MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Redressing the balance of history.

The Belgrano had barely been sunk when the chorus of criticism began that the downing of the Argentine warship by British forces was unjustified. Surprisingly, the man who might have most cause to echo those cries does not.

Captain Hector Bonzo was at the bridge of the Belgrano on 2 May, 1982, when HMS Conqueror fired three torpedoes into his vessel, killing 323 of his men. But Bonzo, it now transpires, believes the attack was justified. "Our mission in the south wasn't just to cruise around but to attack," he told Secret History in what amounts to an astonishing coup for the documentary series. "We knew we had to be ready to attack or be attacked ourselves."

On that spring afternoon, a month after Argentine forces invaded the British Falkland Islands, the HMS Conqueror became the first and last British nuclear submarine to fire in anger. For 22 years this single incident was the most controversial act of the conflict. At the time of attack, the Belgrano was not only outside the exclusion zone that the British Navy had created around the Falklands, but was sailing away from the conflict. To critics of Margaret Thatcher's government, the attack was a key error of judgment, but *Secret History's definitive account of the episode revealed it to be a move of military necessity which practically won the war.

The man who did actually sink the Belgrano was Bill Budding, the bearded, plain-speaking, chief ordnance artificer onboard HMS Conqueror. While Admiral Sandy Woodward, Task Group Commander of British Forces during the Falklands, urged the attack and Margaret Thatcher gave her authority, it was left to chief officer Budding to pull the trigger. As he explained, the torpedoes were usually activated from the control room by a senior officer. But on the day in question "the button didn't work", so Budding was ordered to release the torpedo by shifting a lever in the loading bay.

He impersonated the "whoosh" as 800 lbs of explosives - the first of three torpedoes - began hurtling towards the Belgrano, which had been bought from the US navy and was a survivor of Pearl Harbour. When the submarine felt the explosion of impact, Budding and the entire crew let out a cheer. On board the Belgrano there were only cries as the vessel came to resemble, in the words of one survivor, "a gothic cathedral full of smoke".

An experienced officer, Budding felt no twinge of remorse. His attitude was stoic - that of a seaman doing his duty. His contempt was reserved for critics of the attack. "There was a certain politician calling me a murderer. He had bloody sent me there."

By interviewing many of the principle participants for the first time - including Bonzo - *Secret History revealed that the attack, far from a calculated political act, was a military necessity, urged by Admiral Woodward. Woodward, who was also interviewed, feared that the Belgrano was not, as many have since been led to believe, an ill-equipped training vessel, but a fully armed warship. Although the vessel had changed direction this was, as the Argentines admitted, only a temporary alteration.

The loss of the Belgrano, the programme explained, forced the Argentine navy to withdraw its vessels and so hastened the conclusion of the conflict. Convincingly argued and grippingly presented, *Secret History blew away the clouds that have obscured the story of the Belgrano's demise and so revealed it to be a legitimate military target. Yet at the same time we were left with the stark feeling that the entire conflict and its subsequent loss of life was a folly brought about by the arrogance of the Argentine dictator, General Galtieri. As one Argentine sailor, a veteran of the Belgrano, who survived the attack, said last night: "It was a war and we were actors in this drama."

A picture, it is said, is worth a thousand words, and moving pictures, many more. When news is broadcast on the radio, the listener is told what is happening, but on television we are shown. The evidence is in the images, which is why television news remains one of the great inventions of the 20th century and the 50th anniversary of BBC television news an event worthy of celebration. **50 Years of BBC TV News was the first of three hour-long documentaries on this great British institution. It took us from 5 July 1954, when Richard Baker made history with the words: "Here is an illustrated summary of the news", all the way up to 1973. It was fascinating to learn that the BBC governors were so concerned about maintaining the corporation's reputation for unbiased reporting that in the earliest news broadcasts the presenter was never shown on camera, in case any facial expressions could be registered as a personal opinion. You can only imagine what the governors of the time would make of the gesticulations and verbal contortions of the BBC's political editor, Andrew Marr.

by Stheohen McGinty

Secret History: Sink The Belgrano, Channel 4 50 Years of BBC TV News, BBC 1