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Mensaje: <blockquote data-quote="Aguila_Mora" data-source="post: 2770471" data-attributes="member: 10756">Officers dismissed radar warning of Exocet attack on HMS SheffieldInvincible lost 19-minute chance to issue alert during Malvinas conflict<a href="http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,373246,00.html">'Precious time was passing us by'</a><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/profile/johnezard">John Ezard</a>Published on Tue 26 Sep 2000 14.42 BST21One missile - fired from an Argentine plane first spotted on radar 180 miles away - hit the destroyer HMS Sheffield, killing 20 men and wounding 24. The Ministry of Defence confirmed yesterday that a series of sightings on HMS Invincible were dismissed by senior officers as "spurious" and that no warning was passed to other ships in the Malvinas task force.HMS Sheffield, only on half-alert and with its own radar not fully operational, got little more than a minute's warning. The attack caused the first mass British casualties of the south Atlantic war in 1982.Yesterday a former radar operator on the carrier, David Forster, 37, said the officer who decided not to warn the fleet should "admit and explain" his decision: "I want him to apologise."He said the officer, in the Invincible electronic operations room, dismissed sightings by him and other operators by accusing them of "chasing rabbits". Mr Forster added that he personally felt he had "let 20 men die" by failing to insist that other ships were alerted. "This has been on my mind for the last 18 years."I should have stood up and shouted, 'There's something coming in, believe me - alert the fleet.' I'll always punish myself in my conscience for the death of those men. The Sheffield was a sitting duck. It never had a chance to change course, fire its chaff [anti-radar foil] or even its missiles. Remorse and sadness lie heavy on my heart."The MoD ruled out an inquiry into the conduct of the officer responsible, whose identity has not yet been officially confirmed. "No doubt the officer will still be thinking 'if only'," a spokesman said. Remorse"I don't think that blame is the word, given the set of circumstances. But that does not relieve him of a sense of personal and professional regret."Last night Des Keoghane, organiser of the Malvinas Families Association, said, "I have spoken to a parent of one of the Sheffield dead. He has not heard of this before - and neither have I."Invincible's then captain, Admiral Sir Jeremy Black, who rose to be home fleet commander-in-chief and an aide de camp to the Queen before retiring from the navy in 1992, declined to comment.The MoD confirmed the incident, on May 4, 1982, after a Guardian investigation into separate accounts from two ex-able seaman radar operators on the Invincible. The operators, now civilians, have not previously disclosed what happenedInquiries established that the incident was confirmed soon afterwards in the Malvinas Deployment Book, a souvenir volume of recollections of Invincible's role in the south Atlantic written by officers. Circulated only to crew members in January 1983, six months after the liberation of the Malvinas, it says the radar sightings were classified as "spurious".A Royal Navy Sea Harrier fighter was asked to check with its airborne radar "but could find nothing", the deployment book says. The Exocet hit the Sheffield 19 minutes after the first sighting by Invincible, according to its timetable of sightings.This crucial series of radar traces was not known to the eminent historian David Brown, formerly of the Royal Navy historical branch, when he wrote what the navy regards as the nearest thing to an official history of the conflict at sea.Mr Brown's book, The Royal Navy and the Malvinas War, says that before the attack "there were no bogeys [unidentified aircraft assumed to be hostile] on any of the radar screens".Mr Brown notes that in previous days a series of radar false alarms had led to British warships being put on full action stations. His history says the Sheffield was first warned by another destroyer when the two Argentine Super Etendard attack planes - with top flying speeds of 733mph - were only 25 miles away. Her own radar was jammed because officers were making a satellite phone call to fleet headquarters in Northwood, London. They ended the call and spotted the Etendards on their radar 20 miles away. False alarmsThe planes fired Exocets from 12 miles away. One of them locked on to the Sheffield. It had "little more than a minute's flying time to reach the Sheffield", Mr Brown says. The only warning given to the crew was a Tannoyed shout: "Missile attack - hit the deck".At the time of the attack the Sheffield's unlucky crew was "only in second degree readiness rather than at full action stations", according to another history of the naval conflict. This was "in order to give the crew a short respite. Electromagnetic interference from [the satellite phone] blanketed her detection gear". The Exocet did not explode, but its friction caused a fuel explosion which swept the destroyer with flames and poisonous smoke.David Forster, who now lives in Victoria, Australia, said: "In the task force we perfected a drill called Red Alpha which closes a ship down into full action stations and battle readiness in four minutes."Men are at their radar displays