On This Day in 1982, the Royal Navy lost its first ship in action since WW2 when HMS Sheffield was hit by an Exocet missile.
On This Day in 1982, the Royal Navy lost its first ship in action since WW2 when HMS Sheffield was hit by an Exocet missile.
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>Key to liberating the Falklands was air superiority, largely delivered from HMS Hermes and Invincible. If either carrier was lost it would effectively end the operation.
>The carriers’ first line of defence was the three Type 42 destroyers – HMS Glasgow, HMS Sheffield and HMS Coventry, slung in a wide arc 25 miles west of the task force.
>Shortly before 11am on May 4th, HMS Glasgow thought she picked up an incoming enemy aircraft, though the warning was dismissed by HMS Invincible as a false sighting.
>The ‘ghost sighting’ was real – two Super Étendards hugging the waves at more than 500mph. They released two Exocet missiles and hurriedly turned around before the British could retaliate.
>HMS Glasgow picked up the missile attack on radar and responded, manoeuvring violently, filling the air with chaff to distract the missiles
>There was no such response on HMS Sheffield: her use of a communications satellite prevented her radar picking up either the Etendards or Exocets. At 11.03am officers of the watch scanning the horizon saw a trail of smoke roaring over the waves at almost 700mph. One of the men grabbed a microphone: Missile attack! Hit the deck!
>The Exocet smashed through Sheffield’s hull, across the starboard walkway. Its warhead did not explode, but its fuel tank did, incinerating every man in the galley – 11 lives wiped out in an instant. The missile knocked out the ship’s water mains for firefighting. Despite a herculean effort by survivors of the Shiny Sheff, the fires and smoke took their toll.
>Twenty men were killed, while the destroyer herself succumbed to the damage sustained several days later. Many crew suffered severe burns- they were flown to HMS Hermes first, where sailors were shocked first by the scale of the injuries, then by the fact that the destroyer had to be abandoned.
>Sheffield’s fate shook the entire fleet. “Morale in the vicinity of me has dropped a mile,” observed PO Keith Balston in HMS Glamorgan. “No more jubilant faces. This is for real! We have lost comrades in the Sheffield. She is finished, a burning wreck – done by that Exocet. The very word brings fear to us.”
https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news-and-latest-activity/features/falklands-40
My father served in the Falklands on the Victor tankers, based out of Ascension. He said a number of times that the Exocet was the only asset Argentina had that scared the Navy, in that it was capable of killing a ship from over the horizon. Britain made a number of strategic decisions based on its availability (even though Argentina actually only had a handful of the French-made weapon, Britain didn’t know this)