In May 1982 the UK Royal Navy (RN) rushed the then brand new Sea Skua anti-ship missile into service in the South Atlantic. Equipping the similarly new Lynx HAS.2 small ships' helicopter, Sea Skua had been developed by British Aerospace Dynamics to give the Lynx a powerful punch against the missile-armed fast attack craft and corvettes, then proliferating in Soviet and Warsaw Pact navies. As so often happens, history turned out differently. Rather than 'Tarantul' and 'Nanuchka' missile craft, it was three Argentine Navy vessels - the patrol ship Alferez Sobral, the supply ship Rio Carcarana, and the patrol boat Rio Iguazu - that ended up on the wrong end of Sea Skua in the waters off the Falkland Islands (Malvinas).
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