May. Had there been much

fighting before then or would this be the first sort of major act of violence of this war following the invasion itself? Certainly in terms of the scale and the scale of casualties as they ended up being on the General Belgrano. So yes, there had been some fighting. Argentine forces had taken the islands with very minimal casualties. There'd also then been some fighting for South Georgia. So South Georgia had been retaken by British forces on the 26th of April. But again, very few casualties. They'd managed to disable an Argentine submarine in doing so. But again, on South Georgia, it was very much, I suppose, a token force on that island.

So certainly casualties were minimal up to this point. And all of a sudden, with 300 plus casualties on the General Belgrano, this does kind of scale things up quite considerably really. On the 2nd of May, torpedo tubes were loaded into the nuclear-powered submarine HMS Conqueror. The sea was choppy, there was a light mist, visibility was less than a mile. The submarine had been trailing the Argentine light cruiser. The captain of the nuclear-powered submarine had radioed London for instructions. The defence

secretary, following cabinet agreement, later recalled that it was the easiest decision he'd had to make. Alongside the captain on board Conqueror was the second in command. Now Vice Admiral Sir Tim McClement. Tim thank you very much for coming on. My pleasure Dan. Now was Conqueror in the South Atlantic anyway or were you deployed there after the invasion? We were actually deployed two days after the invasion. We'd been in the North Atlantic, we'd come back into our base in Faslane, invasion. We'd been in the North Atlantic, we'd come back into our base in Faslane, changed the commanding officer who had had 48 hours at sea. He didn't know his three heads of department, so it was quite a challenge for Chris Reefer-Brown. We were told to stall for war before we knew anything about the Falklands invasion. What was the feeling on board the

ship when you were told to do that? None of us were ready to conduct a conventional war in the South Atlantic. I've been in the Navy for 10 years and it never crossed my mind. All I was concerned with, it would either be the Third World War or détente and there was nothing in between. So we had to do a mental shift because we had spent our whole lives chasing Soviet submarines and we hadn't thought about doing surface warfare apart from once every two years when we did our training or close inshore navigation or landing special forces. And we took 14 members of the SBS with us. So you're heading south. You're one of the few people on the submarine that actually knows what's going on.

How far below the surface are you? We did a fast passage, so we were over 300 feet down and we came up every 12 hours just to take our signal traffic because we had to go deep and fast to get there as quickly as possible. In fact, we went to South Georgia first. What did the crew think their jobs would be in the event of war? When we were in the North Atlantic in the Cold War, our job was to find and sink Soviet submarines, normally the attack submarines. That was our primary role and we were very good at it. So on the way to the South Atlantic, I had to train a crew 12 hours a day, very hard, to get them up to speed for landing special forces, close inshore navigation, surface warfare and everything else that they weren't used to doing. Did you think it would come to pass? Did

you think you'd end up in a shooting war down the South Atlantic? None of us did on the way down. We all were in a bit of a dream but preparing for it. The captain was very good. He was very focused on making sure we were ready quite quite rightly, and he drove us very hard. And we were lucky in the quality of his leadership. Three examples on the way down as people dealt with it differently. One officer, who was an ardent anti-smoker, instantly became a 40-day man as we crossed the equator. Another officer came to me and said, this is 1982, we'll have a peace settlement. I can remember his words, you're inciting the ship's company to me and said, this is 1982, we'll have a peace settlement. I can remember his words, you're inciting the ship's company to bloodlust and I'm worried about their mental state.

How are you going to unwind them when we don't go to war? And I said, I'll think about that when we know we're not. And a third was a chief buddy officer who mentally disappeared for 48 hours, was turned in by the doctor who said his mind's gone but his body's fine and when he came back and I talked to him he said it's all right sir I've come to terms with the fact I'll never see my wife and children again so everyone dealt with it differently. Is there something particularly intense about being on a submarine you're all packed in there together no one's going for a quick walk around the heli deck or to get away

from it all I mean is that particular to the service you were in? We were very used to it because that was what we did. We used to go to sea for weeks on end and we all got very used to the routine. It was very different because on the way south, we had obviously stored for war, but we also had 14 members of the SBS and six tons of their equipment. And we had to give them spaces to train so it was very very cramped and we had full stack of tinned food because we didn't know how long we were going to be for so the mindset was very different. A full stack meaning there's so many tins packed

along the floor that you actually raised the floor level? Yeah raised the floor by nine inches. Tell me about the run-up to the attack on Belgrano. Was there a particular moment when you somehow switched into a kind of tactical mode, when you think, right, we are going to do this? Well, already like that, but we were sent from South Georgia after the recapture to the southwest of the islands looking for the Belgrano and her two destroyers. And the other two submarines down there, Spartan Splendor, were sent to the northwest looking for the Argentinian aircraft carrier. We found the Belgrano by luck because she was being refuelled, her group, by a very noisy tanker.

