In the spring of 1982, Britain went to war with Argentina over a group of remote islands in the South Atlantic, one of the last forgotten remnants of the empire. The Falklands to the British... Las Malvinas to the Argentinians. Home to half a million sheep and 1,800 people with limited strategic importance, the island's value was almost entirely symbolic.
The writer Jorge Luis Borges said it was like two bald men fighting over a comb. The most controversial event of the war happened right at the beginning, when there was still hope that diplomacy might prevail. Good evening. Reports are emerging tonight that the second biggest ship in Argentina's navy, the General Belgrano, has been sunk. There were over a thousand men on board.
On the 2nd of May 1982 at 4pm Buenos Aires time, 8pm London time, the British hunter-killer submarine HMS Conqueror fired three torpedoes at the Argentinian cruiser. the General Belgrano. Two of them hit. 323 Argentinian men were killed. It was the bloodiest military action of the conflict. The first time Britain had fired torpedoes in anger since the Second World War. Just rejoice at that news and congratulate our forces and the Marines. Rejoice!
After the fighting ended and Britain emerged victorious, the sinking became hugely contentious. It was the event that ended any chance of peace. Was the attack a legitimate act of war? Or was it a deliberate escalation? The Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, was forced to defend her actions on primetime TV. It was self-defence, she said, and the Belgrano a direct threat to the British fleet. That ship was a danger to our boys. I know it was right to sink her, and I would do the same again.
The London Review of Books covered the Belgrano story extensively. An anti-war member of Parliament called Tam Diehl wrote ten pieces about the Falklands for the magazine. He said... The Prime Minister's account of the sinking was all lies. The Belgrano had been heading back to its home port. The attack was a war crime. A web and tissue...
of contradictions and misinformation is what we face. I take solemn responsibility for charging the Prime Minister with a particular, specific crime. And hi, Mr. Muir. Tam Diel campaigned for two and a half years to establish a truthful account of the sinking. In the process, he became convinced... that there was a deeper conspiracy at play. Sinking the Belgrano when she knew what she did about peace proposals was an evil decision. A criminal act by the British Prime Minister.
The London Review was one of the few places that would publish DL's theories about the sinking. Forty years on, I returned to his pieces. At the center of his argument, his alleged proof that Thatcher had lied was a diary. In September 1982, quite formally, I was given the diaries of a member of the crew. Lieutenant Narendra Sethia. Lieutenant Narendra Sethia was the supply officer on board HMS Conqueror, an unlikely naval officer and an even more unlikely whistleblower.
At the time, he claimed he had nothing to do with the leaking of his diary. Seth was a little bit smooth. That's all I could say. Insanely intelligent. He wasn't really a dedicated naval officer. He was a bon vivant. Lieutenant Sethia wrote in his diary twice a day, every day, as the Conqueror travelled to the South Atlantic and back again. It's full of details of his routine.
his excitement and fear at the thought of going to war, his dreams for the future and, crucially, a detailed account of the sinking of the Belgrano. We were in a seven-birth cabin and he would sit in his bunk and write it. Technically, he's allowed to keep a diary, but you can't put classified information inside an unclassified document. When I got the diary...
I knew what I had in my hand. Dynamite. The diary contradicted the government's version of the sinking in every crucial detail. It turned the Belgrano. International Scandal. A BBC investigative team has been shown a copy of a diary. Everybody was in search of the author of this diary. These were documents that were passed to the Labour MP, Tam Diel, concerning the sinking of the... His information was spread throughout the system and was constantly undermined.
It's an embarrassment for the government and Whitehall insiders are said to be stunned. It was a serious offence, one that had to be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act. The document is classified, top secret, codeword. In a world of half-truths, you're looking desperately for facts, and the diary was a fact. Lieutenant Sethia's diary connects all the main actors in the Belgrano affair and provided the evidence for Tam Diehl's articles in the London Review.
