During the morning of May 4th, a lone P-2V5 Neptune took off from the Rio Grande air base, its mission was to clear and control a path for a C-130 Hercules to cross the altantic sea and deliver supplies and troops to the forces that days prior captured the Falklands/Malvinas Islands. Due to the old age of the Neptune its sensors and radar usually malfunction during flight, thing that requiere the crew to service it in flight (thing that happened during this mission). Suddenly the radar picked up an anomaly, a British Type 42 was detected, immediately after transmitting the information the C-130 flight was canceled and the alarm sounded for the Argentine Naval Aviation Command (COAN), a plan to strike the ship fell into the hands of the brand new Dassault Super Etendard, aircraft that had arrived almost a year before the conflict.
The armament that was going to be used was the AM-39 Exocet, an ASM that the french had supplied in low quantities to the Argentine navy. When the conflict started, pressure was put on the french government by britain to cease activities that helped the argentine military effort, this meant most french technicians departed the country, leaving the argentines to finish the job preparing and calibrating the missiles for their use, thing that they accomplished by themselves.
A pair of SUE took off from Rio Grande Air Base, each carried a missile on their wings and a fuel tank on the other, both aircraft flew under radar and radio silence towards the position informed by the Neptune, both refueled of a KC-130, after that they continued towards their objective.
The British naval fleet was on "warning yellow", without any indication of the presence of enemy attackers. In order to avoid radar detection the SUEs lowered their altitude to 75ft (25m) at 130Nm from their objective. At 50Nm from the objetive both aircraft pop up and activate their radars in order to detect the British ships, thing that they failed to do, thus going back to 75ft.
A sailor (electronic warfare operator) inside HMS Glasgow screamed AGAVE BEARING 238. CONFIDENCE LEVEL CERTAIN!!.(Agave was the radar used by the SUEs) both etendards had been detected while they popped up and had their radars on. A minute later "action stations" were called inside HMS Glasgow, AWO informed to the fleet: FLASH; AGAVE 245; CONDOR 245 (Condor was the nickname given to the Agave), HMS Sheffield only received a fraction of the message (being CONDOR 225 or CONDOR, but it wasn't taken seriously).
At 30Nm of the fleet, both SUEs popped up again, HMS Glasgow detected them and informed. HMS Invincible gave a ROGER OUT and transmitted via LINK-10, message only received by HMS Coventry, HMS Invencible and HMS Sheffield. A minute later HMS Glasgow detected both contacts on their surface radar Type 992 and informed TWO LOW BOGIES, SW 25NM, AIRCRAFT HEADING 070-080. Both contacts were coming at 450Kts and in a clear aproximación to the fleet. Moments later Operators inside Glasgow detected both contacts rising, a desperate order to launch CHAFF D was given, the operator inside Glasgow was desperate, calling for the fleet to take action but he count convince the operators inside Invincible to put themselves in AAW WARNING RED. Another warning was given, but HMS Invincible again just gave a ROGER OUT, HMS Sheffield designated the aerial objetives to its Fire director preparing to intercept.
The SUEs advanced towards the fleet, in a moment both pilots launched their Exocet missiles, this dropping certain meters and then starting their rocket motors, followed by the aircraft inverting their route and heading back to the continent.
Glasgow informed: FLASH, ZIPPO ONE. BRUISERS, INCOMING BEARING 238-12. HMS Invincible continued believing that the contacts weren't a threat. The operator under such desperation screamed through, NEGATIVE, THE FORCE IS UNDER ATTACK!.
In that precise moment the crew of HMS Glasgow saw how a missile came towards HMS Sheffield, the crew inside Sheffield just detected the Lock-on of the missile, 2 sailors outside the ship saw how the missile came towards their direction, one of them managed to scream trough the intercom. MISSILE ATTACK: HIT THE DECK.
Sheffield felt an enormous force hitting its side, the crew felt an explosion and then alarms. The other missile shortly missed the ship and impacted on the sea. Its worth noting that its debated whether the missile exploded or not, but one thing that happened was that the missile still had plenty of fuel inside, since it was launched from a really close range). The crew that found themselves near the explosion lost their lives immediately, a large column of black smoke came out the hole produced by the hit. With all the near compartments close by evacuated, 3 groups were formed to fight the fire but without proper communication they operated in a very uncoordinated manner, the internal extinguishers failed to operate, since the PVC pipes melted under the extreme heat, with help of HMS Arrow and other ships they tried to fight the fire but after Sheffield lost all power, and the fire advanced towards the ships magazines, the captain decided to abandon the ship.
The captain of Sheffield arrived later at HMS Hermes, where admiral Woodward told him: "I suspect someone's been bloody careless". The crippled ship stayed on fire during 6 days, after the fire went off, a crew was sent to recover anything important and then the ship was taken out of the exclusion zone, where it sunk.
The attack on the fleet, with its result being the sinking of HMS Sheffield, impressed some and preoccupied others. The ship sunk, a modern Type 42 Destroyer, could do little when it came to saving itself after the hit, that lead to the later re-desing of the Class and a whole change in damage systems around the world, up to the point where the american Alreigh Burke class ships design has been influenced by the experiences suffered by Sheffield in 1982. On the other side, this action by the COAN with inspired multiple countries to adapt the same operation technics and use them for their air forces (Later to be seen in the Iran-irak war with the Iraqi SUEs). And probably a more impressive note, this was the first surface ship sunk by an Air launched ASM, and the first ship lost by the RN since WW2!.
