On April 19, Argentina deployed four of its five Super Etendards to Rio Grande. Only five air-launched Exocets were available. On May 4, two of the fighters, each carrying one Exocet, went in search of prey. They found it in the shape of HMS Sheffield, alone on radar picket duty. She had three minutes to react before one missile scythed through her hull, killing 20 men. Shock at the loss of a modern destroyer to a single guided weapon was profound, but solutions to the threat posed by the remaining missiles were few. Argentina’s Patagonian airfields were 4,000 miles from Ascension, Britain’s nearest airfield, making a sustained RAF bombing campaign impossible. A Sea Harrier strike would involve exposing the task force’s two irreplaceable aircraft carriers, Hermes and Invincible, to attack.