And we picked up the tanker at over 100,000 yards, went down the bearing and found the group. But they were outside the 200 mile exclusion zone when we found them on the 1st of May and we were told to shadow, which we did. zone when we found them on the 1st of May and we were told to shadow, which we did. And then 36 hours later, we got the change of rules of engagement saying sink the Belgrano. Now, just to pick up there, when you say found, it's an acoustic, not peering through a periscope, you're listening for the effectively engine noise. Yes. And we were lucky because it was an old tanker and she was very noisy. So we picked it up at a long range on our toad array sonar when you're ghosting a ship without giving away important operational methods times operating

procedures do you have to be particularly quiet are you worrying you know every time someone moves a kettle on a hob is there a nervousness there only if you've got submarines. Against surface ships, you don't have to be that careful. You're obviously instinctively required as a submariner. And the noise, if you think there's another submarine around, you do make sure you don't make a noise. I know the engineers will have mats, so if they drop a spanner, it doesn't clang. That's the level of awareness of noise you have.

Who would be on a surface ship with you guys prowling beneath, I'll tell you that much, terrifying. Tell me about the moment by moment, when did the order come through from London? On the 2nd of May we got a signal changing our rules of engagement to order us to sink the Belgrano. The captain decided that we would use the Mark 8 torpedo. We had two types of torpedo, but the Mark 8 was a fire and forget aim off weapon, but it was designed for the Second World War. And the Belgrano was the ex-USS Phoenix that had survived Pearl Harbor. And she had eight inches of armor plating down each side. And the captain reckoned, and I concur completely, that the Second World War torpedo was what we needed to sink a Second World War ship. So I informed the ship's company, because that was my job as second

in command, that we would go to action stations at 1400. I remember making the pipe to conduct a Mark 8 attack against the Valgrano and finished with hands to dinner. And it was roast pork and all the trimmings and apple crumble and custard. I can still remember lunch. What was the feeling then like? I mean, this was, apart from anything else, it's a terrible decision to have to take. And it was also historic. I mean, you presumably just hadn't believed you would ever find yourself sinking surface ships in a kind of Second World War fashion. No, but the thing about being in the military, if you accept the responsibility of your job, you expect part of that responsibility

is doing what you're told by your government. So if you're not going to do what you're told by your government, you shouldn't be in the military. So whereas you don't want to take life if you have to, that's what you've trained to do. And that's what you're there to do. How close do you need to be to sink a ship like that with a torpedo? With a Mark 8 torpedo, which we don't have anymore, 1,400 yards just above the beam. And so you have to get in fairly close. Do you have to be on a periscope depth?

Do you do it from deep? Part of the attack drill is the captain will look through the periscope to take the bearing and range of the target and to estimate its course. My job as the second in command is known as attack coordinator, AC, and I have to go around all the plots, whether it's sonar or whether it's visual and plotting and bits of paper, so that the captain gets the best possible target course range and speed so that when he fires his torpedoes they will hit. So as well as everything else you're having to do some very complicated maths at the same time. Yes we didn't have computers in those days the only one we had was an

analogue computer that calculated the torpedo course on discharge because the weapon as I said is fire and forget it's not guid. So it's like shooting grass. You have to aim off ahead of the target. So Tim, you're a young man. On your shoulders is, apart from the enormity of sinking an enemy vessel, you're responsible for the first time a Royal Navy submarine has fired a torpedo in anger for a generation or two. And you're there doing all this maths and trying to work it out.

