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From the South Pacific to the South Atlantic 4 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, October 1914 (Library of Congress). Argentine Navy battleship ARA Moreno in Dry Dock No. Brazil tried to keep their ships up to date, modernizing Minas Geraes and São Paulo at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1920-21, but by the outbreak of the Second World War, none of these ships were fully operational.
THE SINKING CITY FLEEING PHOENIX SERIES
Combined with their astronomical costs, a series of economic calamities, political crises, and mutinies rendered the ships essentially inoperable and useless. These ships all turned out to be white elephants – by some estimates, these battleship purchases consumed one-quarter of the each government’s entire annual budget.
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Unfortunately for the two Chilean ships, because they were built in Great Britain, the British government seized them for the Royal Navy at the outbreak of the First World War I – one wasn’t delivered until 1920, while the other wasn’t delivered at all, instead becoming HMS Eagle. Built at Massachusetts’ Fore River Shipyard, Moreno and Rivadavia would both visit the Brooklyn Navy Yard for dry docking and painting before embarking on their sea trials they entered Argentine Navy service in the winter of 1914-1915. Chile and Argentina responded by each ordering a pair of their own, with the Argentine ships coming from the United States. In 1905, Brazil authorized funding for a trio of the newest British-built, dreadnought-style battleships, bringing the arms race to a new level.
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The conflict was settled diplomatically in part because the US Navy feared they would lose. By comparison, America’s Navy was relatively weak in 1891, an incident in which two American sailors were killed in a Valparaiso bar nearly escalated into a war with Chile. In the 1870’s, they began purchasing ironclad warships from European builders and expanding their fleets greatly, as the region was embroiled in a series of wars between various combinations of the three big powers and their smaller neighbors, and these purchases accelerated in the following decades. This was not the first time that the US had become involved in the naval affairs of these three countries, all of which had a long maritime rivalry dating back to their founding as independent states. Over the next 25 years, the US would transfer 10 destroyers, 11 Tank Landing Ships, four submarines, and many other smaller support ships to the Argentine Navy, with similar numbers distributed to Chile and Brazil. Louis, Chile Boise and the Brooklyn Navy Yard-built Brooklyn, while Argentina got Nashville and Phoenix. Six World War II-era light cruisers were selected for transfer to Brazil, Chile, and Argentina in 1951. The bulk of this equipment went to members of the newly-created NATO alliance, but also to nations that were key to the American containment strategy, especially in Asia and Latin America. After the war, the United States possessed a gargantuan military arsenal, and the 1949 Mutual Defense Assistance Act was passed to transfer these arms to friendly countries around the world. Built in 1938 as the Brooklyn-class light cruiser USS Phoenix (CL-46), it saw extensive service in the Pacific in World War II.
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The ship in that photo did not begin its life in Argentina, but Philadelphia. The sailors of USS Baltimore, who had an eventful evening in Valparaiso ( Harper’s Weekly, Nov. Sgut snapped a series of pictures that would become the center of a legal and political maelstrom, and the iconic images of the Falklands War. As he and 11 shipmates, one of them dying in his arms, drifted away from the sinking hulk, Lt. In those frantic minutes, as sailors tried desperately to navigate the smoke and fires, 30-year-old Lieutenant Martín Sgut took command of a lifeboat and lowered it into the water. In less than 30 minutes, the order was given to abandon ship, and Belgrano sank, taking 323 souls with her. Two of the weapons found their marks, fore and aft of the ship’s protective belt armor on the port side. on May 2, 1982, the British submarine HMS Conqueror fired a spread of three torpedoes at the Argentine cruiser ARA General Belgrano, located approximately 230 nautical miles southwest of the Falkland Islands.