When corvette lieutenant Marcelo André found out about the sinking of the General Belgrano cruise ship, he was on the ARA “Bahía Paraíso” Hospital ship thousands of kilometers at the height of Puerto de Deseado. The Captain of the ship, Ismael García, without waiting for instructions, ordered his sailors to go at maximum speed to the rescue of the comrades who had been attacked by the United Kingdom of Great Britain despite being outside the Falklands War exclusion area.
“We found out from a naval message that came by radio. He was handing over the guard on the bridge,” recalled veteran Marcelo who was born and raised in Mainqué.
He May 2, 1982 at 4:02 p.m. the first torpedo from the nuclear submarine HMS “Conqueror” hit the engine room of the Belgrano; the second destroyed the bow and the ship began to sink. At 16:23, the commander gave the saddest and most painful order to abandon ship.
André said that the search operation began hours later, through the Neptune 2P112 aircraft that took off from the Río Grande Naval Air Base at 22:30 under the command of Captain Ernesto Proni Leston. The pilot was flying for more than 9 hours but could not spot the Belgrano rafts.
On his return he came across the Neptune 2P111, under the command of Captain Julio Pérez Roca who continued the search. hours past he only had fuel left to return to base.
However, the commander decided to continue the search and make one last pass. “At 1:20 p.m. on May 3, he sighted the first rafts that the storm had caused to drift some 84 kilometers southeast of the sinking point. And you could almost say that He managed to reach the base only with the smell of the fuel”, André recounted in detail.
Meanwhile the destroyers ARA “Piedrabuena” and ARA “Bouchard”, which patrolled the area, plus the ARA “Gurruchaga” and the polar ship converted to a hospital ARA “Bahía Paraíso”, who had a helicopter, joined the operation.
The Mainqué veteran explained that the destroyers The rescue maneuver was particularly difficult due to the characteristics of its propulsion system that used steam turbines. For this reason they had to supply with imagination the way to approach the rafts and get the castaways on board.
He Gurruchaga, a sea tugboat, being a diesel-electric propulsion, made it easier to to face this task. In addition, due to its construction characteristics, it had a lower rail and it was easier for sailors to recover.
The lieutenant André was 24 years old when he participated in the rescue of his Belgrano teammates. At that time he was assistant to the deckmaster at the ARA “Bahía Paraíso”. His work was precisely on the deck, in the maneuvers to recover the rafts. Among his tasks was the mooring maneuver, cargo movements, “everything that was the operation of the ship.”
“At that time we were focused on rescuing the crew of the rafts,” he recalled.
The ship in which he served was furthest from the sinking and arrived in the area at dawn on May 4.
Hours before, the destroyer Piedrabuena, which had made the first contact with the shipwrecked and began the rescue, had already arrived, as had the Gurruchaga and the Bouchard.
The Bahía Paraíso joined the tasks and carried out the salvage of its first raft with 17 men at 10, minutes later the second boat with 11 sailors and the third with 23. That day they recovered in total 69 survivors and 7 bodies. Some comrades had survived the torpedo attack but were victims of hypothermia due to the low temperatures that day.
The ship continued to search with support from Navy Lockheed Electra aircraft until May 9, when no more rafts were found afloat. They explored up to 205 kilometers east and 240 kilometers south of the sinking. Finally, the boat headed for Ushuaia to disembark the survivors and the deceased.
André said that the Bahía Paraíso war pavilion received the “Combat Operations” award.
For the veteran from Mainqué, the sinking of the Belgrano was an act of war that included the risks of the conflict. Three of his friends died that day and other colleagues with whom he had served.
Although the pain is present, André stressed that the rescue of the shipwrecked of the Belgrano cruise “It was probably the most successful in combat in naval history. Out of a crew of 1,093 people, 770 sailors were saved.
He recounted that on December 8, 1914 at the beginning of the First World War, The Falkland Islands were also the scene of another battle and of a total of 2,088 British sailors attacked by Germany, only 217 were rescued. and 215 survived, 10.3%. While the Argentine operative managed to save more than 70% of the crew.
“This shows that preparation, discipline, training and training save lives,” he proudly maintained.
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