On May 25, one of Argentina’s national days, Coventry met her end. The British had moved their invasion force into San Carlos Bay and were putting troops ashore. But they were in a dangerous situation. Sheffield had been sunk several days before and Glasgow had been so badly damaged that she had to return to England for repairs. That left Coventry as the sole provider of medium-range air defense for the British task force. In fact, her job was to act as a decoy, drawing fire away from the task force, regardless of the cost to themselves. Coventry’s commander, Capt. David Hart Dyke, later described it this way. “We were the sacrifice, rather than the other ships which were more important. And that’s war. You’ve got to take risks to win.”

Coventry was teamed with the Type 22 frigate Broadsword, in the hope that the Type 22’s more sophisticated but shorter-range Sea Wolf point defense missiles might succeed in plugging any gaps which Coventry’s Sea Darts might leave open. It seemed like a good idea, since another Type 22, Brilliant, had already successfully used Sea Wolfs to shoot down two Argentinean Skyhawks a few days before.

For awhile it worked. Coventry shot down two Skyhawks in two separate attack waves, with a third Skyhawk shot down either by a Sea Cat fired from the HMS Yarmouth, or by a land-based Rapier battery. But then two more Skyhawks came at them, with another two following behind them. The Coventry’s radar operators tried desperately to get a lock on the aircraft, but because the Skyhawks were flying so low and over land, her radars were unable to differentiate between them and the land. Suddenly the radars did manage to lock on and immediately a Sea Dart was fired. It sped toward the Skyhawks, but then, halfway to its target, the radar lost the lock and a few seconds later the Argentinean pilots watched it fly past them without detonating. Broadsword attempted to fire its Sea Wolf missiles at the Skyhawks, but suffered a software failure, which forced the frigate to restart the fire control computers. One of the Skyhawks’ bombs bounced off the sea and on an upward trajectory, hit Broadsword‘s flight deck and destroyed her Lynx helicopter, without ever exploding.

The second wave of two Skyhawks now bore in. Unable to achieve lock with Sea Dart, Hart-Dyke turned his ship hard to starboard to present a smaller target, but this put Coventry in Broadsword‘s line of fire and her Sea Wolf system, now restarted, automatically checked fire. By this point the Coventry’s crew was shooting at the incoming aircraft with rifle and machine gun fire and the ship’s 4.5 inch main gun. A few seconds later, Coventry was struck by three bombs on her port side, just above the waterline. Two exploded, the third did not. Coventry sank twenty minutes later with the loss of nineteen of her crew.

The Sea Dart’s record after that continued to be a mixture of hits and misses. One day after the Coventry was sunk, the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible came under attack by Argentinean Super Etendards armed with Exocet anti-ship missiles. In less than two minutes time, Invincible fired six Sea Darts. All missed, but the Exocets that were fired all missed the aircraft carrier, hitting instead the container ship Atlantic Conveyer.

On May 30, two Argentinian Super Etendards, one carrying Argentina’s last Exocet, attacked the Type 42 destroyer HMS Exeter, supported by four A-4C Skyhawks with bombs following the Exocet’s smoke trail. Hoping to turn Exeter into another Coventry, they came in low. What they didn’t know was that Exeter’s radar had been upgraded from old Type 965 radar to the more modern Type 1024 which performed better against low-flying targets in ground- or sea-clutter. Exeter fired two Sea Darts and promptly killed two Argentinean Skyhawks. A week later, Exeter detected two Argentinean Lear jet reconnaissance aircraft in the distance. It fired two Sea Darts, hitting one Lear jet, missing the other.

On June 13, the Cardiff fired a Sea Dart at a Canberra bomber that was attacking British troops at Port Harnet House, shooting it down. It was the last time in the Falklands War that a Sea Dart was fired. Almost a month earlier, while en route to the war zone, Cardiff had fired two Sea Darts at a Boeing 707 which the Argentinean air force was using for reconnaissance. Incredibly, the 707 managed to outmaneuver both missiles. Cardiff was also responsible for a friendly-fire incident in which it used a Sea Dart to shoot down a British army Aérospatiale Gazelle helicopter, killing the three soldiers aboard.

The upgrades turned out to be useful. A decade later, Sea Dart again went into action during the 1991 Gulf War. On Feb. 25, 1991, the Type 42 destroyer Gloucester and the U.S. Navy guided missile frigate USS Perry were accompanying the battleship Missouri as she bombarded the Iraqi coast with her massive 16-inch guns. Suddenly radar operators observed two blips appear on their screen. The Iraqis had fired two Silkworm anti-ship missiles at the Missouri. For nearly a minute the information bounced back and forth between the operators and the area command center before it got to the Gloucester.  By the time two Sea Darts were fired, one of the Silkworms had already crashed into the sea. The remaining Silkworm was destroyed by one of the Sea Darts, with only seconds to spare. It marked the first time in which a missile knocked out another missile in a combat situation. Twenty-two years have passed since then, and so have a few wars, but Gloucester’s feat has yet to be repeated.

After the Falklands War, the Sea Dart underwent continuous upgrades and modifications. The surviving Type 42 destroyers followed Exeter’s lead and replaced their now-ancient Type 965 radars with Type 1022s, giving them much-improved capability against sea-skimmers. In the late 1980s, the Type 909 illumination radar was improved  with a data link that allowed multiple missiles to be guided at once, and if necessary, retargeted during flight.

The upgrades turned out to be useful. A decade later, Sea Dart again went into action during the 1991 Gulf War. On Feb. 25, 1991, the Type 42 destroyer Gloucester and the U.S. Navy guided missile frigate USS Perry were accompanying the battleship Missouri as she bombarded the Iraqi coast with her massive 16-inch guns. Suddenly radar operators observed two blips appear on their screen. The Iraqis had fired two Silkworm anti-ship missiles at the Missouri. For nearly a minute the information bounced back and forth between the operators and the area command center before it got to the Gloucester.  By the time two Sea Darts were fired, one of the Silkworms had already crashed into the sea. The remaining Silkworm was destroyed by one of the Sea Darts, with only seconds to spare. It marked the first time in which a missile knocked out another missile in a combat situation. Twenty-two years have passed since then, and so have a few wars, but Gloucester’s feat has yet to be repeated.

The Sea Dart’s last hurrah took place last April during naval exercises off Scotland, when Edinburgh fired off several of them against a series of supersonic decoys. Officially it remains on the books as one of the Royal Navy’s weapons systems, but Edinburgh’s retirement in June also marked the end of the Sea Dart.

By now Talos has mostly been forgotten, as have the Tartar and Terrier missile systems. In the end, Sea Dart will be remembered, for its successes as well as its failures. More importantly, Sea Dart will be remembered for its active role in what will probably remain one of the most glorious chapters in British naval history.