The usual retelling concentrates on General Belgrano and Veinticinco de Mayo, but the French-built corvettes formed a separate missile axis closer to the British task group. Their position offered a more refined firing opportunity than the other formations. A submarine assigned against them would need to engage three targets rather than one, improving the chance that at least one ship could fire. This assessment ranks the Exocet threat above the Skyhawks and suggests Splendid's highest-value targets may have been the carrier's missile-armed Type 42 escorts rather than the carrier itself.
Notable Point · 39:03-41:22
The Drummond corvettes were Argentina's overlooked missile threat
Three nearby Drummond-class corvettes carried twelve Exocets and may have been more likely than Belgrano or the carrier group to launch successfully.