The truth about the Belgrano

Simon Jenkins

Sooner or later someone's self-control L., had to give. All parties had struggled to keep the Falklands out of the election cam- paign, but as Labour's 'desperation mounted, Neil Kinnock and Denis Healey could clearly bear it no longer.

Mr Healey's messy intervention, in which he said he was accusing Mrs Thatcher of glorying in the slaughter of South Georgia (where there was none), was simply daft. Mr Kinnock's was more deliberate. Like a tired entertainer confronting a groaning au- dience, he grabbed desperately at the sink- ing of the Belgrano, relying on Mrs That- cher's patent discomfiture on the subject earlier in the campaign to get him by. The gambit fell flat. Or almost flat. Hindsight clearly makes lousy politics, but it does no service to history either. Just enough doubt remains about this one incident of the Falklands war to let speculation run free. Why does a nervous twitch come over ministers at any mention of the Belgrano? Why do they seem defensive, as if still holding back?

A year of investigative journalism into the Belgrano affair has produced few new facts and obscured many others. What it has not clarified is the state of mind of the British ministers who actually took the Che- quers decision to attack the Belgrano at lun- chtime on 2 May 1982. To understand this we must not rehearse the now well-known results of the sinking but go back to its cause — and to the yawning gulf which at that time separated the public's vision of the impending South Atlantic campaigr from that of senior ministers.

The public's vision was wholly condition- ed by the previous week's victory on South Georgia: the 'appetiser' to be followed by the 'big match' and the 'walkover', in Ad- miral Woodward's reported words. Mrs Thatcher had then demanded we 'rejoice, just rejoice' on the steps of Downing Street. It was a much misconstrued phrase. She had in fact been reflecting her own personal and overwhelming relief at the outcome of the mission, which her war cabinet had ordered against some naval advice and which had almost ended in total disaster. To the public, however, this was unknown. The war now offered the spectacle of a con- tinuous triumph in which the only short- coming was the apparent unworthiness of the enemy.

To put it mildly, this was how it appeared to the war cabinet. To counter Argentine aggression, they had almost recklessly sent the first flotilla south from Ascension Island, under-armed to meet an enemy which, in any logistical equation, was more than a match for it. The political context

surrounding its despatch prevented the nor- mal military assessments from being presented to cabinet. Not until the second week of April did ministers cross Whitehall to the defence ministry to receive a full briefing on risk. They came out thoroughly demoralised. The full-sized aircraft carrier was able to launch reconnaissance, air attack and air combat missions with planes more powerful than anything available to the task force. The Argentinians had an Exocet-armed bat- tle cruiser, plus six Exocet destroyers and frigates. They had Sea Dart ship-to-air missiles and two lethal Type 209 German:, built submarines. More important than a1 this, they were within a day's sailing 0',1 home ports and enjoyed land-based air cover. Not surprisingly, the Royal Air Force felt the Navy had taken leave of its senses in careering off to the South Atlantic. The army staff were hardly more confident. The predicted Harrier and ship losses, not to mention the likelihood of a defended lan- ding, defied every rule of military strategY. Added to this was the fact that Admiral Woodward had only the haziest battle plan. The Argentine navy and air force had to be neutralised before any landing could be commenced. To achieve this meant luring, enemy ships and planes out to the limit 0' their endurance and then eliminating therm The plan was highly fanciful (and failed). But given the resources at his disposal, what else could Woodward have done? By the time of the 2 May meeting at Che quers, the war cabinet's mood was therefore tentative in the extreme. The whole voyage south had been plagued hl arguments back and forth between W00": ward, the war cabinet and the Foreign of- fice over rules of engagement. These had been progressively extended from covering spuurrvee i I 1 saenl ef -ecI e f e onnccel u, d tnog defence B oei Boeing argeacionns naissance), to the maritime exclusion zone, to a 'defence area' round task force opera- tions and finally to virtually the whole South Atlantic. The defence area was declared on 23 April, a week before the Belgrano attack, and was fully cern- prehended in Buenos Aires.

Britain had three nuclear submarines in

the South Atlantic at the time. Already. Spartan had located a minelayer off port_ Stanley and been told not to sink it. Sple.n. did had later located the enemy's power1:111 Type 42 destroyer group outside the exclu..

, sion zone but was detailed to disengagehasahne go in search of the carrier group

failed to find). Conqueror's 1 May locatiohe s first of the third main enemy group, ft he plus two Type 42s, wait was (which 0 greeted with disappointment that it aia.; not the carrier. What should do? Having broken off from the first group and not found the second, he could mouse hardly be told merely to play cat and mk Wooednwemy with the third, and risk it counter-attacking Conqueror into the bargain. Much has since been made of a signal which the Argentine navy says it sent on sin0

1 May recalling all its three battle group port. In the first place, not a word now ut- tered by the Argentine navy on its perfor- mance during the war should be believed. It is contorted with guilt and frantic to salvage some domestic reputation from the shambles of its cowardice. That said, such a signal, if sent, would have been the one sen- sible decision made by Admiral Anaya in the whole war. His best tactic by far was to withdraw his ships to various bases as the British entered the exclusion zone and make random sallies towards the task force at night or in fog. Three British submarines could not possibly patrol every inlet of the Argentine coast. It is the view of most naval experts that such a tactic, allied to regular air attacks, would have been devastating to the task force and could well have won Argentine the war. Anaya and his pro- pagandists now know this.

