RISE AND FALL OF THE PHOENIX
On the afternoon of 2 May 1982 the veteran Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano was steaming on a westerly course, skirting the total exclusion zone south of the Falkland Islands, when a deadly, silent and unseen foe struck. Torpedoes raced towards the cruiser and two of them hit her on the port side. The old ship was mortally wounded and flooded rapidly, causing her to roll over and sink just 15 minutes after the last man had abandoned ship. Her assassin, the nuclear-powered submarine Conqueror, increased speed and went deep to avoid any attack from Belgrano’s escorting destroyers, though they had in fact sped away from the scene.
Commissioned on 3 October 1938 at the New York Shipbuilding Corporation Corporation’s yard in Camden, New Jersey as USS Phoenix, General Belgrano was the fifth of the nine-strong Brooklyn class, entering service as USS Phoenix (CL-46). They were designed to exploit the unlimited size allowed for light cruisers (those with guns of 6.1-inch calibre or less) under the 1930 London Treaty, because the US Navy needed large cruisers for its Pacific operations, but was limited in the numbers of eight-inch gun heavy cruisers it could build.