It feels like you were on the spot. Had you been to these drills so often? Were you calm or was it stressful? No, actually, everyone did their job exactly as they had done in training. The only thing that surprised everyone was a bit technical. The torpedo is ordered to go to any course on discharge but because it was designed in the 40s the mechanical wheel inside the torpedo that does the alteration of course was prone to failure and so you always tried to point the submarine exactly on the course of the

torpedoes my job as i said was to give the captain the best possible target solution. And when the captain was about to fire, I realised that the torpedoes would, on discharge, be altered 17 degrees to the right. But because the target was moving to the left, if the captain waited, then he would get the best possible solution. It was my job. And there is a tape recording at action stations when the captain said, stand by, set up the next voice is mine saying do not fire very firmly captain put the periscope down walked to the torpedo course calculator said why not i explained he got it because it was the best possible solution and he turned around and 16 astonished faces looked at him and then looked at me because the second in command

had just stopped the captain firing the first torpedo since the second world war the captain because he was such a good captain realized that he had to get his team back behind him and in the four steps back to the periscope he worked out how to do it and the next thing you hear on the tape is the captain saying very nonchalantly, do you mind if I fire now, is he? And my voice saying, carry on, sir. And when he fired, the first torpedo went out one degree to the right, the second went out on ship's head zero, and the third was two degrees to the left. And which of the torpedoes struck the Belgrano? The first one missed, the second one hit just after the main mast and the third blew the bows off. How long did they take from the moment of firing to striking the ship? 54 seconds

time of run. I mean you're being very cool but your heart must have been thumping that those 54 seconds. It was. I was counting it down on the stopwatch because that was my job. And so there's no time to kind of, you know, watch what's going on after that. You're taking evasive action after that, are you? Yeah, because there were two destroyers, and we were not allowed to attack them unless in self-defence. Again, I'm not asking for special information,

but the way to avoid death charges is to get away from the place or dive deep or whatever. Yeah, we went deep and fast and cleared the area. But you knew that the Belgrano was going to sink? The captain seen the bow blown off? I mean, there's no way that ship would survive. Well, we were 1400 yards away. He'd seen a big explosion in the bow and one on the mainmast. So we knew it was mission abort, as we call it. You don't know a ship will sink if you just see the explosions. Now that you've read, obviously, more about it and heard from people aboard Belgrano,

how does that affect how you look back on what happened that day? I've never lost a second sleep about the decision to sink it. I obviously regret the loss of life. But as I said, Galtieri started the war. It was the wrong thing to do. We were tasked with finishing the war as soon as possible. And that's what you do. It became controversial. Do you understand the controversy? Was it difficult and distressing for you and other crew members? Everyone dealt with it in their own way.

The controversy was they were outside the 200 mile exclusion zone. They were heading west when we attacked them, but a ship can turn around in 30 seconds and head east. So she was a threat to the task group. Tell me about from a naval point of view, it mattered. Did this have the impact on the campaign that your political masters and you hoped it would? It had a huge effect on the outcome because the threat of their navy and their aircraft carrier was nullified because they went back into harbour. Looking back on this 40th anniversary tell me what's uppermost in your mind is it pride and a job well done in the way that you impacted the wider campaign helped those men ashore

what are you thinking of 40 years later? Regret that you have to go to war in the first place. But if you do, you have to be professional. And if you've got good equipment and well-trained people with good, strong leadership, you will win. And so I'm very proud of what we did. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. More coming up. Over on the Warfare podcast by History Hit, we bring you brand new military histories from around the world.

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Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. A shocking death toll did convince the argentinian navy to withdraw from any potential strike on the british task force as it was heading south so on one level the sinking of belgrano did help ensure british success in getting to the falklands and landing men on the islands. But controversy soon swirled around the call to attack Belgrano. The British government justified the decision by saying the Argentine ship was about to enter the military exclusion zone and that gave them authority to strike any vessel or aircraft entering that zone. But many questioned straight away whether Belgrano was in

fact entering that exclusion zone, or whether it's just manoeuvring, or perhaps even sailing back towards South America. Here's Will Butler again from National Archives on the scandal at the heart of the British government. The sinking of Belgrano was one of the most controversial moments of my life. I still remember people discussing it, people still do argue about it. Can you explain why it remains controversial? So there's a number of reasons really that this remains controversial. So certainly initially it all centred around the timing of a peace proposal which had been put together by the President of Peru. And this proposal had suggested things like an immediate ceasefire,

