The
Atlantic Conveyor (IMO: 6926036) was a British
merchant navy ship,
registered in Liverpool, that was requisitioned during the Falklands War and sunk after being hit by two
Exocet missiles. The wrecksite is
designated under the
Protection of Military
Remains Act 1986.
History
The
Atlantic Conveyor was a 14,950 tonne
roll-on, roll-off container
ship owned by
Cunard. She was built
along with six other container ships, each named
Atlantic
and flown under different national flags for different
companies.
Along with her sister ship,
Atlantic Causeway, the
Atlantic
Conveyor was requisitioned by the
Ministry of Defence at
the beginning of the
Falklands War
through the
STUFT system (Ships Taken Up From
Trade). Due to the short timescales, the decision that the ship was
not "a high-value unit" and a controversy over whether arming
auxiliaries was legal,
Atlantic Conveyor was not fitted
with either an active, or passive defence system.
The ships were used to
carry supplies for the British Task Force sent by the British
government to retake the Falkland Islands
from Argentine
occupation. Sailing for Ascension Island
on 25 April 1982, Atlantic Conveyor
carried a cargo of six Wessex
helicopters from 848 Naval Air
Squadron and five RAF HC.1 Chinooks from No. 18 Squadron RAF.
At Ascension, she
picked up eight Fleet Air Arm Sea Harriers (809 Squadron) and six RAF Harrier GR.3 jump jets, while one
Chinook was removed for maintenance, and then set sail for the
South
Atlantic
. On
arrival off the Falklands in mid-May, the Harriers were off-loaded
to the carriers; the GR.3s going to
HMS
Hermes while the Sea Harriers were divided amongst the
existing squadrons on
Hermes and
HMS Invincible.

The
Atlantic Conveyor
approaching the Falklands.
On 25 May 1982 the
Atlantic Conveyor was hit by two Exocet
missiles fired by a pair of Argentine
Super Étendard jet fighter. The
ship caught fire, the fire then became uncontrollable. When the
fire had burnt out, the ship was boarded but nothing was
recoverable and so the decision was made to sink her.
It is unclear whether
the missile's warhead detonated — some speculate that the Exocet
that struck HMS
Sheffield
did not explode — but the ship was set alight by
the impact of the missiles and the unburnt rocket fuel.
Other sources indicate the warhead exploded after penetrating the
ships hull to where trucks and fuel were stored resulting in an
uncontrollable fire. All the helicopters but one Chinook, callsign
Bravo November airborne at
the time, were destroyed in the fire.
The loss of these
helicopters meant that British troops had to march across the
Falklands to capture Stanley
.
Twelve men died upon the
Atlantic Conveyor, including the
vessel's commander, Captain Ian North, who was posthumously awarded
the
Distinguished
Service Cross (DSC). The ship was the first British merchant
vessel lost at sea to enemy fire since
World War II.
The ship's replacement was built on Tyneside.
Piloting a Sea King helicopter of
820 Naval Air Squadron,
Prince Andrew (then second in
line to the throne) was first to lift off survivors.
Techniques to Defeat Anti-Ship Missiles
A dangerous task, carried out by Sea Kings, was to act as decoys,
to deflect sea-skimming missiles away from surface ships. This was
achieved by hovering close to the ship and as the radar seeker
could not resolve targets in
azimuth the
ship/helicopter combination appeared as a single target. If the
helicopter was not too high the missile guidance system would aim
for the centroid of its apparent target and hopefully pass between
the two. HRH Prince Andrew at one point flew his helicopter as an
Exocet missile decoy. Chaff rockets aim to seduce a missile with a
similar technique by increasing the apparent length of the target.
It is often suggested that cost savings prevented the fitting of
chaff rockets to
Atlantic Conveyor and that this could
have saved the ship. However, the size of the ship's
radar cross section (RCS) was too great
to allow chaff decoys to be effective and their employment would
have been unlikely to have affected the outcome. It has also been
claimed—incorrectly—that the ship acted as a decoy against a
subsequent Exocet attack.
Deaths

Atlantic Conveyor Memorial
The 12 men killed in the sinking of the
Atlantic Conveyor
were:
- Merchant Navy
- Bosun John B. Dobson
- Mechanic Frank Foulkes
- Steward David R. S. Hawkins
- Mechanic James Hughes
- Captain Ian H. North, DSC
- Mechanic Ernest M. Vickers
- Royal Fleet Auxiliary
- 1st Radio Officer Ronald Hoole
- Seaman Ng Por
- Seaman Chan Chi Shing
- Royal Navy
- Chief Petty Officer Edmund Flanagan
- Air Engineering Mechanic (R) Adrian J. Anslow
- Leading Air Engineering Mechanic (L) Don L. Price
As the last resting place of the remains of those who died, the
wreck is designated as a
protected place under the
Protection of Military Remains Act 1986.
Cultural References
- Pink Floyd's 1983 album, "The Final Cut," included an excerpt
from a news broadcast about the replacement of the Atlantic
Conveyor in track 1, "The Post-war Dream"
Further reading
Notes and references