So I decided to follow all the way back to its source to find the man who wrote it and the journalists, submariners, civil servants and politicians attached to its remarkable journey. Second of May, 1982. We fired three Mark 8 torpedoes at the Belgrano. The atmosphere was electric as the seconds ticked away. We heard the first explosion, followed by two more.
Everyone was hysterical, shouting and cheering, and it became quiet only after two or three minutes. As I write, I'm still a bit overwhelmed by it all. I can hardly believe the enormity of what we've done. I'm Andrew O'Hagan, and from the London Review of Books, this is the Belgrano Diary. Do you think it or don't you? Yes or no? The submarine had the Belgrado at her mercy. Episode 1. Half a million sheep can't be wrong.
But I'm not speaking with a gun in my back. On 2 April 1982, Argentina invades the Falklands. This audio is from the only radio station on the islands. DJ Patrick Watts is live on air as Argentinian Marines storm the studio and a gun arrives in his back, courtesy of a soldier called Francisco. If you listen to me, put a white flag in the window of your house and military patrols are going to bring you assistance.
Francisco is one of 600 Argentinian commandos who are involved in Operation Rosario. As they see it, the liberation of the Malvinas. The scene at the radio station quickly descends into farce. Watts negotiates with the invaders, while frantic islanders phone in to ask if it's safe to leave the house to feed their animals.
Yeah, he's taken the gun away now. Anyway, if they want to go to the garden for it? Yeah. To look at the hens. Do you understand the hens? The hens. The hens. How do you write it? Oh, correct. Point on. Yes, a hot chicken. Chicken. Yes. They want to feed the chicken. Patrick Watts keeps broadcasting as the small garrison of 57 British Marines mount a last stand at government house. Argentinian landing vehicles roll towards the capital, Port Stanley, and the governor, Rex Hunt, has no choice.
After meeting the Argentinian commanding officer, he dials into the radio station. Call Clint. The invasion is over in less than 24 hours. The one fatality is an Argentinian commando hit by friendly fire. As Hunt is driven to the airport, he changes into his dress uniform and a plumed hat. He is immediately put on a plane back to London.
The Falklands have been under British rule since the 1830s. There's no indigenous population and they are inhabited by the descendants of Welsh and Scottish sheep farmers. The islands are 8,000 miles from the UK. 350 from Argentina. In 1982, most Britons don't know where to find the Falklands on a map, but every schoolchild in Argentina knows that Las Malvinas son Argentinas.
Quite a lot of relatively young countries have a piece of territory which somehow symbolises the completion of nationhood. Isabel Hilton was the Latin America correspondent at the Sunday Times during the war and reported from Argentina. And for Argentina, that's the Falkland Islands, the Malvinas, which they claim were always Argentine and certainly are rather closer to Argentina than they are to the United Kingdom. At the time of the invasion...
Argentina is in its sixth year of military dictatorship and has been led for a few months by General Leopoldo Galtieri. Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri was commander of the Argentine... Army. He had a reputation for drinking. He was sort of slightly a kind of mini Mussolini figure. You know, he had quite a lot of swagger, but somehow lacked conviction. Argentine sovereignty, which we are claiming and asking for since 1823, has, is, and will always be the objective of the Argentine people.
Reclaiming the Malvinas isn't just a point of national pride. The country's economy is in crisis and the regime has killed and disappeared. Thousands. People thrown out of helicopters over the Atlantic, held in concentration camps, tortured and murdered. And then suddenly, when they invaded the Falklands...
There are pictures of Galtieri on the balcony of the Casa Rosada with a massive crowd cheering him. And you can see he's astonished and delighted. I mean, the military had never been that popular. The streets of Buenos Aires are packed with jubilant crowds, the brutal and violent repression, the economic crisis, all forgotten.
As Argentina's blue and white flag is raised over the islands, a photograph of British Marines face down on the ground at gunpoint is beamed to news agencies around the world. Humiliation on an international scale In Britain, journalists are asking whether Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher can hold onto her job. The unexpected storm blowing up from the South Atlantic has led people to ask the question, can the Prime Minister herself survive it all?