a mutual withdrawal of forces from the Falklands, the involvement of third parties in the administration of the island and that kind of stuff. So this had been sent to Washington and wasn't received by the UK government until I think it's around about quarter past 11 in the evening. UK government until I think it's around about quarter past 11 in the evening. And the Belgrano had actually been attacked at 8pm on that day on the 2nd of May. So initially, there's a lot of controversy about when the peace proposals were received. And was then this attack on the Belgrano a way to kind of scupper any kind of peace proposal. So a lot of that initial controversy in the immediate period certainly centred around this and the government position was very clear on this and

again that kind of paper trail within the official record sets out a lot of this that the government deemed the task force to be under immediate threat and it felt like it needed to take action as quickly as possible. It's also then very clear that the peace proposals were not received until after the attack was made. So you have that initial controversy. But then the controversy kind of rumbles on for a number of years, in fact, relating to then timings of particularly changes in the rules of engagement. So when these changes were made, which gave justification or allowance for HMS Conqueror to attack the General Belgrano. And there was lots of accusations about whether the government had misled Parliament, and it kind of ultimately led to the leaking of some classified material to the Labour MP Tam DL,

who had been one of the kind of louder voices in Parliament, certainly questioning the decision making process around the sinking and the decision to attack the Belgrano. And is this the leaking by a senior civil servant in the MOD, Clive Ponting? Tell me about him. the leaking by a senior civil servant in the MOD, Clive Ponting. Tell me about him. So yes, it was this leak. So Ponting had been responsible particularly for drafting responses to individuals like Tam Dayell and other particularly prominent Labour politicians, the Shadow Secretary of State for Defence as well. And he made the decision to leak two documents in particular, which subsequently became known as the Crown Jewels within that. And actually, certainly unfortunately for Ponting at that time, the leak became public knowledge very quickly.

And he was charged under Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act, which sort of relates to the wrongful communication of information. So he was charged with leaking confidential information. And again, this all centres around discussions, particularly in the war cabinet, about the legality of an engagement at a British attack, particularly on the Vientianco de Mayo, but then also the Belgrano as well. And there were certainly concerns by the Foreign Secretary, as well as the Attorney General, it became clear within some of these documents, they were concerned that this actually would be illegal under international law. They certainly feared that. You can see a lot of these documents, they have been released now. It's fascinating reading 40 years later, to have a look

at some of this material in the National Archives. Did government ministers mislead Parliament? Because that's a big question that we're all asking ourselves in the UK again at the moment. Well, I think, you know, the documents kind of speak for themselves in that way. And I think it's for people to work out themselves to an extent, but the government line doesn't change and it never changes at this stage. Ultimately, what Margaret Thatcher is arguing, and she does so very publicly, is that the government acted in the interests to try and ensure as far as possible to avoid British casualties. And that's kind of the bottom line for them. Certainly, there was some information that was relayed incorrectly in Parliament. Whether that was malicious or not, I think,

is certainly up for discussion and up for debate. And like I say, there is a paper trail, it's certainly possible to work that out yourself as well. and like I say, there is a paper trail. It's certainly possible to work that out yourself as well. So Ponting, he leaks his report to this guy, Tam Diel, this Labour MP. What happens next? He eventually goes to trial. They found out it was him?

He admitted it, actually. Okay. Yeah, so he actually admitted it, although Bizarrely was also then found not guilty. So it was a jury trial, and the jury found him not guilty. The ramifications of that are actually quite important because so he argued that the leaking of those documents was in the public interest. That was his kind of defence. That wasn't covered under the Official Secrets Act and it actually led to an amendment to the Official Secrets Act in the late 80s, which gets rid of this notion that you

can, or it's kind of legitimate, if you like, to leak information in the public interest. So there are kind of wider ramifications for all of this, but he is found not guilty. But again, it's certainly an important thing to kind of think about in terms of those immediate and longer term ramifications of the sinking of the Belgrano. Yeah, apparently he was convinced he was going to be found guilty. He even took his toothbrush to court. He thought he was going to prison. But the jury enraged the judge and no doubt the government by letting him off.

Yes, absolutely. And I think, again, the ramifications for that are things like the amendment to the Official Secrets Act. The government were not happy. As I say, Ponting admitted it. He admitted that he had done it. He didn't hide away from that and shy away from that. So yes, it was a decision that certainly went against what the government believed to be the correct ruling.

