Excellent map. I think that it’s possible that they encountered the ships huntig for ARA San Luis. Now the problem is what happened to Nogueira’s plane wing. He said he was almost hit by a missile and that the explosion was what damaged his wing.
I think that it’s difficult the airframe resists an impact with the water with the wingtip. But I don’t know, maybe this is possible.

Why not? The Argentine government or military have official versions of every other attack during the conflict.

Urgently needed spares (and personnel) for the Task Force were dropped from C-130 by parachute into the sea and recovered by RN warships. Perhaps what the Brazilians saw were spares for the ship itself; it would not be uncommon for merchant ships of this size to carry quite a lot of spares aboard.

There is an interesting account in ‘Ordeal by Exocet’ by Lieutenant Commander Ian Inskip who was the navigator of HMS Glamorgan that states:

“…that Hercules, after being bombed, had turned round and headed for Brazil. Three hours later she was called by an Argentine station using her own call sign and told that if she did not steer for Argentina she would be attacked again. Hercules kept on towards Brazil and fifteen minutes later came under rocket attack…”

I have to say that there are many errors in ‘Ordeal by Exocet’ particularly regarding the types of aircraft lost and things of that nature (not sure when it was written) but it is a very interesting read and I’m sure it is accurate regarding the first hand experience of Lieutenant Commander Inskip (and others) aboard HMS Glamorgan.

His account of the attacks on Hercules put a different slant on the ‘offer’ of an Argentine port. Now I am not totally convinced by this account either but I think any master of a neutral vessel that had just been bombed may take the view that he would prefer to go to a neutral port. Apparently the crew were Italian so that may be another reason that they wanted to go to Rio de Janeiro!

I would be very interested if you had any information about what aircraft were involved (other than Canberra B-105), what weapons were used (some accounts talk of rockets) and the timing of the attacks.

I have also read that the ship was insured for war loss and that at the time there was a surplus of oil-tankers of this size and that the owners came to an agreement with the insurers to ‘write-off’ the ship for a sum lower than the insured value but higher than the current sale value of the ship. This may explain why a ship that was clearly repairable was scuttled in such a way.

As you say we may never know the whole truth about this incident but I certainly don’t think that it was carrying supplies for the British; logically this would make no sense. And why would the British not admit it if it was?

I’ve tried hard to think of some other covert or clandestine reason why this ship could have been operating for the British but haven’t been able to come up with anything plausible.

Although there were some books written by military, like the case of Carballo, Palazzi and Moro’s books, they are not the official version of the force. Also on the book done by the Dirección de Estudios Históricos of the FAA, which pretends to be the official version, they only put the account of the missions and have a lot of mistakes. When they did it they preffered not to talk about the C-130H Hercules serial TC-68 bombing missions, in which the tankers British Wye and Hercules were hit. They only stated those missions as Surveillance ones. This plane made seven flights equipped with bombs and I have details of only three of them, the ones in which the shipos were hit and one in which they detected a possible target and when they get closer they realize it was a fighting ship. For the date and location I think it was the Glasgow returning to England.
Now there is a plan to do a new version of this book, but I can see that most of the Argentine bibliography about the war has a lack of investigation and most of it is based on the accounts of the veterans shortly after the war and the reports of the missions, but they never checked most of the information until now.
Also in the FAA “official” book there are a lot of information missed, like a complete account of the civil airplanes used, the FAA order of battle at the beginning of the war, some missions are not reported and most of the reports are the same published in other books in the first years after the war. The first text of this book was written by comodoro Pio Matassi in the late eighties and includes a lot of information from comodoro Rubén Palazzi book about the air bridge to the islands and from Carballo´s books. All of them are based on investigations done from 1982 till the end of the eighties.
By then, there was also still the problem about the Hercules on the US court, so they didn’t want to talk about it.
In internet you can find the text of the final declaration of the US Supreme court about the attack and there is an account by the ship’s captain of what happened. http://www.altlaw.org/v1/cases/385424
The tale about the rockets is interesting as none was fired against the ships.
The planes involved were:
Boeing 707 TC-91 and TC-92 for surveillance
C-130H TC-68 as bomber with twelve 500 pound bombs on two Multiple Ejector Racks below the wings.
Canberras B-102, B-105, B-108 and B-109 as bombers with two Mk.17 1000 pound bombs in the wing pylons and extra fuel tank on the bomb bay
BAe 125 LV-ALW for navigation aid for the Canberras.
When they started to return, I don’t know why they didn’t go to Uruguay, which is closer than Río de Janeiro. I don’t think that there is any problem for the crew in Argentina for being Italian as a big part of the population here is of Italian origin.
I agree on what you say about the insurance, as I heard also that story and I think it’s possible. Asking with Argentine Navy officers they said the damage was easily repairable and that the bomb could be dismantled relatively easy.
Sadly It’s not possible to find how the Argentinians get the information about the Hercules activities.

