Shipbucket

this happened a couple of days ago... I had no idea.

http://en.mercopress.com/2013/01/22/can ... o-belgrano

Sad ending to the ship.

Apparently, she's lying on her beam ends.

I think the Type 42 has to be my favorite ship. Very sad.

Commisoned in 1982; that makes this a very old hull, so what do we expect, especially after being used for spares and rusting at the dockside?

If you cannibalize a ship for long enough you'll eventually pull out something vital.

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Source Materiel is always welcome.

You're right. A touch of nostalgia. Seems like an end of an era for me. Especially when I see the 42's rusting away at Priddy's Hard in Portsmouth. I remember visiting HMS Sheffield at Navy Days before the war. For me, as a kid, they were easily identifiable because of their domes.

Actually she was commisioned the year before, in 1981, but her launching dates from 1974.

If she wouldn`t have suffered the attack by a guerillla group (Montoneros) in 1976, who put under water mines on the dock to which she was tied to, and caused important damage, mainly to her shaft and whole propulssion systems, she probably would have been commisioned by 1978, two years after the one of her twin (Ara Hercules), which wisely was built in the UK instead, and not in Argentina, as her. (she was the only type 42 not built in the UK).

Yeah, that's a bit of a list.

The article mentions that the ship was the flagship of the initial invasion. I believe the governor of the Falklands signed the surrender papers onboard too.

In the comments section someone mentioned the fact that the Hercules, the British built is still floating, while the Trinidad, which is Argentine built is sinking. Could there be a connection between the British built still floats, and the Argentine built sinks?

I think that the only connection here, is that the brittish built one, wasn`t subject to all the stirrups and anti-gobernment campaigns that existed in Argentina (against the military coup) at the time of its construction, and as he (Hercules) was being built, he didn`t have to suffer nor go through any sabbotage as his Argentine sister did, during it. So Hercules, was built perfectly and in time, while his sister couldn`t benefit of the same instance. (The anti-government or subversive group known in Argentina as "The Montoneros", specially during 1976, had for temselves, a very big list of anti-government bombings (including among them the one that affected the ST), that had their government at the time very bussy).

Besides, afterwards came the international embargo that affected many nations in South America (for the same reasons = military coups in them), so for Argentina, each time it was harder to get any spares for her (ST) and for her brother (H), so naturally she became the source of spares for Hercules and each time as time passed by, together with what happened in 1982, she really had little hope to ever be the ship that she was meant to be.
(Good for us, )

In her comissioned days (including those of the Falkland war), she never worked as a destroyer, for our Argentine brothers, but merely as a fast troop transport and nothing more.