Thatcher presents the invasion as a boat out of the blue. But it isn't. For the past 15 years, successive British governments have given every indication that they want rid of the islands. attempting to negotiate a Hong Kong-style deal, with sovereignty transferred to Argentina and then leased back to Britain for a period of time.
The previous summer, the Joint Intelligence Committee had warned the government that if it didn't come to a decision over the Falklands soon, something like this might happen. Instead of listening to these warnings... That same summer, Thatcher signed off on a defence spending review which proposed cutting the Navy in half and leaving the islands undefended. In Buenos Aires, this was seen as an invitation to invade.
The minister in charge of the spending review was Secretary of State for Defence, John Knott. Here's his private secretary, David Omand. So the whole logic of the huge cuts in forward defence spending that John had been ordered to make by Margaret Thatcher, the whole logic of that was the burden would have to fall on the Navy.
Among Thatcher's proposed cuts was the withdrawal of HMS Endurance, the only ship deployed in the South Atlantic to protect the Falklands. HMS Endurance became a pawn in the Whitehall game. The possibility of a naval conflict over the Falklands was never discussed. Indeed, the Falklands never got any real attention, and I look back on it with some shame, because it was just assumed the negotiations with the Foreign Office would eventually...
result in an agreement with Argentina over some sale and leaseback or sovereignty agreement. Was the withdrawing of HMS Endurance then... A failure of governance was a bad idea, exposing us as it ultimately was to this invasion. The announcement that it... HMS endurance was to be withdrawn, was a mistake. It sent a message to the Argentines? It sent a message. I think the reductions in the surface fleet sent a message. The negotiations...
over sovereignty that the Foreign Office were conducting sent a message. There's no two ways about it. Thatcher has left the islands completely undefended. At the time of the invasion, she's in the middle of her first term and is already in trouble, polling worse than any other leader since the Second World War. Three million Britons are unemployed. The economy is in recession. There are riots in the cities.
The last thing Thatcher needs is to lose British territory to a foreign invader. She stands accused of betraying the islanders who all want to remain British. The newspapers... are calling it her darkest hour. What is Maggie going to do about that? As the first intelligence reports from the South Atlantic start to trickle in, officials from the Ministry of Defence gather in Thatcher's office. The atmosphere is gloomy.
Everyone agrees that there is no viable military response. It's impossible to retake islands 8,000 miles away. But then, Sir Henry Leach, the first sea lord of the Royal Navy, bursts in. uninvited, here he is in 2004 recalling his intervention. I made it quite clear that I had come on the strength of the latest intelligence report. I'd come to seek approval.
to assemble, not sail, but to assemble a task force to deal with this situation. Leach has a plan and it involves every ship he can get his hands on. The two aircraft carriers, HMS Invincible and Hermes, which have just been sold to Australia and India as part of the spending review, are included. So are P&O ferries and commercial liners. And she started to hurry me with questions. And she said, oh, and how soon could they be ready?
And I sucked my neck out and I said in 48 hours. As Leach recalls, Thatcher is sceptical at first, but he keeps going. For him, the invasion is an opportunity to show the Navy's importance and to reverse the cuts of the spending review. And she said, can we really do it? And I said, yes.
And I should have stopped there, but I didn't. And I went on and said, and we must. And she was onto that like a hawk and snapped out there, why'd you say that? And I said, because if we don't pull the stops out... If we don't move fast, if we're not entirely successful, we should be living in an entirely different country whose word will count for little. And she glared at me, and then her face cracked into a grin. because it was the sort of things you rather wanted to hear, I think.