or manning their guns. Most are at their fire-fighting stations. You could defend yourself against any attack. You could dodge and weave, turning at the last moment to confuse an attacking missile."I could have given those men on the Sheffield more than four times four minutes if only I'd stood up and said 'Alert the fleet' after getting those contacts on my screen. I had the time to do it. I should have been strong enough to break the chain of command, even if it meant getting my arse kicked."I have carried the shame of that day with me and will do until I die."The man sitting next to him in Invincible's ops room, Mark Booth, 37, son of a Royal Navy signals operator and now a professional golfer who lives in Buckingham, said his memory fully confirmed Mr Forster's account of the radar contacts."They were absolutely crystal clear contacts. I was adamant that they were true contacts. I would have bet my house on them. Hostile aircraft"After we reported them, they went on to a universal screen in the ops room with the symbol HA for hostile aircraft, the number of the contact and a line plotting the aircrafts' approach to the task force. A lot of people had that on their screens."But he did not recall any remark by an officer about "chasing rabbits" and disagreed with Mr Forster on the issue of guilt. "We did exactly what we trained for in reporting the contacts. It was for other people in the ops room to act on that information. It is every ship's job to make the rest of the fleet aware of such things."Invincible was closer to those contacts and smaller ships don't have the same radar. Any responsibility is on other people's shoulders, not David's. If he had made a fuss in the ops room, he would simply have been treated as hysterical. I feel no guilt at all and David should not. Although we were only 19 at the time, we were very, well trained. We were very good at our jobs. We had the fast reactions that young people often have on electronic matters."The MoD spokesman said: "David Forster must not blame himself. The buck stops somewhere. Someone else had to make that decision." The Sheffield incident was the Royal Navy's first encounter with low-flying, Exocet-carrying attack planes. Many positive lessons had been learned from it, especially in warship design.The destroyer's fire-gutted hulk finally sank six days after the attack. This Argentine success - coming only two days after the British sinking of the cruiser General Belgrano, with more than 300 Argentine deaths - doomed diplomatic negotiations and established the Malvinas conflict inescapably as a shooting war.In May 1983, the next of kin of the Sheffield dead were taken by helicopter to the place where she sank so they could cast wreaths into the sea. David Forster's story"As I was the long-distance air surveyor, I operated 1022 radar which covered 258 miles down to 18 miles radius from the ship. I was sitting at my display when a contact appeared at 180 miles. So I waited for the next sweep - and there it was again. I logged it into the computer and reported it as I'd done so many times before.But this time [an officer] said there was nothing there. The next sweep of my radar came and there it was, now at 160 miles. I reported it again. But the same thing happened. Precious time was passing us by, we did not alert the fleet. We did nothing.The next sweep of my radar, it was at 130 miles, so I reported it again. This time [the officer] became annoyed and told me 'You're chasing rabbits'. My mate now reported a contact at 120 miles and closing. I changed my display down to watch it closer. The contact was now at 80 miles and closing.The radar swept again but this time there were two contacts. The second contact was only on our display for two sweeps when it disappeared under radar coverage. This indicated that we were dealing with an Exocet missile designed to skim above the waves. My mate and I reported the double contact and the fact that one had suddenly disappeared. [An officer] told us that we were 'riding a bike'.Slowly the machines in the ops room began ticking away with the information that Sheffield had been hit. We were shocked with disbelief. An officer came up to us and began handing round sweets.I should have stood up and shouted, 'There is a fucking contact, there's something coming in, believe me - alert the fleet'. I'll always punish myself in my conscience for not having done that. But you're trained to obey the chain of command regardless. It had been drummed into me." Mark Booth's story"I was sitting next to David. We were literally shoulder to shoulder. I knew him very well at the time. He was a very good radar operator.He nudged me when the first contact came in. We already knew from a contact in Chile that the Argentinian aircraft had launched, so we were expecting something.David was the very first person to see them. I saw them as clearly as he did. It is quite a disturbing thing to see an enemy aircraft approaching your ship. He was very nervous and could not speak, so I transmitted his message to the air picture supervisor. We definitely said that they were clear contacts.What he says about the other contacts is correct. The screen giving the identification goes on to everybody's screen in the ops room. There was nothing more David could have done at all."</blockquote>

Verificación: Guerra desarrollada entre Argentina y el Reino Unido en 1982