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HMS Conqueror (S48)

HMS Conqueror (S48)

Overview


HMS Conqueror ("Conks") was a nuclear
Nuclear marine propulsion
Nuclear marine propulsion is propulsion of a ship powered by a nuclear reactor. Naval nuclear propulsion is propulsion that specifically refers to naval warships .-Power plants:...

-powered fleet submarine
Submarine
A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation below the surface of the water. It differs from a submersible, which has only limited underwater capability...

 that served in the Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy of the United Kingdom is the oldest of HM Armed Forces . From the beginning of the 18th century until well into the 20th century, it was the most powerful navy in the world, playing a key part in establishing the British Empire as the dominant world power from 1815 until the early...

 from 1971 to 1990. She was built by Cammell Laird
Cammell Laird
Cammell Laird, one of the most famous names in British shipbuilding during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, came about following the merger of Laird, Son & Co. of Birkenhead and Johnson Cammell & Co. of Sheffield at the turn of the twentieth century.-Founding of the business:The Company was...

 in Birkenhead
Birkenhead
Birkenhead is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral in Merseyside, England. It is on the Wirral Peninsula, along the west bank of the River Mersey, opposite the city of Liverpool...

. As of 2009, she is the only nuclear-powered submarine to have engaged an enemy ship with torpedoes, sinking the cruiser ARA General Belgrano
ARA General Belgrano
The ARA General Belgrano was an Argentine Navy cruiser sunk during the Falklands War by the Royal Navy submarine HMS Conqueror with the loss of 323 lives...

 with two mark 8 torpedoes. She is one of only two submarines which have sunk a warship since World War II, the other being the Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country located at the crossroads of South Asia, the Middle East, and Central Asia...

i Navy's PNS Hangor
PNS Hangor
PNS Hangor was a Pakistani Daphné class submarine, which during the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War sank the Indian frigate INS Khukri. It also damaged another warship, INS...

.

Conqueror was the third of the class, the other two being and .
The main aim of these submarines was to face the Soviet
Soviet Union
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...

 threat at sea by attacking other ships and submarines, and spying on Soviet nuclear-armed submarine movements.

Conqueror, commanded by Commander
Commander
Commander is a military rank which is also sometimes used as a military title depending on the individual customs of a given military service...

 Chris Wreford-Brown, was most famously deployed during the Falklands War
Falklands War
The Falklands War , also called the Falklands Conflict/Crisis, was fought in 1982 between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the disputed Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands...

, setting sail from Faslane Naval Base on the Gare Loch
Gare Loch
The Gare Loch or Gareloch is a sea loch in Argyll and Bute, Scotland.A sea loch aligned north-south, Gare Loch is 10 kilometres long with an average width of 1.5 kilometres. At its southern end it opens into the Firth of Clyde through the Rhu narrows...

 in Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 on 3 April 1982, one day after the Argentine invasion.
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Encyclopedia


HMS Conqueror ("Conks") was a nuclear
Nuclear marine propulsion
Nuclear marine propulsion is propulsion of a ship powered by a nuclear reactor. Naval nuclear propulsion is propulsion that specifically refers to naval warships .-Power plants:...

-powered fleet submarine
Submarine
A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation below the surface of the water. It differs from a submersible, which has only limited underwater capability...

 that served in the Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy of the United Kingdom is the oldest of HM Armed Forces . From the beginning of the 18th century until well into the 20th century, it was the most powerful navy in the world, playing a key part in establishing the British Empire as the dominant world power from 1815 until the early...

 from 1971 to 1990. She was built by Cammell Laird
Cammell Laird
Cammell Laird, one of the most famous names in British shipbuilding during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, came about following the merger of Laird, Son & Co. of Birkenhead and Johnson Cammell & Co. of Sheffield at the turn of the twentieth century.-Founding of the business:The Company was...

 in Birkenhead
Birkenhead
Birkenhead is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral in Merseyside, England. It is on the Wirral Peninsula, along the west bank of the River Mersey, opposite the city of Liverpool...

. As of 2009, she is the only nuclear-powered submarine to have engaged an enemy ship with torpedoes, sinking the cruiser ARA General Belgrano
ARA General Belgrano
The ARA General Belgrano was an Argentine Navy cruiser sunk during the Falklands War by the Royal Navy submarine HMS Conqueror with the loss of 323 lives...

 with two mark 8 torpedoes. She is one of only two submarines which have sunk a warship since World War II, the other being the Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country located at the crossroads of South Asia, the Middle East, and Central Asia...

i Navy's PNS Hangor
PNS Hangor
PNS Hangor was a Pakistani Daphné class submarine, which during the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War sank the Indian frigate INS Khukri. It also damaged another warship, INS...

.

Conqueror was the third of the class, the other two being and .
The main aim of these submarines was to face the Soviet
Soviet Union
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...

 threat at sea by attacking other ships and submarines, and spying on Soviet nuclear-armed submarine movements.

