When the dictatorship, led by general Galtieri, that ruled Argentina in the early eighties came into internal political problems, it turned to one of the favourite moves for governments in trouble: create an external diversion. The diversion of Galtieri was to occupy the British owed Falkland islands, that lie close to the coast of Argentine, and are one few parts of the former British empire still retained by the United Kingdom. The British response was initially unclear, but quickly turned to a belligerent attitude under the leadership of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who herself was at the lowest point of her popularity and apparently calculated that winning a small war against a weak enemy, would be politically advantageous. The outside world, however, made attempts at mediation, the most important one under the auspices of the United States. Meanwhile, the British preparations for war, hampered by the great distance between the Falklands and the British isles, went on, and it was for a considerable time uncertain what would happen. Eventually there were positive noises from Washington, in that the mediators had gotten concessions from the Argentine government. However, soon thereafter all peace moves were effectively killed off, when a British submarine sunk the Argentine cruiser Belgrano, leading to hundreds of casualties.
In the subsequent discussion, the British contented that they had to torpedo the Belgrano, because it had entered an exclusion zone declared by the British was heading towards the Falklands, and that it thereby threatened the safety of the British invasion force, that was approaching the Falklands. The Argentines denied this, stated that the Belgrano was on a patrol, had stayed outside of the exclusion zone, and was at the moment of the sinking heading towards the Argentine coast. There were early doubts if the Belgrano had entered the exclusion zone, and not much later the claim of the course of the Belgrano came under fire. But the big argument arose about the question if the government had known what was going on at the time when making the decision. It was the leaking by a civil servant that resolved the matter. The British submarine had been following the Belgrano for a considerable time, and reported it was sailing back to Argentine. It was Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher herself who had made the decision of the sinking. Of course attempts were made to cover up these facts, including the removal of the ship’s log of the submarine (there is a story about a sailor taking it home for a souvenir; this is humbug, everybody in the shipping or flying world knows that the log is more or less sacred
Later investigations on the wreckage of the Belgrano, showed it was heading for the Argentinean coast, to return home. The sinking of the Belgrano, probably on direct order of Thatcher, wasn’t justified, and was a lie in deed instead of word.
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