NAVY NEWS, JULY 2010


17


22 NAVY NEWS, JULY 2010


● The Fighting G executes a tight turn as she tries to evade a low-fl ying Hawk jet during a Thursday War at OST


’chuting stars over Sultan


NOW here’s a sight to warm the cockles of any Briton’s heart. Yup, a cloudless summer’s day – not too many of those.


The sight of the parachutist from the RN Raiders display team isn’t bad either. The Raiders dropped in (groan – Ed) on HMS Sultan Summer Show – a two-day extravaganza of things nautical... and not so nautical... at the home of RN engineering. Around 21,000 people passed through the gates of the Gosport establishment during the show.


children and their families were treated to a party on the day before the event. The children enjoyed all the fun of Peter


A further 900 local disabled and disadvantaged


Burnett’s funfair as well as a village fête: an area created and run by Sultan staff – Service and civilian personnel – who were dressed as pirates and ran stalls including ‘Soak a Sailor’, ‘Splat a Rat’ and the obligatory coconut shy. The following day the main arena served as the landing site for the Raiders, as well as the venue for the Imps motorcycle display team (pictured below), the Tricky Tykes terrier racing team, the Band of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines Collingwood and a steam rally with a marching display... not all at the same time. The annual Volunteer Cadet Corps Field Gun Competition was also staged. Hotly-contested as ever, it was eventually won by a home-grown crew from Sultan. Picture: LA(Phot) Darby Allen, HMS Sultan


Bloody – and bloody good


LEST it be thought we’re only interested in shiny new Type 45s at OST (see the centre pages), well here’s a stirring tale


was given a ‘satisfactory’ by the exacting folk of FOST, HMS Gloucester sailed back to Portsmouth with the words ‘very satisfactory’ ringing in the ears of the crew.


fact, as befits her proud nickname, the Fighting G possesses “fighting spirit” according to her assessors who put the 25-year-old destroyer through eight weeks of pain. They threw everything in the Bible at the ship – fire, flood, pestilence (well, chemical warfare) – and a few things which aren’t: low-flying aircraft, terrorists, evacuations, submarines.


And come what may, some of the Fighting Gs actually enjoyed the experience.


“It was amazing having the live aircraft to target; it was always a competition to see it fi rst, and sometimes they were so fast that there was just seconds for the whole system to react – it felt fantastic when we started to get it right every time,” said AB Simon ‘Shiner’ Wright on the Port Directional Aid System, providing look-out and targeting for the 4.5in gun and even Sea Dart missile system.


charted the ops room’s journey from the beginning of OST. “It was a rough ride at times,” said CPO Hicks.


“You rely on 45 people in here all to do their job to fi ght the war. It was painful at the beginning, but then it began to click into place. You started to get a good feeling.”


PO Liptrott added: “Where performance exceeds ambition, the overlap is called the ops room!” The teams fi ghting fi res and fl oods inside the ship might have disagreed... No matter how successfully the ops room fought off


Fires adjacent to magazines, fl oods in crucial technical compartments,


communications – were all in a day’s CPO Mickey Hicks and PO Dan Liptrott ys a competition to see it FOSTies don’t hand those out willy-nilly. In


from a venerable 42. And while next-generation destroyer HMS Daring


the hard way that shoring on a hatch into a fl ooded compartment really does need to be rock-solid when he stood too close to some collapsing timber – but thankfully no real harm done. Highlights of the two months included the non- warfi ghting exercises:


(NEO) operations and humanitarian disaster relief, not least because they allowed the ship’s company to get above decks and enjoy some of the summer weather.


was conducted in blazing sunshine, resulting in quite a few odd beret lines. “Pretending that it was pouring with stormy rain was quite diffi cult when we were all slapping on suncream – but I wasn’t complaining as it was rather easier dealing with my stretcher cases,” said medical offi cer Surg Lt Sonia Pillai.


Her team became dab hands with some horrible injuries in very inconvenient locations courtesy of the FOSTies’ imagination.


As well as the infamous trapped casualties, there were plenty of hose-lifts and stretcher- carries onboard to keep everybody exercised.


paperwork.


The writers (phew, we can call them that again – Ed) even managed to achieve some action


“A few fi rst aiders are now swearing that they will have to spend the deployment developing bigger ‘guns’, to cope with some of the heftier members of the ship’s company,” said Lt Cdr Eleanor Webb, the Fighting G’s logistics offi cer.


Not content with being a whole-ship ‘strength’ as HQ1 incident board operator, LWtr Neil ‘Taff’ Evans was, in his own words, “all over” the NEO registration “like a rash”. Meanwhile, the chefs just kept their heads down


Gloucester’s DISTEX (Disaster Relief Exercise) non-combatant evacuation


attackers, the FOST ‘wreckers’ still gave the damage teams a work-out.


entertainment’. It was no wonder then that a little bit of cat-and- mouse developed with the ship’s company when the FOSTies tried to fi nd places to charge their smoke machines... “The exercises just fl ew by,” said deputy marine


loss of all internal ‘light


and everybody fed. “People kept turning the kit off, but if you don’t open on time, you can’t exactly give everyone else grief across the counter, so you’re never going to let that happen,” said Chef Louis Walsh. Of the whole OST experience, CO Cdr David George said: “FOST has done exactly what it’s supposed to – get us to operational capability. “It’s been bloody at times, but actually the ship’s


spirit is such that nothing was too much for it. I’ve seen some tired faces around the last few weeks, but never once a head down or shoulders slumped. “I’m immensely proud of my sailors for what they


engineer offi cer Lt Paul Embleton, who was in charge of the Forward Fire and Repair Party. “They were manic. There were points when I was looking at my incident board and laughing, there was so much on it. There was a lot of thinking – my head hurt afterwards!” Bumps, bruises and gaffes are par for the course through OST. In eight weeks of fi res, fl oods, humanitarian crises and general all hell breaking loose, the ship certainly had its ups and downs. The principal warfare offi cer (underwater) realised after he piped that Gloucester didn’t actually have a starboard seaboat, and one sailor learned literally


have achieved… And yes, I’m very glad it’s over! It’s time to go home, get some rest, and get ready to deploy.”


performance, former CO and now FOST Director South, Capt Malcolm Cree, addressed the ship’s company after their fi nal inspection: “My team has been particularly impressed. “You’ve been enthusiastic, you’ve been receptive,


you’ve provided that individual professionalism, and the most common comment from my staff has been about your teamwork and your fi ghting spirit.” All of which should stand the destroyer in good


stead; later this year she heads to the South Atlantic on a seven-month deployment, taking over from HMS Portland.


The man passing judgment on the Fighting G’s


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