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HISTORY
The ARA General Belgrano was an Argentine Navy
light cruiser in service from 1951 until 1982. Formerly the USS
Phoenix, she saw action in the Pacific theater of World War II
before being sold to Argentina. After almost 31 years of service,
she was sunk during the Falklands War (Spanish: Guerra de las
Malvinas) by the Royal Navy submarine Conqueror with the loss of 323
lives. Losses from the Belgrano totalled just over half of Argentine
deaths in the Falklands War.
She is the only ship ever to have been sunk in anger by a
nuclear-powered submarine and the second sunk in action by any type
of submarine since World War II, the first being the Indian frigate
INS Khukri by the Pakistani Hangor during the 1971 Indo-Pakistani
War.
The vessel was the second to have been named after the Argentine
founding father Manuel Belgrano (1770–1820). The first vessel was a
7,069-ton armoured cruiser completed in 1899.
Aftermath
The area where the Belgrano sank is classified as
a War Grave under Argentine Congress Law 25.546. In 1994, the
Argentine government conceded that the sinking of the Belgrano was
"a legal act of war". In 1999, Sir Michael Boyce, First Sea Lord of
the Royal Navy, visited the Puerto Belgrano naval base and paid
tribute to those who died. In 2003 a search team aboard the Seacor
Lenga, crewed by Argentine and British veterans, was sponsored by
National Geographic to find the sunken cruiser but failed to locate
the ship.
Belgrano's captain, Héctor Bonzo, died on 22 April 2009, aged 76. He
had spent his last years working for an association called Amigos
del Crucero General Belgrano (Friends of the Cruiser General
Belgrano) whose purpose was to help those affected by the sinking.
Captain Bonzo also wrote his memories about the sinking in the book
1093 Tripulantes del Crucero ARA General Belgrano, published in
1991.
In late 2011, David Thorp, a former military intelligence officer
who led the signals intercept team aboard HMS Intrepid, released the
book The Silent Listener detailing the role of intelligence in the
Falklands War. The book revealed that despite the fact that the
Belgrano was observed by the Conqueror sailing away from the
Falklands at the time of the attack, it had actually been ordered to
proceed to a rendezvous point within the Exclusion Zone, to engage
in a pincer attack. A report prepared by Thorp for Thatcher several
months after the incident stated the destination of the vessel was
not to her home port as the Argentine Junta stated; the report was
not released because the Prime Minister did not want to compromise
British signals intelligence capabilities.
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