Isn't it exciting, Will, that you're looking at the National Archives? We're now just laughing and looking at these documents, which at the time were the most secret and most important bits of paper in the UK and now years later they're available that you're curating them and studying them and releasing them to the public. Absolutely and the Clive Ponting trial the documents there they were declassified in 2016 I think and the documents include exhibits from the trial they include the originals of the two documents the crown jewels within them as well, as well as a whole host of other correspondence from senior government officials. And that particular

record is also available to download. So you don't even have to visit the National Archives to look at it. You can download it from the website. So do take a look. As I say, it's fascinating material to look at. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history.

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By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. I thought I'd finish up by talking to an old friend, a brilliant maritime historian, brilliant naval historian, Ian Ballantyne, about some of the issues raised by the sinking of the Belgrano, to give us the expert view, 40 years later, on what it all meant and what it continues to mean. Ian, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Give us a sense, how dramatic was it that in 1982, in an act of interstate warfare, a nuclear-powered submarine sank an enemy surface vessel. How crazy was that? I think it was utterly shocking. I think that the world was agog that such an event had actually

happened somewhere like the South Atlantic between, of all people, Argentina and the British. Because, for example, in America, when the war first erupted, or rather the crisis first erupted, the American news channels were depicting it as something like a Gilbert and Sullivan opera and I couldn't believe that anybody would go to war over some remote islands that were mainly populated by sheep and I think this was the thing that stunned them the most so when it turned to real bloodshed in the South Atlantic then I think that was a real blow to people's perceptions of what was happening or would happen. And there is something about sinking a light cruiser with a torpedo fire

from a nuclear submarine. That's big war. That's big symmetrical interstate violence. Yeah, I mean, to this day, it's the only time in world history, in naval history, that a nuclear powered submarine has actually sunk another vessel and they used world war ii era torpedoes to do it hard-hitting mark 8 torpedoes were used in preference to wire-guided tigerfish torpedoes because they're more reliable and so when the two torpedoes hit the belgrano the amount of destruction caused was quite substantial the bows were blown off and the co whom i interviewed a number of years ago said that he watched the moments of impact and saw the gigantic orange fireball go up into the sky and then the other torpedo hit in their machinery

space to the aft the politics of it was controversial and we've talked about that on this podcast. Militarily was it the right decision? Was it the right thing to do? I think politically it was very difficult but for the sailors at sea for Admiral Woodward in the task force and also in the various units that were there the big fear was that the Belgrano would dash over some shallow water called the Birdwood Bank. And so Conqueror would not be able to reach or prevent the Belgrano group from attacking the task force as the carrier came down. So they were looking at it

from that purely military point of view. And I think regardless of whether Belgrano was going away from or just loitering around on the edge of the exclusion zone, they felt that they had to act. There was a considerable debate about rules of engagement at the time and who should decide whether or not Conqueror should actually fire those torpedoes. In the end, the government acceded to that and provided that to Chris Rayford-Brown, the captain of Conqueror. And what was the impact of Belgrano being sunk on the

Argentinian surface fleet intercepting the British? I think that the impact of the Conqueror attack was to persuade the Argentinians that with nuclear-powered submarines out there lurking under the sea, that if they sent their major units out, then there was a substantial risk that they could be sunk. And so the main flagship of the fleet was of course the aircraft carrier and that had failed in its attempt to launch an airstrike on the British task force and so it was wise as far as the Argentinians were concerned to withdraw that major unit to home port there was an attempt to rescue survivors after the Belgrano was sunk and they were picked up 36 hours after the ship went down. But thereafter, I think the Argentinian Navy was very circumspect about what it did and was very much worried about nuclear-powered

submarines and what they could do. The loss of life was stunning to the world and is a tragedy to think of those men going into the water in that part of the world in those conditions at that time of day. Interestingly, Belgrano's captain sort of weighed in on this, though, didn't he? What did he have to say about the attack and whether it was the right thing for the British to have done? I think Captain Hector Bonzo fully understood what the consequences of taking a fully armed warship out to menace the British task force could be. I think that's why he acknowledged that it was legitimate to attack Belgrano. That was because basically with a warship, you can move it in any direction you like and send it to any point you like and withdraw it or send it forward.