The day after the invasion, Thatcher calls an emergency debate. Order! Order! It's a Saturday. The first time since the Suez crisis of 1956 that Parliament has been in session over a weekend. The front page of the Daily Mail reads, Falkland's fiasco leaves government facing crisis in the Commons today. According to The Guardian, the Prime Minister is this morning coming to terms with the hard fact that the islands are, quote, almost certain.
beyond military recovery. Mr. Speaker, sir, the House meets this Saturday to respond to a situation of great gravity. We are here because for the first time for many years... British sovereign territory has been invaded by a foreign power. This will be Thatcher's biggest parliamentary test yet. And it's all broadcast live on BBC Radio. Mr Speaker, I'm sure that the whole House will join me in condemning totally this unprovoked aggression by the government of Argentina.
against British territory. Thatcher's political opponents are sharpening their knives. Our foreign secretary has already resigned and there's an expectation that she will be next. Across the floor is the Labour leader, Michael Foote. The people of the Falkland Islands have the absolute right to look to us at this moment of their desperate plight. So far... They have been betrayed and the responsibility for the betrayal rests with the government.
must now prove by deeds because they'll never be able, I believe, to do it by words that they are not responsible and they cannot face that charge. That is the charge that I believe does. Lie against them, and I repeat... Deeds, not words. Michael Foote is a founder member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and a self-proclaimed inveterate peacemonger.
But he's as belligerent as the British tabloids. The rights and the circumstances of the people in the Falkland Islands must be the matter uppermost in our minds. MPs of all parties vie to outdo one another in bombastic patriotism. As one Tory backbencher puts it, we must make the Argentine dictator disgorge what he has taken.
Nothing else will wipe the stain from Britain's honour. The coup de grace balls to Enoch Powell, a former Tory, now an Ulster Unionist. The Right Honourable Lady of the Prime Minister. shortly after she came into office, received a subriquet as the Iron Lady in the next week or two. This house... the nation and the Right Honourable Lady herself will learn of what metal she is made.
Can the Prime Minister rise to the occasion? Mr Speaker, the people of the Falkland Islands, like the people of the United Kingdom, are an island race. Their way of life is British. their allegiance is to the crown. It is the wish of the British people and the duty of Her Majesty's government to do everything we can to uphold that right. That will be our hope and our endeavour. And I believe the resolve of every honourable member of this House. Second. Second.
Thatcher's language is Churchillian, an attempt to draw on deep reserves of national feeling, on dissatisfaction at Britain's post-war imperial decline and its diminishing status in the world. Thanks to Henry Leach, the Prime Minister can promise an immediate response. Deeds. As well as once. The government has now decided that a large task force will sail as soon as all preparations are complete.
HMS Invincible will be in the lead and will leave port on Monday. I stress that I cannot foretell what orders the task force... A task force will set sail for the Falklands in just two days' time. The islands, Thatcher says, will be regained by whatever means necessary. A line nobody expected her to take, but everybody seems to like.
Her opponents clear the way, the entire British political class spontaneously and immediately agrees to the dispatching of the task force. The Navy and Thatcher are now suddenly on the same side. The Prime Minister needs the Navy to save her government. The Navy has an opportunity to prove its worth. They come up with a bizarre name for this mission. Operation Corporate. Such an emotional ship's departure for many, many years. Hundreds of relatives.
There's wall-to-wall coverage on television and radio as the flotilla sets sail, cheered by a crowd waving Union Jacks. Vessels of all descriptions, sound their horns in support. emotions are running high. It's difficult to say whether there are more tears streaming down sheeps than streamers from the ship itself. The hordes on the dockside, like Parliament, seem to be caught up in patriotic fervour.
News reporters are on hand to narrate every moment of the fleet's tearful goodbye. ...will be the site of an ocean of Union Jacks and hands held high in farewell and good luck. What has Thatcher awoken in the British psyche? A caller into a radio talk show offers her unique contribution to the war effort. Dialing Argentinian telephone numbers at random.
Little Britain has a message. So as soon as the phone was answered, what did you do? Well, the woman spoke to me in Spanish and I burst into song. Never, never, never shall be slaves. What was the response from the other end of the line? Well, being Spanish, she was very excitable. I don't know two verses of that particular British song, so I sang the first verse twice.
just to make sure she had got it, you know. Is this the sort of thing you'd like to see other people do? Well, yes, I think it's a lovely way to fight a war. Somewhere behind all this, in the distance, but central to our story, is Lieutenant Narendra Sethia, the man who'd write the diary that has come to obsess me. He spent much of the last 40 years living in the Caribbean.
