WASHINGTON -- Argentina attacked the British destroyer Sheffield Tuesday with French-built fighter-bombers launched from its only aircraft carrier that put to sea in a task force about a week ago, U.S. intelligence sources said.
The 3,500-ton Sheffield was hit with a French-built Exocet missile fired from a Super Entendard, a late-1970s generation single-engine aircraft that has a combat radius of more than 400 miles, the sources said.
The British Defense Ministry said in London the missile started a fire in the engine room of the ship, forcing its crew to abandon the 392-foot-long vessel commissioned in 1975. Sheffield class destroyers can carry a crew of 26 officers and 273 men.
The British-built Argentine aircraft carrier, the 25th of May, put to sea about a week ago with a protective screening force of about half a dozen destroyers and corvettes, the sources said.
Its position was not known, but it was thought to be at least 200 miles from the Sheffield because of the combat range of the Super Entendard. The sources said they did not know how many aircraft were involved in the attacking force.
The single-seat Super Entendard, which first flew in 1976, carries two 30mm cannons and can be fitted with bombs, rockets and missiles. It can reach the speed of sound -- 750 miles an hour, or Mach 1 -- at an altitude of 36,000 feet.
