ABSTRACT

The official description of events came in a Parliamentary statement by John Nott on 4 May. 1 On 2 May ‘at 8pm London time, one of our submarines detected the Argentine cruiser, ‘General Belgrano’, escorted by two destroyers.’ In explaining the action, he drew attention to the threat to the Task Force posed by Argentine units, the Belgrano group as part of this threat and that it was ‘close to the total Exclusion Zone and was closing on elements of our Task Force, which was only hours away’. The Prime Minister also reminded the House about the statement of 23 April, which left open the possibility of Argentine forces outside the Exclusion Zone being attacked if they threatened the ‘mission of the British forces’. 2 By changing the word ‘attacked’ in his brief to ‘detected’ in his statement, Nott created later problems for his Government. Other inaccurate details could be readily traced to the first hurried report of the engagement from Conqueror. An example of this was the statement that Belgrano was closing on elements of the Task Force. When Pym was notified (in Washington) of the attack on the morning of 3 May, he was told that the Belgrano had been hit about 30 miles outside the TEZ, but that: ‘The MoD believe that the General Belgrano had just left the TEZ when the engagement took place’. At the same time FCO discovered from the Chiefs of Staff meeting that the Belgrano had not entered the TEZ and was heading in a south-westerly direction when the attack took place.