"Lost Argentine Sub Chased by Brit Heli?" Topic

The Argentinian submarine that vanished last month was being chased by a British helicopter and Chilean ship shortly before disappearing, one of the doomed vessel's sailors told his sister in a "strange" message that was one of the last sent from the sub…

link

Sounds like a "I need to blame someone" response.

No

Oh, not this again…tabloid headlines at best.

I wonder how the sailor found the time to send a message to his sister while under attack.

Would not surprise me.

Helos will ping away like mad trying to find a submarine. Same with a surface ship.

As a submarine, we played games with any surface ship we could see. I may or may not have ever written letters to an aircraft carrier stating 'GOTCHA' after some exercises, with some pictures of the carrier's island numbers on the crosshairs .

But there used to be rules for how the game was played. Submarine gets into trouble (say, low batteries), pops up, says "hi I'm [nation]" on the radio or signal lamps, other side says "thanks for the ASW exercise", game's over. And this was between US and Soviet ships during the Cold War!

So if the ARA San Juan had been in close contact with a UK helo and/or Chilean ship when she got into trouble, there would have been immediate rescue made. Because NOBODY leaves a ship in distress alone. Even if they were just shooting at you 5 minutes ago, you give help.

If you read the article the sister says her brother told her they were "looking for" a British Helicopter and Chilean ship.
Probibly a miss translation and meant "watching for", doesn't say being attacked by anything.

Did the article get changed or modified, cause I didn't read anything claiming they were attacking or under attack.

What in the world!?!?

Dan

@Ironwolf: no update/change data on the article, and even Fox is really good about posting what and where they've changed things.

Sounds to me like the civilians misunderstanding what the Sailor is saying. But any of the veterans on the board will tell you that we don't speak the same language as civilians.

A poor woman who has lost his relative… madness because of the situation… this has not happened… the British would never have done that… they are helping us since day one… read about the "Asado" we give to the British plane crew who have to land in our territory…

Amicalement
Armand

I think it was an accident, there was no reason for anybody to attack the sub. I remember reading a lot of similar stuff in the press when Kursk tragedy happened, some versions included torpedo attack by US boat, collision with US atomic sub, etc. it is very hard to believe that it is just a tragedic accident, and all responsible people are in your own country.

Totally agree!.

Amicalement
Armand

Playing cat-and-mouse games can be dangerous, especially using equipment that may not be maintained as well as they should be due to budget cuts.

Sometimes it is best not to play.

I talk about 'playing games', but realize that a sub can detect a surface ship at significant distances. We had a carrier at more than 15 miles. On the periscope and sonar.

That's a long time before you get run over and potentially damaged.

An absolutely ludicrous suggestion, obviously brought on by grief. There are no British ASW helicopters in that vicinity. I'm sure if we wanted to sink their sub, then our local on station hunter-killer sub (I'm pretty sure there will be one) could achieve it without problem.