On the afternoon of May 25, 1982, two Argentine "Super Flag" fighters carrying two "Flying Fish" missiles approached the British aircraft carrier at an ultra-low altitude of 30 meters above the sea surface. Then, an anti-ship missile went straight to the target at an altitude of 30 meters above the sea, and the Captain of the British warship watched as the missile crashed into a $240 million destroyer.
This scene took place in the 1982 Anglo-Armagh Islands War, and it was also the first case in human history that an anti-ship missile was successfully sunk in actual combat.
In the early stages of the Falklands War, the British Royal Navy was full of elites, and although the Argentine Navy fought at the "doorstep", it still did not dare to take the initiative to attack.
On 26 April 1982, the Argentine Navy's main warship, the cruiser General Belgrano, and two destroyers formed a fleet to patrol south of the Falklands.
At that time, the CIA and the German Federal Intelligence Agency eavesdropped on the internal communications of the Argentine Navy through the encryption devices used by the Argentine Navy with backdoors, thus learning about the movements of the cruiser Belgrano, and Virtue later shared the relevant information with the British.
On 30 April, the ship was spotted by the British submarine HMS Conquistador. After consulting Margaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the British decided to sink the Argentine Navy's capital ship.
After following the fleet for two days, the submarine Conquistador seized the opportunity to fire three Marc 8 torpedoes at the cruiser General Belgrano on the afternoon of May 2.
One torpedo hit the bow, the other hit the back of the ship, and the third went off target. But an 800-pound torpedo, with just one hit, was enough to paralyze a 10,000-ton warship.
Due to the weather, the sea was windy and rough at that time, so the other two Argentine warships did not find that the Belgrano was hit. After the explosion of the British torpedo, a large gap could not be repaired, because the cabin was flooded with water, which forced the captain to order all the crew to abandon the ship.
(After the ship was sunk, it maintained the record for the largest tonnage ship sunk after World War II.) Until April 2022, the guided-missile cruiser Moscow was sunk in the Russo-Ukrainian War. ）
The sinking of the largest warship by the British provoked the Argentines to retaliate, and the Argentine government decided to retaliate against the British army.
At 7:50 a.m. on May 4, the P-2 Neptune patrol aircraft of the Argentine Naval Aviation began tracking the British Sheffield and locked its position nearly an hour later. The Argentine army then sent two "Super Flag" attack aircraft from Tierra del Fuego.
At 10:00 a.m., after receiving aerial refueling from the KC-130 tanker, the two aircraft immediately flew low and prepared to attack, and finally fired two Flying Fish anti-ship missiles at the British ship "Sheffield" at 11:04, one of which was interfered with and failed to hit, and the other successfully hit the ship's starboard side and penetrated the middle of the hull.
At the same time, the Type 965 radar of the "Sheffield" failed to detect the two Argentine fighters mentioned above due to technical limitations, and it was only the rear "Glasgow" that successfully locked the enemy aircraft and informed the fleet.
However, the "Invincible" aircraft carrier command post once appeared that the destroyer misreported the enemy fighter information, and did not care about this. If it were not for the fact that the "Super Flag" fighter had already used up the "Flying Fish" missile, then the British aircraft carrier was likely to become the second "victim" of the day.
As the frontmost position of the entire fleet, the "Sheffield", even if it failed to detect the incoming missiles, its rear destroyers should be able to detect, why did not warn the "Sheffield" in time?
The reason was that someone used the ship's satellite phone without authorization, which made the alarm of the Glasgow behind the Sheffield unable to be delivered. In addition, after the officers and men of the bridge saw the missile tracks at the lower level, they failed to take evasive and countermeasure measures in time, and the ship was eventually hit by Afghan missiles.
Although the missile failed to detonate, due to the breakdown of the ship's engine room and internal equipment, coupled with the residual solid propellant point fuel cylinder and lubricating oil in the machine room, it finally caused a serious fire, causing the entire ship to lose power and causing 20 deaths and 26 injuries.
About four hours later, all the surviving officers and men of the ship abandoned the ship and escaped, and were rescued by British patrol ships of the same fleet. As for the abandoned Sheffield, the cruiser Yarmouth was towed to South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, and the $240 million guided-missile destroyer "lasted" for six days or sank, becoming the first British warship to be sunk after the end of World War II.
In fact, the sinking of the "Sheffield" is not a big loss for the British, and it can even be said that this is the fate of the "Sheffield". If argentine fighters directly attack the "Invincible" aircraft carrier, then two "Flying Fish" anti-ship missiles are enough to make the aircraft carrier lose its combat effectiveness, and Britain is likely to lose the initiative on the battlefield.
Since then, the British government has pressed France to stop supplying Argentina with Flying Fish anti-ship missiles and related technologies.
This kind of anti-ship missile, which is "small and large", proves to people through actual combat that no matter how large the warship, it will be sunk in the face of a sufficient number of anti-ship missiles.
Since then, it has also proved that in future wars, fighters carrying anti-ship missiles will become the key to determining sea power.
