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2 NAVY NEWS, NOVEMBER 2010


HMS Cumberland HMS Daring HMS Sabre/Scimitar


HMS Manchester RFA Wave Ruler


HMS Portland HMS Ocean HMS Tireless HMS Dauntless


Joint Warrior HMS Albion


FASLANE ROSYTH HMS Gannet HMS Clyde 800/801 NAS


HMS Severn DEVONPORT


CULDROSE 771 NAS


YEOVILTON PORTSMOUTH


HMS Westminster BOSTie the Budgie†


Fleet Focus


But, as the First Sea Lord emphasises in the wake of the Strategic Defence and Security Review, “there is still a job to do”. A quick glance at the maps above show that it is being done. And how. In the Caribbean, HMS Manchester snared three drug runners and stopped cocaine reaching its destination (see right). Half a world away, HMS Montrose twice disrupted sorties by Somali pirates, once thwarting an attack on a merchantman, the other occasion destroying a pirate ‘mother ship’ (see page 7). HMS Northumberland is also in the region and the duo will shortly be joined by HMS Cumberland (see right). The green berets of 40 Commando have returned from their ‘bittersweet’ six months in Helmand where the heavy sacrifices, say senior Royals, were ‘not in vain’ (see page 8). The Type 45 destroyer is the great white hope of the surface fleet for the coming generation – and the much-hyped and long- awaited £1bn warships are beginning to make their mark. HMS Dauntless made history by firing a Sea Viper missile – the class’ principal weapon – off north-west Scotland (see opposite). Three thousand miles away her older sister HMS Daring was flexing her muscles for the very first time with a carrier battle group headed by the USS Enterprise (see page 13). Meanwhile the third Type 45, HMS Diamond has hauled down the Blue Ensign and hoisted the White (see page 27). And on the Clyde the Type 45 programme – the most complex surface ships ever built for the RN – is drawing to a close with the launch of the sixth and last of the class, HMS Duncan (see page 9). She’s in the early stages of fitting out at Scotstoun, where HMS Dragon played host to reservists from HMS Cambria (see page 22).


NO TWO ways about it, the past few weeks have been particularly bleak for the men and women of the Royal Navy.


protecting Iraq’s oil platforms and shipping in the Gulf. She took a breather from patrols to visit Saudi Arabia (see page 10). HMS Portland flew the flag for Blighty in Chile and Peru and joined in the anti-drugs war in both the Pacific and Caribbean (see page 14). HMS Ocean’s grand tour of the Atlantic (North and South) is drawing to a close with the helicopter carrier calling in on Nigeria and Sierra Leone – the latter a decade after the Mighty O played a vital role in restoring order (see page 11). By far the most beautiful image to cross our desks this month is that of HMS Triumph taking part in Exercise Joint Warrior in Scotland (see page 6).


Amphibious flagship HMS Albion has been in Scotland working with Royal Marines to trial a potential new ‘fast landing craft’ (see page 15). HMS Somerset is coming to the end of her six months


squadrons partaking in the regular war game (see pages 20-21 and 24-25). The rest were (deep breath) HM Ships Ark Royal, York, Monmouth, Shoreham, Walney, Brocklesby, Cattistock, Ledbury, Penzance, Echo, Biter, and Turbulent, RFAs Fort George and Largs Bay, 814 and 815 NAS. Of those Walney has now passed into history while Ark Royal is the highest-profile victim of the SDSR cuts (see pages 4-5 for details).


She was one of 15 warships and auxiliaries and two Naval air


Britain bows out of fixed wing carrier operations for the next decade – this in the month that we commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Taranto Raid, the most salutary lesson of the potency of naval air power in the Royal Navy’s history (see our supplement in the centre pages).


With the axeing, too, of 800 NAS and the entire Harrier force, ‘A cracking day’


NOW ordinarily we would never question the wording of a Navy press release. But the words ‘stealthy’, ‘softly-softly’ and ‘HMS Manchester’ are not typical bedfellows. Type 42. Big. Belches a lot of smoke. Tynes and Olympuses, not necessarily the quietest engines out there.


