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HMS Conqueror (S48)

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For other ships with the same name, see HMS Conqueror.

Conqueror returning to the Clyde Submarine base (Faslane) flying the Jolly Roger after the Falklands War, 4 July 1982
History
RN EnsignUnited Kingdom
Ordered9 August 1966
BuilderCammell Laird, Birkenhead
Laid down5 December 1967
Launched28 August 1969
Commissioned9 November 1971
Decommissioned2 August 1990
Nickname(s)"Conks"[2]
Honours and
awards		Falkland Islands, 1982[1]
StatusAt Devonport awaiting dismantling
Badge
General characteristics
Class and typeChurchill-class submarine
Displacement4,900 tonnes (submerged)
Length86.9 m (285 ft)
Beam10.1 m (33 ft)
Draught8.2 m (27 ft)
PropulsionOne Rolls-Royce PWR nuclear reactor, one shaft
Speed28 knots (52 km/h) (submerged)
RangeLimited only by food stored on board
Complement103
Armament

HMS Conqueror was a British Churchill-class nuclear-powered fleet submarine which served in the Royal Navy from 1971 to 1990. She was the third submarine of her class, following the earlier Churchill and Courageous, all designed to face the Soviet threat at sea. She was built by Cammell Laird at Birkenhead.

Conqueror is the only nuclear-powered submarine to have engaged an enemy ship with torpedoes, sinking the cruiser General Belgrano during the 1982 Falklands War.[note 1]

Construction

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Conqueror was ordered on 9 August 1966 and was laid down at Cammell Laird's Birkenhead shipyard on 5 December 1967; she was launched on 28 August 1969.[3] Construction was delayed by slow working by Cammell Laird's workforce, and sabotage of the ship's gearbox, which delayed completion by several months.[4] Conqueror was finally commissioned on 9 November 1971;[3] she was the last nuclear submarine built by Cammell Laird.[4]

Operational history

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Falklands War

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Conqueror, commanded by Commander Chris Wreford-Brown, was deployed during the Falklands War, setting sail from Faslane Naval Base on the Gareloch in Scotland on 3 April 1982, one day after the Argentine invasion. Conqueror arrived in the exclusion zone around the Falkland Islands 21 days later and was ordered to scan the area for Argentine shipping, particularly the aircraft carrier Veinticinco de Mayo ("25th of May").

On 30 April she detected, at a range of 100 nautical miles (nm) on long range sonar, a task force of the Armada de la República Argentina (ARA-Argentine Navy). The taskforce was composed of the WWII-era ex-USN light cruiser General Belgrano, and two destroyers, ARA Piedra Buena and ARA Bouchard (both also ex-United States Navy vessels). General Belgrano was originally commissioned in 1944 but significantly modernised in 1960–62 with SPS 40 LRAW radar and SQS29 sonar. By the early 1980s the ARA were no longer receiving parts from the USA to maintain these systems, but the destroyers had recently been re-armed with French Exocet anti-ship missiles. The missiles were a real threat, unlike the 6-inch (150mm) guns on General Belgrano which only had a range of 13 miles (21 km). The task force was sailing southwest of the Falklands, just outside the exclusion zone imposed by the British on all shipping. With Veinticinco de Mayo approaching the islands from the north, the commander of the British carrier battle group in the South Atlantic, Rear Admiral "Sandy" Woodward, feared a pincer attack, with General Belgrano attacking from the south and Veinticinco de Mayo from the north. Woodward requested permission from his superiors to sink General Belgrano.

After some debate, permission to engage General Belgrano was sent to the submarine from the Commander-in-Chief Fleet and Task Force commander, Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse, at the Royal Navy's command centre in Northwood in the United Kingdom. In the intervening period, General Belgrano had retired from its attack position and turned west, since Veinticinco de Mayo was not yet ready to engage the British fleet. This would cause some controversy, although General Belgrano's captain and the Argentine government acknowledged that the attack was a legitimate act of war.[5][6][7]

On 2 May Conqueror became the first nuclear-powered submarine to sink an enemy surface ship using torpedoes, launching three Mark 8 torpedoes at General Belgrano and the destroyers,[note 2] two of which struck the ship and exploded. Twenty minutes later, the ship was sinking rapidly and was abandoned by her crew. General Belgrano was unable to issue a Mayday signal because of electrical failure; this and poor visibility meant the two escorting destroyers were unaware of the sinking until some hours later. A total of 323 men were killed.[8]

Adding to the confusion, the crew of Bouchard felt an impact that was the third torpedo striking or exploding in proximity to the hull, inflicting more than minor damage with 4 gashes in the hull[9] (an examination of the ship later showed an impact mark consistent with a torpedo). The two ships continued on their course westward and began dropping depth charges. At the time, Conqueror's officers believed they were under attack and continued to regard the two Argentine destroyers as a serious threat to the British task force and later returned to search for the Argentine warships with the aim of sinking the destroyers[10] rather than searching for Belgrano survivors. By the time the Argentine destroyers realised that General Belgrano had actually foundered it was already dark and the weather had worsened, scattering the life rafts. The sinking shocked the Argentine people and the ruling dictatorship.

