When Conqueror sank the Belgrano the escorts made a counter attack, Conqueror left the area deep and fast the normal thing to do. Some hours later she returned to the area and observed that the escorts were trying to pick up survivors.

She did not surface to assist because open warfare had been made. The men were not callously left to die in the water. Conqueror did not attack the escorts that were picking up survivors.

As a result of that action the Argentine surface units stayed in port and stayed out of the war, possibly saving more of their lives. Had the aircraft carrier 5th De Mayo come out she would have been torpedoed as she posed a threat to the whole of the operation.

The RN was operating 4 nuclear and one conventional submarine in the SA at the time.

At one time the RN worked under the USN to train operators for deep sea recovery vessels (DSRV's) these were proper mini submarines that could do a dry transfer on a stricken boat using the escape towers that were a from of dry lock connection.

At that time (late 1970's) our navy did not have such a capability. The problem was that transporting one of the mini-subs from the US to otherparts of the world would have proved problematical. Even a mini sub has a huge deadweight, so air transport is difficult but not impossible. The mini sub that was going to be used on the Kursk was transported by sea, that takes time.

The other problem was having enough trained submariners (RN ones) who would not be at sea serving on a submarine available at short notice to assist in a rescue operation. The RN submarine service was quite lean on manpower.

The Mine Warfare section of the RN has good experience in using ROV's for mine countermeasures, but the MW people were not submariners and the type of ROV use. Further the type of ROV used by MW would not be suitable for deep operations on a large craft.

So the decision to use a civvy force to run and operate ROV's under the guidance of the Submarine Rescue Section was taken. These teams are permanently available for just such operations.