On the 2nd of May 1982, the British hunter-killer submarine HMS Conqueror received orders to sink the Argentinian cruiser, the General Belgrano. I remember sitting there and going, bloody hell, this is actually happening. So I run down saying, guys, guys, we've been given permission to engage. And they'd be like, we frigging haven't.
We have. I think it was a gulp. This is for real. I hope I won't let myself down, my captain down, the crew down, the Navy down. Trembling, terrified at that point. So the captain goes up and starts the drill. on bearing that cut on fire. And the next thing was, you know, history.
The sinking of the Belgrano was the bloodiest military action of the Falklands War and the most controversial. I killed 300 people who shouldn't have been killed. Everybody on the submarine knew he was sailing home. They didn't have a chance. In Parliament and on primetime TV, Margaret Thatcher was forced to defend her actions. That ship was a danger to our boys. I know it was right to sink her and I would do the same again.
Was it a legitimate attack? Or was it a war crime? Sinking the Belgrano was an evil decision. A criminal act. Thatcher's government was accused of a cover-up and the truth of the sinking would only emerge after the war in the pages of a private diary. Everybody was in search of the author of this diary. In a world of half-truths, you're looking desperately for facts and the diary was a fact. When I got the diary, I knew what I had in my hand.
Dynamite. 2nd 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. As I write, I can hardly believe the enormity of what we've done. The diary connects all the main players involved in the scandal over the Belgrano. So I decided to follow it back to its source.
to find the man who wrote it and the submariners, politicians, civil servants and journalists attached to its remarkable journey. I'm Andrew O'Hagan. And from the London Review of Books, this is the Belgrano Diary. A story in six parts. Do you think it or don't you? Yes or no? The submarine had the Belgrado at her mercy. Episode 1, coming next Thursday, March the 28th.