HMS Argonaut (F56): Hit Twice, Powerless, and Still Signalling "We Can Still Fight"

A Frigate That Saw a Bit of Everything

HMS Argonaut was a Leander-class frigate built by Hawthorn Leslie at Hebburn on Tyneside, launched on 8 February 1966 and commissioned on 17 August 1967, entering service with the class's familiar armament of twin 4.5-inch guns, a Sea Cat missile launcher, a Limbo anti-submarine mortar and a Westland Wasp helicopter. A 1980 modernisation considerably sharpened her teeth, adding four Exocet anti-ship missiles, a second Sea Cat system, twin 40mm Bofors guns, and a Westland Lynx helicopter in place of the Wasp.

Her fifteen years before the Falklands War were genuinely varied: she escorted the liner Queen Mary on her final Atlantic crossing in 1967, carried out NATO duties between 1968 and 1975, served on the Beira Patrol enforcing the embargo against Rhodesia in 1969, took famine relief supplies to Fiji during a round-the-world deployment that same year, saw fishery protection duty during the Second Cod War in 1973, and deployed to the Persian Gulf on the Armilla Patrol in 1981.

A Very Bad Day at San Carlos

On 21 May 1982, Argonaut was providing close escort for the amphibious force during the opposed landings at San Carlos, stationed near Fanning Head to guard the northern approaches. At 10:15 that morning, Argentine pilot Lieutenant Guillermo Crippa attacked in an MB-339 with cannon fire and rockets, damaging her Type 965 radar. Worse followed at 13:37, when five A-4 Skyhawks struck the ship with two bombs. One detonated inside her Sea Cat missile magazine, killing two sailors outright, while the second caused severe damage to her boiler room and knocked out all power to the ship.

With HMS Plymouth supplying emergency electrical power, Argonaut's captain sent a signal that has since become something of a small piece of Falklands War folklore: we are damaged and have lost power but we can still fight, a genuinely defiant message from a ship that had just been hit twice and left dead in the water.

Towed to Safety, Bombs and All

The following day, three Landing Ship Logistics vessels towed the crippled Argonaut into San Carlos Water, where she remained with both unexploded bombs still lodged inside her, requiring several days of careful, nerve-wracking work by bomb disposal specialists before they could finally be defused and removed. Repairs and sonar upgrades were completed back at Devonport by June 1982, restoring her to full service remarkably quickly given the scale of the damage she had absorbed.

From Warship to Rescue Ship

Argonaut's postwar career took a genuinely eclectic turn. In 1987 she rescued the adventurer Richard Branson from the Atlantic after his hot-air balloon ditched into the sea, a rescue that must have felt very different from combat duty in Falkland Sound. She represented the Royal Navy at the 75th anniversary commemorations of Gallipoli in 1990, and in August 1992 took part in apprehending the fugitive Roderick Newall in the South Atlantic. She was decommissioned from the Royal Navy on 31 March 1993, and left Portsmouth Harbour under tow bound for Spain, where she was finally broken up on 25 January 1995, bringing an end to a career that had survived two bomb hits, rescued a billionaire adventurer, and represented Britain at a First World War commemoration, all in the space of a single working life.