And that was where we found him, on the island of St Vincent. So we're approaching Seth's house for the first time. It's situated high up on a hill, sort of secluded with gum trees and palm trees and bushes. birds on the wires, let's go in and see Seth if we can find him and among all there's greenery. Hello. How are you doing? Hello, hello. I'm Andrew Hagen. Pleased to meet you. Andrew, we meet at last. We do indeed. These are your dogs as suspected. My children.
But they have four legs. Are these trees? No, they were all rescued. One actually was found in a garbage skit when he was six weeks old. And one came... crawling up my driveway, emaciated with a dead puppy in her mouth. Sethia is wearing shorts and a tie-dye T-shirt. He's skinny and covered in tattoos, with faded good looks. and the appearance of someone who's been on a lifelong gap year. He still has charm and we get along at once. This is a local speciality plant.
I don't know whether you recognize it. I do. That's the sort of thing that you can be arrested for. Don't you know that, sir? Oh, really? I've never been very good with plants, you know. Or with the lotto. I just stick them in a pot and smoke them and see what happens. We sit down in the living room.
It's unbelievably hot and there's dog hair everywhere. As you can see, I'm a normal retired naval officer. Sethia rents the ground floor of a two-storey house. The rooms are pretty small. They're dark too. I'm struck by Sethia's shortness of breath. His chest sounds really bad. There's no getting away from it. His circumstances are pretty reduced. Having looked at some of the things you've written about your school days...
I could venture the view that you've always been in a state of rebellion. Yes, very much so. I mean, I hated my upbringing. I mean, it was so formal and toffee-nosed. You know, I was raised by nannies and introduced to mother after afternoon tea. Sethia's father, Babu Lal, moved to the UK from Rajasthan after the Second World War and set up a successful clothing company. The family had a big house in Surrey, a pita ter in Mayfair. The boys went to Haro.
But when his father died, all the money and property were taken by the bank. It turned out that Bab-Ulal had been skimming off the top. Sethia describes himself as a rebel, but after leaving school... He joins the Royal Navy. When I went for my positive vetting, a retired Army major working for MI407, or whatever the department was called, interviewed me.
and started ticking off the list, any associations with communism, and he ticked no. It was only after I received my positive betting, my dear mother said, oh, didn't they know, darling? that I'm a life member of the Communist Party. And that is true. The newspapers we used to get at home as a youngster were the Telegraph and the Morning Star. Explains too much, Sash. Only the cook was allowed the Daily Mirror. It's fucking hilarious. Before leaving London...
I had read a lot about Sethia's diary and the role it played in the controversy after the war. When did you decide to begin a diary? I just thought on the spur of the moment, let's scribble a few things. Personal thoughts committed to a piece of paper. Which is what the diary is all about. 2nd of April 1982.
arrived on board at 0815 to discover that Argentina has invaded the Falkland Islands and we're now in the throes of storing for war. Shit. Everything seems to be happening and it's not a good day. As news of the invasion filters through, the Conqueror's crew are ordered back to the naval base at Fas Lane on the west coast of Scotland, home to Britain's nuclear submarine fleet. On the hull, at a...
patrols have been a little less quick and a little bit more casual. But this one was like, bang, we've got 48 hours. Get on with it. As supply officer, Sethia's job is to make sure that the submarine has absolutely everything it needs, down to the last bolt or screw. I mean, there was so much stuff to load.
In fact, on this particular patrol, because we had to plan to go for so long, we carried so much food that we had to actually build a false deck, even in the control room. So we had to walk on our food until we had eaten it. 3rd of April 1982. Managed to complete storing by lunchtime. Things appear to be getting tense politically, and the Argentinians appear to be realising the enormity of their folly. There's an air of apprehension throughout the boat. How much information did the crew have?
