I'm Rory Stewart and I grew up wanting to be a hero and I'm still fascinated by the ideas of heroism.

In my new series, I'm taking in the long sweep of history from Achilles to Zelensky and asking, what is a hero?

Simply doing your job, being a decent human being.

A true hero is someone who just kind of shines by

their own light and that light is to be recognised by others. The Long History of Heroism

with me, Rory Stewart. Listen on BBC Sounds. Hello and thank you for downloading the podcast of Witness History from the BBC World Service with me, Luis Adalgo.

Today we're going back exactly 40 years to the sinking of the Argentine ship, the General Belgrano, during the Falklands War.

Dario Volunté was just 18 when the Belgrano was torpedoed by a British submarine deep in the South Atlantic on the 2nd of May, 1982.

In 2014, he told me how the attack happened, just as he came on duty.

Hamster Dawn Action stations. as he came on duty. At first we thought we'd been attacked from the air.

It was the way the ship moved, up and down, up and down, as if the attack had come from above.

And the floor felt like it was giving way underneath me.

And then all the lights went out and we were in darkness.

Dario was in the boiler room of the General Belgrano when the torpedo struck.

The attack hadn't in fact come from the air.

It had come from the British nuclear-powered submarine, HMS Conqueror.

Two hundred feet. The Conqueror had been shadowing the Belgrano for more than a day.

On the 2nd of May, they got the order, attack.

The first torpedo hit the bow, the second punched a hole through the side of the

Belgrano, ripping a 20-meter hole in the main deck.

The government of the Republic of Argentina

has to know,

...