Falklands War: The Argentine Air Force attacked the neutral oil tanker Hercules while she was traversing the South Atlantic.

The Falklands War was a ten-week undeclared war between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982 over two British dependent territories in the South Atlantic: the Falkland Islands and its territorial dependency, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. The conflict began on 2 April 1982, when Argentina invaded and occupied the Falkland Islands, followed by the invasion of South Georgia the next day. On 5 April, the British government dispatched a naval task force to engage the Argentine Navy and Air Force before making an amphibious assault on the islands. The conflict lasted 74 days and ended with an Argentine surrender on 14 June, returning the islands to British control. In total, 649 Argentine military personnel, 255 British military personnel, and three Falkland Islanders were killed during the hostilities.

The Argentine Air Force is the air force of Argentina and one of three branches of the Armed Forces of the Argentine Republic. In 2018, it had 13,837 military and 6,900 civilian personnel. FAA commander in chief is Brigadier Gustavo Valverde.

Hercules was a Japanese-built and Liberian-owned very large crude carrier launched in 1970 and completed the following year. She was chartered from 1977 by Amerada to carry fuel from Alaska to the Hovensa oil refinery in the United States Virgin Islands. On 8 June 1982, she was traversing the South Atlantic, en route to collect a load of crude oil, when she was attacked three times by Argentine aircraft. She was severely damaged by air-to-surface missiles and struck by two bombs that failed to detonate. Listing, she put into port in Brazil so that the damage could be assessed; it was determined that it was too dangerous to move an unexploded bomb lodged in one of her oil tanks. Her owner, United Carriers, decided to scuttle the vessel off the Brazilian coast. Claims by United Carriers and Amerada failed to reach Argentine courts, and an attempt to claim jurisdiction for a case to proceed in US courts eventually failed after a Supreme Court decision.