[FastCoyote]

"he General Belgrano was not a battleship,"

I believe the Belgrano was aluminum, or was that the British ship?

[ansel12]

The british one

[Armedanddangerous]

The British ships lost in the Falklands were mostly made of aluminum, as I remember.

[Strategerist]

Belgrano was steel, was the USS Phoenix, a World War II- era light cruiser.

A number of the British ships including HMS Sheffield had Aluminum superstructures.

More British ships were sunk by dumb bombs in the Falklands War than by Exocets, something that gets forgotten. And if all the Argentinian dumb bombs had exploded the British would quite possibly have lost so many ships they would have lost the war - they were dropped at incredibly low altitudes and didn't arm.

[Gum Shoe]

The General Belgrano wasn't aluminum.

She was built as USS Phoenix (CL-46), the sixth of the Brooklyn-class light cruisers, in New Jersey by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation starting in 1935, and launched in March 1938. She survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and was decommissioned from the US Navy (USN) in July 1946. USS Phoenix was sold, with another of her class (USS Boise), to Argentina in October 1951, for $7.8 million. She was renamed 17 de Octubre after an important date for the political party of the then president Juan Perón. Perón was overthrown in 1955, and in 1956 the vessel was renamed General Belgrano (C-4) after General Manuel Belgrano, who had fought for Argentine independence in 1816.

[Redleg Duke]

" I believe the Belgrano was aluminum, or was that the British ship?"

The HMS Sheffield was aluminum. The Belgrano was the old USS Phoenix, a light cruiser of WWII vintage.

[Jimmy Valentine]

The "General Belgrano" was the old USS Phoenix a W-2 six inch gun cruiser. She was fitted with automatic six inch guns and if she had gotten to the Falklands she could have sunk the whole British fleet in an hour or so.

I don't know how well she was maintained by Argentina, but she was caught loafing along at seven knots with no screen when she was torpedoed.

I always had a theory that we told the Britsd where she was from satellite photos.

[Reily]

The Belgrano was a Lt Cruiser of either late WW2 or 1950s vintage. I believe it originally was built for the US Navy. The Argentines bought it in the 1960's or 1970s.