On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 10:45:14 +0000, John Rumm
wrote:

IIRC war was never declared over the Falklands - hence why it was always
the Falklands "conflict" and we never struck directly at air bases etc
on Argentine soil.

You may be right.

Having said that I am not too bothered about the Belgrano - sail a
military ship in and out of an exclusion zone during a conflict and you
have to be asking for trouble.

Spot on. During my HP career I visited Northwood one time, and was
taken into the depths of the place - it's like a tower block built
upside down, you go in at the top and proceed downwards. It's where
the UK navy is controlled from (AIUI). Able to withstand anything but
a direct nuclear hit.

Anyway, I digress. The story I'm familiar with is that Belgrano had
presented a bit of a problem by sailing close to the exclusion zone
and was being tracked by submarine HMS Conqueror. Conqueror reported
back to Northwood, signal immediately escalated to 10 Downing Street
and the order was taken at Prime Minister level to take the ship out.
Although the turnaround time was relatively short in this message
sequence it appears that Belgrano had turned around away from the
conflict zone and was heading towards safety.

I understand the purpose of engaging Belgrano like this was to show
the argies that the UK meant business. Remember that after Belgrano
went down no other argie ships came out of port.

PoP

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