Yes the evidence that it could have been Sub is :

-Seen as either periscope or snorkel summerging ( Diesel Sub ? )
-Speed increased while been tracked by sonar
-Double blimp on launch of torpedo ( which could mean had been engaged )

Going back to the Ascension Islands:

– RFA Olmeda sights ‘feather’ or ‘wash’ of submarine periscope.
– Sonar tracks ‘target’ making fast evasive action.
– No weapons are launched.

Do you see the similarities? I’m amazed how ‘jumpy’ the Royal Navy were given that this was 18 April, before the real conflict had begun, and the fact that the Falklands were thousands of miles away.

Admiral Woodward, himself a submariner and ‘teacher’ on the Royal Navy training course for submarine captains (the ‘perisher’), said “we were more inclined to think it might be a Soviet nuclear boat…..only two creatures of the deep possess this tremendous power – Red October, and Moby Dick”.

I would imagine that the RN sonar operators would have had a lot more experience tracking nuclear submarines than the crew of the Tracker and yet they were completely fooled.

Do you think the Tracker crew could have made the same mistake two days after the ARA Belgrano was torpedoed by a British nuclear submarine?

If the captain of HMS Splendid knew where ARA Veinticinco de Mayo was on 02 May and he knew that she would probably be heading west I’m convinced that Splendid could have found and tracked her, assuming she wasn’t too far away (or other tasking prevented it). If found I don’t think that ARA Veinticinco de Mayo would have been attacked by any British SSN certainly if she was close to shore and couldn’t possibly threaten the Task Force.

Did ARA Veinticinco de Mayo return to Puerto Belgrano on 04 May and sail again to be at sea on 05 May?

On the other hand maybe no British SSN managed to locate ARA Veinticinco de Mayo and the ‘target’ was something else. Could it have been a Soviet submarine? It is possible I suppose but I would have thought that any Soviet submarine would have been more interested in what the British were doing.

I have to say I think the most likely explanation is that it was a whale; remember this was only a few days after the Belgrano. The British ‘attacked’ several whales with Mark 44 torpedoes and the ARA San Luis fired a torpedo at one; even before the shooting-war started a false periscope sighting caused near panic at Ascension Island causing most of the Task Force to up-anchor and speed out to sea!

Is there any evidence that couldn’t be caused by it being a whale?

Boxes, as far as I know, were only used for SSN (but SSK may have had in ‘inshore’ box later).

Admiral Woodward stated in his book that neither HMS Spartan nor HMS Splendid could find ARA Veinticinco de Mayo at the critical time before ARA Belgrano was sunk. Apparently these two submarines swapped boxes several times and were also diverted from their searches by other tasking.

I personally doubt that the captain of an SSN would have risked using his periscope (or even needed to) while tracking a carrier of the vintage of Veinticinco de Mayo (the position of this task group had been confirmed by Sea Harrier radar on the night of 1/2 May) especially post-Belgrano when politically any attack would have been forbidden.

There is no way that the RN (or anybody else) could have had a SSN sunk at that time and for it still to be a secret.

From a Southend-insider:

Thursday, 14 August, 2008, 12:20 AM

As off today, no actual scrapping has occurred but will do soon.
They will remove any spares they need and also the engines before scrapping commences.

I don’t suppose they could ‘cherry-pick’ a few nice bits for eBay could they? 😉

Thanks for that detailed account of the Tracker operations; they seem to have been very active at this time considering that later they were withdrawn due to serviceability issues.

The British submarines operating around the Falklands were each given a ‘box’ (or billet) to operate in so if they encountered another submarine in their box it had to be an enemy submarine (this method really being for NATO against USSR but there could have been Soviet submarines too!).

The official reason that HMS Spartan lost contact with the ARA Veinticinco de Mayo was that she sailed out of their box and they could not follow her. When the carrier operation was abandoned and the Veinticinco de Mayo returned to the west she must have re-entered the box and I would imagine that Spartan’s captain would be very keen to re-establish contact, although any thoughts of attacking her would have been tempered by the loss of ARA Belgrano.

It is entirely possible that what was detected and attacked was a whale. The RN, who are very good at hunting submarines, had many false alarms with ‘sightings’ of periscopes and dropped many Mark 44 torpedoes plus depth charges in areas where there were no Argentine submarines. I would imagine the Argentine Navy would be less experienced (especially with hunting nuclear submarines) and would have been very ‘jumpy’ following the loss of the Belgrano.

Ah! But you would say that, wouldn’t you…..you’re one of them, aren’t you…..you’re on the payroll! :diablo:

The MK37 was launched on may 08 because they thought a sub was in the area…

I’ve read that ARA San Luis launched a torpedo against a possible submarine contact on 8 May but are you suggesting that the target was HMS Onyx…

We have a report of Traker launching on or close to May 05 an MK44 – Do you know something about it ?

HMS Onyx has some minor damage , a Rock ? or military accion ?

…or that a Grumman S-2 Tracker dropped a Mark 44 torpedo and HMS Onyx was damaged?

In either case HMS Onyx could not have been a target as she only reached the Falklands on about 25 May. Possibly the target in both cases was a whale; the RN dropped several weapons, including torpedoes, on what were later assessed as ‘marine life’!