The sinking of a large warship is indeed a rare event in modern naval warfare.
At the moment, it’s not known for sure what happened to Moscow, but its sinking makes a lot of sense – if it were the result of enemy action it would be an extremely rare event.
Indeed, we have to go back to the Falklands War 40 years ago to rewind the last time a ship of comparable size and reputation was sunk by the enemy. No ship of this size had been destroyed in combat before, since the Second World War.
The last time a cruiser was completely destroyed by an enemy was on 2 May 1982, during the Falklands War which took place in the South Atlantic between Great Britain and Argentina.
The Argentine Navy cruiser General Belgrano (H2) was sunk by the British nuclear-powered attack submarine HMS Conqueror, with the loss of more than 300 crew.
The aging Belgrano, which first entered service with the United States Navy in 1938 as the USS Phoenix, which survived the attack on Pearl Harbor, was selected to command one of two surface warfare groups during the day. Argentina’s pincer attack, aimed at knocking down two British aircraft carriers east of the Falklands.
Hoping to reduce the underwater threat posed by submarines, the Argentines moved two battle groups into shallower water, but Conqueror continued to track the cruiser.
With the plan to land special forces on the Falklands, and not wanting to risk losing Belgrano, the commander of the British task force, Admiral Sandy Woodward, requested permission to engage the Argentine ship.
Two torpedoes were fired from Conqueror and the loss of life on the Belgrano was made worse by poor preparation, including that the doors and hatches designed to withstand the explosion were left open.
Fully equipped, the Argentine cruiser displaced 13,645 tons, slightly larger than Moscow, although some documents suggest that the Argentine warship was sailing with a smaller displacement than the Russian cruiser, at least. at the time it was sunk.
Furthermore, while the cause of the loss of the Moskva is still unclear, the Belgrano still holds the record as the last major warship sunk by a submarine to date.
During the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War, the much smaller Indian frigate INS Khukri, displacing about 1,200 tons, was sunk by the Pakistani submarine PNS Hangor (H3), and the surface warship. fall prey to submarines anywhere since the end of World War II.
Other notable incidents of enemy action against major warships in the years after 1945 did not tend to result in loss of ships.
During the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, anti-ship missiles played an important role
In May 1987, an Iraqi Dassault Falcon 50 commercial jet (reconstructed) fired two Exocet missiles (France) at the US Navy frigate USS Stark (H4) at sea. in the Persian Gulf on the sidelines of the conflict.
The attack killed 37 sailors and injured 21 others, but the frigate was repaired. The lesson of the incident was the introduction of improved decoys on US Navy warships.
The United States Navy experienced a terrible incident in October 2000, with the attack on the USS Cole (H5) one of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, by suicide bombers in a small ship. , filled with explosives.
In contrast to other incidents, Cole was at anchor at the time of the attack, stopping to refuel off the southern Yemen port of Aden. The explosion killed 17 American sailors and injured 39 American sailors, and led to significant changes in the process of protecting US Navy forces.
If the damage done to Moscow was the result of hostilities, the scale of the incident would likely make it one of the most significant in naval warfare since the operation. Falklands four decades ago.