Even if you look at the pictures from the papers, her Guns were at anger. A ship does not sail with her Guns at anger. They only move them Port or Stbd when about to fire. A Battleship (And this was a real Battleship) will not fire with her guns in-line as the shock wave will rattle the Captains curtains. They fire abeam so the ship can roll a bit.
She was about to fire upon a sub, the RN wouldn’t comment on whether it was a Nukey or a Dervy. It could even have been a yankee sub…
Oh lordy, where do I start? :rolleyes:
Firstly, battleships and cruisers can and do fire their main armament with the guns pointing in any direction that they are able. Obviously it is desirable to be able to bring all your main armament to bear on the target and for most battleships and cruisers that means a ‘broadside’ and especially in the case of the Belgrano whose C turret normally points towards the stern and cannot bear fully forward.
Secondly, I can’t think of any good reason why the Belgrano shouldn’t have had her guns pointing any way they wanted when she wasn’t at action stations; many RN frigates and destroyers spent most of the war with their guns pointing at the bridge but that was apparently the best position to keep the South Atlantic out of the turrets…..rather than indicating mutiny! 😀
All the photographs of Belgrano sinking that I have seen show the B turret trained to starboard. Was it only this turret that was supposedly engaging a surfaced submarine?
Every account I’ve ever read about the sinking state that the attack by HMS Conqueror came as a total surprise to the Belgrano. In fact most of those killed on Belgrano were senior Petty Officers who were in a canteen area known as the ‘Soda Fountain’ when one of the torpedoes struck the ship immediately beneath them. Is it likely that these men would have been there if the ship had been at action stations and engaging a submarine?
Why has this crucial piece of evidence about the activities of the Belgrano never been used in any of the controversy that has existed about sinking of her? Surely a government under pressure would have released the name and position of any such submarine and yet I’ve never heard such a claim nor have I read such a claim in any of the many books I’ve read on the subject. Where exactly do you come by this information; can you quote any source?
You’ll have to excuse my disbelief but it seems strange to me that a mystery submarine conveniently surfaces, is detected by the Belgrano, who is about to (but doesn’t actually) fire on it with one turret of its main armament, when she is struck by torpedoes from a second submarine, HMS Conqueror, while the other mystery submarine presumably dives and continues with whatever ‘secret’ activities it was conducting when it was forced to surface in the first place.
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