All we were told was that we were going to head down south. None of us thought it sounded like a war in inverted commas. It sounded like the Argies have had too many glasses of wine and, you know, gone off and dumped it here rather silly. And so we'll go there and show them the flag and be around and threaten them and then they'll scurry off back home. 4th of April, 1982. News is bad and the boat is throbbing with anticipation.
We finally sailed to 2115 and before we did so I remembered to make out my will. A long night at sea. HMS Conqueror quietly leaves Fas Lane and is soon in the North Atlantic. It's one of the five hunter-killer submarines that will join the British task force. They are powered by nuclear reactors but carry conventional weapons.
They are able to get to sea more quickly than the surface fleet and move faster through the water. Britain's key strategic advantage over the Argentinian navy, they are perfect for a stealth attack. Did it seem conceivable that within four weeks exactly, you'd be sizing up an enemy vessel? Absolutely not. The attitude on board with everybody at that time.
Also, God, not another bloody long patrol. We just got back from one. 6th of April, 1982. A fast passage. Shaved my beard off, much to everyone's amusement. The captain addressed the ship's company today. He sounded very serious, and although there was much choking and laughter, I sense some nervousness. Am I going to win a VC? Will they name an accommodation block after me? Is this really war?
Is this really war? Thatcher is talking a good game, but she can't actually do anything without the backing of the United States. She has a close relationship with Ronald Reagan and expects his support, but since becoming president, he has made it a priority to strengthen relations with the junta and bring them into his anti-communist alliance.
It's a very difficult situation for the United States because we're friends with both of the countries engaged in this dispute. And we stand ready to do anything we can to have a peaceful resolution of this with no forceful action or no bloodshed. Lawrence Friedman, the author of the official history of the Falklands campaign. The first thing Factor did was to contact Reagan. But then the Americans...
decided that they wouldn't wholeheartedly back the UK because they had their own links with Buenos Aires, which Thatcher was furious about. I mean, she thought it was, you know, the aggrieved and the aggressor, and what were the Americans trying to do finding a middle position? Reagan sends his Secretary of State, Alexander Haig, on a transatlantic shuttle diplomacy mission. Al Haig has his eyes on a Nobel Prize. Don't worry, he tells Reagan.
I'll walk this kitty back. 8th of April, 1982. The news today said the Falkland situation would be settled by diplomacy rather than by bullets. We're all a bit pissed off because we know what that means. 12 weeks away while the politicians fart and blush negotiating. What a total waste. On the same day that news of the American diplomatic effort reaches the submarine,
Al Haig arrives in London for a first round of talks. Jim Rentschler, a senior staffer in the National Security Council, also keeps a diary. It's full of acidic anecdotes about his colleagues and... a play-by-play account of the diplomacy. April 8th, 1982. Number 10 Downing Street. And here's Maggie appearing in a flower-decorated salon.
La Thatcher is really quite fetching in a dark velvet two-piece and a soft hairdo. Walking in, she says, Listen, I want to show you guys something very appropriate considering the subject on our minds. and she pointedly leads us to a pair of recently hung oil portraits, one of Nelson and the other of Wellington. Thatcher, you see, just ain't buying our suggestion for a diplomatic approach to the crisis.
Maggie is having none of it. Thatcher has the bit between her teeth, Haig warns Reagan, and is convinced she will fall if Britain can't win back the islands. the Americans start to realise that she's in earnest about military action. Wherever naked aggression occurs, it must be overcome. Our naval task force sails on towards its destination. We remain fully confident of its ability to take whatever measures may be necessary.
Airborne again in less than 48 hours, Haig heads to Buenos Aires. Gaultierre is as stubborn at the negotiating table as Thatcher. Liberating the Malvinas has been a hugely popular move for him. He tells Haig that if Argentina withdraws now, he won't last a week. Translation Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough. On the 23rd floor of the Sheraton Hotel, Jim Rentschler watches on. He writes later in his diary about Galtieri's, quote, demagogic appearance. April 10th, 1982.