In other words, irrespective of the Belgrano's course or destination on 2 May, it would have been militarily irresponsible riot to have put out of action so substantial al Part of the enemy's arsenal. The Belgrano aso carried sophisticated directional equip- ment for guiding air attacks on to the task force. The lack of this was subsequently a bitter bone of contention between the Argentine air force and navy.

By the time the Belgrano was sunk, Bri- . tain was already engaged in a sea battle with Argentina. An air attack had narrowly Trussed Glamorgan and more attacks, in- cluding from the carrier, were expected by the hour. A torpedo against an Argentine cruiser was hardly an appreciable escalation of a bomb attack against a British destroyer. The British fleet was at this time in really. appalling danger, with the odds against eventual success — though hidden from the British public — an ever-present concern to the war cabinet. Within the month, all five of WoOdward's most sophisticated Sea Dart- Si ea a Wolf air defence ships (Coventry, Shef- , G/asgow, Brilliant, Broadsword) were sunk or out of action. And this was after the removal of the entire enemy surface fleet from the scene following the Belgrano sink- ing. Mrs Thatcher and her colleagues were h. ardly likely to increase those odds by re- jecting the fleet commander's request for an engagement at the start of the campaign. These considerations totally overwhelm- ed all others in the collective mind of the war cabinet. With hindsight, the weekend of 1 May can seem like no more than the cruel prelude to an ultimately one-sided en- counter. It did not seem so at the time. Ministers may stand charged with the recklessness of the whole adventure. They were certainly foolish in the bravura they eon and in the popular media when cau- tion and an awareness, of risk might have n more prudent. It was undeniably un- fortunate that the Belgrano attack took place outside the total exclusion zone and was followed rather than preceded by a new geographical zone off the Argentine coast. But this was a presentational rather than substantive point. The action was covered by the 23 April defence area declaration. If,

after that declaration, the Argentine fleet really thought it could cruise outside the TEZ (and launch attacks into it) with im- punity, it was foolish. The sinking was militarily justified. All those involved in the decision regarded it afterwards as one of the `least difficult we had to take'.

Militarily justified perhaps, but what of diplomacy? Was this not a limited conflict, not total war? What of the Peruvian peace plan? What of the accusation that the Belgrano was sunk deliberately to sabotage Francis Pym's negotiations in New York?

All wars are catalogues of coincidence and none more so than the Falklands. The fact that on 2 May yet another of General Haig's peace plans (disguised in Peruvian clothes) had reached a fruitful moment and that Francis Pym was in conclave with Perez de Cuellar was inevitably a gift to every conspiracy theorist. It sent Tam Dalyell MP into paroxysms and Paul Foot scurrying all the way to Lima, both to fall victim to a mendacity from Buenos Aires which might have put less partisan souls on their guard.

Mr Pym's dinner with de Cuellar in New York was purely exploratory and is really ir- relevant. No UN peace effort had yet been mounted and there was no reason to impede Woodward's operations in the hope °tone. Nonetheless, it is patently true that the Belgrano sinking pre-empted the first post- Haig initiative of Belaunde Terry (president of Peru). Galtieri told Belaunde on the Sun- day night that there was no way he could proceed. He and Costa Mendes have both

since declared that they had accepted the Peruvian plan and would have signed it. But such statements are meaningless. The junta at the time was wholly under the con- trol of Admiral Anaya whose all-powerful navy council had not approved the plan and had rejected a remarkably similar one the weekend before. Anaya remained con- vinced throughout that Argentina would win. It was nothing new that Galtieri and Costa Mendes were for a settlement — they had also accepted Haig's various plans. Anaya was the obstacle.

After the sinking, the British war cabinet was privately horrified at the loss of life from Conqueror's two torpedoes. The size of the ship had led them to expect only a crippling, with a modest casualty rate. John Nott was patently shocked when told of the scale of disaster in the middle of the next day's press conference. The war cabinet's enthusiasm for peace undoubtedly increas- ed as a result and was only reinforced by the swift revenge raid on the Sheffield.

The opportunity for a Falklands settle- ment was probably never greater than in the week following the Belgrano affair. Both sides had suffered shattering traumas. In- deed Anaya might have been thought a con- vert to peace, with his contribution to the war now apparently at an end. Still he held out, opposing the resurrected Peruvian plan which Mrs Thatcher herself pushed through an emergency meeting of her full cabinet on 5 May. Had Anaya picked up this plan, the war would have ended, Britain would have suffered at least partial humiliation and Buenos Aires might have seen its flag fly- ing, in some form, over Port Stanley. That Mrs Thatcher herself sponsored this plan in cabinet is the true measure of her reaction to the Belgrano and Sheffield: she and her colleagues were for the first time having serious doubts over whether they could win militarily at all.

Governments rarely make their best or most considered decisions in the heat of war. But that is no reason for history to cloud these decisions with myth. The Belgrano was attacked because the British

war cabinet was coming near to running scared. It had no impact on the likelihood of peace, except possibly to enhance it. But the sinking had a dramatic impact on the course of the war. Had it not occurred and the enemy fleet not been terrified back to port, the unmentionable might have hap- pened. Mrs Thatcher's Falklands gamble might have failed. It was the turning point of the war.

Simon Jenkins is political editor of The Economist and co-author with Max Hastings of The Battle for the Falklands.