General Belgrano (ship, 1938)
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The General Belgrano was an Argentine cruiser . She originally entered service as a Brooklyn- class light cruiser of the United States Navy with the name USS Phoenix and registration CL-46 . The ship was sunk on May 2, 1982 during the Falklands War by the British nuclear submarine Conqueror . This makes it one of only two ships worldwide that have been sunk by a submarine attack since the end of the Second World War.
history
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The keel was laid, financed from a 1934 budget, on April 15, 1935 at New York Shipbuilding in Camden . On March 12, 1938, the ship was launched and put into service on October 3, 1938. It was named after the capital of the US state Arizona , Phoenix . Its maiden voyage took it to Trinidad and South America , then it operated on the American west coast. The ship was equipped with 2 × MK 31 - 2 × MK 33 fire control radars (1938) or 2 × MK 34 and 2 × MK 3 radar lights and 2 × MK 44 - MK 4 radar lights (1943). The four “Curtiss SOC Seagull” double-deckers on board could be launched with two catapults.
The ship was in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the day of the Japanese attack , but remained undamaged. On the same day it was used together with the cruisers St. Louis and Detroit to search for possible Japanese surface attack forces. Then it was initially an escort between Hawaii and the American west coast. The Phoenix then went to Melbourne ( Australia ) and operated in Australian waters until February 1942. This was followed by voyages in the Indian Ocean for several months, with the ship involved in the evacuation of Java .
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From July 1942 it was overhauled in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard and then brought to Casablanca, Secretary of State Cordell Hull . The transfer to the VII Fleet in the South Pacific followed.
From 1943 to 1945 it took part in the Pacific War and in all major landing operations. In 1944 it was involved in the battle on Surigao Strait . It took part in the sinking of the Japanese battleship Fuso . At that time it was camouflaged according to scheme 32 / 5d .
Calls
Second World War
- December 26, 1943: Bombardment of Cape Gloucester
- January 25-26, 1944: Bombardment of land targets in New Guinea
- March 4 and 7, 1944: Bombardment of targets on the Admiralty Islands
- April 22, 1944: Support for the landing at Hollandia
- May 25, 1944: Support for the landing on Biak (New Guinea)
- June 4, 1944: Slight damage after an aerial bomb attack (one killed, four wounded)
- July 2nd, 1944: Support for the landing on Noemfoor
- September 15, 1944: Assistance with the occupation of Morotai ( Moluccas )
- October 20, 1944: Support of the landing on Leyte , participation in the sea and air battle in the Gulf of Leyte and the battle in the Surigao Strait. It took part in the sinking of the Japanese battleship Fuso .
- January 1945: Support for the invasion of Luzon
- 13.-28. February 1945: Support for the fighting on Bataan , Corregidor
- 26.-28. March 1945: Support for the landing on Cebu
- June 29th - 7th July 1945: Cover for mine clearance operations and support for the landing on Balikpapan ( Borneo ) with subsequent transfer to the Pearl Harbor shipyard
- September 1945: Relocation to the east coast
During his time in the Navy it was assigned to the following units
- CRUVDIV 9 Battle Force, US Fleet (1939 - January 27, 1941)
- CRUVDIV 9 Battle Force Pacific (April 3, 1941 - March 23, 1943)
- Flagship CRUVDIV 15 Battle Force Pacific (July 1, 1944 - July 1, 1945)
After the ship was decommissioned on July 3, 1946, it was sold to Argentina on April 9, 1951 together with one of its sister ships, the Boise , for $ 7.8 million . It was initially named 17 de Octubre and was renamed General Belgrano in honor of Manuel Belgrano in 1956 after the overthrow of Juan Perón . The General Belgrano was rebuilt several times in Argentina and received, among other things, Sea-Cat starters and new Dutch radar systems . The catapult system on the aft deck was removed and the aircraft on board exchanged for two helicopters on board .
Falklands War
On April 26, 1982, during the Falklands War , the General Belgrano ran with two destroyers from Ushuaia to patrol about 230 nautical miles off the Falkland Islands . The group initially avoided a fight with the units of the Royal Navy and stayed south of the exclusion zone of 200 nautical miles around the Falkland Islands, declared by the British. In the event of an operation against British warships, it was planned that the two accompanying destroyers would first fire their Exocet missiles at the targets and that the General Belgrano , which had no anti-sea missile armament, would then damage or displace ships with its 15, 2 cm guns should attack. Since the aging engine system of the cruiser only allowed a top speed of 18.5 knots, it was impossible for him to get close to the much faster British warships at any other combat distance.
The NSA and the BND could read along the secret naval radio of Argentiner at this time, because the use compromised key equipment of Crypto AG . The locations of the Argentine ships obtained in this way were passed on to the British.
On April 30, the ships were sighted by the Conqueror nuclear submarine ( Churchill- class ). The submarine followed them for two days until Margaret Thatcher, at the suggestion of her military adviser and chief of defense, Fleet Admiral Terence Lewin, ordered the group to attack. The commander of the Conqueror , Captain Chris Wreford-Brown , then scored on 2 May at 15:57 three torpedoes of the type Mark VIII on the General Belgrano from. The first torpedo hit the aft engine room, the explosion struck through three decks and left a hole about 20 meters long in the main deck. Around 270 sailors were killed as a result of this hit, the machinery failed and the electrical systems were also badly damaged. The second torpedo hit the cruiser at the forecastle, and the bow was almost completely torn off by the force of the detonation. The General Belgrano listed heavily to port and began to sink over the bow. Since the pumps were not working due to the damage to the power supply, no effective countermeasures could be taken; in addition, it was not possible to make an emergency call. The ship therefore had to be abandoned at 4:24 p.m. and left by the crew. About an hour after the torpedo, the cruiser capsized on the port side and sank. The third torpedo had missed the cruiser and hit the destroyer Hipólito Bouchard , but had not exploded.
The accompanying destroyers had registered the torpedo hits in their sonar systems and were then turned to the north; this corresponded to the operational regulations, according to which one had to flee immediately in the event of a submarine attack. For this reason - and also because of the extremely poor visibility - it was not immediately clear on the two destroyers what had happened to the General Belgrano . Rescue measures were only initiated late at night. Argentine and Chilean ships saved a total of 770 people. 321 sailors and two civilians on board died when the General Belgrano sank . The photo of the sinking cruiser taken from a life raft became one of the most famous images of the Falklands War.
literature
- Stefan Terzibaschitsch : Cruiser of the US Navy , Bechtermünz Verlag, ISBN 3-86047-588-6
Web links
- Homepage of the US Naval Historical Center
- Paul Eddy, Magnus Linklater and Peter Gillman: Get away, you bastards! The absurd war for the Falkland Islands (III) . In: Der Spiegel . No. 44 , 1982, pp. 208-228 ( Online - Nov. 1, 1982 ).