1. You are talking about the Tigerfish Torpedo, it wasnt that it wasn't working, they were concerned that it MIGHT not work as it was new and untested. Therefore they decided to use the tested Mark 8.
2. No disagreement, again I am not disagreeing with the decision to sink the BELGRANO only the reasons the MOD cited to do so. (Come on guys, I have said this 3 times now). For the last time, I agree that the MOD was right to sink BELGRANO, just not for the reasons they stated.
3. They did not have complete superiority true, but they controlled the skies. The Argentinians developed pop-up tactics to screen themselves by hiding under the hills of the falklands and hug sea level which then rapidly climb as they began their attacks. Terrain masking was how they were able to attack those ships. The reason they did so was to avoid the air search rader on the ships and the Harriers above them. Remember the Argentians lost about 80 aircraft, for perhaps 8 harriers (a few of which were accidents).
4. I stand by what I said on this. First of all I was only talking about BELGRANO herself not her escort**. Her Sea Cat system was a short range SAM which had a max range of 3 miles. The rest of her Air Defence was WWII weapons 40mm Befors, 20mm Orlikions. These weapons were useful against WWII piston aircraft, but not against jets who were simply to fast for the gunners to track. The British had exactly the same problem when defending against Argentian air raids. One of the biggest things learned the UK learned from the Falklands War was that her naval air defense was totally insufficient against low level attacks, which lead to the devolpement of newer systems. Had the RN been armed with rader-controlled CIWS like the US Phalanx system, I think they'd have suffered far fewer losses. The Argentianians were able to shoot down 2 Harriers using a landbased Orlikon 35mm system which is rader controlled. But thats how armies get better, by learning from past mistakes.
**I just check the escorts, they were two ex-USN Sumner class DDs. I could find no evidence of them being fitted with SAMS which would mean they had the same gun self defense as BELGRANO did namely 40mm and 20mm.
Its 4am will carry on tommorow...
OK MM, get some sleep this will rumble on anyway.
1. I couldn't remember which torpedo type, all I recall is that they couldn't get a "bang" out of it - whatever that means.
2. I thought that the MOD reason for sinking the Belgrano was because it was a threat to the Task Force.
3. The Argentinians did not develop pop up tactics, they had to use them. This was due to the way that they had their bomg launch system, so they had to lob the bombs rather than drop them - for which the RN & GB will be forever grateful.
4. The Belgrano was still tooled up for AA, the age of the weapons doesn't matter, only the speed of reload and accuracy, the Task Force were also using GPMG's as AA in the Falkland Sound, that was as high tech as was available at the time. A moot point anyway as she was sunk by torpedoes, better that than losing 3 or 4 Harriers to AA, or AAA as it's called nowadays.
In short this was a simple Mission Analysis problem:
- Do nothing, risk fleet interdiction, ship loss, ground troop and supply loss, therefore lose the War.
- Sink the Belgrano, thus no threat to Invasion or Naval assets, enabling ground troops to win the War, downside - the Argentinians will be unhappy. I can see how that rolled out!
The Junta chose to invade and didn't like the fact that they didn't get their way. They tried to argue the point further and were given a bloody nose. Again a shame as so many people had to die, but it certainly helped to move the Junta into retirement, so it wasn't all bad.