So he understood that his vessel, the Belgrano, had the opportunity, would have headed towards the British task force with the two escorting destroyers and launched an attack. So I think he as a sailor and a warrior understood that. It's so extraordinary to be talking about this on the 14th anniversary with the sinking of the Russian ship in the Black Sea and it raises some of the same questions and thoughts, doesn't it? One of which is simply what it represents to me. The idea that if you're seeing major capital ships sunk, that means almost certainly that you're talking about interstate warfare between two

fairly equally matched foes able to deploy very sophisticated weapon systems. We're getting away from the kind of asymmetric wars that you and I have become so used to over the last certainly 20 years. It implies that we're tapping into something much older here. I think you're totally correct. This is a sea change, to use that phrase, in how we'll look at naval warfare. Because for 20 odd years, as you say, navies have gone around the oceans firing their guns at land targets or lobbing missiles into Syria, which is what the Russians have done. And we in the West have fired cruise missiles hundreds a bit of a forgotten aspect of British naval history, Royal Navy ships went in very close to the Libyan coast and used their guns and also launched helicopters and did things which really they weren't opposed by anybody. There wasn't a threat there ashore in Libya.

And in the Gulf War of 1991, there wasn't really the same scale of threat there from the Iraqis, although they fired that sort of worm missile out to sea. And then we've seen other instances where navies have just sailed up and down and bombarded people. And I think the Russians, lacking even the same scale of major naval operations that we in the West have, didn't fully appreciate or understand how dangerous it was to establish a habit to go close to somebody's shore, even if it's 30, 40, 50 miles away, and think that there were no missiles that could reach you, and then sail up and down,

bombarding Odessa, and suddenly find out that the enemy potentially, I mean, there's a lot of fog of war around this even now, has a missile that can reach you and hit you and if you're not prepared the second that that threat emerges the speed is so immense that you can be caught out and the layered defense that mosfet supposedly had failed if indeed it was you know missiles which is the way that people are leaning and people paid with their lives and the ship was lost so i think it was a massive shock to the russians but i think that they were probably quite lax about how they prepared for what the ukrainians would do in i like you i'm fascinated by naval history is there a future for big steel ships floating about on the sea when you've got these missile

systems, you've got torpedoes like the Conqueror fired? Who would be cooped up around these ships today? Warfare is a bad business, isn't it? I mean, it's unbelievable what's out there. And the Russians themselves have not unleashed, and which the Chinese are working on. It's terrifying, to be honest. If there ever is what you might call a major navy versus navy war let's say in the pacific between china and the americans and we and the australians and the japanese and others are launching out there as well it will be horrific i mean the missile systems hypersonic missiles and the chinese are working on ballistic missiles that can hit warships, so it's said. I think there will be major casualties and major changes. And if we come back to European waters, the Russians, although they've shown that they were quite happy to put a quite elderly, obsolete, big steel warship off the coast of Ukraine and see it sunk,

they do have formidable firepower in their northern fleet up in the Arctic. So there's still a lot out there. And they rely mainly for that on submarines, because they know that anything that's on the surface is going to be so much more vulnerable. So I think there's a whole horror story awaiting us if we ever get into the horrible, terrible game of Navy versus Navy with the full panoply of just conventional weapons used, I think it would be horrific. Cheerful stuff. I know.

I'm glad I asked that question. Thanks very much indeed, Bob. Well, thank you very much. And 40 years on, how should we think about the sinking of Belgrano on this anniversary? I think it's a lesson that if you go to war and you wage a war of aggression, I think the mosque was the same, that you may well suffer a blow to your national pride and also your navy. But above all, fathers,

mothers, whoever, girlfriends, boyfriends will see their loved ones killed in an action that's ordered by a politician and some kind of glorious attempt to regain territory. And I think that has always got to be the lesson of warfare, is that sooner or later, the human beings pay the price. Well, that's it, folks. Huge thank you to my guests, Will Butler, Sir Tim McClement, and Ian Ballantyne. This episode is part of our

Falklands 40 series, which is available wherever you get your podcasts. If you're new, please go back to the beginning with our Falklands 101 episode on what started the war. We've also got a documentary going on at History Hit TV. We're like Netflix, but for history,

except we're growing. Unlike Netflix, it's very exciting to be able to say so we're sort of like netflix but just for history please go to history hit tv there's a link in the description of this podcast just click on there you get taken there straight away and you'll be able to watch fascinating interviews with many many falklands veterans about the war 40 years ago so thanks to all the guests subscribe to history at tv see you next time. you you