Argentina earned their first win over England at Twickenham for 16 years, condemning Eddie Jones' side to defeat in their opening game of the autumn campaign.
England eased their way to a 16-12 lead at half-time amid horrendous conditions in front of an 80,000 crowd, with Joe Cokanasiga scoring the only try of a physical first half.
But the hosts were unable to recover when Emiliano Boffelli and Santiago Carreras crossed in quick succession after the break to tilt the contest in favour of the visitors.
Replacement Jack van Poortvliet crossed the whitewash to repair some of the damage, but England couldn't use it as a springboard for a comeback, with Boffelli's boot keeping the visitors in front.
And, despite England's best efforts, the visitors were able to hold on, earning a well deserved 30-29 win.
It is only Argentina's second away victory over England following on from a success in 2006, and their first victory over them at any venue since 2009.
Victory here will tee up Michael Cheika's side nicely ahead of their trip to Cardiff next weekend, and follows on from their first-ever away win over New Zealand earlier in the year.
In contrast, this defeat will be seen as a blow for England head coach Jones, who will now be under real pressure to produce an acceptable response against Japan before taking on the All Blacks in a fortnight.
Speaking after the defeat, Owen Farrell admitted his team struggled to resolve several big issues on the day, but insisted they can't afford to let this result cause heads to drop in the camp as they look to show some much-needed signs of progress ahead of the Six Nations and Rugby World Cup next year.
He told Amazon Prime: "We were talking about some issues that we had on the field and we hadn't quite managed to address. We talked a little bit about going forward. We've got a long way to go this autumn.
"We need to make sure we don't drop any confidence because of this. We don't stop start again. We're building on top of it. We've just got to look a bit deeper.
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"There were obviously scrappy parts of the game, which will obviously get better as we go along, but there were also avoidable ones like discipline and we need to make sure we address it properly because we were talking about it on the field but it wasn't quite happening for us."
England: Steward; Nowell, Tuilagi, Farrell (c), Cokanasiga; Smith, Youngs; Genge, Cowan-Dickie, Sinckler, Coles, Hill, Itoje, Curry, B Vunipola.
Replacements: Singleton, M Vunipola, Heyes, Ribbans, Simmonds, Willis, Van Poortvliet, Slade
Tries Cokanasiga, Van Poortvliet
Cons Farrell (2)
Pens Farrell (5)
Argentina: Mallia; M Carreras, Moroni, De la Fuente, Boffelli; S Carreras, Bertranou; Gallo, Montoya, Gomez Kodela, Alemanno, Lavanini, Gonzalez, Kremer, Matera.
Replacements: Ruiz, Tetaz Chaparro, Bello, Paulos, Isa, Morales, Talbornoz, Morlando.
Tries Boffelli, Carreras
Cons Boffelli
Pens Boffelli (6)
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