17. General Belgrano is the only ship to have been sunk by a nuclear-powered submarine
General Belgrano was originally USS Phoenix, a light cruiser that was a veteran of the Pacific theater in World War II. In 1951 the ship was sold to the Argentine Navy, which commissioned the ship 17 de Octubre, which remained its name until Juan Peron was overthrown in a coup (in which the ship participated). It was then renamed, General Belgrano. The ship was upgraded with anti-aircraft missiles but by the 1980s it was for all practical purposes obsolete. When the Falklands War erupted General Belgrano was in service near the exclusion zone mandated by the British Navy surrounding the Falkland Islands when it was tracked by the Royal Navy submarine HMS Conqueror.
Conqueror hit General Belgrano with two of the three torpedoes it launched, and the old cruiser sank quickly. Electrical failure prevented the ship from issuing distress calls before going down, and the cruiser’s escorts did not recognize its sinking until much later. The loss of life was 323 dead, most of them due to the explosion of the torpedoes and the resulting fire. Over 700 men were rescued by the Argentine navy and civilian ships. HMS Conqueror was the second submarine to sink an enemy vessel since the Second World War ended (the first occurred in the Indo-Pakistani War) and remains to date the only nuclear submarine to attack and destroy an enemy ship.