Without wishing to cause offence this sounds suspiciously like an Argentine invention to cover the embarrassment of attacking a completely neutral ship.

I don’t think there is any conspiracy here; the British used plenty of civilian supply ships, with British civilian or volunteer crews and some really were put ‘in harms way’ but unfortunately the Hercules wasn’t one of them.

Frankly almost nobody in Britain knows (or cares) about the bombing of this ship, there are plenty of other things that have brought the Government controversy over the years, the sinking of the Belgrano, the loss of Sheffield, the bombing of the Sir Galahad and Sir Tristram; why would a ‘cover-up’ have been needed here?

The problem here is that the ship was of Liberian flag (a neutral country) and operated by a US company (although they supported the British, they only send supplies to Ascension, not directly to the Operations theatre because this could led to more support to Argentine by other Latin American countries and a worst relationship between Latin America and the US (except Chile and Colombia, all the other Latin American countries supported Argentina, some of them very fiercely). The owners of the ship made a claim to the Argentine government to pay the ship in the US court, by the claim was denied by the US Supreme court and the case was finished in the late eighties. It’s interesting that they demanded a payment for the fuel the ship was carrying on her tanks for the trip to Alaska, bu the Brazilian navy said the fuel was left at Río de Janeiro to avoid the fuel going to the seas. they only kepot a minimum fuel to go to the place where the ship was sunk. I don’t know how she was sunk, as in the photos of the ship sinking it’s no evidence of this.
I think the ship was carrying supplies from the US as seh was coming from the USA and never stopped in any British harbour, but she was going directly to the Operations theatre and the information the Canberra pilots were given was that the inteligence stated the ship was carrying supplies. It’s important to state that the ship wasn’t accidentaly bombed, the mission stated that they have to attack “this” ship, the Hercules, not any ship they encounter, so some information they must have.
Argentina received a lot of intelligence information from a lot of sources, most of them were never revealed.
I think the US sent this support directly to the operations theatre because they were needed fast, so to carry them to Ascension and then to British ships will take a lot of time. They used a civilian ship to try to avoid Argentine detection and also for not showing they were participating directly on the war. Some days before, Brazilian president Figueredo, on a visit to the US, told Ronald Reagan that the Latin American countries will not accept any British attack to the mainland nor an open involvement of the USA on the war. The USA needed the support of Latin American countries on the war against communist guerrillas on the region.
The commander of the Brazilian Air Force by 2002 was one of the officers who inspected the ship and told the pilot of Canberra B-105 on that mission, about what he saw. In the same day he was noticed about that (we were in Brazil at Canoas Air Base for the first Cruzex exercise) he told me what the Brazilian had told him. Sadly the FAA doesn’t authorize the official publication of the attacks against British Wye and Hercules, I think it was because of the use of TC-68 as a bomber, as the FAA released some information about the Canberras but none about the Hercules bomber until now. All that was seen was non official.
Ofically, the Argentine Armed Forces never talked about those attacks, so there is no Argentine cover about this operation, oficially this never happened and the ship owners also didn’t want to talk about it. For Argentina this wasn’t embarrasing, as there was no official accusation against the country except this claim at the US court that led to nothing. The press around the world didn’t gave much importance to the attack, so there wasn’t too much need to cover the operation.
Another interesting thing is that, because Argentine acussed the ship for carrying supplies for the British, the operators of the ship didn’t want to show the press that they were not carrying supplies. They forbid the access to the press to the ship and decided to sunk her, when she was completely repairable and Argentina offered to dismantle the bombs. It’s strange that they denied this offer and preferred to sink the ship.
All I know is non official and was told by the participants of those missions and information also given by some Brazilian friends and what the Brazilian newspapers published then. The Brazilian press was concerned because it was impossible to interview the crew of the ship and that a lot of political pressure was put for not talking about it.