But somehow the Busy Bee closed to within 150 metres – just shy of 500ft in old money – of a suspicious fishing boat in the dead of night to launch her sea boats and surprise a trio of Caribbean drug traffickers. The net result? An estimated 240kg of cocaine were either seized by HMS Manchester’s US Law Enforcement Detachment, or tossed into the sea. Eight bales of the drug were hurriedly


kg MS t


thrown overboard by the smugglers in a desperate – and futile – attempt to escape the law.


Six bales sank, but quick-thinking by the Navy sea boat crews resulted in two being recovered as evidence, each of them containing 30 kilos of cocaine. And the overall result of HMS Manchester’s haul: an estimated £16.8m of drugs which will never reach European shores. Or any other shores for that matter...


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warning as possible to jettison the drugs. After the recovery of the two cocaine bales which didn’t sink, the three men aboard the fi shing vessel were quickly apprehended by the US Coast Guard team. The trio were later handed over to the Colombian authorities when Manchester rendezvoused with a Colombian Coast Guard vessel.


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“It has been a cracking day for HMS Manchester, and a cracking day for the continued campaign against narcotics traffi cking in the Caribbean,” said a delighted Cdr Cox. “The smugglers had nowhere to hide thanks to the stealthy approach and quick reactions of the ship’s boarding teams. “Valuable evidence was secured and the traffi cking of a substantial quantity of cocaine has been disrupted.”


tha


the international rugby union community. The tournament was played in the mid-


patrol aircraft spotted the suspicious-looking fi shing vessel in daylight in the Colombian Basin, an area of the Caribbean bounded to the south by Colombia and to the south-west by Panama. The aircraft alerted Manchester, which at the time was 80 miles to the west. CO Cdr Rex Cox ordered his ship to make best speed so that she would be able to make a covert approach after nightfall. That gave the target vessel as little


The operation began when a US maritime


afternoon Caribbean heat on a rubberised astro- turf pitch which allowed a fast fl owing style of play.


Curaçaon sides – making six matches in all, of which the Mancunians won four. The only team to go unbeaten were Wara Wara 1st VII, comprising some very talented, quick players.


Manchester’s coming towards the end of her lengthy Caribbean patrol; she’s due to return to Portsmouth shortly before Christmas.


Manchester’s teams played each of the


Wara Wara RFC. Rugby’s a fairly new sport on the island and the Dutch have aspirations of joining


Taking a break from anti-drug patrols in Curaçao, the Busy Bee fi elded two sides in a rugby 7s contest hosted by


The very last Sausage role


HMS Cumberland has


embarked on what has become her fi nal deployment – and her third tour of duty to the same region in as many years. The frigate departed Devonport at the end of September – before it was announced that all four remaining Type 22 frigates were to be decommissioned by the end of next year under the Strategic Defence and Security Review (see pages 4-5). The Mighty Sausage will be east of Suez until well into the New Year.


the region from whence she came at the tail end of 2009 (and at the tail end of 2008 as well...).


Cumberland is returning to


year’s deployment ended, the warship has received some TLC courtesy of engineers from Babcock and enhancements for her 2010-11 deployment, notably improved weapons and comms systems. Those improvements were tested during the latest Joint Warrior exercise in north-west Scotland (see pages 20-21 and 24-25) before Cumberland made for Gibraltar and then the Middle East. There her tasks are many and varied, with the overarching aim of maritime security – including protecting Iraq’s oil platforms (currently safeguarded by HMS Somerset – see page 10), general security at sea in the central Gulf, and counter- piracy/smuggling/terrorism/ people trafficking in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean (her principal mission on her last sortie to this part of the world). Cumberland’s Commanding


In the nine months since last


HMS Gloucester RFA Black Rover


HMS Northumberland HMS Somerset HMS Montrose HMS Enterprise HMS Chiddingfold HMS Middleton HMS Pembroke HMS Grimsby RFA Bayleaf RFA Diligence RFA Lyme Bay RFA Fort Victoria RFA Cardigan Bay


Plus one ballistic missile submarine on patrol somewhere beneath the Seven Seas


845 NAS/846 NAS/857 NAS/ FDG/1710 NAS


IMAT


Offi cer, Capt Steve Dainton – who previously worked in the UK Maritime HQ in Bahrain – said: “It is impressive to see how far the Iraqi Navy has come during recent years.” He added: “My crew have


done really well over the past nine months and are at an extremely high standard. “The ship is operationally focused and ready to deal with any of the very real threats we may encounter while we are away.”


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