The U.S. was booed as loudly as Great Britain, and cries of Thatcher Puta filled the vast Plaza de Mayo. Will the college-like enthusiasm hereabouts long endure if war really does break out? Will you still find crowds shouting, Gera, Gera? As Owl Hay gets back on his plane to London, Thatcher publicly announces a 200-mile exclusion zone around the Falklands. British submarines are now allowed to attack Argentinian ships, but only within the zone.
The idea is to show other countries that Britain is serious about defending the islands and to make it hard for the Argentinians to resupply them. It seems to establish the battleground. If the zone is challenged... We shall take that as the clearest evidence that the search for a peaceful solution has been abandoned. We shall then take the necessary action. Let no one doubt that.
The Exclusion Zone is the first of a series of rules of engagement that the British will issue throughout the war. Lawrence Friedman again. The rules of engagement are the legal framework, not in international law, but within national law. with which the armed forces must operate. And they basically circumscribe the military's freedom of manoeuvre. They're the means by which politicians exercise. Not by ordering the military to do things, but by preventing escalation or...
that would be completely difficult or would be outside international law. 10th of April, 1982. past the Cape Verde Islands. News is that a 200-mile exclusion zone has been established around the Falklands. We may attack Argentinian vessels within that zone. The political situation doesn't seem to have improved, and today we're parallel with Angola. The Conqueror continues south, crossing the equator on April 12th.
It's an uneventful journey. Lieutenant Sethia is on watch twice a day, six hours on, six hours off. In between, he writes his diary. Pretty uncomfortable in the rough seas. A long watch and a late supper. 16th of April, 1982. Saw one flew over the cuckoo's nest tonight.
Reminded me of myself. Getting close now. Accompanied by hundreds of seals throughout the day. Mottled grey with white bellies. This is going to be a difficult passage. 19th of April, 1982. Past Madeira today. We've decided that when we get back to Faslane, we'll wear eye patches. bloodstained slings and carry crutches and collect money, posing as Falklands veterans, we might be able to start a trade and stuff penguins.
Was there a change during those crucial days in the Falklands campaign where perhaps the atmosphere changed from one of boredom and trepidation to excitement and fear? Yes, there was a huge change. I suppose things were speeding up, becoming closer to possible conflict. Officers all had what they called their own division. I believe I had 12 or 13 men in my division.
and I was responsible for their welfare. Senior officers would do the same to me. And this was very important, to keep an eye on people, because people can flip, and occasionally it can become too much. 20th of April 1982. Our watch is going insane and we spend much of the time reminiscing on runs ashore, talking about filth and joking about death. Military intervention is now seeming a very real likelihood.
Sethia is right. The American diplomatic effort is floundering. Haig has put forward a three-point plan which would see control of the islands passed to an interim administration with representatives from neutral countries. until the sovereignty question can be resolved. But he's struggling to bridge the gap between the British and Argentinian positions.
During a second round of talks with Thatcher, it's becoming clear to Jim Rentschler that there is no middle ground. Ever get that hemmed in feeling? The Iron Maiden is really toughening up her already robust talk, especially on the question of the fleet standing off. Unthinkable. One simply doesn't trust burglars. No, no, absolutely not. The fleet must steam on. After two weeks of talks and 30,000 air miles, Haig returns to Washington.
The kitty has not been walked back. Rentschler packs his bags and signs off with a flourish. April 20th, 1982. Fuck you, Argentina. We're airborne. Time to bag it. The stewards pull down the comfortable sleeping berths, and everybody surrenders to the Morpheus mode. If ever a ship was in the sand, Haig's peace shuttle is it. The moment of South Atlantic truth is upon us.