Conqueror, commanded by Commander
Commander
Commander is a military rank which is also sometimes used as a military title depending on the individual customs of a given military service...

 Chris Wreford-Brown, was most famously deployed during the Falklands War
Falklands War
The Falklands War , also called the Falklands Conflict/Crisis, was fought in 1982 between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the disputed Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands...

, setting sail from Faslane Naval Base on the Gare Loch
Gare Loch
The Gare Loch or Gareloch is a sea loch in Argyll and Bute, Scotland.A sea loch aligned north-south, Gare Loch is 10 kilometres long with an average width of 1.5 kilometres. At its southern end it opens into the Firth of Clyde through the Rhu narrows...

 in Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 on 3 April 1982, one day after the Argentine invasion. Conqueror arrived in the exclusion zone around the Falklands twenty-one days later. She was ordered to scan the area for Argentine shipping, particularly the Argentine aircraft carrier
Aircraft carrier
An aircraft carrier is a warship designed with a primary mission of deploying and recovering aircraft, acting as a seagoing airbase. Aircraft carriers thus allow a naval force to project air power great distances without having to depend on local bases for staging aircraft operations...

, ARA Veinticinco de Mayo (the "25th of May"). On 30 April, she spotted the Argentine light cruiser
Light cruiser
A light cruiser is a warship. The term is a shortening of the phrase "light armoured cruiser", describing a small ship that carried armour in the same way as an armoured cruiser: a protective belt and deck...

, ARA General Belgrano
ARA General Belgrano
The ARA General Belgrano was an Argentine Navy cruiser sunk during the Falklands War by the Royal Navy submarine HMS Conqueror with the loss of 323 lives...

. Belgrano was sailing southwest of the Falklands, just outside the exclusion zone imposed by the British on all shipping and approaching the Task Force, while the ARA Veinticinco de Mayo was approaching from the north. British admiral, Rear Admiral J. F. Woodward, requested permission from the British government to sink Belgrano. After some debate he was allowed to proceed, though while this was going on the Belgrano retired from its attack position since the ARA Veinticinco de Mayo was not ready. Finally, the message to engage the Belgrano was sent from Northwood
Northwood Headquarters
Northwood Headquarters is a military headquarters facility of the British Armed Forces in Eastbury, Three Rivers, Hertfordshire, England. It is home to three command and control functions of the British armed forces and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ; Permanent Joint Headquarters, Commander in...

, the Royal Navy's fleet command centre in the United Kingdom to Conqueror.

The basis for this decision was that the Royal Navy feared a pincer-style attack with Belgrano attacking from the south, and the Veinticinco de Mayo from the north. Also Belgrano could have escaped from Conqueror by sailing across nearby shallow waters, and it could then have attacked the British Task Force.


The scene was now set, and on 2 May Conqueror became the first nuclear-powered submarine to fire in anger when she launched three Mark 8 torpedoes at Belgrano, two of which struck the ship and exploded. Twenty minutes later, the ship was sinking rapidly and was abandoned by the crew. Due to electrical failure the General Belgrano was unable to issue a Mayday signal, and this, combined with poor visibility, meant that the two escorting destroyer
Destroyer
In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast and maneuverable yet long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against smaller, short-range but powerful attackers .Before World War II, destroyers were light vessels without the endurance...

s were unaware of the sinking until some hours later. A total of 323 men were killed.

Conqueror's war did not end there. The crew of the submarine had to face Argentine Air Force
Argentine Air Force
The Argentine Air Force is the national aviation branch of the armed forces of Argentina. As of 2007, it had 14,606 airmen and 6,854 civilans on duty.-History:...

 attempts to locate the boat in the days after the attack, which had shocked the Argentine people and ruling dictatorship. Conqueror did not fire again in anger throughout the war, but the crew did provide valuable help to the task force by using their sophisticated monitoring equipment to track Argentine aircraft departing the mainland.

After the war, Conqueror returned to Faslane, flying the Jolly Roger
Jolly Roger
The Jolly Roger is the name given to any of various flags flown to identify a ship's crew as pirates. The flag most usually identified as the Jolly Roger today is the skull and crossbones, being a flag consisting of a skull above two long bones set in an x-mark arrangement on a black field...

, a customary act of Royal Navy submarines after a "kill". 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".


Conqueror did not take part in any other conflicts, and was decommissioned in 1990. The periscope
Periscope
A periscope is an instrument for observation from a concealed position. In its simplest form, it is a tube in each end of which are mirrors set parallel to each other at 45 degree angle....

 and captain's cabin of the submarine can be viewed in the Royal Navy's museum in Gosport
Gosport
Gosport is a town, district and borough in Hampshire with around 79,000 resident inhabitants, with a further 5-10,000 during the summer months, situated on the south coast of England...

.

External links