HMS Sheffield (D80): The First Royal Navy Ship Lost in Action Since the Second World War

Built at Barrow, With an Odd Twist of Fate

HMS Sheffield was built by Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering at Barrow-in-Furness, ordered in 1968 and laid down on 15 January 1970. During construction an explosion killed two dockyard workers and damaged a section of her hull, which was repaired using steel originally intended for another vessel under simultaneous construction at the yard, the Argentine ship Hercules, an odd historical footnote given the nation Sheffield would one day find herself at war with. She was launched by Queen Elizabeth II on 10 June 1971 at a cost of £23.2 million and commissioned on 16 February 1975, the first of the Royal Navy's new Type 42 guided missile destroyers and an early test platform for the Sea Dart missile system.

South to the Falklands

Captain James Salt took command of Sheffield on 26 January 1982. When Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands that April, she was ordered to join Task Force 317 on 2 April, reached Ascension Island on 14 April and entered the Total Exclusion Zone around the islands on 1 May, one of a small number of Type 42 destroyers providing radar picket and air defence cover for the task force.

Attack from the Air

On the morning of 4 May 1982, Argentine naval aviation detected the task force, and at around 11:04 two Super Etendard aircraft flown by Capitan de Fragata Augusto Bedacarratz and Teniente Armando Mayora launched AM39 Exocet missiles from twenty to thirty miles out, using the terrain and radar gaps between ships to close undetected. A warning from HMS Glasgow was not acted upon in time, and one missile struck Sheffield's starboard side at deck level, tearing into the forward auxiliary machinery room. This article treats what followed with the seriousness it deserves.

Twenty Lives Lost

The missile strike started a fierce fire that Sheffield's crew fought for around four hours, hampered by damaged firefighting systems and thickening smoke, before Captain Salt gave the order to abandon ship because of the risk of the fire reaching the Sea Dart magazine. Of the 281 men aboard, twenty were killed and dozens more injured, only one body was ever recovered, and the survivors were taken aboard HMS Arrow and other ships nearby, some by helicopter to HMS Hermes. It was the first Royal Navy ship lost to enemy action since the Second World War, and the names of those twenty men are remembered still. HMS Sheffield was taken under tow by HMS Yarmouth, but continued flooding through the hull breach caused her to roll over and sink on 10 May 1982 in around 1,800 metres of water.

An Inquiry, and a Reassessment

A Board of Inquiry convened on 7 June 1982 found that the ship's principal warfare officer and anti-air warfare officer had been negligent in failing to act on the warning from HMS Glasgow, though no court martial followed. For years it was widely believed the Exocet's warhead had failed to detonate and that the fire alone caused the loss, but a Ministry of Defence reassessment in 2015 concluded that the warhead had in fact exploded, a correction to the historical record more than three decades after the event.

A Protected War Grave

The wreck of HMS Sheffield lies on the seabed of the South Atlantic and is protected as a war grave under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986. Her loss remains one of the defining moments of the Falklands War, a stark demonstration of the vulnerability of modern warships to anti-ship missiles, and a sobering reminder of the human cost borne by those who served aboard her.