A week later, as the task force closes on the islands, Al Haig announces that his diplomacy has failed. The US comes out publicly for Britain. We must remember that the aggression was in the part of Argentina in this dispute over the sovereignty of that little ice-cold bunch of land, armed aggression of that kind. must not be allowed to succeed. 29th of April 1982. We're now well over 9,000 miles since sailing.
A day of fast passage to our new areas around the Falkland Islands and Tierra del Fuego. We've had a reassuring signal saying that it looks as if the diplomatic pontificating is now over and military intervention seems inevitable. The task force arrives at the exclusion zone on the same day that the US announces its support for Britain. The Argentinian fleet is already at sea, ranged in three battle groups.
Argentina has 11 warships compared to Britain's 44. It's the job of the hunter-killer submarines to find them and police the perimeter of the exclusion zone. Conqueror's orders are to locate the group to the south-west, the General Belgrano, and its two escorting destroyers. 30th April 1982. Continuing passage to our areas.
where the threats are from the cruiser Belgrano. The weather today has been incredibly good. Very calm, clear skies, sunny and excellent visibility. Perhaps the calm before the storm. The Conqueror is on the hunt. But finding a ship in the expanse of the ocean is no easy task. In situations like this, you use passage sonar, which means you listen.
You listen to the noise coming from the other vessels. You can tell from passive sonar what type of ship it is eventually. You can tell the number of blades that there are on a propeller. the number of shafts that it's got, with air bubbles collapsing on the blades, and down to that detail. The sonar operators attempt to separate background noise from the noise of their target ship. The unique sound that each ship creates underwater is known as a signature. 1st of May 1982.
The signatures we held earlier turned out to be the Argentinian service group, and we closed to within 4,000 yards of them in the morning. We came up the periscope death, and in fact I saw her visually myself through the periscope. Capture that moment for us. What did you see with your own eyes? I saw with my own eyes, over the horizon, the masts of four vessels, the three ships and the oil tanker.
There's one cruiser, the Belgrano, the two Allen Sumner-class destroyers and an Euler, and we caught them in the middle of a replenishment at sea, which would have made a superb target, but unfortunately they're still south of the exclusion zone. The Belgrano is a sitting duck, but according to Britain's own rules of engagement, until it moves into the exclusion zone, the Conqueror can't attack. Our aims.
really, were to track the vessels, to track them, to watch them, to listen to them, to learn about them through sound information, and basically to do that from a distance. not with any aggression, not with any intention of letting them know that we were there, just to watch and wait, in inverted commas to use a very well-worn expression to await further instructions.
Spent most of the day trailing them discreetly from about 10,000 yards as they headed west, hoping that they're going to turn Norton to the zone. Excitement before going to bed tonight. as we believe we may be going to action stations overnight to loose off a couple of Mark 24s. There was always and always is the feeling that yes, we have been strongly trained for this. It's drilled into the brain, into the mind, the soul.
We've been trained to press a button, and if that time comes, press it we shall. Next time on the Belgrano Diary. I remember sitting there and going, bloody hell, this is actually happening. So the captain goes up and starts the drill on bearing that cut on fire. When a torpedo is fired, you can feel it. It makes its way. And the next thing was, you know, history.
I do remember actually listening to the Belgrana breaking up. If you can imagine a huge ballroom with a very, very high roof and an enormous 18th century glass chandelier. It sounded like the chandelier suddenly snapping its wire and falling to the ground. And it was tinkling, tinkling, tinkling, tinkling.
The Belgrano Diary is a production from the documentary team at the London Review of Books. If you liked this episode, please leave a rating and a review wherever you listened. This helps other people find the show. Gotcha, will be available next Thursday, April the 4th. You can read a collection of the magazine's coverage of the Falklands War and the politics of the early 1980s on our website. There's a link to this in the show notes.
where you will also find a list of the archival audio used in this episode. The series producer was Richard Curling, Ben Walker was the producer, and Zach Brophy, the story editor. Original music and sound design by Joel Cox. The diary of Jim Rentschler was read by Patrick Kennedy. Additional voice work by Duncan Wilkins. I'm Andrew Hagan.