世界著名沉船事件之五　貝爾格拉諾將軍號

GeneralBelgrano

貝爾格拉諾號戰艦的沉沒是福克蘭戰爭中最慘烈和最引起爭議的事件之一。1982年5月2日，英國的核潛艇——英國皇家海軍艦船“征服者號”(HMS Conqueror)向阿根廷戰艦——貝爾格拉諾將軍號(ARA General Belgrano)發射了兩枚魚雷。大約有300人在此次襲擊中送命。

當這艘令人生畏的戰艦開始沉沒時，有史以來最困難的一次海上營救活動也在進行中。魚雷使得貝爾格拉諾號上的1093位船員中的368人送命，幾乎相當于阿根廷在這場戰爭中傷亡總人數的一半。

直到現在，人們還是沒有完全打撈起這艘沉船的殘骸。

wenty four years ago,on 2 May 1982,the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano was sunk in a torpedo attack by the British submarine HMS Conqueror with the loss of three hundred and sixty-eight lives.It was an action that was controversial1 then and remains so to this day. In this attack,and the war that followed,over one thousand Argentine and British lives were lost.Now,the Falkland Islands2 has ended up as a veritable fortress3 that has cost billions of pounds to establish and maintain.To this day,Britain maintains a considerable garrison to protect less than two thousand islanders,and a long-term diplomatic settlement seems years away.

The sinking: military or political decision?

There were two separate controversies surrounding the sinking of the Belgrano.One was whether it had been done after the UK government had been informed of a crucial new peace attempt being brokered by Peru,and the other was whether the Belgrano itself was really a direct threat to the task force.

On the first issue,a long-time critic of British conduct in the South Atlantic,the Labour MP Tam Dalyell,has persistently said that he was told by a senior Conservative that the Prime Minister was aware of the new Peruvian peace initiative and had given the order to sink the Belgrano in spite of this knowledge.

This was in the context of a government that had become deeply unpopular at home and was faced with an international crisis that could easily have caused intense criticism had it focused on the failure to anticipate Argentine military action.Moreover,opinion polls showed strong support for a diplomatic solution and considerable concern over the risk of a war. Opinion only swung behind the government after Sheffield was sunk two days after the Belgrano attack.

The government response to Tam Dalyell was to insist that details of the Peruvian plan had only come several hours after the order to sink the Belgrano had been given.Furthermore,the cruiser was sailing towards the task force,was a formidable4 fighting ship equipped with Exocet anti-ship missiles,was a direct threat that had to be countered and that orders to attack it were given almost immediately after it had been detected by Conqueror.

As a result of persistent questioning by Tam Dalyell and others,a very different picture eventually emerged. The Belgrano was actually a forty-two-year-old ship that had survived Pearl Habour in its original designation as the American heavy cruiser the USS Phoenix. It did not carry Exocet missiles and was due to be taken out of service and turned into a floating museum. It was sailing away from the Task Force, not towards it and, most significant of all, had been tracked by the submarine Conqueror for some thirty hours before the order to sink it was given.

Almost the only modern equipment on board the Belgrano was a long-range search radar built in Holland,and the ship was patrolling southwest of the Falklands to give early warning of a possible involvement in the war by Chile, or the movement of British ships towards mainland Argentine bases.

In spite of all of the complications,the Thatcher government continued to insist that war was inevitable and that the cruiser had to be sunk.In the years that followed,the controversy simmered5 on,flaring up during the 1983 general election when Mrs Thatcher was unexpectedly unnerved by televised questioning of her by a guest on the Nationwide programme,Diana Gould from Cirencester6.

A year later,a senior Ministry of Defence civil servant,Clive Ponting,was arrested and charged with communicating classified information to Tam Dalyell. This concerned an attempt to mislead a Select Committee over the circumstances of the Belgrano attack. Ponting was tried the next year at the Old Bailey and acquitted in a landmark case.

Dalyell himself faced persistent difficulties in trying to get the issues raised in parliament,including filibustering7 by Conservative MPs to constrain his planned contributions. All of these aspects suggested to sceptics that there was something to hide.

Before and after the sinking

In attempting to throw light on the circumstances of the sinking, two issues concerning British military actions,and the orders behind them,are relevant.Neither received much attention at the time,and one has scarcely entered the public domain until now.

The first concerns British military action that actually preceded the attack on the Belgrano.Thirty-six hours earlier,and almost immediately after the Haig mission ended,an RAF Vulcan bomber,operating from Wideawake Airfield on Ascencion Island8,bombed the Stanley airfield on the Falklands, with the stated aim of destroying the runway,using the minimum of force necessary.

A few hours later,the Stanley base was attacked by Sea Harriers and by gunfire from two frigates and a destroyer.Whatever the stated purpose,this went far wider than attacking the runway.Among the ordnance used by the Sea Harriers were BL755 cluster bombs,each dispersing around three hundred thousand high-velocity shrapnel fragments over an area of more than an acre and having a devastating effect on people.

In their artillery bombardment9,the three warships used their 4.5 inch radar-controlled guns to deliver a pattern of shells at a collective firing rate of one per second.The shells were fused for air-burst,not ground-burst,being intended to destroy soft targets rather than damage the runway.The Argentines admitted to fifty-six casualties, including nineteen dead.

In short,the nature of the military action before and after the Belgrano sinking indicates strongly that the Thatcher government was single-minded in its commitment to a military solution to the crisis.It succeeded, albeit at great cost, both then and since, not least because of the commitment of the service-people involved.The victory went on to serve the domestic purpose of greatly increasing the governments popularity,leading to a landslide10 victory at the general election a year later.