I found it!! This article does discribe the Brits using a lot of ordance and sounobouys looking for Argentine subs in littoral waters that were really in port well except for one.The Brits must have thoght the old US made sub was a threat....Poor ASW use by the Brits.
Warning ..the link is a PDF file! And is a general overall view of subs in the Falklands War.
http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~lswartz/falklands.pdf#search='Argentine%20submarines%20%20in%20the%20Falklands'
However, accounts of the war tend to center on the sinking of two ships in particular: the
Argentine cruiser General Belgrano and the British destroyer HMS Sheffield. Sunk by a nuclear
submarine and a “smart” missile respectively, these two ships’ demise reflect important lessons
to be learned about naval warfare, but must be viewed in a larger context. Submarines and
“smart” weapons played a far larger role in the conflict than simply sinking two ships; only by
understanding the larger picture can one learn the lessons of the Falklands Conflict.
Submarines in the Falklands Conflict
The first operation involving a submarine in the Falklands involved the Argentine
submarine Santa Fe, the former USS Catfish (SS 339), a Perch class diesel sub commissioned in
1945. The Santa Fe was en route to the Falklands to covertly ship supplies to the troops
garrisoned there, surfaced and approaching the port of Grytviken, when it was spotted by a
British helicopter on April 25.2 The helicopter was one of a group of five consisting of one
Wessex, two Wasp, and two Sea Lynx, which subsequently fired on the helpless submarine with
depth charges and other ordnance.3 Surfaced, the submarine had little defense except for the
rifles found on board. The Santa Fe’s crew beached the badly damaged submarine just outside
of Grytviken. Although this was a chance encounter, it highlights the vulnerability of a
submarine when on the surface. As the submarine is a weapon of stealth, once that stealth is
removed, it becomes a sitting duck to attacks from both the air and sea.
The Santa Fe was not the first submarine on the scene, however; as the political conflict
escalated in March, the British nuclear submarines Spartan, Splendid, and Conqueror were
2 William J. Ruhe, “Submarine Lessons,” Military Lessons of the Falkland Islands War: Views from the United
States. 8.
4
ordered to sail for the Falklands, to “covertly prepare a task force for South Atlantic
operations.”4 This action showed two advantages of the modern nuclear submarine: speed and
stealth. Thanks to their nuclear propulsion plants, the submarines were able to arrive far before
the rest of the British task force. Furthermore, this action took place without at all affecting the
political situation. Because the ships could remain undetected nearly indefinitely, the
Argentineans had no idea that submarines were off their coast unless the British told them, thus
not exacerbating an already tense situation. Indeed, had the politicians been able to resolve the
conflict at that time, there would have been no trace of the British submarines ever being in the
area.
The British did eventually inform the Argentineans of their submarines’ presence,
however, finally establishing a 200-mile “maritime exclusion zone” around the Falklands on
April 12. This effectively stopped any Argentine naval operations in the area: no ship would
dare to risk entering waters patrolled by the superbly handled British submarines. Indeed, in an
interesting illumination on the stealth of nuclear submarines, the British could have been bluffing
without the Argentineans ever knowing—as one British submariner quipped, “the only way to
know for sure that there is a submarine is when one starts losing ships—and that’s a very
expensive way to find out.”5
That maritime exclusion zone resulted in the most famous submarine encounter of the
war, the sinking of the Argentinean cruiser General Belgrano by the HMS Conqueror. On May
2nd, the Belgrano and two destroyer escorts went on patrol just outside of the exclusion zone.
The British saw the Belgrano group as a threat to its task force, and ordered the Conqueror to
3 USS Catfish SS339 Home Page
4 Ruhe 7.
5 Tom Clancy, Submarine.
5
engage. The Conqueror used two Mk VIII torpedoes, sinking the Belgrano in forty minutes.6
This was the first time that a nuclear submarine had attacked a surface ship in actual combat.
The Argentineans learned their lesson well: the Argentine navy was essentially holed up in port
most of the war, especially their carrier Veinticinco de Mayo. As a result, Argentine planes had
to fly 425 miles from the Argentine mainland to their targets, which taxed their fuel capacity to
the breaking point.7
Perhaps the most disturbing lesson of the war is in the realm of Anti-Submarine Warfare
(ASW). Argentina had only four World War II-era diesel submarines, two of which were tied up
in port: the Salta’s battery was depleted (although the Argentines moved it around to confuse the
British) and the Santiago del Estro had been cannibalized for spare parts.8 As mentioned above,
the Santa Fe was damaged early in the war and thus remained inoperative throughout the
conflict. However, the British spent an extraordinary amount of time trying to track these few
submarines. An enormous amount of ordnance was dropped on false contacts, while Sea King
antisubmarine helicopters constantly patrolled the area.9 Their efforts were confounded by the
difficulty to conduct sonar operations in shallow water.10 That the British spent so much time
and firepower ineffectively chasing one outmoded diesel submarine shows both the difficulty of
ASW and the deadliness of even older submarines to a large surface fleet.
Indeed, the San Luis fired several torpedoes on British ships, yet each torpedo missed its
target. It is suspected that “synchro misalignment had caused incorrect bearing information to be
transmitted from the periscope to the fire-control console,” and that furthermore an “overzealous
leading petty officer…had incorrectly reconnected lead used to power-up torpedoes in
6 Ruhe 8.
7 James L. George, “Large Versus Small Carriers,” Military Lessons of the Falkland Islands War: Views from the
United States. 16.
8 “The Lesson of the San Luis,” International Defense Review, Vol. 30 No. 8. 36.
6
their tubes before launch.”11 This shows that one must not only have the technology—one must
also be well-trained in using it effectively.
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