Apparently HMS Invincible and HMS Brilliant headed to a position ‘south of Falkland Sound’ (Brown – The Royal Navy and the Falklands War) on the nights of 6th and 7th June to intercept Canberra or C-130 transport aircraft. Commander ‘Sharkey’ Ward states in his book that CAPs by single Sea Harriers from HMS Invincible were flown 120 miles ‘west of Cape Meredith’. It is not always referred to as Operation ‘Canbelow’ but it seems that this operation and the inshore activities of the Type-42 destroyers were part of a strategy to tighten the not-so-effective air blockade of the islands.

Excellent, thanks!

On the website of HMS Coventry they seate the following on May 22:
Coventry locks on to an Argentine Boeing 707 reconaissance aircraft. A flash door fails and the missile launcher goes into fail safe mode, preventing the launch. Later in the day HMS Cardiff also attempts to down what may have been the same aircraft – they have more luck in that their missile fires successfully and is seen to explode near the target, but the aircraft’s crew had seen the incoming missile and successfully manouevred to avoid it, returning to base safely.

It’s strange, as TC-92 very far from the islands. How far from the islands was Bristol group on May 22. They have some mistakes, as they also state that Exeter and Cardiff arrived to the TEZ together with the landing force on May 20. It’s interesting as is obvious they didn’t fire against a Boeing 707 on May 22, but to whom they fired that day.

They had luck on their side that night. Saw the missile and it self detonated as well.

I wonder why our command did not place us off the west coast at night? Surely with our radars looking toward Argentina with open ocean ahead of us we would have managed to detect and engage these aircraft a lot easier. As it was we were positioned where our radars would be blinded by all the high ground on the islands.

Maybe because they were closer to the coast for an Exocet attack? I don’t what could happened if the Argentine Navy send their four fast patrol crafts to the islands (two Higgins class and to TNC 45). They could be an interesting threat to any ship operating close to the coasts and they could be hidden easily as they were small and well armed. Although the two TNC 45 had torpedoes, they could be armed with Exocet, as t was done some time ago with one of them. a good idea was to have two at Puerto Argentino/ Stanley and two at Port Howard or Fox Bay to protect San Carlos

I’ve been looking for this document for ages now and screamed with delight when I found it!

It is the Report Of Proceedings (ROP) submitted by HMS Cardiff at the end of the conflict (as did all warships). It is a bad copy so I have helped you with key incidents.

Take your time reading it because I do not think there are many official documents like it available. The Royal Navy did not release this.

Let me know if you need help with abbreviations etc.

The firing on June 2 was against COAN’s Fokker F-28 serial 5-T-21, as no Hercules flew to the islands on that day. The Navy made a lot of flights with their F-28s and one with an Electra (29th of May) to the islands during May and June. The FAA only operated with Hercules to the islands from may 1st.

I think this is another case of aircrew exaggerating their post combat reports, let me explain. With reference to the night Canberra missions my ship HMS Cardiff constituted 50% of the Type 42 contingent on the dates quoted. HMS Bristol had Seadart but was not tasked with inshore night missions throughout her time down south and only one of the Type 42s were detached from picket duty at any one time.

4 June: Cardiff on NGS gunline Bluff Cove – no Seadarts fired.

12 June: Cardiff in San Carlos – no Seadarts fired.

Without looking to see where Exeter was on the other nights in question , how do you explain the airborne Seadarts on the 4th and 12th June?

Do you know if the Canberras were detected? or why you didn’t fired against them? Do you know if the Hercules landing on the airport in the night were detected?