Conqueror's war did not end there. The crew of the submarine had to face the Argentine Air Force which located the submarine's wake and her raised periscope on 7 May, apparently from a C130 Hercules 100 feet (30 m) overhead at peak light, of midday[11] in the short Falklands sub-Antarctic day; the Argentine Air Force may have attacked [12] the submarine then or later with US-type air-launched anti-submarine torpedoes in the days after the attack. Conqueror did not fire again for the remainder of the war, but helped the task force by using sophisticated monitoring equipment to track Argentine aircraft departing from the mainland.

After the war, Conqueror returned to Faslane, flying a Jolly Roger, a customary act of Royal Navy submarines after a kill. The flag, now in the Royal Navy Submarine Museum at Gosport, featured an atom for Conqueror being the only nuclear submarine with a kill, crossed torpedoes for the type of weapon used, a dagger indicating a cloak-and-dagger operation, and the outline of a cruiser for what kind of ship was sunk.[13] When asked about the incident later, Commander Wreford-Brown responded, "The Royal Navy spent thirteen years preparing me for such an occasion. It would have been regarded as extremely dreary if I had fouled it up".[14]

Operation Barmaid

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Later in 1982, Conqueror completed a raid to acquire a Soviet passive towed sonar array from its Polish-flagged towing vessel. The operation, a joint mission between British and American forces, was conducted on the boundary of Soviet territorial waters. Conqueror used cutters affixed to her bow to shear through the 3 in (76 mm) thick wire before silently returning to her base on the Clyde.[15]

Collision

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On 2 July 1988 Conqueror was involved in a collision with the Army Sail Training Association yacht Dalriada south of the Mull of Kintyre. The yacht sank and four crew members were rescued.[16]

Decommissioning

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HMS Warspite (left) and HMS Conqueror (centre) with HMS Valiant (at rear) at HMNB Devonport Navy Days, 26 August 2006.

Conqueror was decommissioned in 1990 and the periscopes, captain's cabin and main control panel from the submarine's control room, and the Jolly Roger flag flown, are on display in the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport. As of 2019, Conqueror is one of over 20 nuclear submarines still held in storage by the Ministry of Defence, awaiting final disposal.[17]

Notes

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  1. ^ The only other submarine to sink a warship since World War II is the Pakistan Navy's diesel fueled PNS Hangor (S131), during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971.
  2. ^ Conqueror was also equipped with Tigerfish torpedoes, but they had been found to be unreliable and her captain chose to use the more reliable, 55-year-old Mark 8 design

References

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  1. ^ "Falklands Campaign Battle Honours". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). 25 October 1983. Archived from the original on 14 July 2009. Retrieved 5 September 2008.
  2. ^ Hastings, Max; Simon Jenkins (1983). "Chapter 9". The Battle for the Falklands. Bungay, Suffolk: Book Club Associates. p. 147.
  3. ^ a b Moore 1985,  p. 617.
  4. ^ a b Hennessy and Jinks 2016, pp. 300–301.
  5. ^ One Hundred Days: The Memoirs of the Falklands Battle Group Commander, Admiral Sandy Woodward. 1st ed., (1992). Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-0-00-215723-0.
  6. ^ Elliott, Francis (28 December 2003), "'Belgrano' ordered to attack British ships on day before sinking, secret report reveals", The Independent, London, archived from the original on 31 January 2016, retrieved 2 May 2020
  7. ^ Belgrano legal action fails Archived 1 September 2017 at the Wayback Machine, BBC News Report, 19 July 2000
  8. ^ Rossiter, Mike (2009). Sink the Belgrano. London: Random House. pp. 305–318, 367–377. ISBN 978-1-4070-3411-9. OCLC 1004977305.
  9. ^ N. Sethia. Guardian 18 October 2000
  10. ^ S.Prebble. Secrets of the Conqueror. Faber. London . 2013, p. 122
  11. ^ S. Prebble. Secrets of the Conqueror. Faber & Faber. London 2013, p. 126 [ISBN missing]
  12. ^ N. Sethia. Navy Net blog 14/1/2013 & Declassified file 2016 PREM 19/2017 f 174, which confirms the PM and MOD had cleared the release of info of Lt N. Sethias' unofficial and unapproved, personal log of HMS Conqueror from 29/4/82 to 6/5/82 covering the Belgrano engagement but not the subsequent Argentine attacks on 7 May or later operations HMS Conqueror
  13. ^ "Photo of HMS Conqueror''s Jolly Roger in the Royal Navy Submarine Museum". Archived from the original on 30 November 2021. Retrieved 30 November 2021.
  14. ^ Sandy Woodward, Patrick Robinson. One hundred days: the memoirs of the Falklands battle group commander, Naval Institute Press, 1992, ISBN 978-1-55750-651-1. p. 161
  15. ^ Neil Tweedie (12 October 2012). "HMS Conqueror's biggest secret: a raid on Russia". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 16 August 2014. Retrieved 28 August 2014.
  16. ^ "HMS Conqueror (Collision)" Archived 2 November 2023 at the Wayback Machine Hansard HC Deb 21 July 1988 vol 137 cc722-3W
  17. ^ "MoD criticised over submarine disposal". 3 April 2019. Archived from the original on 7 December 2019. Retrieved 23 October 2019.

Sources

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  • Hennesey, Peter; Jinks, James (2016). The Silent Deep: The Royal Navy Submarine Service since 1945. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-241-95948-0.
  • Moore, John (1985). Jane's Fighting Ships 1985–86. London: Jane's Yearbooks. ISBN 0-7106-0814-4.

Further reading

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